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| september 2018
theVoice • rockfordchamber.com
Guest Perspective insight
It takes a village … part two Attract (and grow) top talent There is a lot of buzz around third grade reading lately. While research designating deficiencies in third grade reading as a significant risk factor is not new, it has come into focus in Rockford recently when a collective impact forum was held this June. The forum, hosted by NICNE and facilitated by the Tamarack Institute, sparked community conversations that focused on recent statistics indicating that a majority of our third graders are not reading at grade level. Despite what appears to be staggeringly adverse statistics, encouraging statistics show we have an education system to be proud of. All of RPS 205’s Early Childhood Centers have earned the Gold Circle of Quality designation. At the elementary level, the school district has implemented Reading Horizons, a reading program focused in the areas of phonics to improve comprehension. Since implementation of this program, literacy growth rates for K-2 students have increased by 9 percent from 2017 to 2018, and national percentile rankings in literacy for RPS 205 Kindergarten students have increased by 15 points from 2017 to 2018.
Literacy by Third Grade While third grade reading is an
important indicator of future success, the focus should be on how we, as a community, can prepare our students with a solid foundation prior to third grade and outside of the academic experience. Such efforts should reach as far back as prenatal services and continue on throughout early childhood in identifying and striving to close opportunity gaps. It is not as much a matter of education as it is of social responsibility to provide additional support for those who were not provided critical foundational experiences such as family vacations exploring other cultures, or trips to the zoo or museum. Evidence-based research continues to validate the major impacts on academic performance when effective school, family and community collaboration supports student outcomes. This is especially true for at-risk children and students facing poor academic performance.
Community Experts Needed Two Alignment pilots that were implemented this spring aim to tackle barriers to access for Rockford families. One involves the designation of various community service providers to serve as a single-point-of-entry for basic services to help families navigate our often-confusing
system of services. The other involves the facilitation of playgroups that nurture parent-child interaction for families with children ages 0 to 3. A new pilot is underway that supports the rollout of the school district’s new integrated literacy curriculum which includes real-world application through hands-on learning, guided reading with meaningful texts and project-based learning. For this pilot, the Alignment Rockford Curriculum Design Support Team will be seeking community industry experts to help RPS 205 curriculum leadership teams in designing relevant real-world classroom experiences to support the curriculum. The pilot will begin with third grade, and it will guarantee that regardless of a student’s or a school’s resources, each student will be provided an equitable quality experience connecting community and curriculum with learning standards.
Endless Opportunities Jay Sandine, Rockford Park District executive director and Alignment Rockford governing board member envisions numerous ways the Rockford Park District can support early literacy initiatives.
“At your park district, we have 30,000 individual children Katy Haun Alignment Rockford registered for lessons, leagues, camps and programs each summer. Having our coaches and program leaders incorporating reading into the recreation curriculum is an easy, fun and impactful way of keeping our children from that summer slide so that they are ready to continue their learning and growth when schools starts,” he said. It is up to our community to provide the needed wrap-around support as a partner to our public education system. Join a team; brainstorm how your organization can support a culture of reading; encourage your employees to volunteer in the schools; commit your organization to supporting pilots. The opportunities are endless! Katy Haun is operations manager at Alignment Rockford. Call 779-200-1963. The views expressed are those of Haun’s and do not necessarily represent those of the Rockford Chamber of Commerce.