our mission
-0002.png/:/cr=t:0%25,l:0%25,w:100%25,h:100%25/rs=w:400,cg:true)
Our mission is to enable students in Trenton public elementary schools to read at grade level by 3rd grade. The Trenton Literacy Movement, Inc., (TTLM) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.
our HISTORY
The Trenton Literacy Movement, Inc., was established in 2016 with the goal of identifying and applying educational technologies to improve reading outcomes for children in Trenton, NJ. Since our establishment in 2016, we have grown tremendously. Highlights of our activities include:
- We raise funds every year to provide support for our afterschool reading intervention program, to hire certified teachers, and recently to hire a program manager.
- We will provide stipends for parent liaisons, when necessary, to encourage greater participation on the part of parents in support of their children.
- We established the TTLM education subcommittee to provide expertise and direct support as needed and share best practices.
- We launched a Read Aloud Youtube channel with 14 read alouds in partnership with a community-based organizations. Available 24 hours, 7 days a week, to encourage parents to read to their children it has over 1 million views.
- We partnered with the Trenton Digital Initiative to provide over 75 free computers for home use.
- We provide incentives to increase participation and reward excellence in the afterschool reading intervention program
- We continue to volunteer to support Read Across America, Drop Everything and Read, (D.E.A.R.) and Black History Month, as well as other literacy related programs during the school year.
- We welcomed our new partners, The Union Baptist Church of Trenton and the Trenton Rotary Club as financial supporters.
- Our President, Edward W. Bullock recently published his first childrens book “Warren Goes to Grandpa’s,” available here and at Barnes&Noble.
why we are needed
Low literacy affects entire communities and Trenton is no exception.
- Literacy is the key to a successful and independent life and a sustainable city.
- An introduction to books and being read to prior to beginning school is critical.
- By age 2, children who are read to regularly display greater language skills, comprehension, larger vocabularies, and cognitive skills than their peers.
- 61% of low-income families have no books at all in their homes for their children. https://www.kidsreadamerica.org/
- In low-income neighborhoods, the ratio of age-appropriate books is 1 for every 300 children. - Handbook of Early Literacy.
- 34% of children entering kindergarten lack the basic skills to read.
- New Jersey’s low-income 4th graders fared even worse, with 78 percent scoring below proficient on national literacy tests. Since 2003, the achievement gap between New Jersey’s low-income students and their wealthier peers grew 3 percent according to a KIDS COUNT® data snapshot.
- More than half of New Jersey’s fourth-graders are not reading proficiently by 4th grade – a key predictor of a student’s future educational and economic success, according to a KIDS COUNT® data snapshot, Early Reading Proficiency in the United States, https://acnj.org/newsroom/news-releases/nj-4th-graders-score-low-on-literacy-still-ahead-of-nation/
why we are needed in Trenton
A City in Distress
- Roughly 57.4 percent of students in Trenton Public Schools are economically disadvantaged. (Economically disadvantaged students are students who are eligible for free or reduced lunch.) This is almost twice the state average and 16 percent of households live on less than $10,000 annually. Nearly one-quarter of residents lack health care and violent crime is close to the highest in the state.
- Math proficiency among city students, 98 percent of whom are black or Hispanic, lingers in the single digits.
- Six of Trenton's 20 schools scored 10 or less on the state’s new 100-point evaluation system.
- America’s literacy crisis has reached epidemic proportions, with millions of children and adults affected each and every year by a never-ending cycle of educational disadvantage.
