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A note from Don Bolce
Last fall a group of local organizations came together to form the Steering Committee for READy to SOAR, the Silicon Valley Campaign for Third Grade Proficiency. This effort is aligned with the national Campaign for Grade Level Reading, which aims to increase third grade reading proficiency by increasing school readiness, reducing chronic absences in young children and reducing summer learning loss through summer learning and enrichment programs.
The members of the Steering Committee include the City of San José, the YMCA of Silicon Valley, United Way Silicon Valley, Oak Grove School District, First 5 Santa Clara, the Partnership for School Readiness, Kids in Common and the Santa Clara County Office of Education.
Past issues of Closing the Gap have highlighted local efforts to increase school readiness (e.g., Transitional Kindergarten, Educare, the Early Learning Master Plan). This issue features several programs addressing summer learning and enrichment.
San Jose Beyond the Bell is a new online directory of summer learning programs developed through a public/private collaboration between the Office of San José Mayor Chuck Reed and EdJigsaw. It is a resource for parents and educators to help locate summer learning opportunities.
We are excited about this new resource and look forward to expanding its capabilities over time. The San Jose Public Library is also launching its annual Summer Reading Celebration to promote literacy during the summer break as part the campaign to reduce summer learning loss.
We're also working with Attendance Works and local partners on plans to address chronic absenteeism, which will include an Attendance Awareness Month this September. We'll provide more information on how you can be involved in these projects in the coming months.
SCCOE Program Director,
Special Projects
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SJ/SV2020 launches Beyond the Bell program
 A summer learning guide and online directory, which allows parents to see the full range of educational resources that exist beyond their children's schools, is being made available to parents, educators, and service providers in the San Jose area thanks to SJ/SV2020.
San Jose Beyond the Bell provides parents with an online directory that they can search for over 1,000 after-school and summer programs within their location and budget. These programs extend from academic programs to extracurricular programs that offer developmental benefits. There's also a summer learning guide with links to articles and events to help parents support learning outside of school.
 Research indicates that up to two-thirds of the achievement gap can be attributed to the summer learning loss that occurs when students have a lack of academic stimulation over the summer months. Most students lose the equivalent of one month of academic gains in each summer vacation, with low-income students affected the most.
A report by the RAND institute suggests that participating in summer programs can help stem these losses, and yet only 25 percent of students in the United States participate in summer learning programs.
The launch of the resource took place on April 25 at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San Jose. Speakers included San José Mayor Chuck Reed; Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Xavier De La Torre; Anne Cain, Interim Library Director, San Jose Public Library; and Jess Morgan, Founder and CEO, Edjigsaw, who gave a demonstration on how to use the website.
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GLOW financial literacy program supports AVID's goals
 Most high school students hope to pursue their education at college, but for many, the practical challenges in doing that-especially in terms of finance-can seem insurmountable. This is especially true of students whose families lack a college-going background.
Andrea Lichter, director of the Region V AVID Program at the Santa Clara County Office of Education, recognizes that college enrollment and success are dependent not only on academic preparation but also on the ability to meet the costs. In exploring ways to help students meet this challenge, she started to explore bringing the GLOW Financial Literacy Curriculum to AVID sites.
(AVID-or Advancement Via Individual Determination-is an in-school academic support program for grades 4-12 that prepares students for college eligibility and success, placing academically average students in advanced classes.)
Lichter felt that GLOW would be a natural partner for AVID. The mission of GLOW is to empower under-resourced students and their families to overcome barriers to higher education access and success. GLOW provides programs to address the obstacles most likely to derail deserving but under-resourced students: financial readiness, budgeting, and access to financial aid and scholarships. The program gives students an interactive, student-driven financial literacy and college financial planning curriculum.
The partnership between AVID and GLOW resulted in the participation of 20 AVID teachers represeting eight high schools and 838 students in the East Side Union High School District.
"Feedback from teachers has been great," Lichter reported. "Teachers indicated that the students were very interested in the content, and that it especially helped the seniors who were applying to college and seeking grants and scholarships and overall understanding of loans."
The pilot program was so successful that expansion is being considered at other AVID schools in the county. |
 San Jose Public Library aims to prevent loss in reading skills over summer break
The San Jose Public Library is easily able to support reading when school is in session. But once vacation commences, librarians have to work especially hard to spread the word about the importance of continuing to read over the summer months.
 In an effort to encourage children to pick up books over the summer and avoid succumbing to summer learning loss, the library organizes an annual citywide reading initiative. This year's Summer Reading Celebration will run from June 1 to July 31.
Children who participate in the summer reading program and actively read over the summer months can minimize the effects of summer learning loss, while preparing themselves for the upcoming school year. "We encourage teachers and principals to tell their students about the Summer Reading Celebration in particular because it is a fun way for students to fill in the learning gaps over summer vacation," says Madeline Walton-Hadlock, senior librarian.
The two-month-long reading initiative invites families to participate together and offers rewards for reading. In 2012, more than 15,000 people participated in the program.
Open to all ages, the program is broken down into four categories: Pre-Readers, Children, Teens and Adults. In addition to the summer reading program, the library also offers special programs during the summer months including arts and crafts activities, live music performances, magic shows and more. To learn more about the Summer Reading Celebration, visit sjpl.org/summer.
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It is the vision of the City of San José, the Santa Clara County Office of Education, school districts, charter schools, colleges, and business and nonprofit community agencies to join together to eliminate the achievement gap in San José by 2020. The "achievement gap" refers to the disparity in academic performance between two groups: lower-performing Hispanic/ Latino and African-American students, and higher-performing Asian and White/non-Hispanic students.
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