United Way Worldwide and Ascend at the Aspen Institute have long partnered with each other and with the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading to disrupt the cycle of poverty and create more hopeful futures for children with a focus on improving early learning. Two-generation (2Gen) approaches, which support children as well as their parents and caregivers, […]

We know that attendance is key to student success and to closing academic gaps. And yet, since the pandemic, norms around work and learning have shifted dramatically to disrupt the tradition of school as attending in-person, five days a week. In fact, four-day school weeks occurred in about half of the states in the 2022–2023 […]

The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (CGLR) is proud that more than 5,000 local agencies, organizations and institutions and over 100 sector- and field-leading organizations have taken a stand and joined with CGLR to ensure that children in economically challenged, fragile and marginalized families can achieve third-grade reading proficiency. Children’s museums in CGLR communities have played […]

Since the pandemic, it has become even more evident that kindergarten is a crucial time to ensure that students from low-income and marginalized families have an equal chance to create a solid foundation toward early school success. In fact, research demonstrates that the entire third-grade reading gap is evident by the end of kindergarten, and […]

Nurturing the development of emotional intelligence and social skills has been widely embraced as an important and even essential aspect of the “whole child” approach to education. A growing body of research from human development, the learning sciences and neurosciences affirms the importance of ensuring learning environments and instruction promote social-emotional and cognitive development to […]