In conjunction with the Toyota Family Learning initiative, the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL)is accepting applications for five three-year grants of $175,000, along with NCFL communications support and training, to develop services that engage or mentor families in learning together, as well as family service learning projects. Applicants may be schools (public or charter), libraries, community-based organizations, or any other organization that provides services to educational services to families, including children from 4 to 18 years of age, grandparents, parents, and legal guardians, as well as a high percentage of minority and/or low-income families in two or three unique sites. Preferred projects will adapt existing family engagement in education efforts to include family mentoring, interactive literacy activities between children and parents, service learning components, and parental training. Activities and experiences from these projects will be shared on the Toyota Family Learning Web site.
For complete information, please see the full RFP. Applications are due June 24, and successful grantees will be notified in July.
Energy company Westinghouse Electric is offering $1,000 grants to three schools for projects with a STEM-centered focus through its N-Visioning a Brighter Future initiative. Successful grantees will also receive an additional $2,000 for their respective science departments for general needs. Successful projects will directly involve students, incorporate community resources, and/or employ team-teaching or interdisciplinary strategies. Eligible applicants must be located in the United States and may be elementary, middle, or high schools. For complete information, please see the full RFP [opens PDF]. The deadline for applications is November 15.
Retail chain Dollar General is making grants of up to $15,000 available for adult literacy and $4,000 for youth literacy through its Literacy Foundation. Applicants must be s 501(c)(3) organization, K-12 private or public school, a public library, or a college or university located in a state in which Dollar General operates and within 20 miles of a Dollar General location. Applicants for the adult literacy grant must provide assistance with English language acquisition, adult basic education, or general education diploma (GED) preparation. Youth literacy grants are intended to support existing programs, for purchasing equipment, software, or technology that will support literacy initiatives, or for the acquisition of books and/or other materials for below-grade-level readers, new readers, or readers with learning disabilities.
To apply online and take a quiz of eligibility, please see the Dollar General Literacy Foundation Website. Applications for the adult literacy grants are due on February 28, and grant announcements will be made on May 17. The deadline for youth literacy grants is May 23, with announcements to be made on August 21.
Established more than two decades ago, the Captain Planet Foundation is committed to nurturing a new generation of environmental stewards across theUnited States and around the world. Currently, it is accepting applications for its youth environmental projects initiatives to catalyze youth to take part in community service through environmental stewardship and to increase environmental education in school. Eligible applicants and sponsoring agencies must be exempt from federal taxation under the Internal Revenue Code Section 501. Grants are typically made to organizations with annual operating budgets below $3 million, in the form of seed funding of $500 or less, to applicants that have obtained a minimum of 50% in-kind of matching funding.
For FAQs and application materials, please see the Captain Planet Foundation’s grant application Web page. Applications are commonly accepted on February 28 and September 30 of each year.
The Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team’s FastBreak Foundation has announced that it will accept applications from nonprofits for the 2012-2013 season. From October 2012 to April 2013, the FastBreak Foundation will award a $5,000 grant each month based on each of the following themes:
New Season, New Beginnings (Organizations offering new opportunities or directions for youth);
Operation Minnesota Heroes (Organizations that support Minnesota military personnel and their families);
Season of Giving (Organizations serving families in need during the holiday season);
WolvesCare (Organizations supporting children who are fighting life-threatening illnesses);
WolvesFit (Organizations supporting health and fitness for youth);
Read to Achieve (Organizations focused on literacy and encouraging a life-long love of reading); and
Wolves Think Green (Organizations that work to improve and restore the environment).
In addition to the grant, winners will receive tickets for and a public address announcement during a game.
Our governor, Mark Dayton, has declared March “Reading Month” in Minnesota. The official proclamation lists three specific reasons for the declaration:
“The citizens of Minnesota stand firmly committed to promoting reading as the catalyst for our students’ future academic success, their preparation for America’s jobs of the future and their ability to compete in the global economy”
“Minnesota have provided significant leadership in the area of community involvement in the education of our youth, grounded in the principle that educational investment is key to the community’s well being and long-term quality of life”
“NEA’s ‘Read Across America,’ a national celebration of Dr. Seuss’s 107th birthday on March 2, 2011, and the acknowledgement of the month of March as ‘National Reading Month’, to promote reading and adult involvement in the education of our community’s students.”
