A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

President Clinton's Call to Action for American Education in the 21st Century

America Reads Challenge

"We ought to commit ourselves as a country to say that by the year 2000, 8-year-olds in America will be able to pick up an appropriate book and say 'I can read this all by myself.'"

Remarks by President Clinton to the Community of
Fresno, California, September 12, 1996

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 40 percent of America's 4th graders are reading below the basic level--not nearly as well as they must to keep up with the complexities of today's jobs and society. We need to really push toward improving our efforts to help all children read.

While teachers and schools have the critical responsibility for making literacy and the basics a top priority, study after study finds that sustained individualized attention and tutoring after school and over the summer can raise reading levels when combined with parental involvement and quality school instruction. Reading with children at the youngest age, quality pre-school, and tutoring from pre-school to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade can work to help all our children read at an early age--but certainly by the end of the 3rd grade. If families, schools, community groups, employers and religious groups make improving the reading skills of children and adults a top priority from the earliest years of a child's life at home until he or she becomes a successful reader, then America can attain the goal of being a reading, literate society.

For this reason, in August 1996, President Clinton announced the America Reads Challenge to ensure that every child can read well and independently by the end of 3rd grade. And he called on all people in America -- parents, teachers, libraries, religious institutions, universities, college students, the media, community and national groups, business leaders, senior citizens--to join the effort to meet this challenge. Already, groups from Jumpstart in Boston to the Reading One-One program in Richardson, Texas, have responded enthusiastically to the President's challenge.

The President has pledged $2.75 billion over 5 years toward the America Reads Challenge which includes:

America's Reading Corps of one million tutors to provide individualized after-school and summer tutoring for more than three million children in pre-K through 3rd grade who want and need extra reading help. Thirty thousand reading specialists and tutor coordinators, including Americorps volunteers, will mobilize and train this corps of one million volunteer tutors who will work with teachers, principals and librarians to help children succeed in reading.
Parents as First Teachers Challenge Grants that invest in success by supporting effective and proven local efforts, as well as regional or national networks, that assist parents who request help to better work with their children so that they may become successful readers by the end of 3rd grade. Research shows that reading to children in their first three years helps children learn words and concepts and actually stimulates physical development of the brain.
Expansion of Head Start. The President's balanced budget will expand Head Start to reach one million 3- and 4-year-olds by the year 2002, while continuing the new 0-3 year-old Head Start initiative. The priority of providing all children with high-quality preschool responds to studies stressing that literacy problems are best averted with the earliest intervention possible, including pre-school.
Support for 100,000 College Work-Study Students to Serve as Reading Tutors. Last year, the President signed into law a budget that increased the number of work-study jobs for college students by a third--enabling an additional 200,000 young people to work their way through college. The President has called for half of all new work study funds to support 100,000 college students to serve as reading tutors, thereby providing a unique opportunity for college students to be involved in helping young children learn to read. To encourage this activity, the Secretary of Education has waived the employer matching fund requirement for those work-study students who tutor pre-K through elementary school children in reading. Also, the President has called upon college presidents to rally other students and college resources to help America read. More than twenty college presidents have already stepped up to lead this effort.
Accountability for Results. The Administration will use the improvements in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to provide an annual measure of the reading performance of 4th graders and their progress toward meeting the reading challenge.

A challenge to every parent, teacher, principal, and community member

The success of the America Reads Challenge depends on the involvement of all Americans--parents, teachers, principals, libraries, religious institutions, universities, college students, the media, community and national groups, cultural organizations, business leaders, and our senior citizens.

Parents should read to their children 30 minutes a day. Even as babies, children are learning about language from their families. Talking to them, reading to them, and singing with them even in these earliest years can make a big difference. Parents need to turn off the TV, take their child to the library and get a library card, talk with teachers about their child's progress, and take time to read with their child at home. Parental involvement makes a real difference. According to a recent study, 4th-grade average reading scores were 46 points below the national average where principals judged parental involvement to be low, but 28 points above the national average where parental involvement was high.
Schools should provide a high-quality reading program for all students, including making sure teachers know how to teach kids to read and have the support they need to do so. They must also identify those students who need extra help. The America Reads Challenge is not a substitute for in-school reading programs. Instead, it is designed to build on the work of teachers and schools to improve their in-school reading programs, as well as on the Administration's investments in Title I, Even Start, bilingual education and other in-school programs to strengthen in-school teaching and learning.
Community members should start an America Reads Challenge reading tutoring program at their local school, library, or community center or become a reading tutor after school, on weekends, and in the summer. The Clinton Administration, through the summer Read*Write*Now! effort, already has begun working with organizations like the Boys and Girls Clubs, Girl Scouts, the American Association of Retired People, the U.S. Catholic Conference, the American Library Association, the International Reading Association, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, and Reading is Fundamental to mobilize reading partners for children during the summer months.
Businesses should work with schools and libraries. The Administration also is working with the private sector in helping parents help their children learn to read, through the Partnership for Family Involvement in Education. Employers can help start a summer reading program in their community as part of the Read*Write*Now! effort to avoid the summer drop-off in reading.
Colleges and universities should use half of their new funds for work study to provide reading tutors. If all colleges meet this challenge, 100,000 work-study students in 1998 would be tutoring young children in reading. Already 60 college presidents have pledged almost 10,000 work-study slots in support of this goal, as well as thousands of other students to do community service as reading tutors.

For more information on the America Reads Challenge, call 1-800-USA LEARN or visit the U.S. Department of Education's home page at http://www.ed.gov

AmeriCorps SLICE Corps, Simpson County, Kentucky
In this program, 25 AmeriCorps members provided intensive tutoring in reading to 128 2nd graders, helping the students improve their reading comprehension by an average of 2.8 grade levels over nine months. One-third of the students improved by more than three grade levels. Members visited each student's home every other week to show parents their children's reading materials, update them on the child's academic progress and offer tips on how to help their children read. The key is consistency. AmeriCorps SLICE members tutor students for the entire school year. As a classroom teacher said about one student: "[The student] is in his second year of being tutored by a SLICE Corps member. Last year he was very shy and withdrawn. He was very adept verbally but not so at reading and writing. This year his reading is better and he really enjoys writing. He's a real worker and seems to enjoy school much more. [The student's] parents are very interested in his school progress. They are willing to come whenever you call them and they spend time working with him on his school work. He has thrived on the individual attention that only a SLICE Corps member could give him."

Samuel W. Mason Elementary School, Boston, Massachusetts
Mason School, once cited in a 1990 Boston Herald article, with its then enrollment of 133, as "The Least Chosen Elementary School In The City", turned itself around through a variety of innovative approaches. The school has 296 students (43 percent African-American, 23 percent Cape Verdian, 14 percent Latino, 13 percent white, 3 percent Asian-American, 2 percent Native American). Twenty-four percent of the homes are non-English speaking. Reading has been a primary emphasis of Mason's improvement efforts. Teaching teams include Reading Recovery and Resource Room teachers. These teachers work with grade-level clusters in the morning to reduce the student-teacher ratio from 26:1 to 13:1. In the afternoon, the team works with the kindergarten and early childhood teachers in the early literacy program, "Bright Start," in groups of nine students. Title I reaches all students and doubles the time in reading instruction. Special attention is paid to learning styles, with emphasis on accelerated reading instruction and problem-solving activities. In 1995, Boston College's Urban District Assessment Consortium Project found that Mason's reading performance exceeded the average score for the City of Boston and for the other 11 urban school systems in the project.

What It Means to Read Well by 4th Grade
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) defines three main levels of 4th-grade reading: basic, proficient, and advanced, and they help explain what it means to read well by the 4th grade. The following sample passage is from Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White. While not from the actual NAEP, it helps illustrate the kinds of skills expected of students at each level of comprehending a work of fiction:

Having promised Wilbur that she would save his life, she was determined to keep her promise. Charlotte was naturally patient. She knew from experience that if she waited long enough, a fly would come to her web; and she felt sure that if she thought long enough about Wilbur's problem, an idea would come to her mind. Finally, one morning toward the middle of July, the idea came. "Why how perfectly simple!" she said to herself. "The way to save Wilbur's life is to play a trick on Zuckerman. If I can fool a bug," thought Charlotte, "I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs."

Students at the basic level are able to read the passage and tell what Charlotte promised Wilbur.
Students at the proficient level are also able to describe why Charlotte thought she could fool Zuckerman.
Students at the advanced level recognize that Charlotte compares waiting for ideas to entrapping a fly.
President Clinton's America Reads Challenge asks all Americans to pitch in and help children read so that by the time they reach the 4th grade, they can at least read at the "basic" level and many more than now are reading at the "proficient" level.

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Last Updated -- Feb. 13, 1997, (pjk)