FOCUS AREA: ADVANCING EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING AND LEARNING
Literacy is the foundation of all learning.
Ready, Set, Read! is a three-year, $5 million campaign dedicated to dramatically improving third-grade literacy proficiency across SFUSD.
With community and philanthropic support, we are strengthening SFUSD’s ambitious efforts to transform its literacy instructional systems, improve how it teaches every child to read and write, to ultimately drive dramatically higher literacy proficiency for all students.
The Goal: To increase the percentage of SFUSD 3rd grade students reading at grade level from 52% to 70% by 2027.
Achieving literacy proficiency by third grade is a critical milestone.
Research shows that children who are not reading proficiently by this stage are four times more likely to drop out of high school compared to their peers who read at grade level.
Approximately, only half of SFUSD 3rd graders are reading at grade level.
SFUSD has set forth an ambitious goal to increase 3rd grade proficiency to 70%. The plan underway to achieve this goal is a comprehensive overhaul of the district’s literacy instruction systems, equipping all elementary school teachers with a new research-backed literacy curriculum rooted in the “science of reading”, and providing high-quality instructional coaching and ongoing support.
This enables all teachers to consistently use evidence-based teaching strategies, ensuring that every student becomes a confident, lifelong reader.
The Opportunity: 1000 Hours with a Teacher
Each year, every SFUSD student spends approximately 1,000 hours in the classroom with a teacher. Research shows that the single most impactful investment we can make is ensuring teachers have the tools, training, and support to maximize learning during these 1,000 hours—so that every moment in the classroom drives meaningful learning, growth and achievement.
Ready, Set, Read! will improve 3rd grade literacy proficiency for SFUSD students by investing in 3 critical areas:
1
Robust Support to Teachers
Increase and improve training and coaching for over 1,500 K-5 elementary school teachers in SFUSD’s new literacy curriculum evidence based in the “science of reading”.
2
Access to Literacy
Instruction Expertise
Provide access to literacy instruction specialists during initial implementation stages of the new literacy curriculum, to assure that evidence-based strategies are embedded in SFUSD’s instructional system from day one.
3
High Dosage Tutoring
Expand equitable access to research-backed, classroom-embedded high-dosage tutoring —both aligned with the new literacy curriculum and scalable across the district —ensuring that every student who needs tutoring receives it.
“Quality instruction and quality curriculum are the most high-leverage tools we have in teaching for equity and giving each student what they need in order to succeed, especially for historically underserved populations.
That is what I am the most excited about when it comes to this new literacy curriculum.”
MS. “L”
INSTRUCTIONAL COACH, ALVARADO TK-5 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
