Starting in February 2015, over 300 local citizens signed up to indicate their interest in participating on one of four working groups aligned with Read Charlotte’s four pillars.
In October and November, 38 local citizens were selected to represent a broad swath of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg community to participate on the Working Groups. These groups worked intensively between January and September 2016 to develop a ten-year strategic plan and set of community indicators to track progress.
They accomplished these specific goals:
In January 2016, Read Charlotte hosted the first of three systems change workshops. By “system” we mean the set of interacting and interdependent component parts (families, child care programs, schools, public agencies, nonprofits, etc.) that collectively affect how children develop as readers from birth through third grade.
We needed to understand how this system works and develop a set of strategies to improve how its parts work together to raise third-grade reading proficiency for children. At the first workshop, 111 participants were introduced to “systems thinking.”
Following the January workshop, we surveyed over 3,000 families, educators, students, providers and funders in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. This was accomplished in six weeks with the assistance of over three-dozen nonprofit agencies across the community. The United Way of Central Carolinas hosted 32 community conversations with families, educators and students. This information was used to create a “system scan” for the community. Participants learned root cause analysis to evaluate the system scan data and identify underlying causes of system outcomes. The third and final systems change workshop took place in November 2016.
After two years of research and alignment, Read Charlotte began to move into implementation in collaboration with an army of dedicated groups and individuals across Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Through four main focus areas (research and data, improving systems, strategic funding, and building networks) Read Charlotte is confident that more children can succeed.
Read Charlotte is a community initiative that unites families, educators and community partners to improve children’s literacy from birth to third grade with a goal of doubling reading proficiency from 39% to 80%. Reading proficiency at third grade is a critical predictor of school, career and life success. Children who are not reading at grade level by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school.