Roles for United Ways

Here are the most significant roles United Ways can play to drive early grade reading roadmap strategies, based on the thinking of national experts and United Way field leaders:

Executing Strategy 1: Strengthen Schools to Ensure Students are Engaged in Learning

• Provide human and/or financial resources for professional development for teachers and principals in the area of early grade reading.
• Advocate for the use of research-based curricula for teaching reading and ongoing professional development for teachers focused on reading instruction and intervention.

Executing Strategy 2: Provide Support to Students Struggling with Reading in Kindergarten Through Third Grades

• Advocate for early and frequent research-based reading assessments for all students.
• Work with school districts to analyze their existing data or develop data systems and use data to provide support to students tailored to their specific challenges.
• Bring data to life via compelling narratives and info-graphics and elevate the issue to drive community members to take action on early grade reading.
• Partner with business and corporate partners to engage their employees as volunteer reading tutors.
• Partner with schools, teachers and community-based organizations and the Corporation for National and Community Service, Experience Corps (now part of AARP) and AmeriCorps to provide research-based tutoring interventions to students struggling with reading.
• In partnership with schools and in concert with classroom teachers, recruit and provide evidence-based training for volunteer tutors to work with students who require additional one-on-one reading assistance.
• Develop and create collaborative complementary reading programs (outside of regular school hours) that intentionally and seamlessly connect reading help to school curriculum.
• Broker relationships between schools and existing community reading programs to ensure the exchange of data around student outcomes and to establish the connection of the program with school curricula.
• Create funding incentives for community reading programs that use best practices and research, have strong student outcomes and work in concert with the schools and school curricula.

Executing Strategy 3:  Empower Families to Help Their Children Read and Learn

• Convene and facilitate community organizations, schools and families to develop and implement a comprehensive family engagement plan in elementary schools with low reading scores.
• Partner with business and corporate partners around developing policies in the workplace that permit parents (or grandparents raising children) to attend education-related activities during work hours. 
• Partner with libraries to have computers available for families to use to check on their students’ attendance and other school activities and set up kiosks for families’ use in schools.
• Engage community partners in working collaboratively with schools to plan and deliver a series of workshops for families, including an orientation prior to school commencement, about the importance of daily attendance and the completion of homework and offer an incentive for attending such as a refurbished computer or discounted internet rate.
• Engage and convene the medical community to acknowledge and leverage their role as a trusted advisor to parents in the early years and create efficient and effective literacy strategies for use by the physician during the visit with the parent and child.
• Advocate for the medical community’s use of developmental screenings that include literacy as part of the assessment.