By Dr. Christopher Beissel, Hamburg Area School District Superintendent
We know the importance of early childhood literacy — reading is the gatekeeper of knowledge acquisition and opens pathways to opportunity.
We have also heard about the trends and statistics regarding America’s literacy crisis. Studies have found that only 47% of kindergarten students were reading on grade level as recently as the 2021-2022 school year, and those students who lack adequate reading skills by the end of fourth grade are four times less likely to earn a high school diploma.
Why does early childhood literacy matter? Literacy is critical in developing personal and social skills in young people and helps build empathy and creativity. Our ability to find fulfillment and be taken seriously in the world depends on our ability to effectively communicate our wants and needs.
Once a student falls behind in reading, closing the gap becomes increasingly difficult and requires significantly more time and resources in the form of targeted intervention. Additionally, reading difficulties have been shown to lead to decreases in student motivation and confidence. Some students simply give up after experiencing repeated struggles and failures.
School districts working in partnership with their communities can help reverse these concerning trends. Early exposure in the home to both spoken and written language can develop pre-reading skills and kickstart a child’s understanding of social conventions, inflection and tone while building a working vocabulary.
According to the National Commission on Reading, the most important influence on a child’s early reading success is exposure to books prior to beginning school.
The simple act of placing a physical book in a child’s hand to allow them to feel it, to touch it and to turn pages helps build basic awareness of print features and “how books work.”
Community libraries provide children with exposure to print and often host special events, crafts, and other family-friendly activities. Yard sales, Facebook Marketplace and local pre-owned stores and donation centers are also great places to find gently loved books.
When parents engage in reading and language activities with their children, it is time well spent and will pay dividends in contributing to the child’s future reading success. When parents read to their children, it helps build positive associations with books and reading later in life.
In schools, our work must focus on establishing rigorous, grade-level exposure to rich and explicit early reading experiences. Research on best practices has shaped a shift toward structured literacy and the science of reading, a systematic, cumulative and explicit approach to literacy instruction.
The Hamburg School District is piloting programs in K-5 classrooms for future adoption as we seek to establish a rigorous, robust and explicit approach to teaching reading aligned with the science of reading.
While programs alone will not solve the literacy challenge, an aligned curriculum in the hands of talented, passionate and well-trained teachers significantly impacts student reading outcomes.
Schools must also continue to promote the importance of reading in our communities and form strong, trusting, and lasting partnerships with our parents, community members and local organizations and businesses.
While the early childhood literacy challenges faced by schools can feel daunting, there is hope that a strong school-community partnership, combined with a systematic and explicit approach to foundational reading skill development in the classroom and targeted and timely interventions, can reverse the trends. Our students and communities will undoubtedly benefit from our efforts.
This article was originally published on the Reading Eagle: https://www.readingeagle.com/2025/03/13/superintendents-forum-early-childhood-literacy-and-the-school-community-partnership/