(Madison County, NY) The Fourth Annual Madison County Literacy Summit was held on Wednesday, May 2 at the New Beginning Church on Genesee Street in Wampsville.

This was a celebration of successes and a time to be re-invigorated for charge into the many projects underway to help every inch of the county achieve maximum literacy at all stages of life.

In 2010 and 2011 more than 50 Madison County Literacy Coalition Task Force members helped create a coalition of literacy providers, a formal non-profit structure with Managing Partners and a full time Executive Director. The MCLC hired the experts at Literacy PowerLine to do a detailed Literacy Needs and detailed Literacy Services Assessment. The managing Partners then developed a detailed Five-Year Strategic Plan. The coalition has very clear set of goals. Much has been done.

The Fourth Annual Summit presented what has been accomplished, what the group is engaged in and where they go next.

For more information, please contact Coalition Executive Director Jay Dunn at 796-1543 or mrjayadunn4@gmail.com.

Spurred by a reading crisis for American students, more than 120 cities, counties and towns have submitted ambitious and sustainable plans to get students on track for grade-level reading by the end of third grade. The third grade milestone marks the point when children shift from learning to read and begin reading to learn. Students who haven’t mastered reading by that time are more likely to get stuck in a cycle of academic failure, drop out of school, and struggle throughout their lives

In September, the Madison County Literacy Coalition’s Managing Partners submitted a Letter of Intent to the Campaign for Grade Level Reading. Hard work by many county literacy providers and the new Executive Director, Jay Dunn, produced a Community Solutions Action Plan submitted in March for national adjudication.

The MCLC is now part of the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading Network (www.gradelevelreading.net.), which will provide access to experts, policymakers, and over 80 foundations and philanthropic donors, who fund early childhood and early learning and literacy projects.

The plan also serves as application for the All-America City awards, which will be announced by the National Civic League in July.

The communities—ranging from big cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and Baltimore to smaller places like El Dorado, Kansas and the Madison County, New York—are  in what is clearly a national crisis: a full two-thirds of U.S. students, and fourth-fifths of low-income children, fail to become proficient readers in the early grades.

The Community Solution Action Plans they have developed focus on developing strategies to tackle three underlying issues that have consistently kept children from learning to read well:

school readiness — too many children are entering kindergarten already behind

school attendance — too many young children are missing too many days of school

summer learning — too many children are losing ground academically over the summer

Madison County’s Literacy Coalition members are enthusiastically moving ahead with their plan.

For more about the MCLC see their web page at madisoncountyliteracycoaliton.org.

Excerpts borrowed from http://www.gradelevelreading.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/CSAP-Release-2.html.