The City of Paterson and Paterson Public Schools officials will join with representatives from Paterson Reads to celebrate the adoption of an actionable, standards-driven city-wide reading campaign to track literacy improvement over time.
City officials said the national Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, which designed the CSAP model, was launched to reverse a potentially catastrophic trend by supporting common-sense solutions at the federal, state, and local levels.
The City of Paterson has now signed on to join Paterson Reads in the fight to achieve community-wide reading success.
Nationwide, an alarming number of children—about 67 percent nationwide and more than 80 percent of those from low-income families—are not proficient readers by the end of third grade.
This has significant and long-term consequences for each of those children and their communities and the nation as a whole.
If left unchecked, this problem will undermine efforts to end intergenerational poverty, close the achievement gap, and reduce high school dropout rates.
Far fewer of the next generation will be prepared to succeed in a global economy, participate in higher education, or enter military and civilian service.