Community alliances can help you reach the next generation of readers

The first day of kindergarten has been called the “starting gate,” the day all children begin learning what they need for academic and future success. In reality, the starting gate is about five years earlier—at birth. Regrettably, by the time many children reach kindergarten, they are already far behind.

In 2002, the Economic Policy Institute’s report Inequality at the Starting Gate concluded that “disadvantaged children start kindergarten with significantly lower cognitive skills than their more advantaged counterparts.” Although this is not very surprising, it is disturbing because research tells us that the relationship between the skills a child has entering school and his or her subsequent academic performance is remarkably stable. In fact, knowledge of alphabet letters at entry into kindergarten is a strong predictor of reading ability in the 10th grade, and there is nearly a 90 percent chance that a child will remain a poor reader at the end of fourth grade, if the child is a poor reader at the end of first grade. Because school readiness is strongly linked to family income, children from low-income families enter school at a huge disadvantage.

So how can we help? Libraries can play a key role in reaching out to their communities. Outreach gives us an opportunity to meet parents and children where they are, or to take the library to them, and to assist those who might never come to the library.

We are very aware that we will never have enough staff to do all the direct service necessary. We’ve learned that a good way to maximize our coverage is to work with like-minded organizations that serve children, training their staff to speak about the importance of talking and reading aloud daily.

Pediatricians in our county’s health clinics play a special role in outreach as they conduct 500 monthly well-baby visits. With our guidance, they can give early literacy advice and dispense prescriptions for parents to read 20 minutes a day to their preschool children. Other, perhaps unexpected, partners include the housing authority workers who operate after-school programs; thousands of child-care providers and Head Start teachers; Russian, Vietnamese and Spanish parent educators; and community health nurses, to name a few.

Here’s what we’ve learned about partnering: first, be alert to partnering opportunities. Find organizations that work with young children and their families (such as K–12 schools, Even Start, and faith organizations) to see how you can support their goals with library services.

When you work with other organizations, discover a common ground. Learn what they do, ask about their goals, listen to their needs, and ask how you can help. Tell them what you can offer. Sometimes they don’t have a clue about all the resources the library can provide.

Second, get involved in your local early childhood community and search out the key players in your area. Participate on every board, committee, and task force for young children. Most communities have a commission or council focusing on the issues of early childhood. Ask if you can attend their meetings. They might be surprised that you are interested, but literacy certainly fits into every community’s wellness model. And once they hear what you have to offer, they will recognize that the library can add value to their early childhood efforts and resources.

If libraries wish to increase the number of good readers in later grades, when all children need to be “reading to learn” rather than “learning to read,” we should impact children’s skills before they enter kindergarten. The children we need to influence most are the ones who are living in poverty. As the National Research Council says, “The majority of reading problems faced by today’s adolescents and adults could have been avoided or resolved in the early years of childhood.”