Turn the Page KC is focused on the critical need to ensure that all children have a pathway to reading proficiency by the 3rd grade. Research shows that the likelihood that an individual will graduate high school and achieve career success can be predicted when a child is in third grade, and typically just eight years old.
However, as of 2019 in Missouri, less than half of all 3rd graders achieved proficiency in reading. For children of color, the numbers are even lower. Since these results, our world and our schools have seen the powerful negative effect of COVID-19 on children’s learning opportunities and we know that reading skills have been dramatically impacted.
Since March of 2020 and the disruption to schooling, Turn the Page KC has been partnering with schools, agencies, and funders across Kansas City to support children’s learning. We sent home over 20,000 free inclusive children’s books through school supply and meal distributions across Greater KC. Most notably, we engaged with the Out-of-School-Time Collaborative – made up of our friends at the YMCA of Greater KC, The Upper Room, Camp Fire Heartland, and the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Kansas City – and ensured that 16 Safe Learning Sites opened across Greater KC to ensure students in hybrid school schedules had a safe place to learn and parents could return to work.
Now, we are again laser focused on supporting children’s literacy skills and recovering some of the reading loss that was experienced across the pandemic. And we need your help.
We hope that you will join us in providing inclusive books to children, literacy support strategies to families, and books and learning tools to teachers. Through these strategies, we can focus our efforts on four factors that most contribute to reading success: school readiness, school attendance, out-of-school-time learning, and access to inclusive books. No gift is too large or too small to ignite a child’s passion for reading.
Your support can help a child become a reader and ensure that everyone in Kansas City has the literacy skills they need to be successful in life.
Thank you,
Turn the Page KC