Co-Investing in the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading

In keeping with its mission to help vulnerable children achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger society, as a co-investor in the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation will help inform, shape and advance this effort to ensure that many more children from low-income families are prepared to succeed in school and in life.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation was “at the table” from the very start of the GLR Campaign—one of three architects of the early vision that produced the current 129-community, 35-state effort to advance grade-level reading and create more hopeful futures for children from low-income families. The initial collaboration was rooted in our shared views that education is the foundation of children’s success, that investing early and comprehensively in those children and their families is the smart and right thing to do, and that learning can and should be nurtured by everyone who interacts with a child in all settings from home to child care to formal schooling.

The GLR Campaign and its network of communities are emerging as a significant platform for learning, innovation and scaling of effective programs and practices to ensure more young children are healthy, ready to learn and successful in school. As the Campaign shifts from mobilization to making progress toward outcomes, this is an important time for Kellogg to join as a co-investor. Co-investment provides the basis for a strong and mutually rewarding relationship that can advance the interests and objectives of both organizations — and, most important, help improve the prospects for millions of children.

Financial support from Kellogg, together with that of the other co-investors, will enable the GLR Campaign to become the forward-leaning, effective backbone organization to drive the collective effort of communities and states toward achievement of our goal:

By 2020, a dozen states or more will increase by at least 100% the number of children from low-income families reading proficiently by the end of third grade.

Early Wins and Promising Momentum

2012 was a breakthrough year for the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. 124 communities hailing from 34 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands became part of the GLR Communities Network by completing a rigorous, locally led process to form coalitions of local stakeholders and develop plans to address important barriers to students’ achieving reading proficiency by the end of third grade. These communities encompass 350 school districts with 8 million K-12 students. More than 1,600 groups are part of the local coalitions. And in an indication that momentum is growing, Arkansas, with five communities, joined in April 2013, and another two dozen communities from an additional six states have expressed intent to join.

Other encouraging signs:

  • Led by governors, chief state school officers and legislative leaders, as many as 30 states have put a “stake in the ground” for third-grade reading.
  • Over 40 sector-leading organizations have signed on as Campaign Partners. Collectively, these organizations reach into virtually every community in the nation and represent a vast array of financial, intellectual and human resources.
  • Significant commitments to mobilize millions of volunteers and service members have come from United Way Worldwide, the Corporation for National and Community Service, AARP/Experience Corps and City Year.
  • Philanthropy is stepping up, both through more than $7 million invested to date in the GLR Campaign itself and through grantmaking aligned with the grade-level reading agenda. For instance, Target, a Campaign co-investor, will invest $500 million by the end of 2015 in the Target Read With MeSM initiative. Recently, Bloomberg Philanthropies awarded $5 million to Providence, Rhode Island, a GLR Network community, for its proposal to combine technology and coaching to help low-income parents improve the quality of their conversations with their young children and thereby increase the children’s vocabulary. 163 local funders are part of the sponsoring coalitions. In Arizona, Arkansas and Maine, philanthropy is taking the lead to organize and advance strong, statewide grade-level reading efforts. Six affinity groups and 12 regional associations of grantmakers are actively engaged.
  • The GLR Campaign’s key messages have been lifted up in hundreds of stories in electronic, print and social media, including coverage in major mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post and PBS NewsHour.

Fueling Momentum, Driving Impact

In 2013, the GLR Campaign will focus on seven strategic, high-yield activities to sustain the momentum and drive toward impact:

  • Continuing to strengthen and grow the set of partnerships that engage key constituencies and provide the leadership and support needed for success. The Campaign is seeking to deepen mutually beneficial relationships with existing partners to yield even more value, to deepen or establish connections with other change-seeking initiatives, and to recruit more partners from the education, health and public housing sectors, as well as from among reading support organizations, STEM advocates and programs that foster successful parenting.
  • Help communities in the GLR Network complete the pivot from planning to performing and proceed with implementation. This is being led by the Network Communities Support Center (NCSC), the arm of the Campaign established to help Network communities develop, implement, share and sustain solutions to the challenges and barriers to grade-level reading by the end of third grade. The NCSC functions as: a hub for peer networking; a broker of technical assistance and consulting support from a broad array of public, private and social sector providers; and an accelerator of local change efforts through opportunities such as the All-America City Awards program.
  • Develop and disseminate products, tools and guidance on topics relevant to early learning and reading proficiency. Through the NCSC and the GLR Campaign’s various communications vehicles, the Campaign will work to assure that Network communities have ready access to existing and emerging knowledge such as research on brain development and information about effective programs and practices. In addition, the GLR Campaign is undertaking or planning a number of initiatives that are expected to add to the knowledge base and/or facilitate better use of knowledge and resources at the community level. In 2013, top priority among these initiatives will be: (1) continuing the Healthy Readers Initiative begun in 2012; and (2) continuing to partner with a variety of sector-leading organizations on using technology to help parents advance early literacy and launching additional components of the Successful Parenting Initiatives, including Supporting Parents for Success and Parents and Teachers Together.
  • Expand work with states around policies that promote early learning and build a more seamless system of services and supports from birth through third grade. The GLR Campaign has always included states as a target for action, but it “began local” in the belief that changes in a state’s population centers would drive change in the state capitol. This is still likely to be important, but significant movement among governors and state legislators makes this an opportune time for the Campaign to increase attention to state-level work.
  • Increase and intensify philanthropic support of the GLR Campaign and the grade-level reading agenda. The relationship with the Open Society Foundations’ Campaign for Black Male Achievement and the connection between the Healthy Readers Initiative and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Vulnerable Populations Program demonstrate the potential of the GLR Campaign and the Network communities to serve as platforms for philanthropic collaboration. In 2013, the GLR Campaign will continue to seek out and develop other collaborative opportunities, as well as additional investment in the Campaign itself. The GLR Campaign also will work to deepen and expand its relationships with philanthropic infrastructure organizations.
  • Broaden the reach and enhance the effectiveness of the GLR Campaign’s communications approach. The GLR Campaign has engaged in a vigorous and extensive outreach effort to share and promote its message. For example, in 2012, senior Campaign representatives spoke at over 100 events. In 2013, the Campaign will continue an active program of presentations, in-person meetings and consultative sessions, and will support special events such as an upcoming Washington Post Live symposium that will feature distinguished panels of governors and chief state school officers. To amplify the message, the GLR Campaign will work closely on communication strategies with Network communities and Campaign Partners, for example by co-sponsoring National Summer Learning Day with the National Summer Learning Association and Attendance Awareness Month with Attendance Works.
  • Build the GLR Campaign’s capacity and infrastructure to be an effective “backbone organization.” The GLR Campaign set out to be catalytic and has been highly successful at that. While encouraging, the better-than-anticipated success also has brought to the fore the urgency of addressing the needs of the enterprise. The scope of the Campaign now includes an extensive network of communities, many engaged partners and funders, and a growing number of initiatives. To stoke and sustain the momentum, it is critical that the Campaign not only continue its catalytic role, but also that it become an effective backbone organization — providing structure and coherence to keep all of the pieces on track and moving compatibly, collaboratively and consistently toward the end goal. Consequently, in 2013, the Campaign will commit time, energy and resources to building the necessary infrastructure and sustainable capacity to assure that it can fulfill the responsibilities of a backbone organization.

Co-Investing in Better Futures for Children

Joining as a co-investor, Kellogg would directly support the forward progress of the Campaign in areas that align with the Foundation’s mission, strategic priorities and work with families and communities.

Especially important will be building out the capacity of the Network Communities Support Center, so that it, in turn, can help build capacity at the community level and make the connections between Network communities and peers, other change-seeking initiatives and resources that will be essential to success. With a large and growing number of communities tackling the grade-level reading agenda, fulfillment and execution pose significant challenges and are a primary focus for the Campaign, as indicated by the fact that support for communities now represents more than 50 percent of the enterprise budget.

Beyond financial support, the GLR Campaign will benefit tremendously from Kellogg’s guidance based on the perspective and knowledge gained through a long and rich history of related grantmaking around education, health, and community engagement as well as family support and programming to foster early literacy, such as Reach Out and Read, Parents as Teachers and Raising a Reader. Kellogg also brings significant experience working on the ground in communities and states, further beckoning a more structured collaboration in pursuit of the 2020 goal.

For these reasons, the GLR Campaign is eager to include the W.K. Kellogg Foundation among its enterprise co-investors and to link our efforts to put more children from low-income families on the path to success.

About the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading

Launched in 2010, the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading is a collaborative effort by funders, nonprofit partners, states and communities across the nation to ensure that more children from low-income families succeed in school and graduate prepared for college, a career and active citizenship. The Campaign focuses on reading proficiency by the end of third grade, a key predictor of high school graduation and a milestone missed by 80 percent of low-income children. The goal:

By 2020, a dozen states or more will increase by at least 100% the number of children from low-income families reading proficiently by the end of third grade.

The milestones[1] by which the GLR Campaign will assess whether it is on track for sustainable momentum toward the 2020 goal are:

If by 2015, grade-level reading has become: apriority for parents, educators, sector leaders and policymakers; aperformance measure for schools and school districts; a targetfor increased investment and citizen service; and acatalyst for policy advocacy.

If by 2016, at least two dozen communities report measurable progress on critical indicators of school readiness, student attendance, summer learning and grade-level reading at the end of first, second and third grades.

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[1] The GLR Campaign initially defined milestones for the mid-point of the effort, which will be 2015. It subsequently has broken out the 2016 milestone related to student progress, because that will synchronize with the availability of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.