A New Effort for Reading

More help is on the way for children who cannot read, and for their parents. Reading by 9, The Times’ public service campaign to increase the number of Southern California third-graders who read at grade level, is expanding the effort, with the help of other corporate sponsors and community groups. The effort seeks to help more families, mobilize more tutors and attract additional donations of time, books and money. It’s all toward preventing widespread illiteracy from crippling a generation of young people.

Starting today, parents who need help for their children can get it by calling (877) ReadBy9, a toll-free number. Adults too can get assistance in learning to read.

The help is coming from all quarters. Government, business, education, civic groups, community organizations and individuals are determined to change an appalling statistic: Four out of five Southern California third-graders cannot read at grade level.

Gov. Gray Davis and Cal State University Chancellor Charles B. Reed will join Mark Willes, chief executive officer of Times Mirror Co., and Kathryn M. Downing, publisher of The Times, at Cal State Los Angeles today to advance their attack on the reading crisis. They will be joined in the campaign by Liam E. McGee, southern region president of Bank of America; Eli Broad, chairman and CEO of Sun America; Henry Cisneros, president and CEO of Univision Communications, and Richard Heftel, president of KLVE radio. Other major partners in this broad assault on failure include Rotary International, Rolling Readers USA, the Screen Actors Guild, La Opinion and Harley Davidson/Love Ride. The education advisors are the Los Angeles County Office of Education, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators and the Governor’s Elementary Reading Initiative Institutes.

By September, Reading by 9 aims to have 6,000 trained reading tutors and literacy volunteers helping children, mostly in public schools across Southern California. Over the next school year, the campaign intends to put 1 million new books into kindergarten-through-third-grade classrooms in the region. A broadcast and print public service campaign is being launched. And this time next year, a new summer reading program will encourage children to fall in love with books. The Times and its partners pledge to keep at this effort as long as it takes to help millions of children make the grade.