9th Annual Make It Your Business Luncheon Recap

by Rafael Otto | May 23, 2017 | Community Engagement, EI/ECSE, Home Visiting, Oregon Research, Preschool, Preschool Landscape

9th Annual Make It Your Business Luncheon Recap On Thursday, May 18, 300 early childhood advocates, educators, business leaders, and friends attended Children’s Institute’s Make It Your Business Luncheon at the Portland Art Museum. More than $153,000 was raised to continue our advocacy for strategic investments in early education and healthy development beginning with prenatal care.

Donalda Dodson, winner of the 2017 Alexander Award and executive director for the Oregon Child Development Coalition, spoke about the need for communities to come together to improve outcomes in maternal health and early education. “Nothing I have done has been done alone, but through committed team efforts,” she says.

Our keynote speaker, Professor Sean Reardon of Stanford University, delivered a timely and engaging presentation on education inequality. He said organizations like Children’s Institute that bring together “all aspects of the social safety net” have the best chance of changing children’s lives.

Oregon’s Early Learning Opportunity: a data-packed slide show on what Oregon can do to help young children learn, thrive, and succeed.

Ready by 3rd: a slide show featuring kids and families benefiting from home visiting services, Early Intervention/Early Childhood Special Education, and preschool.

Keynote address from Professor Sean Reardon: Listen or download as a podcast

Download the presentation slides

Keynote address from Professor Sean Reardon: Audio slide show featuring presentation slides and photos

View our event photos on Facebook

Oregon’s Early Learning Opportunity

by Rafael Otto | May 22, 2017 | Early Works, Grade Level Reading, Videos

Oregon’s Early Learning Opportunity, featured at our 2017 Make It Your Business luncheon, is packed with data and underscores the impact of early environments on early abilities, the importance of third grade literacy, and the opportunity Oregon has by investing in proven approaches such as home visiting, Early Intervention/Early Childhood Special Education, and preschool, to change education outcomes statewide.

What is grade-level reading and why is it important?

by Rafael Otto | Apr 26, 2017 | 3rd Grade Reading, Early Works, Grade Level Reading, Preschool, School Readiness, Successful Students

What is grade-level reading and why is it important? “Grade-level reading” is a phrase that’s used often in the education world. But many parents may not know what it means – and why it’s so important.

The basics

Reading proficiency by the end of third grade is the most critical indicator of whether a child will graduate high school, according to The Campaign for Grade Level Reading. Children’s Institute works with the Campaign for Grade Level Reading to address challenges to early literacy so all children can be on track by third grade.

Why is third grade such a critical point? In fourth grade, curriculum shifts to more advanced topics. If a child is still learning to read, it makes reading to learn that much more difficult. If a child is reading proficiently by the end of third grade, they are four times more likely to graduate from high school than their classmate who struggles with reading.

The statistics

Oregon has the third lowest high school graduation rate in the U.S. The work to improve that statistic starts in early childhood education. But recent statistics paint a troubling picture: Only 14 percent of children entering kindergarten in 2013 could name a single letter. Nearly 40 percent could not identify a single letter sound.

Of the 2.5 million kids who dropped out of high school nationally in 2015, 1.6 million of them received the lowest reading scores on the third-grade literacy exam.

Reading proficiency is much more likely to be an issue for students of color and low-income students. In 2015, 82 percent of African American fourth graders were reading below proficiency, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count Data Project. The same study found 79 percent of Hispanic fourth graders were behind in reading.

Similarly, 80 percent of children from low-income families aren’t reading at grade-level by the end of third grade.

What can be done?

Education advocates say getting all children to read at grade level by the end of third grade requires everyone working together. Efforts include encouraging parents to read to their children, ensuring preschool programs are high-quality and affordable, reducing chronic absences from school, and addressing summer learning loss.

Here are some resources for further information on grade-level reading:

The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading

A primer on the issue including how different states try to ensure fourth grade reading proficiency

Double Jeopardy: How Third Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation

How race, economic status affect Oregon graduation rates

Professor Sean Reardon, Shining a Light on Inequality to Create Change

by Rafael Otto | Apr 26, 2017 | News, Announcements

Professor Sean Reardon, Shining a Light on Inequality to Create Change Stanford professor Sean Reardon is the keynote speaker at Children’s Institute’s Make It Your Business Luncheon on May 18, 2017. Reardon, a Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education and a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, analyzes the effects of income inequality and segregation on young children’s development and educational experiences. He uses his findings to advocate for proven solutions to support children’s cognitive growth, enhance their educational experiences, and improve their academic achievement.