How does one go about building reading skills to students? One way is to engage students not only in the classroom, but also at home with parents. If you are a parent or want to teach parents how to engage their children in learning, Dr. Peter Afflerbach of the University of Maryland’s Literacy Research Center has eight tips for parents to ensure reading success for students:
Find ways to create enthusiasm for reading.
Encourage children to read different types of texts (books, newspapers, internet content).
Ask children questions about what they read.
Help children find materials that match their interests and achievement levels.
Talk with children about the importance of reading.
Try not to communicate any anxiety related to your children’s reading.
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton recently released his “7-Point Plan for Achieving Excellence” in education. The seven points in the plan focuses on three main areas: improve state education funding; focus more resources and raise the profile of Early Childhood Education; and narrow the achievement gap.
Dayton spoke about the plan on his website, stating, “Education was key to our State’s past prosperity, and it will be key to our future prosperity. An excellent public education system will be the driving force behind job creation in Minnesota. We must prepare today’s students for the jobs and the industries of the future, and thus we must make important innovations in our public school system. With this plan, we will take what is good with Minnesota’s K-12 education and make it even better, to ensure every student full opportunity to succeed in this ever more competitive global economy.” (http://mn.gov/governor/newsroom/pressreleasedetail.jsp?id=9625)
Specifically, the seven points are as follows:
1. Funding education for the future – including investing in early childhood and kindergarten and maintaining efforts to close the achievement gap. Part of this mandate calls for establishing a Governor’s Commission on Better School Funding.
2. Better early childhood education – by targeting all-day kindergarten, expanding the K-12 system to a pre-K-12 system, and implementing school readiness standards.
3. Close the gap – through setting accountability targets to close achievement gaps and establishing a Governor’s Award for Excellence in Education and Governor’s Achievement Gap Innovation Fund.
4. Reading well by third grade – by launching a statewide literacy campaign, molding accountability standards to meet this goal, and adopting literacy standards for pre-K-3.
5. Support teaching for better schools – setting alternative pathways to teacher licensure, establishing a statewide teacher performance evaluation, development system, and support networks, and supporting early childhood teacher observation and development.
6. Better testing for better results – including developing assessments for learning (i.e., formative assessments: see our former post on formative assessment), establishing a Test Reduction Task Force, and including growth as an accountability measure.
7. A department of education that provides educational leadership and support – by repositioning the Minnesota Department of Education to support teachers, schools, and districts; reauthorizing the Statewide Early Childhood Advisory Council and reestablishing the Children’s Cabinet; and charging the Commissioner of Education with leadership of early childhood initiatives.
An article from the Philanthropy News Digest recently highlighted a report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation KIDS COUNT project. Recent studies have found that there is a correlation between students who are proficient in reading by the end of the third grade and a “child’s success in school, life-long earning potential, and ability to contribute to the nation’s economy.”
The article specifically highlights the data regarding disparities in reading proficiency rates in low-income families for varying ethnic groups. The report states that “two-thirds of fourth-graders overall and four out of five fourth-graders from low-income families are not proficient in reading…disparities in reading achievement persist across economic, racial, and ethnic groups.” The article goes on to discuss thoughts and recommendations on the report.
Words Work!™ is an early literacy program developed by The Saint Paul Foundation to increase children’s literacy skills and improve family involvement. ACET has provided evaluation services to Words Work! since 1999, which included multi-site analyses and a longitudinal quasi-experimental research project whose positive results were recently published in a peer-reviewed journal. Today, we are very pleased to see such a successful project highlighted in the Star Tribune.
The April 20th edition of the Star Tribune featured a letter to the editor written by Carleen Rhodes, President and CEO of The Saint Paul Foundation. The letter attests to the “results of positive early intervention via our Words Work! program.” She encourages “legislators and other Minnesota leaders to continue to invest in early childhood programs.”
For more information on the Words Works! program, see The Saint Paul Foundation’s website: (http://www.saintpaulfoundation.org) or watch the video below: