Partnering to Promote Successful Parenting
As a leading sponsor of the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading’s Successful Parenting
Initiatives, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation will advance the field by elevating effective tools
and approaches to help parents be more effective in their roles as first teachers, principal
brain developers, and co-producers of improved educational outcomes for their children.
These initiatives will help amplify Kellogg’s investments in whole child development,
family literacy, educational advocacy and innovative practices to support families,
schools and communities as they strive to put young children on the path to success.
Successful Parenting Initiatives
While the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading’s stated target is reading proficiency by the end of third
grade, we know that the contributors to this successful outcome begin long before a child enters the
formal pre K-12 education system. In those early years, parents are the first, most significant and most
enduring influence in giving their children the right start and putting them on a path for success. This
recognition long has been captured in references to parents as their children’s first teacher, best coach,
strongest advocate and essential role model. More recently, groundbreaking research on brain
architecture and how children learn has led to an appreciation of an even more fundamental role for
parents – as the principal brain developer for young children.
Like the Kellogg Foundation, the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading recognizes that all parents want
good outcomes for their children. But many parents in high-poverty communities lack the resources,
knowledge and skills to succeed in these critical roles and to create the supportive home environment
that would prepare their children for school. A significant readiness gap is the result. What we now
know from the science of brain development leads us to assert with confidence: We can improve the
chances of success for all children if we invest in early learning early, to ensure high quality learning
experiences beginning at birth. “Invest in early learning early” means giving parents, guardians,
extended family members and caregivers the information and tools that will enable them to nurture
children’s full and healthy development.
This urgent task will be addressed by the GLR Campaign’s multi-pronged Successful Parenting
Initiatives, which will seek to build on the leadership efforts of Kellogg and other funders to reach,
inform and engage these essential adults by mobilizing communities and using both traditional and new
ways to communicate the message, including “high-touch,” “high-tech,” and popular media. As
presently envisioned, the Successful Parenting Initiatives will include these components:

Supporting Parents for Success: National programs such as Parents as Teachers, HIPPY, the
National Center for Family Literacy and Nurse-Family Partnership have a well-established record
for providing parents with guidance and tools to nurture their children’s development. In some
communities, such as New Orleans and Albuquerque, families are receiving help from local
programs. But despite the quality and commitment of these groups, large numbers of lowincome parents still are not reached with the help that will enable them to succeed in their roles
and responsibilities. The GLR Campaign will bring together representatives from the leading
national parent-support organizations, selected local programs, funders working in this arena
such as Kellogg at the national level and Skillman in the key community of Detroit, and public
agencies fostering coordinated action to help young children and their families, such as
Michigan’s Early Childhood Investment Corporation, to develop a common sense consensus and
action recommendations about how best to help more low-income parents succeed in
supporting their children’s development.

Parents and Teachers Together: Educators have long known that “parent engagement”
helps children succeed, although they often struggle with how to make that vital connection.
And parents who want to be actively engaged often face challenges in finding welcoming ways
to be involved substantively to support and improve what is happening at school. Kellogg’s
Educational Advocacy program supports efforts to bridge that divide to assure effective
communication and cooperation between and among adults, and a number of programs are
demonstrating the benefits of approaches that build parents’ capacity to be involved in their
children’s education and that foster perceived and real partnership between parents and the
school. For example, Kellogg grantee Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors is providing Latino
parents with the knowledge to promote school readiness and the confidence to be active
participants in their children’s education. Teacher home visiting is another approach that makes
the connection, helping teachers understand the factors that may be affecting student
performance and helping parents understand how they can help their children do better in
school. Parents and Teachers Together will find and promote promising programs and
strategies such as these through which parents and teachers are building and strengthening the
partnerships that will allow them to co-produce better outcomes for young students.

Technology for Successful Parenting: Community engagement, home visiting and other
“high touch” programs and practices are essential to building a culture of support needed for
successful parenting. Yet, the magnitude of the challenge is such that, even combined, these
will not reach enough parents to move the needle. Today’s technology has to be seen as part of
the solution. Toward that end, Technology for Successful Parenting has embarked on an effort
to identify and/or develop ways to use technology to provide low-income parents with the tools
and information they need to nurture their children’s development and literacy skills. Thus far,
this has included: (1) a partnership with the New America Foundation and Joan Ganz Cooney
2
Center to publish Pioneering Literacy in the Digital Wild West; (2) a partnership with ConvergeUS
and PBS that led to recent release of the award-winning PBS’ Parents Play & Learn app; and (3) a
collaboration with First Book to develop a vision and plan for a virtual marketplace to facilitate
widespread access to and adoption of digital resources, including e-books, interactive games,
smart technology and other digital content.
These Successful Parenting Initiatives provide a powerful approach for communities to more effectively
involve parents in their efforts to improve school readiness, school attendance, and summer learning.
With a common focus on engaging parents as co-creators of their children’s learning, this approach
aligns well with Kellogg’s commitment to whole child development, family literacy, educational
advocacy and innovative educational practices that stem from collaborations among schools, families,
and communities.
About the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading
Launched in 2010, the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading is a decade-long effort by foundations,
nonprofit partners, states and communities across the nation to ensure that more children from lowincome families succeed in school and graduate prepared for college, a career and active citizenship. The
Campaign focuses on reading proficiency by the end of third grade, a key predictor of high school
graduation and a milestone missed by more than 80% of low-income children. These children arrive at
school already far behind their more affluent peers, fall farther behind by missing too much instructional
time due to chronic absenteeism, and then lose ground over the summer, each summer.
The Campaign’s message that this catastrophe-in-the-making must be addressed has tapped into the
widespread consensus about the need for more high school graduates, with an encouraging response.
Over 40 sector-leading organizations have signed on as Campaign Partners. More than 120 communities
have become part of the Campaign’s Grade-Level Reading Communities Network by assembling broadbased coalitions and developing plans to tackle the readiness, attendance and summer learning
challenges. These GLR Network communities hail from 35 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico
and the U.S. Virgin Islands and include over 1600 organizations in their local coalitions.
Our goal:
By 2020, a dozen states or more will increase by at least 100% the number of children from
low-income families reading proficiently by the end of third grade.
The milestones1 by which the GLR Campaign will assess whether it is on track for sustainable momentum
toward the 2020 goal are:
1
The GLR Campaign initially defined milestones for the mid-point of the effort, which will be 2015. It subsequently
has broken out the 2016 milestone related to student progress, because that will synchronize with the availability
of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
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If by 2015, grade-level reading has become: a priority for parents, educators, sector leaders and
policymakers; a performance measure for schools and school districts; a target for increased
investment and citizen service; and a catalyst for policy advocacy.
If by 2016, at least two dozen communities report measurable progress on critical indicators of
school readiness, student attendance, summer learning and grade-level reading at the end of
first, second and third grades.
An encouraging sign of the growing movement in states, governors, chief state school officers and
legislative leaders in as many as 30 states have put a “stake in the ground” for third-grade reading.
4