Sacramento Focuses on Grade-Level Reading

I see that State of the ReUnion has been doing some reporting on Sacramento, California, exploring some of the tough challenges facing the community, so I thought I’d mention that Sacramento is joining the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, a national effort to get more low income kids to read at grade level by third grade.

Last month, Mayor Kevin Johnson launched the Sacramento Reads! 3rd Grade Literacy Campaign, one of the largest communitywide reading initiatives in the United States. Currently only about 37 percent of third graders in Sacramento read at grade level. The goal of Sacramento Reads! is for 80 percent of third graders to be reading at grade level by 2020.

Sacramento’s ambitious plan is part of a collaborative effort by dozens of funders and nonprofit partners across the nation known as the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. Other communities that have answered the call include New Britain, Connecticut; Springfield, Massachusetts and Los Angeles, California.

The campaign focuses on three preventable causes of the performance gap between low income readers and other students:
•    The readiness gap: The fact that many low income kids who show up for school are already behind because they haven’t had as much access to books or high quality pre-kindergarten programs that help prepare students to learn.
•    The attendance gap: I’ve already written a blog post about this problem. Research has found that one in 10 kindergarten and first grade students nationwide misses nearly a month of school each year in excused and unexcused absences.
•    The summer slide (summer learning loss): Lots of students lose ground over the summer if they are not reading at home or engaged in enrichment programs.

The National Civic League has also joined this nationwide effort. Our part will be to encourage communities to address the reading gap by focusing the 2012 and 2015 All-America City Awards on grade level reading efforts. Ordinarily, the award programs let communities choose the issue areas they want to present to our jury of civic experts at the annual event. In 2012, we’ll be doing things a little differently.

In 2012, the All-America City Award program will be a little different. NCL is asking communities to develop comprehensive plans that focus on the three critical areas identified by the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. Winners must demonstrate capacity to use data, deploy effective interventions, build strong cross‐sector partnerships, and mobilize public will to improve reading proficiency in the early grades.

Since the late 1990s, NCL has asked All-America City finalist communities to list at least one project that benefitted or engaged young people. Consequently, we’ve had more than a few past winners present reading or literacy projects.

For example: Marietta, Georgia, a winner in 2006, touted “Marietta Reads!” program. Participants selected books from approved lists and are tested on reading comprehension. Students earned points on the basis of the book’s difficulty and test scores. Goals were set for students at each grade level in all the city’s schools, and students earned awards by reaching those goals.

Hollywood, Florida, a winner in 2007, presented its “Born to Read” program, which positioned a fulltime librarian at the Memorial Primary Care Clinic, to interact with each family of young children. New families were given an application for a library card, a resource guide and a first book for the child. Families were given instructions on ways to encourage reading and this is reinforced with every subsequent visit to the clinic.

El Paso, Texas, a winner in 2010 has its annual Día de los Niños/ Día de Los Libros to improve literacy and health awareness in the community. The event involves a free giveaway of books and opportunities for young people to sign up for the Summer Reading Club.

Tupelo, Mississippi, a winner last year, featured two projects from the mayor’s task force on education:  “Read Tupelo” which provides a morning of learning for approximately 400 four and five year olds, including art activities, a music demonstration with various instruments, and story time presented by local officials and volunteers. Another initiative provides every baby born at North Mississippi Medical Center’s Women’s Hospital a copy of the book, Goodnight Moon.

Our hope is that more and more communities will do what Sacramento is doing and organize community-based efforts to address the reading gap. (Another difference in 2012 is that the campaign and its partners are offering technical assistance and peer learning opportunities to cities that participate in the award process.) To qualify, communities must submit a letter of intent by October 14.

For more information on the All-America City Grade Level Reading Award, visit the campaign’s website or the All-America City Award blog.

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Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.

We are so pleased to bring you State of the Re:Union’s 2011 Fall Season with the following episodes:

The Bronx, NY: Still Rising from the Ashes
The Bronx has long been seen as a symbol of America’s failings.  For many people here, ‘making it’ means escaping the crime and poverty of their borough.  But some have refused to flee. This episode shines a light on the hold-outs and the dreamers, people who’ve committed their lives to keeping chaos at bay in the Bronx.

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Mississippi Gulf Coast: Defending the Gulf
After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the area, Mississippi Gulf Coast residents were forced to come together to deal with the aftermath. Then, just as they were starting to get back on their feet, the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster dumped millions of barrels of oil into the water just off their shores. Cumulatively, these events have made environmentalists out of a whole lot of Gulf Coast residents who may not have considered themselves as such. We tell an hour of stories about the fight for the natural world bringing Gulf Coast residents together … both with one another and with unlikely partners. And how, in some instances, that fight is turning out to be exactly what a community needed to survive.

