• Ralph Smith on the Campaign for Grade Level Reading
• Stacey Stewart on United Way’s community-based grade level reading efforts
• Ron Fairchild on summer reading loss
• Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia and Christine Benero on Colorado’s reading campaign

Last October, more than 160 across the country submitted a letters of intent to participate in the 2012 All-America City Award for Grade-Level Reading and to join the Grade-Level Reading Network of Leading Communities. Civic leaders in most of the communities are now hard at work developing their Community Solutions Action Plans (CSAPs) to respond to three major challenges: too many children not ready for school and too far behind to catch up; too many children missing too many days of school and too much instructional time; and too many children losing ground over the summer months and returning to school in September further behind than when they left in June.

March 12 is the filing date for the CSAP. If your community was among the more than 160 that filed a Letter of Intent, this may be the time to check in with your local team leader. You can:

• Support, encourage, and where necessary nudge the process. Let the Team Leader and her/his team know that participating the Network is important to you.
• Volunteer to help on the task forces and workgroups charged with data gathering, program mapping, and consensus building.
• Monitor progress, nudge, and pitch in. The CSAPs are due on March 12. How is your city coming along?

In other AAC-GLR news:

The next All-America City Grade-Level Reading Award webinar will be Thursday, February 9 at 2-3:30 PM ET.  The webinar will go over the peer review process that will be used to guide this year’s selection of participants. You will also have a chance to hear from experts in early childhood and summer learning.

Join us to get your questions answered and gather ideas as you move into the final stages of completing your Community Solutions Action Plans (CSAPs) over the next few weeks.  Click here to register.

Here are some other important documents for participants in the 2012 AAC-GLR Awards.

• Framework for applying for an AAC-GLR Award
• List of participating (loi) communities
• Third Grade Reading “Success Matters” brochure

NCL President Gloria Rubio-Cortés was on hand to congratulate Mayor Bob Murphy and a group of community leaders.

The quilt has been making rounds of cities that were finalists in the 2011 All-America City Awards. Lakewood was named a 2011 All-America City last June at an award ceremony and celebrqation in Kansas City, Missouri.

Gloria Rubio-Cortés

By Gloria Rubio-Cortés

Our new administrative fellow, Cheryl Jacobs, is reaching out to past members and others to renew or join the National Civic League.  You can pull up a copy of our membership form by clicking here.

As a member or contributor to NCL, you join a national network of doers and thinkers—community leaders, elected and appointed officials, educators, nonprofit and business leaders—and interact through social media.  You get the latest reports on community building techniques and programs for building civic engagement and solving community problems with a subscription to NCL’s quarterly journal, National Civic Review.

Your support is critical to people who are consistently improving their communities with the assistance of NCL’s programs and guides/publications.  We depend on you to be able to help people be problem solvers.

NCL Admin Fellow Cheryl Jacobs

NCL members and donors are important to us.   We invite you to stay involved, to support these efforts, to build our nation’s civic infrastructure, and to strengthen our democracy.  Knowing that it is a difficult time for everyone, NCL has kept its membership fees affordable.

Please renew your membership or make a donation by completing the attached form and mailing your check or allowing us to charge your credit card.  Or go to our Web site www.ncl.org and make a tax-deductible contribution to NCL.

ZeroDivide and the National Civic League (NCL) have teamed up to publish an issue of the National Civic Review on how rapidly evolving information and communications technologies (ICT) can overcome the barriers that divide the “haves” from “have-nots” in communities across the U.S.

“New technologies are transforming the way we live our lives, providing unprecedented opportunities to increase economic well-being and enhance civic engagement,” said Tessie Guillermo, President and CEO of the San Francisco-based ZeroDivide. “Underserved communities are pushing the envelope of what is possible, yet issues of cost, availability, language and literacy continue to limit their full and equal participation.”

Understanding these new opportunities and challenges is the central focus of NCR issue 100:3: “ Beyond the Digital Divide: How New Technologies Can Amplify Civic Engagement and Community Participation.” The contents of the new issue are available for no cost on the Wiley-Blackwell Online library http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1542-7811 and at ZeroDivide’s website http://bit.ly/digdivide100.

As part of the launch of this issue, ZeroDivide and NCL will convene a free webinar on November 17th entitled “Catalzying Civic Innovation: Using Tech for Community Engagement.”  The call will feature Jay Nath, Director of Innovation for the City and County of San Francisco, who has an article in the journal. Damian Thorman will also join the discussion. He is the National Program Director at The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and project lead for the Apps for Communities program – a joint project of the Foundation and the Federal Communications Commission.

For more information on the webinar and to RSVP, please visit http://bit.ly/webinarNCR.

NCR 100:3 features some of the country’s leading experts and advocates addressing a broad range of issues relating to ICTs - everything from ways of improving health care delivery to the use of mobile phones to mobilize political participation and civic engagement. “From digital divide to digital inclusivity, the issue of access has become more sophisticated in less than a decade,” writes Ali Modarres, chairman of the Department of Urban Analysis at California State University, Los Angeles. “Now inclusion encompasses service provision, access to data, creating presence on the Internet, and having influence in shaping the future of ICTs.”

