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Promoting Student Literacy
Nationwide, we are facing a literacy crisis. Recent studies have revealed that 70 percent of all eighth graders do not read on grade level, and approximately 40 percent of high school graduates lack the literacy skills employers seek. In the new information economy, those who know how to access information, to understand it, to apply it, and to articulate it both through the spoken and written word will succeed, while those who do not have these skills will find few employment opportunities. To ensure a bright future for our city, The Fund has supported several initiatives that help combat this literacy deficit. Below, you can read more about some of our key literacy-driven projects:
Library REACH Grant Program
For New York City's public school students, libraries can be the driving force behind reading, learning, and creating a brighter future. They are oftentimes the only place in which a student can explore her interests outside the classroom, go online to research college choices, or do her homework in a quiet, safe space. Literacy is essential to paving a path for success for our students, and there is no better investment that
New Yorkers can make than supporting the improvement of school libraries.
For this purpose, The Fund has run the Library REACH (Revitalizing Education for Adolescents and Children) grant program since 2004. Through a competitive application process, The Fund uses private sector contributions to award grants to schools to transform their libraries. Library REACH is based on the idea that a small amount of money -- when strategically placed in the hands of an enthusiastic librarian and a principal with vision -- can transform a public school library into a center of literacy and learning for the entire school community. To date, more than 200 schools have received these grants, impacting over 190,000 students across New York City.
Library REACH grants empower school librarians to purchase a range of resources to meet the unique needs and interests of their students and school community. These resources may include foreign language collections for immigrant children who are learning to speak English, or college and career books for students exploring post-graduation opportunities. Some librarians invest in computers so that their students can access critical research tools and hone their digital literacy skills. Others have purchased nonfiction collections to replace books that are decades out of date, multi-media tools like audio books and page turning devices to support students with special needs, and rugs, couches, and lamps to create a cozy reading nook for independent reading.
Library REACH grants are notable for their contribution to physical upgrades to school libraries, but they also contribute meaningfully to the culture of the school. A successful school library can function as a hub of exploration and learning that the entire school community can use and enjoy. For example, a vibrant library filled with up-to-date informational resources can be a valuable tool for a teacher, and can often foster a collaborative relationship between teachers and the librarian that had not existed before. Furthermore, a Library REACH grant can enable librarians to expand their parent book collections so that they can provide helpful resources to families about how to read with their children and practice literacy skills at home.
Library REACH applications are available in the fall. For more information about this program, please email info@fundforpublicschools.org or call 212-374-2874.
Legacy Library Grant Program
In the fall of 2010, The Fund launched a new library grant program, called Legacy Libraries. This program invites NYC public schools to apply to be a part of a fundraising campaign for an upgrade worth up to $50,000 to their school library to enhance its ability to help the school meet its student achievement goals. Funded by donations from NYC public school alumni and other friends of our schools, this initiative enables supporters to donate to the library of their choice and watch its transformation unfold in real-time through our interactive website, www.nycgrads.org.
Here, donors can meet the principal, librarian, and students of the school that they are supporting, view photos and videos of the library, monitor the grant’s progress – both in funds raised and library upgrades completed – and see the impact of their contribution, from footage of students using the state-of-the-art computers or reading the brand new books they helped purchase, to thank-you messages from the school community. And, www.nycgrads.org offers a variety of ways to give back to our schools, in addition to donating – from volunteering to mentoring, new opportunities will be added frequently so we encourage you to bookmark the site and share it with friends!
Check out our three Legacy Libraries below:
College Prep at East Side
Remember how much work was involved in your own college application process? Standardized tests, dozens of forms, deadlines, recommendations, essays – it’s a lot to handle! Help the students at East Side Community High School better navigate this process by funding a college and career prep program within their school library.
A Community Hub in Brooklyn
To foster a vibrant culture of literacy at the school and in students’ lives beyond school, PS 32 is working to bring families into the library, make them feel at home, and encourage them to read with their students.
A New Library in the Bronx
Help PS 130 build a top-notch library that will inspire its students to be lifelong readers.
Core Knowledge Early Literacy Pilot
Comprehending words on the page – and understanding the context in which words are used – are some of the most important skills our students need to succeed in college and the workforce. But, children living in poverty are not developing these skills at the level necessary to compete in today’s fast-paced global economy. Effective early literacy instruction is critical to leveling the playing field. To this end, The Fund has mobilized private support for the New York City Department of Education’s Core Knowledge Early Literacy Pilot.
The pilot utilizes the Core Knowledge Early Literacy curriculum, developed by Dr. E.D. Hirsch, to address the literacy achievement gap by arming all children with the general knowledge that strengthens reading comprehension skills in later grades. The curriculum integrates rich content knowledge across a range of subject areas – from American history to botany – into literacy instruction during the early grades. This information provides students with key cultural and historical reference points that set the background for what they are reading. For example, imagine trying to understand the popular children’s book Goodnight Moon if you did not know that the moon is a planet that rises at night and can be viewed from Earth. Similarly, it would be challenging to comprehend The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn if you did not understand the concept of slavery, or that slavery existed in the United States for a period of time and targeted certain groups of people. The Core Knowledge curriculum helps students build this contextual background so that they can better understand what they are reading, connect it to other topics they are learning about, and tackle new information more effectively.
New York City has joined with several other school districts to pilot this innovative reading curriculum and has already seen promising results. In 2009, for example, the kindergarten students in Core Knowledge pilot schools showed six times the gain from fall to spring on literacy assessments when compared to the students of similar demographic profile at comparison schools. Additionally, schools that participated in the first year of the pilot all chose to continue using the curriculum with their own funds, indicating that teachers are finding it to be such a strong resource that schools are willing to invest in it going forward. As the pilot progresses, its effectiveness may inspire more teachers to utilize this approach in other subject areas and grade levels as well – helping model for our students that literacy is a lifelong skill.
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