IMPACT REPORT THE FIRST FIVE YEARS 2015-2019
Laying the Foundation for
2015 -
Read Charlotte is a ten-year community-wide initiative uniting parents, educators and community partners to improve children’s literacy from birth through third grade. Our goal is for 80% of students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg to reach College & Career Ready by third grade. Here is a highlight of our major accomplishments in the first 5 years of this systems change and grassroots work.
RESEARCH & BUILDING THE FRAMEWORK
BOOKS ON BREAK
Devoted over 1,000 hours reviewing primary research on “what works” to improve literacy to make sure we focus on the right things. • We identified birth-to-third grade indicators to improve literacy, which formed the basis for our “Reading Success Pathway” • We shared these insights with dozens of stakeholders in Charlotte-Mecklenburg and beyond, giving over 300 presentations to local organizations in the first two years
Promising Pages replicated the Books on Break model from Book Harvest in Durham, North Carolina. Since 2016, Promising Pages hosted 40 book fairs in 27 CMS schools, distributing 104,749 books to children to read during school breaks.
• Used these insights to build a roadmap for strategic action with four working groups to “stack and align” the most effective literacy interventions
2017
ACTIVE READING WORKSHOPS Created Active Reading workshops, filling a key gap in the market to train families in how to use children’s picture books to build children’s language, vocabulary and oral reading skills. In Summer 2017, transferred ownership to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library. To date 3,625 adults have been trained in Active Reading. Multiple communities in North Carolina and other parts of the country have been trained in Active Reading and are replicating this work.
2016 SYSTEMS CHANGE WORKSHOPS
2015
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Hosted three two-day systems change workshops in January, May and November 2016 with over 100 participants at each session. This laid the foundation for Read Charlotte’s work combining a focus on both supporting effective programs and improving systems.
REACH OUT AND READ Read Charlotte partnered with Reach Out and Read Carolinas (RORC) to strategically expand their program over a three-year period. We met our goal to expand the number of RORC clinics from 13 to 35 clinics. In 2016, RORC conducted approximately 44,000 well visits annually in 13 clinical locations. In the three years since our partnership, RORC reported over 127,000 well-visits at 35 active sites, of which the majority of the sites are located in low-income ZIP codes. We helped to strengthen partnerships between RORC, Atrium Health and Novant Health.
Impact: Systems Change
2017
READING MENTORS READY4K TEXTS
Introduced the evidence-based Ready4K text messaging program in Mecklenburg County. Sends tips and advice for families about things they can do at home to support language and literacy plus other areas of development starting at birth. Currently, almost 3,000 families receive text messages three times a week providing age-appropriate guidance on how to help their children. We are looking to scale Ready4K to serve an additional 10,000 families over the next three years. We've sent nearly 1 million texts to local families.
READY TO READ
Wrote a business plan with Child Care Resources Inc. for Ready To Read, a three-year program to improve Pre-K children’s reading readiness by combining data, coaching, an evidence-based literacy curriculum and the evidencebased Raising A Reader booklending program. Secured over $2 million from a dozen funders for this effort. In the 2018-2019 school year, 484 children, 36 teachers and 22 child care centers participated. The 3-year olds and 4-year olds in the Ready To Read classrooms significantly outperformed children in comparison classrooms in targeted reading skills. Moreover, the teachers in Ready To Read classrooms demonstrated stronger literacy instructional practices. We are looking to repeat these results and successful practices in more Pre-K classrooms.
DATA COLLABORATIVE Developed and launched the Read Charlotte Data Collaborative, a community of practitioners that use data to continuously improve student language and literacy outcomes. Over the first two years of this three-year initiative, 10 nonprofit organizations have received 210 coaching sessions and 49 group trainings. We also doubled the number of organizations that set goals for student literacy outcomes, increased by eight-fold the number of organizations using evidence-based literacy practices, and collecting data on quality of program implementation, and quadrupled the number of datadriven continuous improvement cycles. We look forward to scaling these successful practices to other Read Charlotte-supported initiatives.
