NJ School Advocates To Launch New Coalition With Newark Event

NEWARK, NJ — A New Jersey advocacy group recently kicked off a campaign to persuade state officials to adopt a plan to boost literacy in every public school.

JerseyCAN will be marking the launch of its New Jersey Legacy of Literacy (NJLL) coalition with a series of public screenings of the documentary, “The Right to Read.” They will include a screening in Newark at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 17: learn more here.

According to JerseyCAN, the new marketing and legislative campaign aims to influence Gov. Phil Murphy, the New Jersey Legislature and the New Jersey Department of Education to adopt a “high-quality statewide plan” that addresses literacy in every public school in the state.

Here’s the problem, organizers said:

“This year, the Nation’s Report Card, an annual report conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a congressionally mandated initiative administered by the National Center for Education Statistics within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences, stated that New Jersey has failed to move the needle in closing socioeconomic or racial gaps in 4th-grade reading proficiency for the past twenty years. Further, last month’s Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee noted that 58% of the state’s third graders are not meeting reading standards. In addition, it has been reported that less than 10 percent of students in some urban areas of the state are currently reading at grade level. Specifically, the Asbury Park school district did not have a single 3rd-grade student at grade level proficiency.”

Here's what the new coalition hopes to achieve, organizers said:

“Through the creation of NJLL, JerseyCAN and its coalition partners from around the state will activate a layered plan, beginning with a multi-platform marketing campaign to showcase data regarding the literacy gap in New Jersey public schools. In addition, the coalition will launch a lobbying campaign to work with the New Jersey Legislature that will look to define clear state directives and goals to address the literacy gap, enable aligned teacher training for public school teachers, mandate more significant information sharing to parents regarding their children’s literacy acquisition, and instruct the New Jersey Department of Education to develop and implement a plan to address the literacy gap.”

During the Newark screening on May 17, JerseyCAN will showcase current New Jersey data regarding public school literacy, outline plans for the NJLL, and facilitate a discussion to inform the work and priorities of the newly created coalition.

For more information on the public screening or to RSVP, click here.

New Jersey-based organizations interested in joining the NJLL coalition can email Samantha.wilkerson@jerseycan.org.

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