A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Initiative 4:
Reading Excellence Act

The Reading Excellence Act provides communities with resources to give young children the readiness skills and support they need to learn to read once they enter school. Its goals are to teach every child to read by the end of the third grade and to improve the instructional practices of teachers and other instructional staff in elementary schools. The act supports the following activities: (1) professional development, (2) school-based and non-school-based tutoring, (3) family literacy, and, (4) transition programs.

The Secretary of Education is authorized to make competitive grants to state education agencies. The states that receive funding will then make subgrants on a competitive basis to high-poverty local school districts. State education agencies may make two kinds of subgrants?local reading improvement grants and tutorial assistance grants. These grants will be sufficient to support two-year projects. States will have three years to spend the funds.

All states are eligible to apply for a reading excellence grant. A state that wishes to participate must establish a reading and literacy partnership with the governor, chief state school officer, the chair and ranking minority member of committees in the state legislature responsible for education policy. The partnerships also involve representatives of local districts eligible to receive subgrants under the program, community-based organizations, state directors of federal programs supporting reading instruction, parents, teachers and family literacy service providers. Eligible applicants for the local reading improvement grants include local school districts that have at least one school in Title I improvement status, have the highest or second-highest percentages of poverty in the state or serve the highest or second highest number of poor children in the state. Eligible applicants for the tutorial assistance grants include the above-listed districts as well as those districts that are located in an Empowerment Zone or Enterprise Community.

Publications:
Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (National Research Council, National Academy
Press, Washington, D.C., 1998). To order, call 800-624-6242 or order via the
Internet at http://www.nap.edu.
Starting Our Right, A Guide to Promoting Children's Reading Success. (National Research
Council, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. 1999). To order, call 800-624-6242 or order
via the Internet at http://www.nap.edu.

Fact sheets and questions and answers for this initiative are available on the U.S.
Department of Education Web site at http://www.ed.gov/inits/FY00/index.html.

Program Director: Joseph Conaty, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
202-260-8228, Fax: 202-260-8969, e-mail: joseph.conaty@ed.gov.

Additional Contact:
America Reads Challenge, 202-401-8888, E-mail: reading.excellence@ed.gov.

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[ Initiative 3: The Class Size Reduction Initiatives ]

[ Initiative 5: Learning Anytime, Anywhere Partnerships ]