Preventing the Achievement Gap for 39,000 Future Students

BOSTON – Thrive in Five, a public-private partnership launched one year ago by Mayor Thomas M. Menino and United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley, today issued its first report on city-wide progress toward universal school readiness.   The report includes examples of progress under each of the Thrive in Five goals, as well as the indicators that it will use to measure results.  Thrive in Five Co-Chairs Liz Walker, former WBZ news anchor and currently the principal at The Walker Group and Randal Rucker, president of Family Service of Greater Boston, presented the progress report at the Mattapan Public Library.

Mayor Menino told the crowd of 100 parents and leaders from corporations and nonprofits, “Seven thousand children are born in Boston each year.  Every child is filled with unlimited potential, and each family has high hopes and bold dreams for their future.  Through Superintendent Johnson’s Acceleration Agenda, Boston works hard to help every child succeed once they are in school.  But we know large gaps are all too present when students first arrive in kindergarten.  We see the gap in children’s vocabulary, in their familiarity with books, and in their ability to interact with other students and with adults.  This report tracks the ground we’ve covered in one year, but more importantly, it shows the distance still to go, and our plan to get there.”

“We all understand the challenges economic stress and poverty creates for families as they struggle to provide for their children and to nurture their children’s learning and development,” said Michael K. Durkin, president and chief executive officer at United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley.  “The economic crisis we are in today has only exacerbated and expanded these challenges and made resources more scarce.  That is why it is so important that we continue the great work of Thrive in Five – mobilizing and coordinating the entire city today to ensure that children are ready for school tomorrow.”

The Thrive in Five report also includes key indicators it will track and report on annually that demonstrate progress toward universal school readiness, also clarifying which important data is not yet available.  For example, the report details that, on the one hand, 81% of mothers in Boston get adequate pre-natal care; on the other hand, less than    40% of the early education seats in Boston (in Head Start, family childcare, Boston Public Schools and childcare centers) are in programs that have been accredited, the national standard for high quality early education.

The report notes that data is not yet available to track what percentage of young children are read to daily by an adult or older sibling, an important measure of whether children are being prepared for school.  Thrive in Five also hopes to determine how to track the percentage of parents with young children who are registered to vote, as an indicator of civic engagement for parents, as well as the percentage of well-child health care visits that include screening children early on to catch developmental delays.

Examples of progress from April 2008 to April 2009 include:

160 families – with 300 children – living in subsidized housing enrolled in a comprehensive set of services for family stabilization and school readiness, through Smart from the Start, a collaboration among City departments, the Family Nurturing Center, and other community organizations.

With funding from United Way, communities began identifying gaps in services and coordinating programming. Fifty community-based organizations in Allston-Brighton formed the Early Childhood System of Care to connect parents and young children to neighborhood resources, and 15 family-serving organizations in Mattapan began meeting as a team to coordinate services.

741 early education, health and dental providers distributed guides with child development milestones and activities to do at home, in eight languages, to 7,500 children and caregivers during the November launch of Talk Read Play, a new public and parent engagement campaign from Countdown to Kindergarten and ReadBoston.

Sixty-two early education and care providers became accredited, and an additional 140 Boston providers are in the process of becoming accredited/re-accredited.

The progress report released today shows how over the past year, Boston has:

• Ensured that early childhood is a high priority in programming, policy and resource development;
• Improved and expanded services for young children and their families;
• Identified common indicators and necessary baseline data to monitor city-wide progress; and
• Developed a collaborative infrastructure that ensures a permanent commitment to the healthy development and school readiness of all Boston children.

Examples of next steps included in the report are distributing information to parents along with all birth certificates, and reaching families through a wide range of media, such as a new Haitian radio show on parenting.  The report is available on  http://www.ThriveinFive.org.

Thrive in Five last spring released a comprehensive school readiness roadmap for Boston, driven by brain research and economic analysis that demonstrate the significant impact on children and the significant return on investment from early childhood interventions.  The plan aims to prevent the achievement gap in our next generation by addressing gaps already apparent when students enter kindergarten. 

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