Early Education and Third Grade Reading Levels – Greater Austin Area My Brother's Keeper

Priority Objective: Ensuring all children enter school cognitively, physically, socially and emotionally ready and ensuring all children read at grade-level by the third grade

Group Goals

Provide newborn males of color in the greater Austin area with age appropriate books (ages zero to five) to begin a private library.
Distribute and provide 3rd grade reading data to the public that is easily accessed.
Review educational requirements for successful teachers dealing with males of color

Early Childhood Groups Support Book Distributions

Greater Austin Area My Brother’s Keeper (GAAMBK)’ early childhood committee has partnered with BookSpring https://www.bookspring.org/gaambk and a number of other local education and early literacy organizations to address kindergarten readiness. This critical milestone includes social, emotional, and early literacy skills such as vocabulary, oral expression, and story comprehension. As reported by the E3 Alliance, low-income boys from African-American, Latino, and Native American backgrounds are statistically more likely to be behind on this milestone than other groups of children upon entering school. Often this gap persists through third grade, one of the key priorities for helping boys of color succeed through in GAAMBK’s strategic goals.

Action Items: Access to Books

In order to address this problem, the committee collected 5000 gently used books from the community last fall. We are now using our network to reach parents, caretakers or close relatives of a young boys of color age 5 years or younger. Through a coupon distributed through committee partners, these families to invite them to build up their home library, read aloud to their young boy every day, and help encourage his lifelong love of reading!

Longterm Impact of Books at Home

Bookdrive books Research shows that as few as 20 books in the home helps children have a better chance of success in school and in life (Evans, 2010). This effort will build home libraries to this critical mass, with a wide selection of new and gently used books for babies, toddlers, and young children to choose from, including bi-linugal English/Spanish. BookSpring will also provide tips for how to read aloud to a young child and encourage engagement through follow-up activities and discussion.