Impacting Third Grade Reading Proficiency: What Works and What Does it Mean?

The North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation and the Institute for Child Success recently released a new resource for states and communities, What Works for Third Grade Reading. As an educational tool for the North Carolina Pathways to Grade-Level Reading (Pathways) initiative, this collection of 12 working papers addresses each of Pathways’ whole-child, birth-to-age-eight Measures of Success for aiding all children to read on grade-level by the end of third grade.

Pathways’ working papers include extensive research- and evidence-based policy, which shows that the best practice for achieving third grade reading proficiency is following a three-prong, comprehensive strategy that coordinates measures of success for child development in health, at home, and at childcare and school.

So what does all this mean? What Works for Third Grade Reading integrates birth-to-age-eight strategies for reading proficiency. Parents and child advocates in the early childhood and K-12 sectors can not only track child achievement in each of the 12 measures of success but then also recommends opportunities for intervention that will put children on track to grade-level proficiency.

Advocacy & Communication Solutions, LLC, (ACS) are experts in early childhood and k-12 policy and communication. ACS understands the continuum of birth through age 8 especially through its work with K-12 clients like The Ohio 8 Coalition and The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), and early childhood clients like PRE4CLE and The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). To learn more about ACS’ expertise in K-12 and early childhood education, read our case studies here!