When Marilyn Buckley of Rochester sits down to read with her 6 year old daughter, Caroline, she knows she is fostering literacy skills encouraged by the experts. But this is not the case for the majority of families in the city. The reality is, that if things remain the same, in 10 years when Caroline is in high school, more than half the kids her age in Rochester will have the reading skills she possesses today as a first grader.

Staggering Statistics
In the city of Rochester, too many children enter the learning environment without the fundamental skills they need to be “ready to learn”. They are unprepared for successful achievement and more likely to experience performance gaps from which they may not recover. In our own community as well as others, illiteracy is a fundamental community issue that directly contributes to high school dropouts, crime, poverty, and unemployment among our poorest city residents.

In Rochester, we are facing that crisis today. The current state of affairs in the Rochester City School District, while improving, is unacceptable. The statistics are staggering:
• The Rochester City School District faces a 49% high school dropout rate.
• Children at the fourth grade level score at a much lower proficiency level on the NYS English Language Arts (ELA) Examination than their peers in the suburbs and across New York State.
• At the eighth grade level, Rochester’s rates are abysmal: roughly 18% of eighth graders score proficient on the ELA Examination.

• According to a recent study, a staggering 57% of Rochester’s population age 16 or older was identified as being at a grade level 1 or 2 literacy level.
It is for these reasons, and many more that Mayor Robert J. Duffy has made improving literacy in our community among his top priorities. “The issue of literacy transcends all three of my priorities — education, public safety, and economic development. When adults and children can read and communicate at a higher level, they will stay in school and qualify for solid employment upon
graduation,” says Mayor Duffy.

Mayor Duffy’s Plan
Upon taking office in January 2006, Mayor Duffy stated that this community would focus on fundamentals. “One of the most fundamental issues plaguing the Rochester community is illiteracy rates among our city’s children,” says Mayor Duffy. Early literacy plays a critical role as the experience most important to reading development. Half the education achievement gaps between poor and non-poor children already exist at kindergarten entry. Research has indicated that the children most unlikely to participate in routine early literacy experiences with their families are those whose parents have low levels of education and/or who live in households in which English is not the primary language. For example, in one study from the National Center on Family Literacy, 48% of Hispanic non-English speakers with less than a high school education did not read to their children at all. The value of parents reading to their young children is especially important and has long been recognized and strongly supported by research.

A Call to Action
In his first State of the City address, Mayor Duffy announced his vision for Rochester, “One City: Rochester.” Recognizing the current state of the city, the Mayor boldly declared that, “there are two cities of Rochester today…one part of the city is prosperous with wealth, affluence, and strong neighborhoods while the other part of the city suffers from widespread poverty, illiteracy, crime, blighted neighborhoods, and violence.”

The Mayor challenged the community to have one city, built on hope, unity and commitment. To accomplish this goal, the Mayor has outlined the priorities of his administration in three areas: education, economic development, and public safety.

Rochester’s Literacy Summit
As literacy transcends all three of his priorities, and recognizing that literacy issues are a fundamental crisis in Rochester, Mayor Duffy has put a stake in the ground affirmed that he envisions Rochester’s future to become the nation’s most literate mid-sized city. To accomplish that goal, the Mayor convened a prominent Literacy Taskforce of progressive community activists and scholars in his second month of office (February 2006) to begin planning for a community-wide Leadership Summit on Literacy. The Mayor’s Chief of Staff, Jean Howard was given responsibility for pulling the group together and organizing the Summit. “The Mayor’s Literacy Taskforce is a dedicated and passionate group of literacy and education experts who feel strongly about the Mayor’s vision. We’ve been working hard over the last 10 months to organize a great kick-off to this effort in the Summit,” commented Jean Howard. The Summit, which convened over two days on November 28 and 29, served as the organizing kick-off of a multiphase, multi-year Literacy Initiative. The taskforce has been meeting regularly to plan for the Summit that addressed the literacy shortfalls in the Rochester community and developed a comprehensive community-based response to the rising level of literacy. Much has been accomplished since the taskforce first convened in February of this year:

• February 2006: First meeting was held of the Mayor’s Literacy Taskforce. Subsequently five meetings were held.

• May 2006: An offsite Literacy Retreat was held to plan and define the goals and strategies of a process that addresses this community’s literacy crisis.

• Early June 2006: An Urban Fellow from the University of Rochester was assigned to the Mayor’s Literacy Initiative to benchmark research which included best practices, successful literacy outcomes, and inventory of local literacy programs.

• Late June 2006: The Center for Governmental Research (CGR) joined the City’s literacy efforts to assist in the planning of the Summit and render credibility of results.

• July 2006: Benchmark, research outcomes, and best practices were presented by UR Urban Fellow. A proposed agenda for the Summit was also presented. The taskforce agreed that the first phase of the literacy program roll-out will focus on the 0-6 year group, with a special focus on parents and care-givers.

• August 2006: Literacy Taskforce continued meeting to plan for the Literacy Summit and the City of Rochester began to solicit for “Partners in Literacy Program.” The Summit is scheduled for November 28 and 29, 2006, at the Riverside Convention Center.

• September 2006: The Literacy Taskforce continues to meet and is focusing on defining measures of success and identifying promising model around the country. The group is also nearly finished with the draft Literacy Summit agenda. Save the date letters were also sent out to the community.

• October/November 2006: The Summit agenda was finalized, speakers invited and confirmed, and community participants and breakout discussions were organized.

Innovative in its approach, the Summit convened Rochester’s political, business, civic, and educational leadership with pre-selected community organizations and individuals, both locally and nationally who view literacy as a crisis, and combating it as a mission. The Summit was organized into three parts:

• A Community Call to Action: Mayor Duffy, Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks, Sandy Parker of the Rochester Business Alliance, and Rochester City School District Superintendent Manuel Rivera are challenging the community to get involved in this important community issue.

• Rochester’s Literacy Crisis: Panels and presentations from national and local experts on the current literacy crisis.

• Community Dialogue and Conversation: A two-day working session with community organizations to develop a long term, phased approach to address the community’s literacy crisis.

At its conclusion, the Literacy Summit accomplished the single most important task, organizing the community around a universally accepted long-term plan of action. “In the end, I hope to challenge this community to collaborate and think differently about literacy issues in this community,” says Mayor Duffy. “We have rallied all sectors of the Rochester community to work together, comprehensively, to lift up children and families all across the Rochester community. And we have a plan in place that holds organizations and individuals accountable to deliver results,” adds Mayor Duffy. Our civic leaders are calling upon parents and educators to help our children. You have the support to take a leading role in the success of Rochester’s youth, and what better opportunity than now to do so?

This article is the first in a series on literacy in Rochester. GVP thanks the City of Rochester’s Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Schwab, and Mayor Robert Duffy’s Chief of Staff, Jean Howard for their contributions.