Who will read to Lucas County's children?

The 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that only 38 percent of U.S. fourth-grade students -- and only 17 percent of low-income fourth-graders -- read at or above the proficient level.

That finding for low-income fourth-graders is a national crisis in the making. It has profound implications for our nation's global competitiveness, and for the likelihood that the majority of low-income children will be able to advance their lives through education.

As a first step to address this crisis, Read for Literacy launched the Creating Young Readers program in 2009, with support from the Stranahan, Toledo Community, Anderson, and Toledo Rotary foundations, as well as the Downtown Toledo Kiwanis Club.

The Creating Young Readers program recruits and trains volunteers to read to literacy-challenged preschool and kindergarten students on a one-to-one basis. This helps them to develop strong preliteracy skills so that they will be ready to learn to read when they enter kindergarten.

During the first two years of Creating Young Readers, children who participated in the program rapidly increased three important preliteracy skills -- picture naming, alliteration, and rhyming -- that have been shown to contribute to stronger reading skills. The children's teachers also noted substantial improvements in the children's behavior, ability to participate in class activities, and interest in reading and books.

The young readers program works because volunteers provide reading and reading-related experiences that children from low-literacy households cannot receive at home. The volunteers also provide positive support and high expectations.

Research has shown that by the age of 5, children from low-income households typically have been exposed to fewer than 100 hours of one-on-one picture-book reading, while children from middle-class homes typically have been read to for 1,000 hours. The result is that many low-income children enter kindergarten with very low preliteracy skills, including a vocabulary that is half the size of middle-class children.

The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy found that 9 percent of Lucas County adults -- 29,000 people -- read at the "below basic" level, a level so low that they are unable to read to their children in a fluent and effective manner.

As a consequence of growing up in households headed by these adults, more than 1,100 children in Lucas County each year score in the lowest of three groupings on the literacy portion of the state-mandated Kindergarten Readiness Assessment test -- a level so low that they are virtually doomed to become poor readers and therefore struggling students.

Indeed, research has shown that children who begin kindergarten with low oral language skills -- one of several important preliteracy skills -- by 13 years old will read at a level five years behind their peers who began school with high oral language skills.

As a next step, Reading for Literacy needs 200 volunteers to read to an additional 200 children in Pickett, Robinson, and Glenwood elementary schools, Queen of Apostles elementary school, the Catholic Club, two north Toledo pre-schools, and Head Start sites in Rossford, Toledo, and Fostoria.

Each volunteer will read one-on-one to children once a week for 60 to 90 minutes throughout the school year.

A goal of this magnitude cannot be accomplished by business as usual. So Reading for Literacy invites not just individuals, but businesses and other workplaces, unions, retiree groups, and civic, professional and social organizations -- any group that wants to attack low literacy at its source -- to volunteer to expand the program.

To find out how you, your organization, or your company can help, email jim.funk@toledolibrary.org call Reading for Literacy at 419-242-7323.

Jim Funk is director of Read For Literacy.