Washington Winter Show 2012

22 FIGHT FOR CHILDREN’S WORK IS DIVIDED INTO TWO BROAD CATEGORIES: ensuring access to quality early childhood education through our Ready to Learn DC program and improving academic achievement in K-12 schools. Our tagline, Championing Change | Changing Lives, captures the spirit of what we do: we champion change on a systemic level and change lives by directly impacting the quality of programs that touch individual children. OUR WORK AT A GLANCE: CHAMPIONING CHANGE CHANGING LIVES READY TO LEARN DC While most DC children have access to preschool, the quality of programs varies dramatically and the majority of children enter kindergarten lacking the skills they need to learn. We are working actively with public officials to raise and enforce accountability standards for preschool programs. Our direct investments in schools and community-based organizations– including AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation and Sunshine Early Learning Center–allow us to directly touch the lives of hundreds of young children, while strengthening the teaching skills of dozens of early childhood educators. We also give parents information they need to choose a high quality preschool for their children. K-12 ACADEMIC ACHIEVE- MENT As an early and leading proponent of education reform efforts, we promote systemic change, particularly through the use of data to improve classroom instruction and through programs that strengthen teacher and principal effectiveness. Our commitment to reform is evidenced by our financial support of DC’s Race to the Top grant application and IMPACT, the innovative evaluation program for DCPS employees. Through our annual Quality Schools Initiative, we find schools that are doing an excellent job educating low- income children, reward themwith financial resources, and encourage these high performers to share what they do well with other school leaders through leadership roundtables and high quality professional development materials. WWW. FIGHTFORCHI LDREN.ORG