In my post last month post I invited you all to follow a couple of discussions happening at ALSC Board Meetings at Midwinter, including a our “mega-issue” discussion, Next Steps for Early Literacy.
Following a review of the IMLS funded report Bringing Literacy Home: An Evaluation of the Every Child Ready to Read Program (2017), the ALSC Board examined the Every Child Ready to Read (ECRR) product as a strategic initiative, considering the necessity of further development of the product in formal partnership with PLA.
We recognized that ECRR is now foundational to libraries’ work in early literacy, and is understood today as a practice, not just a toolkit. This is exactly what we intended to achieve with this initiative, and while there are opportunities to develop and extend its practices further, we determined that the constraints of the formal ECRR partnership no longer best serve our strategic effectiveness in early literacy.
Therefore, the board voted at our Midwinter Meeting to “conclude Every Child Ready to Read as an active initiative, retaining the existing product and identifying or establishing working group(s) to preserve the five practices and to make recommendations on current areas of need in early literacy.” We will craft a new MOU with PLA to focus on the maintenance of the existing product and communication related to different, but related programs and services. The MOU will allow for flexibility within each organization to continue to develop new programs and services related to but different from the ECRR framework. Both organizations will look to the oversight committee (which will continue through its current obligations) for recommendations on where and how to best carry this work forward. We look forward to continuing to work together collaboratively, if informally, as we investigate how to go deeper and reach further with what we’ve learned together.