Jay Nath writes how a “Government 2.0” movement is giving citizens opportunities to “participate and contribute value in a new architecture of openness and collaboration.” Jon Funabiki, executive director of the Renaissance Media Center, touts the growing influence of “little media,” small community-based newspapers, Internet publications and broadcast outlets that reach linguistically and ethnically diverse audiences often ignored by the mainstream media. Sasha Constanza-Chock of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology writes about successful uses of ICTs by immigrant rights groups. Other essays focus on a groundbreaking program by ZeroDivide to promote broadband use and digital literacy, and new ideas for how foundations can support their grantees in making use of new technologies.

“It’s so exciting to be working with ZeroDivide on this critical and timely issue,” said National Civic League President Gloria Rubio-Cortés. “We want this issue to give doers and thinkers in the public, private and nonprofit sectors new ideas about how to channel the power of information and communication technology so that it benefits all of our communities.”

Founded in 1998, ZeroDivide helps underserved communities realize the transformative power of technology to achieve social progress and economic opportunity. Since its inception, the nonprofit has invested $50 million to increase these communities’ civic engagement and economic well-being through technology innovation, access, training and content production.

For more information, visit www.zerodivide.org and bit.ly/digdivide100

Jane McAtee and Gloria Rubio-Cortes

Each year, dozens of finalists in the All-America City Award are asked to submit quilt squares representing something special about their communities. The squares are stitched together into a quilt, which tours the country visiting each finalist town, city, county or region. Southwest Airlines, the Official Airline of the All-America City Awards, is launching the quilt on its national tour again this year. The quilt will stop in each finalist community for several days, where it will go on display in public buildings and community centers. “What a wonderful way for people to celebrate the work they are doing to improve their communities!” said Jane McAtee, manager of community affairs and grassroots at Southwest. “It’s such a great opportunity or them to be creative in expressing the things that make their communities unique.”

First stop on the quilt’s 24-city tour is Kenai, Alaska, population 7115, a finalist and winner in the 2011. Among other things, Kenai’s award winning application focused on a community-wide effort to cleanup a local salmon fishery. The town’s quilt square illustrates a salmon leaping out of the river. Torrance, California, number five on the quilt tour, features a beach scene on its patch. “The All-America City quilt represents the spirit of the All-America City Awards—people working together to address our nation’s most pressing challenges,” explained National Civic League (NCL) President and chief quilter, Gloria Rubio-Cortés. “Think of the fabric of the quilt as something like the fabric of an American community.”

The patchwork varies from intricate patterns—some communities enlist the efforts of accomplished quilters—to very simple and basic cut and paste shapes. Craft and technique, however, are less important than the sentiment and community pride. It could be the town seal, for example, or an official city motto. It could be a local landmark, a scenic view or words expressing local values and goals, or a combination of any of the above. The patch-makers are encouraged to use their creativity. Last stop on the quilt’s 17-state tour will be Beloit, Wisconsin. Along the way it will visit Tupelo, Mississippi; Seaside, Oregon; Fayetteville, North Carolina and Fort Worth, Texas, among other locales.

Learn more about the award program and follow events leading up to annual event the All-America City blog at  www.allamericacityaward.com. The 2012 All-America City Awards will be held in Denver, Colorado, June 30-July 2 and will have a special focus on communities that mobilize to improve reading scores for at risk students. For more information, contact Mike McGrath at the National Civic League, 303 571 4343.

Our goal was to get 50 to 55 communities to sign up.  This level of interest has more than surpassed expectations, which suggests that grade-level reading may be an issue whose time has come.  We’ve been working with the National League of Cities and United Way Worldwide, among other groups, to generate interest in this award. It will be given to communities (counties, regions, whatever) that develop the most comprehensive, realistic and sustainable plans for addressing three issues: school readiness, school attendance and summer learning.

A pact between the National Civic League and the foundation-led Campaign for Grade-Level Reading allows these communities to join the Campaign’s network, which will provide assistance throughout the application process and help cities develop community-wide plans for improving reading achievement by the end of third grade. These localities will also be on the radar screen for the Campaign’s 80 foundations and philanthropic donors, who fund early childhood and early learning and literacy projects.

The event will be held June 30-July 2 in Denver, Colorado. We are really looking forward to it.

One of those bright spots is Morningside Elementary School in Brownsville, Texas. About 99 percent of the kids are Hispanic. About 99 percent are on the free or reduced-price lunch program (FARM). About 80 percent are Spanish speakers.

This is a demographic that typically haunts the less- than-excellent categories of statewide standardized performance tests. Not at Morningside. Quoting from the website:

“During exam time at Morningside Elementary, big posters appear with a simple message: 90%. ‘I expect everyone to get at least 90 percent on the test,’ says Principal Dolores Cisneros Emerson. Ambitious? Yes, but consider that 100 percent of Morningside third graders — virtually all from low-income families —were reading at grade level on the state assessment test last year, and 55 percent were commended for having no more than three questions wrong. Emerson expects excellence from Morningside students, no matter where they come from. Benchmarking, regrouping, individualized instruction, tutorials, and relentless optimism get results.”

