James Earl Jones and Theo Lion Join House Members
to Promote Literacy on Capitol Hill

Reading First Initiative is a Key Component of No Child Left Behind Act

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The House Subcommittee on Education Reform, chaired by Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE), held a hearing today on "Literacy Partnerships that Work."  The hearing featured celebrities and private sector leaders, including actor James Earl Jones, providing information about literacy programs they support and have found to be successful.

Improving literacy among adults and children requires a cooperative effort between the public and private sector.  This year, President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law.  The Reading First initiative, one of its key components, encourages states and local schools to establish reading programs based on scientific research for all children in kindergarten through Grade 3.  Under the President's leadership, federal funding for reading programs has been tripled from $300 million in FY 2001 to $900 million in FY 2002.

Opening the hearing, Subcommittee Chairman Castle noted that: "Reading is such a fundamental skill that many of us take it for granted. Yet, we now know that reading is a skill that does not come naturally. And, for those children who don't learn to read, an early educational stumble can easily translate into a lifelong learning disability."

Describing his lifelong love of reading, actor James Earl Jones remarked on how, "All of us - lawmakers, reading teachers and tutors, corporate philanthropists, educators, and literacy volunteers - all of us have an important and necessary role addressing this issue."

Theo Lion, one of the stars of the PBS series Between the Lions, also appeared before the subcommittee to discuss his love of reading and efforts to help children learn how to read.  As Judith Stoia, an Executive Producer at WGBH television in Boston who oversees the production of Between the Lions, noted:  "Sesame Street still does a brilliant job teaching the alphabet and its sounds.  Between the Lions goes much further in teaching vowel sounds, how sounds go together to make words, and how words make sentences you can read.  In short, Between the Lions helps young children crack the code to become readers."

Testifying about his company's involvement in literacy efforts, Ivan Seidenberg, the President and CEO of Verizon, described how his company's "mission is highly focused. We work to raise public awareness, create partnerships, and generate financial support for local and national literacy organizations so they can do their jobs more effectively.  To use a communications metaphor, we believe that - through our scale, scope, and technology - we can increase the 'bandwidth' of the system and enable more learning to be delivered to more people, more effectively."

In describing the numerous ways in which MBNA promotes literacy, MBNA Executive Vice President Ralph Kuebler stated that: "Our expertise is in banking, not in education, so to help improve literacy, we needed a partnership program that was at the grassroots level, that involved teachers, that provided resources for the classroom, and that incorporated accountability. ... We created grant programs which can be models for other businesses that are willing to invest the people, time, and money to make them work.  The MBNA grants programs are successful because they are designed to empower teachers in all academic subjects."

Pizza Hut President and Chief Concept Officer Mike Rawlings testified about his company's BOOK IT! program, which is nation's largest and longest-running reading incentive program.  BOOK IT! is beginning its eighteenth year this month and more than 20 million school children will participate in the program that encourages them to set reading goals for the next six months and then provides praise, recognition and free pizza when they reach those goals.  More than 90 percent of teachers have said the program met or exceeded their expectations and Rawlings noted that: "We look forward to many more years of BOOK IT!  We will continue to look for ways to make our program even more responsive to the needs of children today.  And we expect to help another generation of readers learn to love books and have some fun doing it."

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