The Advocate’s recent article highlighting that thousands of Louisiana third graders could be held back due to poor reading scores is a call to action. It’s a painful reminder of why United Way of Southeast Louisiana’s New Orleans Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (NOLA-GLR) exists and why our collective efforts cannot slow down.
We launched this campaign with a bold 10-year goal: to ensure that 80% of New Orleans students are reading on grade level by the end of third grade. Third grade is a critical milestone. It’s the line that separates learning to read from reading to learn. If we fail our children here, we put their entire academic and economic futures at risk.
Holding children back should never be the first intervention. While accountability is important, ensuring all children can read on grade level requires early action, not just late-stage consequences. That’s why NOLA-GLR is focused on upstream solutions, addressing school readiness from birth, expanding access to quality early childhood education, reducing chronic absenteeism, preventing summer learning loss, and supporting strong literacy instruction from early educators and caregivers alike.
Through partnerships with schools, out-of-school programs, business leaders, and families, we are making progress by:
- Increasing public awareness about why early literacy matters
- Developing innovative pilots like employer-sponsored childcare for hospitality and public safety workers
- Distributing thousands of books with culturally relevant toolkits and creative community activations
- Building a robust citywide data hub and launching a longitudinal study to track real outcomes
- Advocating for public policies and funding streams that sustain these efforts across generations
The news that so many children may be held back must challenge us to meet this moment and transform it. It should fuel our resolve to support families and educators before students fall behind, not after.
We are not just trying to change test scores. We are working to change lives. This is why the New Orleans Campaign for Grade-Level Reading exists, and why we must keep pushing forward together to ensure all children are able to reach their full potential.
United is the Way.
Todd Battiste
Senior Vice President for Education & Youth Initiatives