Task Force Priorities Help Ensure That All Children Will Succeed in School Board

by Carolyn Curtin, Chair, Ensuring Early Childhood Literacy Task Force, Michigan State Board of Education

The Michigan State Board of Education is charged with providing leadership and general supervision of public education. This means it’s our job to help every child enter school well prepared to learn to read and to prepare every school to meet the literacy needs of ALL students. Recognizing that reading serves as a major foundational skill for all school-based learning, the State Board has adopted three major priorities to ensure that all children develop the learning foundation they need to achieve and succeed in school. These include:

• Ensuring all children enter school ready to learn.
• Ensuring all children become independent readers/communicators who can understand and apply information within their daily lives.
• Ensuring that all schools are ready to meet the needs of all children.

Last year, the State Board convened five task force groups to identify actions that would assist in accomplishing these three priorities. The task forces focused on ensuring early childhood literacy, ensuring excellent educators, embracing the information age, integrating communities and schools, and elevating educational leadership. All State Board Task Force reports are available on the State Board Web page at www.michigan.gov/mde.

Among the many ideas and recommendations put forward by the Early Literacy Task Force were:

• A statewide literacy awareness campaign targeting parents and care givers.
• Innovative programs that put educational tools directly in the hands of parents.
• Tougher early childhood education standards and literacy benchmarks.
• Dynamic partnerships with service agencies, libraries, pediatricians, and clinics.
• New ways of educating Michigan teachers on best practices in early childhood literacy.

In this, the third issue of Leading Change, we bring you information about Michigan’s efforts to ensure that early childhood literacy remains a continuing priority.

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