Recently, the State of Ohio passed legislation designed to ensure students are reading at grade-level before advancing to the fourth grade. In the 2011-2012 school year, over 40% of third graders in Greater Cincinnati schools were not reading on grade level. The United Way of Greater Cincinnati has identified one of the community’s “Bold Goals” as: “By 2020 85% of children will be prepared for Kindergarten, 85% of youth will graduate from high school and 45% of adults will have an associate’s degree.” These goals require a literate population at all levels. Students’ reading abilities in the primary grades are a predictor of later educational success potential, particularly how well a student achieves on third grade reading tests. The Library actively collaborates with community stakeholders working toward this bold goal for education. The summer months and the Library’s traditional position as an organization that supports reading during these non-school months, makes it the ideal institution to lead learning in a focused, curriculum-based way during the summer in support of the larger community bold goal. Even with equitable learning progress during the school year, students lacking learning opportunities in the summer suffer a cumulative gap of learning during the early grade years. To counter this problem, a more focused, learning-based program has been designed and will be implemented this summer.

The traditional summer reading program will continue, with a restructuring of human and fiscal resources to meet the clear need in our community. A new emphasis will be placed on serving primary grade students, especially in neighborhoods served by schools with low reading proficiency scores and identified as in need of intense intervention. Prizes for these target populations of children will support academic progress and include electronics that support literacy and learning. This emphasis will be extended to older children, including teens, with a focus on writing programs. Utilizing the Summer Camp Reading program developed locally, targeted intervention programs will serve approximately six specific neighborhoods. Each site will have a 3-to-1 child/adult ratio with four hours of literacy-based programming and at least 30 minutes of one-on-one tutoring each day provided by certified reading specialists. Students at risk of not reading at grade level by Grade 3 will be identified in consultation with teachers and administrators from the school. Free summer camp experiences for school-aged children will be offered at all library locations to provide a fun and developmentally appropriate learning experience that emphasizes literacy skills. Both the one-day and the week-long Brain Camps include activities accessible to a wide range of learning styles. Daily nutritious lunches will be available at selected locations to children ages 18 and under to bridge the summer months when free and reduced-cost lunches are not available at school. Literacy-based activities will accompany the free lunch service to encourage daily reading and learning activities with their peers.

This is the Summer Camp Reading (SCR) program. Funded by an anonymous donation of $66,000, SCR identifies 12 students most at risk of not reading at grade level by grade three and immerses them in an intensive six week program to improve their reading. A combination of private tutoring, group activities, and reading aloud, this program gets very strong results with 100% of the students participating seeing dramatic improvement in student reading scores. Pre- and post-testing for each participant in the Summer Camp Reading element of the Summer Learning program will provide documentation about the impact of the Library’s efforts and partnerships in support of improved third grade reading. Summer Camp Reading also provides formative assessments that will impact the daily learning activities for the children involved in each of the targeted neighborhoods. This will provide data-driven instruction and measurable outcomes on which future Library efforts can be based. This will also offer community stakeholders concrete evidence of the Library’s impact on the learning of struggling students.