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Wyoming: The New Old West
People are few and far between in Wyoming.  Those that do live here prize tradition, self-reliance, and their connection to the land.  So when change comes to the high plains—an oil boom, a minister with new ideas—communities here are tested.   And neighbors have to strike a balance between preserving their independent way of life and learning to rely on one another. We trek to the small towns and remote ranches of Wyoming, meeting people as they adapt to the New Old West.

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Cleveland, OH: Entrepreneurs at Work
Cleveland, Ohio, is a city that was made by entrepreneurs. But for decades, it’s been known as a city that’s a shell of its former manufacturing-era glorious self. However, Cleveland is being embraced by a new generation of entrepreneurs as a place to put their dreams in motion. This is a now a city of entrepreneurship in a range of incarnations … in their kids’ education, in the environment, even in beer. This is an hour of entrepreneurial stories, taking a look at that go-get-em-seize-your-dreams energy in a variety of forms.

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Sacramento, CA: All Hands on Deck
There’s been a lot of bad news coming out of Sacramento lately: homelessness, the foreclosure rate, unemployment, and political gridlock in a state crippled by the recession.  Add to that a stubborn case of political fatigue, and you’ve got a lot of reasons to write this cityoff.  But we trekked to California’s beleaguered state capital to take a peek behind the national headlines and find out who keeps this city running—day in, day out—despite all that’s going wrong.  And we left with the realization that people in Sacramento are remaking the American city, in surprising and deeply moving ways.

We are perpetually moved by the incredible stories, people and communities we encounter in making each SOTRU episode. This season is no exception and we are sure that you will be as surprised as we were to learn the things happening in our communities.  You can visit the above pages to listen and download full episodes. There will also be some additional goodies (pictures, articles, and in some cases, a video documentary) you can peruse, adding even more insight into each episode.

Please listen for State of the Re:Union on your local public radio station. In the event your local station isn’t carrying us, you could always give them a call and request it! We’re sure they would love to hear from their listeners anyway. Thanks again for supporting SOTRU. We hope you enjoy the new episodes, documentaries and other bonus features from our travels.

*Listeners in Northeast Florida, you can celebrate the launch of the fall season with us at our annual fundraising event.  Together, Jacksonville’s Museum of Modern Art (MOCA) with SOTRU’s very own, Al Letson, will be hosting and entertaining with a live performance. ‘State of the Re:Union Live’ on Saturday, Oct 22, 2011, will have two shows: the first begins at 7:00 p.m. and the second is at 8:30 p.m. The seats are VERY  limited, so to make sure you don’t miss out, you can purchase tickets in advance for $15 here, or $20 at the door (provided there are seats still available).  See you there!

The Making of “Sacramento”

Get a behind the scenes look at the making of a State of the Re:Union episode.

This video takes us to Sacramento, California. There’s no over-estimating the love fans here feel for their Sacramento Kings, one of the city’s few big attractions.  But last winter, the King’s owners put in motion a plan to move the team down to Anaheim, and fans here reacted more powerfully than anyone could have imagined.  We follow the ups and downs as the dramatic—and possibly final—Kings season unfolds.  You’ll get a firsthand look at just what goes into quilting together pieces of an episode to create an hour of radio storytelling, and what makes Al tick (sweet potatoes from Boston Market, for one.).

All Hands on Deck

There’s been a lot of bad news coming out of Sacramento lately: homelessness, the foreclosure rate, unemployment, political gridlock in a state crippled by the recession.  Add to that a stubborn case of politics fatigue, and you’ve got a lot of reasons to write off this city.  But we trekked to California’s beleaguered state capital to peek behind the national headlines and find out who keeps this city running—day in, day out—despite all that’s going wrong.  And we left with the realization that people in Sacramento are remaking the American city, in surprising and deeply moving ways.

For instance, after severe budget cuts jeopardize Sacramento’s biggest and best-loved park, a fifth grader masterminds a solution to help save it.

We follow the emotional ups and downs of die-hard fans as the threat to move their beloved basketball team, the Sacramento Kings, unites them as a community with one voice and cause. Also, Explore Sacramento’s tent city, and the people working to find innovative solutions to assist in resolving this crisis spanning many years. Al will give you a guided tour of all of these things involving facets of survival and community helping to bridge a divided community.

To find out more how the story unfolds, listen to the full episode of Sacramento, CA: All Hands on Deck.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Harwood staff and Rich are on vacation this week and so we bring you a post from January 2006 that still rings true today. Let us know what you think – have we, as a society, changed at all in the last 5 years?

The notion of personal sovereignty is an enormously powerful idea and a potentially dangerous one. It signals to us that we as individuals can go our own way, do our own thing, and be our own person. Or, as the U.S. Army used to say, “Be all you can be!” The idea is deeply embedded in the current definition of consumerism that has grabbed hold of the American imagination. Nowadays we consumers expect to get what we want, when we want it, at the highest quality and the lowest cost – and if we don’t like something, we can return it without any questions asked.