In a New York Times opinion piece in 2013, Reardon noted, “the more we do to ensure that all children have similar cognitively stimulating early childhood experiences, the less we will have to worry about failing schools. This in turn will enable us to let our schools focus on teaching the skills — how to solve complex problems, how to think critically and how to collaborate — essential to a growing economy and a lively democracy.”

Reardon’s research findings also provide eloquent reasoning for supporting the brain development of young children. “Early childhood experiences can be very consequential for children’s long-term social, emotional and cognitive development. … And because those influence educational success and later earnings, early childhood experiences cast a lifelong shadow.”

Reardon’s landmark analysis on the effects of income inequality on educational experiences and academic achievement, The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor: New Evidence and Possible Explanations, can be found here.
Join us at the Make It Your Business Luncheon to hear Professor Reardon’s keynote speech on the research that led him to become a strong advocate for investing in early childhood education.

Join us at the Make It Your Business Luncheon to hear Professor Reardon’s keynote speech on the research that led him to become a strong advocate for investing in early childhood education.

Swati Adarkar and Sue Hildick on Oregon’s SB182

by Rafael Otto | Apr 20, 2017 | Benefits of Preschool, Instructional Alignment, Oregon Policy, Podcast, Preschool Landscape, Professional Learning

Senate Bill 182 would help early educators across the state access professional learning to increase the quality of early education. The bill would also allow K-12 schools to coordinate more with local preschools to ensure high-quality and seamless education in the state. In this podcast, Children’s Institute President Swati Adarkar and Chalkboard Project President Sue Hildick discuss Senate Bill 182, what it would do for early childhood education, and other opportunities for improving education with a focus on systemic change.

Segment Highlights

0:53 “This bill really is about elevating the role of the teacher in the classroom and the leader in the school as we look at how to transform our education system,” Sue Hildick says.

1:47 SB 182 “both elevates the investment we’re making and it better organizes how these dollars are spent,” Hildick says.

2:22 “Right now, we’re delivering a lot of one-subject professional development across the entire school district for everybody. We haven’t really been able to get to a place where professional development is tailored to a teacher’s needs.” Hildick says. This bill would change that.

3:35 “It’s an exciting point in time in Oregon for us to be thinking about these intersecting points and connections between early learning and K-12,” Swati Adarkar says.

6:23 “We’re at a unique moment in time when we are building anew … what we need to do is step back and look at the early learning space and how that becomes really seamless,” Hildick says.

8:57 “We’ve made some good strides in serving more kids but we still have a long way to go … we’re excited that the governor considers high quality preschool a priority,” Adarkar says.

11:10 “We’re really working on how to grow skill sets and instructional practices around equity,” Hildick says.

13:14 “Early educators have been underpaid so dramatically for such a long time…. What we know is that quality teacher-student interaction is sort of the core and heart of what leads to improved outcomes. So if we’re not supporting educators to really have their professional development supports, we know we’re not going to get there over time,” Hildick says.

14:48 “The potential is enourmous. We know that the teacher in the classroom has the most impact on what a child learns in a day, followed by the leader in the school … this bill creates sort of a covenant with educators. They are being invited to the table….” Hildick says.

15:49 “Think about why teachers go into the profession to begin with and the barriers that we’ve put in their way to really achieve and accomplish what they want with children. I think it’s really about meeting educators’ needs and inviting them in to the conversation around solutions. We often haven’t had a chance to do that.” Adarkar says.

18:34 “There’s probably no better investments than these investments … these are heavily researched, heavily evaluated, we know very clearly the impacts of investing in the workforce on the outcomes that children experience,” Hildick says. Those practices include providing teachers with mentors and collaboration time for teachers to problem solve together outside of the classroom.

19:39 “For most child care providers and educators in preschool, the notion of having a substitute or a backup or planned time is often nonexistent,” Adarkar says. “We need to think a little differently around the delivery mechanism for this” so that children across the state can have access to high-quality preschool.

20:49 “I think professional learning would look very different in every one of our 197 school districts … What I’m hoping 182 is going to do is open up some of that thinking and create opportunities for deeper professional learning,” Hildick says. “We have some wonderful professional development going on but again, it is largely episodic. It’s not embedded and systemic.”

21:39 “Systemic approaches is absolutely the point at which we are at in the state … little pieces and parts across the state is not going to move the dial in terms of statewide graduation rates,” Adarkar says.

21:52 “We’ve got to think about bridge building. The bill gives us a framework from which to work from but still the reality is going to be on the ground,” Adarkar says.

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