WGVU and PBS KIDS:
Raising Readers

Today, nearly half of America's children are not prepared to succeed when they enter kindergarten. Research shows that children living in poverty enter kindergarten at an especially high disadvantage, particularly in literacy skills. The 1995 Hart Risley study found that by kindergarten, a child in poverty has heard only 5,000 distinct words, whereas a child from a professional family has heard 20,000 words. The effect of this deficit continues as a child progresses through elementary school – studies show that if a child is not reading on grade level by the 4th grade, he or she will never catch up. Furthermore, 4th grade literacy rates are directly tied to high school dropout rates, which are the most cited predictors of crime, low income, and reliance on social services.

To address this national problem, PBS partnered with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to launch PBS KIDS Raising Readers, a national initiative that surrounds children ages 2 to 8 with research-based literacy content, with a special focus on children living in poverty. PBS KIDS Raising Readers aims to build literacy skills by surrounding kids with multimedia content, while simultaneously providing resources and training for teachers to support their students' learning. A 2009 study conducted by the Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) and SRI International tested the impact of immersing children and their teachers in PBS KIDS Raising Readers content. The study found that preschoolers from low-income communities who participated in the PBS KIDS Raising Readers media-rich curriculum outscored their peers who did not participate in the curriculum on all tested measures of early literacy, such as naming letters and knowing their sounds. Furthermore, children who started out with the lowest literacy skills gained the most, learning an average of 7.5 more letters than children in the comparison group. (Education Development Center, Inc. and SRI International, "Summative Evaluation of the Ready to Learn Initiative" 2009)

The impact of PBS KIDS Raising Readers has been enhanced greatly through meaningful national partnerships with organizations such as WIC, the Library of Congress, the National Center for Family Literacy, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies. These relationships have helped increase access to literacy resources in low-income communities nationwide.

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