Developed and launched the Tutor Charlotte Reading Mentors program in Fall 2017 in partnership with United Way of Central Carolinas. Modeled on the Lead to Read program in Kansas City, for two school years the United Way coordinated the recruitment of over 20 organizations who provided volunteers to read oneon-one with 633 Kindergarteners in nearly a dozen CMS schools. CharlotteMecklenburg Library provided training to volunteers in Active Reading, who read with whole classrooms of Kindergarteners for 30 minutes once a week. In summer 2019, Read Charlotte worked with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to redesign the North Star Reading Partners curriculum to incorporate successful practices from Tutor Charlotte.
LITERACY PRACTICES STUDY
SUMMER LITERACY INFUSION Partnered with the YMCA of Greater Charlotte in 2017 to replicate a Summer Literacy Infusion model we discovered in Philadelphia in which children in summer camps get 1 hour of literacy four days a week. Over 1,850 children have been served over three summers (20172019) at YMCA branches and through several community partners: Discovery Place, Parks and Recreation and the CMS After School Enrichment Program. Over the first three years, 95%, 74% and 85% of students avoided summer reading loss in summers 2017, 2018 and 2019 respectively.
Partnered with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools on a study by Harvard Professor James Kim on classroom literacy practices in CMS. This report, Practices Matter: Major Findings from the CMS Teacher Literacy Survey, showed how CMS teacher classroom literacy practices were related to student reading outcomes. The report emphasized the importance of focusing on foundational literacy skills in Grades 1 and 2. It also pointed to the importance of fluency for students in higher poverty and Title I schools. The findings from this report provided the foundation for future Read Charlotte projects that focused both on classroom instruction and targeted tutoring.
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Laying the Foundation for
2018 -
SMALL GROUP INSTRUCTION PILOT Launched an 18-month pilot project with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and the Belk Foundation to engage UPD Consulting to build a learning community among six elementary schools to improve their small group reading instruction. The insights from this project contributed to the school district’s adoption in 2019 of a new literacy curriculum and movement towards standards-aligned K-3 literacy instruction.
2018
The first annual Summer Reading Campaign kicked off in 2018, raising awareness of the critical importance of reading and learning over the summer with a robust social media and digital effort, coupled with traditional advertising. We partnered with Smart Start of Mecklenburg County to run advertisements on city buses all summer long. In 2019, community partners helped to distribute over 22,000 flyers about the summer slide to families through CMS schools and programs. We plan to continue this summer campaign annually.
2019 Kicked off the first annual Commit To 80 public campaign in March 2018. During Commit To 80, Read Charlotte asks the entire community over a two-week period to pledge specific commitments to get involved to improve early literacy. This annual effort helps to raise awareness, facilitate more partnerships and maintain momentum across the community. In 2018, we received over 500 commitments during Commit to 80. In 2019, we received over 1,200 commitments. We plan to continue Commit to 80 annually each spring.
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TRANSFORMATION NETWORK
Launched the Read Charlotte Transformation Network (RCTN), a network of school-community partnerships with the goal of building a platform to improve local collaboration and coordination focused on literacy. The RCTN helps to coordinate: high quality tutoring, family literacy nights, building home libraries, and summer reading. In 20182019, 50 community partners helped coordinate distribution of 55,000 books in 25 Book-APalooza events, coordinated 19 Family Literacy Nights attended by 1,700 people and provided over 500 tutors across 10 CMS schools. In the 2019-2020 school year, we have 11 participating CMS schools and are looking to grow the Network’s reach and impact to serve 30-60 schools by 2025.
Impact: Systems Change
2019
HELPS FLUENCY TUTORING
In the 2018-2019 school year, Read Charlotte coordinated the introduction of the evidence-based HELPS fluency program in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Partners included Augustine Literacy Project, the United Way, Helps Education Fund and CMS. A total of 155 third grade students in 10 CMS schools received targeted fluency tutoring. Across all students, 43% exceeded expected growth in reading fluency. Students who received 50 or more tutoring sessions made 1.5 years growth in reading fluency. In the 2019-2020 school year, the Helps Education Fund leads coordination of HELPS tutoring for over 250 second and third grade students in 13 CMS schools. Read Charlotte focuses on volunteer recruitment from businesses and community groups. A new innovation is partnership with 5 local colleges and universities to employ Federal Work-Study college students as paid HELPS tutors. We seek to grow this collective effort to serve students in 30-60 schools by 2025.
