Strengthening Early Literacy in Greater New Orleans
This article is co-authored by Todd A. Battiste, United Way of Southeast Louisiana and Mike Woodward, Schott Foundation for Public Education, who serve as the GNOFN Education Action Table Co-Chairs.
Recent reporting from WWNO on third-grade retention highlighted an important and sobering fact: nearly one in four Louisiana third graders did not meet reading proficiency benchmarks last year.
This moment presents an opportunity for deeper community reflection: What does it take to ensure that every child reads proficiently by third grade? And what role can philanthropy and community organizations play alongside schools?
These questions mirror a core insight from the Schott Foundation’s Loving Cities Index: If we want to reach every child in the classroom, we must support them outside of the classroom too. To do so, cities and towns need to invest resources in all areas of life to allow children, particularly young people of color, to experience real well-being.
Research consistently shows that students who are not reading on grade level by the end of third grade are significantly more likely to struggle academically in later years. But if we can help all students reach this milestone, the impact will ripple across the rest of their lives. Reading proficiency is strongly correlated with:
High school graduation rates
Postsecondary enrollment
Long-term economic mobility
Recognizing this, the Louisiana Department of Education has emphasized early literacy as a top statewide priority, with investments in teacher training, high-quality instructional materials, and structured literacy approaches. Schools across Orleans Parish are working to implement these strategies within tight budgets and complex community conditions.
Yet literacy development does not begin and end in the classroom.
In the Greater New Orleans region, a network of nonprofits, business leaders, philanthropic partners, faith-based institutions, libraries, afterschool programs, and family support organizations already contribute to literacy outcomes in meaningful ways:
Out-of-School Time learning: Afterschool and summer programs provide tutoring, reading circles, and enrichment opportunities that reinforce classroom instruction, particularly important in preventing summer learning loss.
Family engagement and parent support: Community organizations often serve as trusted messengers, helping families understand reading benchmarks, access books, and create literacy-rich home environments.
Culturally responsive programming: Local groups are uniquely positioned to incorporate culturally relevant texts, storytelling traditions, and multilingual supports that resonate with children and families.
Basic needs and well-being supports: Literacy outcomes are deeply connected to health, housing stability, and economic security. When families face housing displacement, unreliable transportation, or food insecurity, consistent learning becomes more difficult. Community-based organizations often address these underlying conditions. Through the Loving Cities Index, Schott understands early literacy within these interconnected systems through a youth well-being lens. Rather than treating well-being as a separate goal, this framework encourages public systems to work together to produce safety, stability, belonging, and opportunity in young people’s daily lives.
Collective learning, shared influence, and systems leadership: The United Way of Southeast Louisiana New Orleans Campaign for Grade Level Reading serves as a collaborative learning platform where cross-sector partners engage deeply with the question of what it truly takes for children to thrive. Grounded in shared data, lived experience, and continuous reflection, the Campaign creates space for philanthropic partners to contribute perspectives, challenge assumptions, and help shape integrated literacy and well-being strategies. Participation is not about directing solutions, but about thinking alongside communities and institutions to strengthen alignment, elevate effective practice, and advance conditions that make grade-level reading attainable for every child in New Orleans.
Philanthropy can play a catalytic role by:
Bringing together service providers and advocates across issue areas – from education and housing to transit and economic development – to collaborate on shared goals
Funding evidence-based tutoring models delivered in accessible community settings
Investing in early childhood literacy initiatives
Building capacity for grassroots community groups that already support families
Taken together, these strategies can strengthen literacy ecosystems, but they are not enough on their own to produce lasting, equitable change. Importantly, these programs and outcomes do not happen without community power.
Funders can help ensure that literacy efforts remain community-centered, recognizing that families and local leaders understand the barriers and assets within their neighborhoods. Philanthropy has a role to play not only in supporting literacy programs but also in building the community power needed to sustain them and secure stronger public investment in early education more broadly.
In this context, philanthropy’s role is to resource civic infrastructure that makes public investment possible by supporting organizing, coalition-building, and advocacy efforts that allow communities to shape early education funding decisions, rather than leaving those choices to others.
This reinforces a core lesson: youth well-being improves when communities have the power and the public investment, starting with early education, to shape the systems that affect their lives.
