Welcome to the Oakland Literacy Coalition
The Oakland Literacy Coalition (OLC) is a collaboration of literacy service providers, foundations, businesses, Oakland city representatives, the Oakland Unified School District and other community partners committed to the goal of equipping, at a proficient level, all Oakland children with the life skills of reading, writing, and communication by the end of third grade.
The Oakland Literacy Coalition will galvanize these organizations around a shared vision of a city-wide network of high quality early literacy resources that are accessible, collaborative, integrated, and well supported.
In order to accomplish these goals, the OLC will gather, share and use the latest research to inform its partners, expand funding opportunities for high quality service providers, promote successful strategies and develop evaluation systems to measure progress and success.
Beliefs
We believe:
- All children can learn and succeed.
- Children’s development of early literacy proficiency is critical to lifelong learning, success, and personal fulfillment.
- Our children’s success depends on a focused, collaborative effort by parents, public and private early learning organizations, OUSD, the City of Oakland, business and philanthropy.
- Parents and/or primary caregivers are the first and most important teachers of their children.
- We must reach out to children and parents where they live, work and socialize – the work of building literacy and engagement must be pro-active.
- Success requires a system-wide focus on continuous improvement and learning from best practices
- Success should be evaluated by measurable and quantifiable student outcomes.
- Success will come from building upon the existing strengths of the community
Barriers
Current barriers to effective early learning in the city of Oakland:
- Patchwork of “siloed” early learning programs of varying or unknown quality
- Lack of access to support and resources for many sites and schools
- Lack of accessible and affordable programs for many families
- Low parental and public awareness of the importance of early literacy
- Lack of public involvement, action, and volunteerism toward solutions
- Lack of citywide vision and understanding
- Sustainable and consistent funding
- Language differences between families, schools and sites and a lack of translators
Goals
Student Goals: All students will be able to read, write and communicate by the end of the 3rd grade.
Family Goals: All parents, grandparents and caregivers will be equipped to encourage early learning and literacy.
School/ Early Literacy Provider Goals: All schools, teachers and early literacy providers will understand the best practices and research in order to provide high quality literacy services. Early learning service providers and schools will align curriculums and support effective transitions from pre-K to elementary school.
Neighborhood Goals: All neighborhoods will have the resources necessary to support early learning and literacy.
City Goals: The OLC will create a long-term, integrated, and improving early-learning environment throughout the city of Oakland. This will include a citywide “call to action” to mobilize a new volunteer force of citizens, businesses and philanthropies focused on early learning and literacy.
What the OLC will do:
- Channel resources to areas of need
- Promote collaboration
- Promote what works
- Recognize diverse and culturally affirming literature
- Provide a centralized resource of literacy service provider information
- Monitor progress toward coalition goals
- Align literacy goals among Pre K, K-3rd programs, schools and OUSD
Conditions for success
- Engagement in and support from the early learning community
- High parental and public support for quality early learning opportunities and programs
- Sufficient availability and capacity of quality early learning opportunities and programs
- An effective and improving citywide early learning system and supporting infrastructure
- Clarity about how we will evaluate our efforts