HOME READING HELPER Read Charlotte launched the Home Reading Helper website in September 2018, a free online resource that provides videos, activities and downloadable materials for families to support children’s reading from Pre-K through third grade. A focused marketing and partnership strategy resulted in 107,341 unique visitors over its first 15 months. Home Reading Helper is now more popular than the Read Charlotte site. In November 2019, there were 4,390 visitors to the Read Charlotte website compared to 13,500 to the Home Reading Helper. We seek to grow Home Reading Helper visitors and will integrate this more into Family Literacy Nights and upcoming work focused on the transition to Kindergarten.
Major Five-Year Accomplishments: FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS: Financial contributions to Read Charlotte are an important measure of community confidence in our work. Since inception, gifts and commitments to Read Charlotte to date total $13.1 million from 87 unique donors. (Includes contributions received to date for the next five years of our operations.) This does not include other contributions made to local literacy programs or strategic co-investments in supported programs that did not pass through our organization. Moreover, these funds were raised without any public fundraising campaign as we have sought to avoid competing directly with nonprofit service providers. MULTI-CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM: Over the past five years, Read Charlotte has developed an effective, professional multi-channel communications platform. This includes website, social media (Facebook and Twitter), digital ads, search ads, billboards, radio, print and co-branded bus ads. Over this time period, annual traffic to the Read Charlotte website grew from 1,693 unique visitors in 2015 to 41,849 visitors in 2019. Our Facebook followers grew from about 300 in early 2017 to 5,192 in late 2019.
STRATEGIC CO-FUNDING: Read Charlotte has a two-part funding model: a $2.8 million Transformation Fund to fill gaps and invest in new ideas and coordination of strategic co-funding in targeted projects with engaged local donors. Over the past five years, Read Charlotte has successfully collaborated with local funders to co-invest $6.8 million in strategic co-funding in 11 targeted projects. Of this amount, $2.6 million (38.5%) came from Read Charlotte’s Transformation Fund and $4.2 million (61.5%) came from strategic co-funders. These co-investments seeded new ideas (e.g., Active Reading workshops and the Data Collaborative), funded research (e.g., CMS literacy study), brought new models to Charlotte-Mecklenburg (e.g., HELPS fluency tutoring, Tutor Charlotte, Ready4K, Summer Literacy Infusion), expanded existing programs (e.g., Reach Out and Read), and supported pilot and demonstration projects (e.g., Ready To Read and Network for Continuous Improvement project). NATIONAL PACESETTER AWARDS: Read Charlotte’s accomplishments were recognized by the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading with a Pacesetter Award in 2016 and 2017. These awards are given to highlight communities that serve as proof points and represent the “leading edge” of innovation, impact and improvement within the GLR Network, currently comprised of more than 300 communities, representing 44 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Alberta, Canada.
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We Believe in Our Evid Eight Key Insights Insight: Parent expectations for what their child should be able to do in reading both before and after they enter school is the biggest driver of parent engagement.
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Insight: Alphabetic knowledge, early writing and oral language by the end of Kindergarten are among the strongest predictors of children’s reading ability in 1st and 2nd grade.
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Insight: There is a 76% correlation between end of 1st grade phonics and 3rd grade EOG scores.
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Insight: Only 1 in 5 students below grade level in phonics at the end of 1st grade reach College and Career Ready on the 3rd grade EOG
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Insight: Only 60% of students at grade level for phonics at the end of 1st grade make it to College and Career Ready on the 3rd grade EOG scores.
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Insight: There is a 79% correlation between end of 3rd grade reading fluency and 3rd grade EOG scores.
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Insight: 70% of CMS 3rd graders in Spring 2019 would have been at grade level if they experienced no summer reading loss.
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Insight: The biggest gaps in summer learning occur between 1st-2nd grade and 2nd-3rd grade.