“It’s true,” said Morningside Principal Delores Cisneros Emerson, when I asked her about the bright spot description. “We’re awesome. Let me tell you. We’re the best.”

The school uses the aforementioned benchmarking to determine individual strengths and weaknesses. Kids who are performing poorly are placed in smaller sized classes and meet with an “interventionist” to work on skills.

The school has regular tutorials, three days a week in the fall and spring, to help kids who are not doing well and kids who could be doing better with a little push. Ten times a year the school has tutorials on Saturdays to make sure the kids get enough time with the teachers.

“There are a lot of facets that contribute to students’ success on the campus,” said the principal. “One of them is the teachers really caring about the kids and doing everything possible to make sure they get what they need and treating each child as an individual. Second, the interventions with the kids who aren’t doing well and benchmarking the kids really often and seeing what skill they are lacking and working on that skill for those kids.”

The third key to success, says the principal, is parents. “I have a very strong parental base,” she says. “They may not be here every day sewing or cutting or making copies, but they support the school. They send their kids to school. Last year I had an ADA (average daily attendance) of 97 percent. They are trying to survive themselves, but the best way they can support me is to make sure they get their kids to school.”

Research tends to bear this out. One of the critical barriers to performance by low income kids is poor attendance.  Attendance is one of the three critical areas the campaign is asking schools and communities to focus on as a way of upping reading performance. The others are school readiness and the summer reading gap, the fact that low income kids lose ground during the summer months if they are not reading regularly.

Another key to success: “I know where the kids come from,” she said. “I know what their future is if they don’t become educated.”

She grew up in Brownsville, a city of about 175,000, across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, Mexico and attended local public schools, a local university and a local graduate school. She learned her management skills from another dedicated educator, Ernestina Treviño, who recently retired as principal of A.S. Putegnat Elementary, another school with mostly Hipsanic low income kids that has shown excellent results in the performance tests.

“She would always try to think what she could do more for those kids to succeed,” she said. When she got her own school, she was determined to duplicate her mentor’s performance. When she came to the school, it had not made the AYP (average yearly progress) benchmark under the “No School Left Behind” law. Her first year, it made the AYP but just missed being classified as exemplary. “The second year, we became exemplary and we have been exemplary ever since.”

We used to run an awards program for outstanding educators, and I interviewed a number of the honorees. How to describe? “Dedicated,” doesn’t quite get it, “energetic,” yes, “confident,” that would be an understatement. I’m talking teachers and principals who work in low income, high crime parts of our cities and seem to have no problem mobilizing kids, parents, teachers, community and business people—any and everybody—to buck the expectations and statistics. It’s like what the NASA guy says in the movie, Apollo 13. For these people, failure really isn’t an option.

(This item was originally posted on the State of the Re:Union Website)

Here are some other useful resources for those interested in finding out more about the AAC GLR awards.

2012 AAC Letter of Intent

Sample Letter of Intent (Be patient. It takes a minute to load the Word document.)

Frequently asked questions

Campaign for Grade Level Reading Backgrounder

Guidelines for Mayors

Guidelines for Community-based Organizations

Guidelines for Business Leaders

Campaign for Grade Level Reading Video

Archived Webinar Presentation (PDF) on AAC 2012

Everyone knows how important education is for the economic prospects of a community or region. But who would have thought that low education attainment levels would lead to a scarcity of supermarkets?

Eden, a town of about 16,000 in Rockingham County, North Carolina, found this out the hard way in 2005, when one of the community’s few groceries closed and the locals got up a petition asking a supermarket chain to open a new store. They already had a site picked out and gathered around 2000 signatures. But the supermarket chain took a pass on Eden. The reason: the percentage of residents with college degrees—about 10.8 percent—was considered too low.

The activists merged with an existing community group to form the Eden Education Foundation, and later, broadening their focus, the Rockingham County Education Foundation. Working with the University of North Carolina, the group brought in two new college counselors to split their time between four county high schools advising kids who had never seen themselves as potential college grads.

It may seem like a small or obvious thing, beefing up the high school counseling program, but it’s not. These days overworked high school counselors spend an average of less than 20 percent of their time advising kids about college, according to one survey, but their help is essential, especially for first generation learners.

At the All-America City Awards in Kansas last June, Eden brought several kids from the local high schools who described how a counselor, named Mr. Woodard, had helped them through the daunting process of applying for college and scholarship money, rallying them, encouraging them, and bugging college admissions offices on their behalf. These were kids whose parents had never gone to college and had no idea what to do. One compared the process of applying to college to being in a foreign country.

I mentioned already that no kids from Eden had applied for college during College Application Week in 2006. A year later it was 22. By 2009, the number increased to 583. In 2010, seniors from the four schools earned more than $17 million in scholarships, an increase of about 44 percent from the year before. Small steps, perhaps, on the road to getting more kids in college.

Eden was one of ten AAC winners in 2010. You can watch their presentation to the AAC jury
here.