BOSTON -- Nearing the midpoint of an ambitious plan to have all third-graders reading well by 2005, some leaders in this city called the "Athens of America" are believers. Maybe, they say, Boston will move beyond rhetoric and become the first American city to pull it off.
The 4-year-old campaign, ReadBoston, has enlisted almost every city organization even remotely involved with literacy. Of about three dozen such urban-literacy coalitions across the nation -- including a longtime initiative called Baltimore Reads -- ReadBoston is one of only a few focusing primarily on children.
Since the campaign began in 1995, Boston reading scores have begun slow improvement "a little sooner than we expected," says Margaret Williams, ReadBoston's executive director. "There are a lot of other factors to consider, but we're overjoyed, and we've got more than half of the campaign to go."
The Boston campaign puts more than 1,000 trained tutors together with low-performing children, solicits 100,000 books each year in a "Books for Kids" campaign and coordinates summer reading camps for 3,000 -- among a plethora of activities. In its first three years, it channeled $7.1 million into the effort.
Some of the initiatives are sponsored directly by the coalition, but many more are operated and financed by public agencies and private companies nudged and coordinated by ReadBoston. "We are not a program," says Williams. "We act as convener, broker and catalyst for connecting resources with those who need them."
Ninety organizations are involved in partnerships with ReadBoston, including the school system and some 30 individual public schools.
At O'Hearn Elementary in the working-class neighborhood of Dorchester, Principal Bill Henderson expertly negotiates the hallways, using his cane to point out Read-Boston's impact on the school.
About a quarter of O'Hearn's 225 students have a handicap of some sort, and the principal is blind. "I can't read print, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be literate," says Henderson.
Henderson insists that all parents read with their children every night. Despite some setbacks, he's achieved 90 percent participation in two years.
Among other tactics, O'Hearn gives books to the families of newcomers and to students on their birthdays. A ReadBoston grant also pays for O'Hearn teachers to read in students' homes and promote home reading.
"Every child has a reading contract," says Henderson, "and we take very seriously the breaking of those contracts."
Trained reading "partners" -- among them, local college students receiving federal AmeriCorps benefits, members of a Jewish coalition, a police district commander, a retired teacher -- visit O'Hearn's classrooms during the school day and three times a week after school. ReadBoston helps coordinate the volunteers, including O'Hearn's volunteer "reading partner liaison."
Henderson says he's optimistic about the prospects for ReadBoston, "especially since the superintendent [Thomas Payzant] is on board and has made literacy his own top priority."
The principal says he's most proud of some of his disabled students who have sharpened their literacy skills "and become inspirations to the whole school. Barring a miracle, some of my students will never read at grade level, but they can improve. You never overcome some disabilities, but you can work around them."
Boston's campaign is unusual in that it began with an emphasis on children. A similar child-oriented effort, the Reading Campaign in Seattle, now in its fourth year, was launched by the late school superintendent there, John Stanford, as part of his commitment to making reading that system's top priority.
Other urban-literacy campaigns -- in Baltimore, Houston, Atlanta, Cleveland, Dallas, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Washington -- all began with an emphasis on adult literacy and only recently turned attention to early reading.
Baltimore Reads
Says Maggi Gaines, Baltimore Reads executive director: "We were created 11 years ago by the mayor, but somewhere along the way we recognized that learning was a family-assistance issue, and it didn't make sense for us to be working only with adults."
So Baltimore Reads has added children's pieces to such well-known adult programs as the Ripken Learning Center. There's the after-school Reading Edge, as well as book-collection drives and other efforts aimed at improving family literacy.
"Back in the beginning," says Gaines, "we saw literacy primarily as an equity issue. It was seen as only right that we provide a second chance to people whom society had failed the first time around.
"Now we've come around to seeing literacy as an economic development issue. Without solid basic skills, you don't get to play in the park of employment, and you're less likely to encourage your children to learn to read. So if we don't get to the parents, we're abandoning still another generation."
Baltimore reading scores in state performance tests ticked upward in 1998 for the first time in four years, but city youngsters remain far behind their peers elsewhere in Maryland. Meanwhile, the adult illiteracy rate in the city is one of the highest in the nation.
"Despite a network of literacy programs and some competition among them," says Gaines, "there is more than enough work for all of us to do."
Nationwide efforts
Nationally, President Clinton's service program, AmeriCorps, and his "America Reads Challenge" -- which has elevated the third-grade reading goal to national prominence -- are playing a major role in the new emphasis on early reading instruction. AmeriCorps and VISTA volunteers are at work in classrooms and summer camps across the nation.
"I estimate that without AmeriCorps, 40 to 45 percent of our programs would close down. It's been the soul of expansion of reading programs in Houston," says Margaret Doughty, director of the Houston READ Commission. The mayoral commission oversees the nation's largest urban literacy program with $6 million spent yearly on adult and family literacy programs and a network of 108,000 children and adults. Doughty calls it "an underground school system."
Such local umbrella campaigns operate with a mix of private and public money, and they must raise funds to survive. Doughty says one challenge is fostering a "noncompetitive environment." After all, she explains, the individual literacy programs, many of which predate the broad campaigns, compete for funding in the same arena and are jealous of their turf.
News media are playing an increasingly prominent role in these campaigns, says Edith Gower, director of the 35-member National Alliance of Urban Literacy Coalitions, based in Houston. Newspapers and electronic outlets have contributed manpower and resources in Boston, Nashville, Pittsburgh and San Diego, she says.
The Sun in Baltimore launched its wide-ranging "Reading By 9" campaign in late 1997, followed a year later by a similar program at The Sun's sister paper, the Los Angeles Times.
Years of effort needed
It's too early to tell if the new literacy emphasis will make a difference in childrens' reading scores. School systems are just starting to narrow a decades-old gap in reading achievement between cities and suburbs, according to recent studies.
The ReadBoston effort was begun by a group led by Richard Weissbourd, a lecturer in education at Harvard University, who was concerned that many Boston third-graders were reading below grade level. The group enlisted the mayor and superintendent, both of whom endorsed the effort.
The campaign's 10-year goal is unusual. Clinton wants American third-graders to reach grade-level achievement by 2000, a goal no one believes is reachable. Organizers of the Boston campaign say they wanted to give the drive a realistic time to succeed. They also wanted to work side-by-side with the school system.
For example, ReadBoston raised private funds to install Success For All, the rigorous Baltimore-based school reform model, in two elementary schools. "People said Boston is the Athens of America," Williams recalls, "so we said if an excellent program isn't here, let's bring it in. Now it's become an accepted model from which Boston schools can choose."
Adds Weissbourd, an authority on school reform: "I wanted to actually focus on improving instruction. Otherwise, you can do a massive literacy campaign and have zero impact on the number of kids reading by third grade."
The third grade, or age 9, is the important dividing line, Weissbourd says, because beyond that point "kids who have learned to read go north, and kids who haven't learned to read go south."
Pub Date: 6/25/99