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READ CHARLOTTE LAUNCHES DATA COLLABORATIVE TO IMPROVE LOCAL DECISION MAKING & ACCELERATE PROGRESS

Charlotte, N.C. (August 30, 2017) – Eleven local organizations will participate in Read Charlotte’s Data Collaborative, a new collective effort by birth-3rd grade literacy providers, funders, and community partners to improve the availability, quality and use of data to improve children’s literacy, this fall.

“The Data Collaborative is vital in achieving the goal of 80% of Charlotte-Mecklenburg third graders reading proficiently by 2025,” explains Read Charlotte Executive Director Munro Richardson. “Strategic use of data by nonprofit agencies and funders will help our community better understand what works to improve children’s literacy. Working alongside early literacy partners to provide this type of support is an exciting piece of our efforts here at Read Charlotte.”

The Data Collaborative focuses on three core activities: common literacy assessments across agencies, program impact reviews, and staff professional development on using data to drive results.

Through this partnership, literacy providers across the birth through third grade continuum will not only receive a comprehensive understanding of children’s language and literacy skills using a valid, reliable common assessment, but also a stronger understanding of areas for growth within the organizations, as it relates to students’ language and literacy development.

“We know when students in our program are behind but our hope is that we can now drill down on why they are behind and focus our time working on the right areas,” said YMCA Senior Director Amanda Wilkinson.

To ensure high quality training and adequate coaching ratios, Read Charlotte has selected a limited number of organizations to participate in the Data Collaborative at this time.

The following organizations have made a three-year commitment: Ada Jenkins Center, Above & Beyond Students, Bethlehem Center, Charlotte Bilingual Preschool, Freedom School Partners, Lakewood Preschool, Reading Partners, The Learning Collaborative, Thompson Child & Family Focus, YMCA and YWCA.

“Read Charlotte will work closely with these organizations through training and coaching focused on how to transform literacy data into meaningful information,” said Read Charlotte Data Manager Deepti Panjabi. “Every child’s literacy and language development data are valuable assets to us as leaders. If we can remain curious about what’s contributing to student success, we can align our practices to support their development and this has the potential to transform children’s trajectories on their reading success pathways.”

Read Charlotte has fostered partnerships with Govan-Hunt Staff Development and Red Ventures to support training and coaching of participants. Digital Charlotte is providing access to its digital library of laptops, which will support participants to learn how to use data systems. Read Charlotte looks forward to fostering partnerships with a variety of other local groups to support the Data Collaborative.

The Data Collaborative participants were invited to apply for the 2017-2018 year. Each group will participate for up to three years. Read Charlotte looks forward to learning from the initial cohort to potentially expand the number of participants in the future.

Early childhood participants began training on August 25. Organizations serving students in grades K-3 will begin training on September 14. As part of the three-year commitment, organizations agree to participate in 15 training sessions across three professional development tracks and monthly coaching sessions annually.

 

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