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dence-Based Strategies Our key insights helped to form our objectives and focal areas.
We have 3 objectives. Get more birth-K kids ready to learn to read
Get more K-3 kids on track to reading proficiency
Prepare the system to scale impact
We’re focused in 5 areas.
1 2 3 4 5
Support great teaching
Encourage home literacy routines
Provide high-quality, targeted tutoring
Build home libraries
Stop summer reading loss
"Read Charlotte has taken on the heavy lift of building partnerships with families and community partners without placing extra work on teachers and staff. This has definitely played a part in our success by helping our parents understand and embrace their role in their scholars' literacy success. Our scholars feel that school and learning to read is more important because they see their parents as stakeholders." - Orlando Robinson, Principal, Reedy Creek Elementary
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Getting to 80%
First Ward Child Development Center
Mecklenburg Child Care Association
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The West Charlotte Coalition
Will Take All of Us
DIGITAL CHARLOTTE
FREEDOM COMMUNITIES
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Governing Board Johanna Anderson The Belk Foundation
Paul Draovitch Duke Energy Foundation
Sandra Holub Albemarle Foundation
Weston Andress (Vice Chair) The PNC Financial Services Group
Dena Diorio Mecklenburg County
Rhett Mabry The Duke Endowment
Lane Faison Skeebo Foundation
John Martin Young Black Leadership Alliance
Dr. Rachel Banks Novant Health Charles Bowman Bank of America Brian Collier Foundation For The Carolinas
Rebeca Fernandez Davidson College Fannie Flono Community Volunteer
Katie Morris (Chair) The Belk Foundation Anna Nelson CD Spangler Foundation
Crawford Pounds PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Justin Steinschriber The Leon Levine Foundation Kristi Thomas Wells Fargo Stick Williams Community Volunteer Earnest Winston Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
Lead Funders
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Supporters Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
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City of Charlotte University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Additional Funders Aaron Jeter
Hugh and Jane McColl
Russell Zabel
Alexis Gordon
James Family Foundation
Sally C. Saussy
Allen Tate Company, Inc.
James Klein
Selwyn Avenue Presbyterian Church
Andrea Barkley
Jane E. Pounds
Stephen L. Cornwell Foundation
Ann Dunlap Hendrix Charitable Fund
Jenkins B. Trotter
Steve & Loree Potash Family Foundation
Annette Korbin
Jim H. Thompson
StudeoCo
Barry A. Teague
John F. Cassady
Tamara Holt
Brighthouse Financial Inc.
John S. & James L. Knight Foundation
The Alpha & Omega Foundation
Carol Hallquist
Katherine O. Bagby
The George K. Baum Family Foundation
Caroline Starnes
Kathleen W. Shaw
The Katherine & Thomas M. Belk
Carrie Reinhardt
Kathylee B. Thompson
Foundation, Inc.
Charles Butt Foundation
Kissel Family Foundation
The Stanley Family Charitable Fund
Charlotte Hornets Foundation, Inc.
Kristina Denta
Theresia Moser
Children's Medical Endowment Fund
Laura Burkart
Trinisha Dean
Christine Nicodemus
Lisa Barnaby
UNC Charlotte
Davidson College
Margaret C. Sockwell
UNCC Chapter of Phi Kappa Phi
Dawn M. DeRose
MetaMetrics Inc.
Virginia T. Shaw
Ellen Rosenfeld
Michael & Maggie Greksa
WestEnd Advisors
First Presbyterian Church - Charlotte
Out Of Print
Whitney D. Arnall
Glenda Kilgore
Page & George Bradham Family
William D Funderberg
Global Endowment Management
Foundation
William A. McEachern
Gwen M. Poth
Patricia R. Morton
Winer Family Foundation
Hal and Holly Levinson Family Fund
Pete Gorman
WP Pizza Bar-Charlotte
Henry Sale
Rick and Saundra Magee Family Fund
Yanliang Dong
Holly Eskridge
Robinson Center for Civic Leadership
Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation
Howard G. Solender
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220 N. Tryon Street, Charlotte, NC 28202
www.readcharlotte.org
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