Self-fulfillment has been part of the American landscape since our nation’s founding. But I often wonder if Jefferson had the same notion of the “pursuit of happiness” when he wrote that phrase into the Declaration of Independence as we do today. As we all know, Jefferson had a strong belief in the role of an informed citizen in society. Take apart that phrase and you end up with two key ideas: individuals who see themselves as more than free-lancing consumers and those who make it their business to be engaged in the larger society around them.

Today, the phrase “pursuit of happiness” is often the clarion call for individual self-fulfillment, at times without any regard to the larger society. Indeed, we are being socially groomed to expect to come into the public square and make claims and demands for our own interests without concern for others. But this pursuit only leads us to hyper-individualism, self-absorption, even selfishness.

As Americans repeatedly pointed out in my book, Hope Unraveled: The People’s Retreat and Our Way Back, too many of us are free-lancing our way through society, allowing our love affair with consumerism and personal sovereignty to crowd out the necessary time and space to be attached to public life and politics. We have retreated into close-knit circles of families and friends, often simply to pursue individual happiness.

I remember as I was traveling the country in recent years and talking with Americans, I would ask people to give me a motto for their community and the nation. One person said to me, “I’ve got mine and to heck with you.”  Another said, “I’m for me and you’re for you!” And still another person gave me this one, “I’m for me and you’re for me!”

Perhaps it goes without saying that over any extended stretch of time it is impossible for people to go it alone – even with the most remarkable circle of family and friends. The webs of entanglement in our interdependent lives will sooner or later stare us in the face. Our jobs, our safety, our schools, our health care, our very quality of life are all inextricably intertwined. People are by nature social animals. There is an emptiness that we all encounter when we peel ourselves away from others and choose to go it alone. We all know that in our heart of hearts. No consumer product or vacation home or gated wall can protect us from that universal truth.

People who have been part of something larger than themselves will tell you that they gained from those experiences an incredible sense of belonging, a deeper belief in the power of people to act together, and even a sense of happiness. And while their happiness may have been tied to some personal achievement, they will almost always say that it was also a result of their connection to others.

Like I said, personal sovereignty has always been part of the American experience; but that alone will not create the pathway for each of us being better people or to creating a better society. So, I would ask each of us to consider this question: What does happiness really mean to each of us and where can we find it? And what is the relationship of our answer to the state of the union? The phrase “state of the union” suggests that there is a coming together of disparate pieces – some of those pieces are our 50 states, others are comprised of we the people as individuals.

It’s time to call ourselves back to public life – and to each other. And I would ask each of us to think about Jefferson’s words, and realize that greater personal happiness will come by being part of stronger communities and a stronger nation. Personal sovereignty just cannot fulfill our deepest wants.

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A dynamic public speaker, Rich Harwood is a frequent keynote for foundations and national organizations. He is an expert contributor on national and syndicated media outlets including MSNBC, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN’s Inside Politics, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Special Report with Brit Hume, C-SPAN, and many others. He is also the author of Hope Unraveled: The people\’92s retreat and our way back (2005), Make Hope Real: How we can accelerate change for the public good (2008) and numerous studies, articles and essays chronicling vital issues of our time. His most recent written work, Why We\’92re Here: The Powerful Impact of Public Broadcasters When They Turn Outward, is being published and distributed in Spring 2011. You can follow him on twitter @RichHarwood and facebook.com/richharwood.

You can read Rich’s posts every Tuesday on State of the Re:Union’s website.

Entrepreneurs at Work

Cleveland, Ohio, is a city that was made by entrepreneurs. John D. Rockefeller started Standard Oil there. The General Electric Company built one of the nation’s first industrial parks in Cleveland. But for a few decades, that is not what it has been known for.

Instead, thanks to the polluted Cuyahoga River catching on fire back in 1969, it has been known as “the mistake on the lake,” a reminder that it had been a city that had become a shell of its former manufacturing-era glorious self. However, thanks in large part to its dirt-cheap rents, Cleveland is being embraced by a new generation of entrepreneurs as a place to put their dreams into motion.   ………………………………………………………………….

This is a now a city of entrepreneurship in a range of incarnations … in the classic business sense, yes. But Cleveland’s also a city of people turning their entrepreneurial sense on the place around them– in their childrens’ education, in the environment, even in beer. This is an hour of entrepreneurial stories, taking a look at that go-get-’em-and-seize-your-dreams energy in a variety of forms.

To hear the full rundown of the many different ways the community that “rocks” is rocking even more, click on Cleveland, OH: Entrepreneurs at Work.