Imagine an Arkansas where all kids grew up with high-quality education, healthy food, safe housing, affordable health services and supportive relationships.
While this vision for our state is achievable, we're not quite there yet. That's why the Arkansas Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (AR-GLR) and 28 organizations recently launched Excel by Eight (E8), an initiative to help ensure that all children have equitable access to health care and education that maximizes their full potential.
Studies have shown that a child's brain develops faster from birth to age 3 than any other time in life. This makes the first years of a child's life critical to their long-term development and future academic progress, behavior and health.
Investing in children early ensures resources are reaching children when they need them most. When we support them in their earliest years, infants grow into healthy kids who are confident, empathetic and ready for school and life.
And, as a result, our communities, work force and economy become stronger and more productive.
Since it was established in 2011, the Arkansas Campaign for Grade-Level Reading has worked with families, educators, policymakers and business leaders around the state to move the needle on children's education outcomes, starting at birth.
Over the past eight years, AR-GLR has made significant progress by focusing on family and community engagement, school readiness, school attendance, classroom instruction and summer learning. Working alongside many partners, we have helped set children up for success by increasing the percentage of third-graders in Arkansas reading on grade level.
With Excel by Eight, we're expanding our approach to strengthening outcomes for children. As AR-GLR has seen firsthand, we can't expect our kids to succeed--either in school or in life--if we don't give them the tools and support they need to grow and thrive.
To improve children's development outcomes, we must ensure that all Arkansas communities are fully plugged into a grid of family, health, education and community resources. Without reliable or steady access to these essential resources, our children could face a range of development challenges that have long-lasting consequences, both for them and for the entire state.
E8 will tackle this challenge head-on by focusing on the most critical years of a child's life: birth to age eight. It will take a three-pronged strategy to improve child health and education outcomes and decrease existing gaps.
First, it will build models for change in communities around the state. Second, it will identify and address the policy barriers that make it difficult for communities to build and strengthen their resource grids. And finally, it will foster understanding of early childhood development in order to encourage the public to help strengthen resource grids statewide.
The first cohort of E8 communities is in Conway, Independence, Monroe and Sevier counties. Already, these communities are hard at work as parents, educators, health professionals, business leaders and everyday citizens join together to pinpoint gaps and develop strategies to improve child outcomes.
This is just the beginning of E8's efforts. By investing in our state's youth, E8 will help us take a step toward a brighter future for Arkansas. Visit ar-glr.net to join us in building a strong foundation for every child.
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Angela Duran is the campaign director for the Arkansas Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, a collaborative effort of nearly 30 state organizations whose goal is for all children to read on grade level by the end of third grade.
Editorial on 12/16/2019