The Ready-to-Learn grant program is authorized by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended by the Improving America's School Act of 1994, Title III, Part C (20 USC 6921-6928).
The purposes of Ready-to-Learn Television are: (1) the development of educational programming for preschool and early elementary school children and their families; (2) the development of educational television programming and printed materials to increase school readiness for young children in limited English proficient households and to increase family literacy; and (3) the development of accompanying support materials and services that promote the effective use of educational television programming.
is the first children's television show produced out of the Ready-To-Learn Television Grant, a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Education and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Check your local Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) station for times!
is a daily half-hour literacy series for four-to-seven year olds which will help them learn to read. The program takes place in a library inhabited by an animated group of puppets and "real" people. Children will find the tools they need to learn to read and to seek out books and information.
U.S. Department of Education funds have been used to expand "First Book," a free book program for disadvantaged children. The program has expanded from three PBS stations to 133 stations. These stations have distributed more than 1 million books to disadvantaged children who would not otherwise own them. In addition to providing a regular allotment of free books to these stations on a monthly basis, a matching book fund has been established to encourage stations to purchase additional books. Many stations have ordered books in Spanish, English, and other languages. Stations can order any of the books included in the Scholastic catalog or in the Mondo catalog. Several of the most popular titles are Is Your Mama a Llama in English and A Pocket for Corduroy in Spanish. Books are distributed by stations through their affiliations with organizations like Head Start, Even Start, public libraries, hospitals, and correctional facilities.
"PBS Families" and "PBS para la familia" are free quarterly publications that provide ideas about how to enhance the learning of preschool and early elementary school-aged children after the TV is turned off. The circulation of "PBS Families" is 1 million copies per issue with the circulation of "PBS para la familia" running right at about 100,000 copies per issue.
The focus of Ready To Learn is to provide workshops for parents and other adults most in need. Therefore, stations partner in their own communities with different kinds of organizations in order to reach the appropriate audience.For example, all stations in West Virginia provide workshops to every Head Start parent in the state, since Head Start is West Virginia Ready To Learn's statewide partner. WGBH/Boston works with the Resource and Referral Agency (as do many other stations) in order to connect with daycare providers. The population attending RTL workshops at Idaho Public Television are mostly parents and caregivers who are migrant workers, while RTL workshops in Iowa and Oklahoma target Native American parents and families.
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Last modified May 16, 2001 (jfc)