BILL REQ. #:  H-1712.1 

Read first time 02/15/2005.   Referred to Committee on Education.

     AN ACT Relating to reading readiness; adding a new section to chapter 28A.300 RCW; and creating a new section.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 1   The legislature finds that teaching a child to read early and well will open doors of learning and wonder that will benefit the child throughout life. As Graham Greene said, "There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in." For the Kennewick school district, that quote captured the vision of its community for all its students. "Every day some children, for the first time in their whole lives, see the door crack up. Beyond is a brilliant world. It is not the world they feel and smell and hear and touch. It is a symbolic world which they can share with the best storytellers, generals, athletes, and poets, with the best scientists, mathematicians, and historians of the past three millennia."
     The legislature finds that reading is also a gateway skill that opens doors for children to learn other important subjects such as math, science, literature, and social studies. It is a skill that is relied upon for about eighty-five percent of all educational instruction. The legislature finds that while about forty percent of children learn to read easily, another forty percent need significantly more help and the remaining twenty percent of children need intensive and sustained assistance. Yet, research shows that if children do not learn to read well by the third grade, they are at risk of becoming academic failures and school dropouts.
     The legislature finds that a child's ultimate success in school depends, in no small part, on how well the child was prepared for school, a preparation that happens mostly at home. Children enter kindergarten with wide variations in their readiness to learn to read. These variations lead to reading readiness gaps among students, gaps that tend to persist as achievement gaps throughout the children's educational careers. The reading readiness gap is especially acute between children with parents in a profession and children who come from low-income homes. The legislature also finds that parental involvement in a child's life is essential and that parents can help eliminate the reading readiness gap by reading to their children for twenty minutes a day.

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 2   A new section is added to chapter 28A.300 RCW to read as follows:
     The "ready to read" community assistance program is established in the office of the superintendent of public instruction. The purpose of the program is to encourage local public-private partnerships that enhance preliteracy and reading readiness efforts. The responsibilities of the program shall include but need not be limited to:
     (1) The preparation and dissemination of one or more models to stimulate community support for preliteracy foundations;
     (2) The stimulation of community efforts to introduce parents of newborn children to the importance of reading to their children and other preliteracy activities; and
     (3) The stimulation of efforts to educate parents and guardians of preschool age children about child development and literacy