Families and Communities
For an initiative aimed at advancing elementary or adolescent literacy to succeed, it must focus not only the students being educated, but on their parents and communities as well.
Children and adolescents typically model their own behavior on that of their parents and community-members. It follows that if they regularly see these people actively reading they are far more likely to appreciate the value of reading themselves. If they are surrounded by adults whose success is due in part to their ability to read and engage in complex reasoning, students are apt to place a high value on school, literacy, higher education, and the opportunities they deliver. In short, these students are far more likely to value “reading to learn.”
A recent Time Magazine/SRBI Poll reported that more than half of all high school graduates attribute their school success to their family’s involvement and encouragement, and more than half of this group also credits their own desire to succeed or go to college
The evidence is clear that schools must work to involve parents, particularly in low-income areas where, poverty puts additional pressure on adolescent students to seek jobs to help support their family and thus their time for and attention to school work may be limited. That recommendation also applies in neighborhoods with a high percentage of first-generation-American families, where parents with limited English proficiency, low levels of formal education, and weak literacy skills in their native language, may be uncertain about how to help their children succeed in the American educational system, according to the Carnegie Corporation report Double the Work: Challenges and Solutions to Acquiring Language and Academic Literacy for Adolescent English Language Learners.
Featured Publications
Grantee Publication
Mobilizing Communities to Support the Literacy Development of Urban Youth: A Conceptual Framework and Strategic Planning Model
The project on which this paper is based was motivated by the widely recognized need to develop systemic approaches to one of our nation’s most serious problems: the fact that large numbers of young people, both those who are enrolled in middle or...
Report
Community/Organization Mobilization for Adolescent Literacy
In order to address the complexity of the adolescent literacy crisis and to understand the varied conditions in which families and children live, new systems need to be developed that will allow communities to create or enhance their own structures...
Report
Parent/Guardian Engagement in Adolescent Literacy
Parents of children at the elementary level are far more involved in their children’s education, both through communicating with the school and helping their child at home. However, as students move through the upper elementary and secondary grades,...
Report
Youth/Adolescent Growth in Literacy
A crucial part of any effort to mobilize a community for adolescent literacy is to empower youth to take ownership of their own literacy development. Research indicates that the level of motivation a young person experiences can determine whether...
Carnegie Results
America’s Literacy Challenge: Teaching Adolescents to Read to Learn
This edition of Carnegie Results reviews the Advancing Literacy program, which focuses on improving the literacy of students in grades 4-12. Though the effort was only begun in 2003, it has already made important inroads in tackling the challenge of...
Report
Great Transitions: Preparing Adolescents for a New Century
Carnegie Corporation's Council on Adolescent Development builds on the work of many organizations and individuals to stimulate sustained public attention to the risks and opportunities of adolescence, and generates public and private support for...
