National Campaign for Grade Level Reading

The National Campaign for Grade Level Reading efforts identify three target areas that are widespread, consequential and amenable to community solutions:

School Readiness:

• Research show that children from low-income environments do not have the basic language skills that support reading success.

Attendance Gap:

• Chronic absence is a problem for 1 in 10 kindergartners and first-graders nationwide; in some school districts, the ratio is as high as 1 in 4.
• For low-income children, chronic early grade absence predicts the lowest levels of achievement in higher grades.

Summer Learning Gap:

• Low-income children fall behind during the summer by as much as two months of reading achievement, while their middle-income peers make slight gains.
• Summer learning loss is cumulative.