Comprehensive approach to improving early literacy producing results

The Florida Department of Education considers children ready for kindergarten if they have basic literacy skills like knowing their letters, simple math skills like counting, and can follow instructions and get along with their classmates.

Fewer than half the children in Hillsborough and a little more than half in Pinellas are deemed ready for kindergarten, according to state testing records. The overall score for the state is 44 percent.

Those numbers pose a significant problem, says Diana Santangelo, Director of the Thrive By Five program. She says it’s very likely that children who are not kindergarten-ready won’t be reading on grade level by third grade. After that, only about 15 percent of those students ever catch up. Many others are at risk of eventually dropping out of high school.

Thrive by Five, a Community Foundation Tampa Bay initiative, brings together caregivers, agencies, business people, and civic leaders in a collaborative effort to reach families and children and improve school readiness. The goal is to have 65 percent of children ready for kindergarten by 2030. In 2025, just 40 percent of kids in Hillsborough and 53 percent in Pinellas were deemed ready, according to Department of Education numbers.

Resources available

With funding from the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County, Thrive by Five published an Early Learning Literacy Guide to provide information on area nonprofits and agencies that work to improve children’s reading skills, books and digital books available for free, and library programs and events. Print versions are available at the seven Children’s Board Family Resource Centers, and online versions are available on the Children’s Board and Thrive by Five websites.

Organizations listed in the guide include the family resource centers, which offer tutoring and play groups to develop social skills; Champions for Children’s Great We Grow, a center in Town ‘n’ Country that has a bilingual program promoting healthy development and school readiness; and the Children’s Home Network RAISE program, which, as its website states, works with families to help children overcome physical, mental, and emotional barriers so they can heal, learn and thrive.

The programs are focused on having children reading on level by third grade because, as Hillsborough Education Foundation notes, “it is the point where students shift from learning to read to reading to learn.”

Thrive by Five has also established Thrive by Five Connects for parents who are looking for help. They fill out an anonymous online questionnaire and, based on their responses, the site provides a tailored list of area providers.

“They’re given all the resources right in front of them that can address their specific problems,’’ Santangelo says.

VPK’s positive impact

Research shows that children who complete at least 70 percent of voluntary pre-kindergarten classes are nearly twice as likely to be ready for kindergarten, Santangelo says. So with the help of the Children’s Board and 13 other funding sources so far, Thrive by Five plans to launch a publicity blitz in September encouraging parents to enroll their children in a free voluntary pre-kindergarten, or VPK, class. It’s a half-day class during the school year and a full day during the summer.

Early education professionals say obstacles that may prevent parents and caregivers from sending a child to a VPK or Head Start program include a lack of transportation, or a work schedule that does not allow them to pick up their child from the half-day of VPK. And, of course, parents may not know the importance of Head Start and VPK in their child’s development.

In a positive turn of events, third-grade reading scores are going up, though they still have room to improve. In Hillsborough, the amount of students at grade level improved from 51 percent in 2024 to 55 percent in 2026, according to results of the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking test (FAST). In Pinellas County, 68 percent of third graders were reading on level this year, compared to 55 percent in 2024.

Since FAST launched in the 2022-23 school year, Hillsborough County schools have seen an eight percent increase in scores, says Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Tracie Bergman.

Effective approach

Educators credit the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI) Foundations method of teaching reading for contributing to the improvement they’re seeing. Foundations is a systematic way of teaching phonics that stresses training and oral drills at every step, from the sound of letters to groups of letters to words. 

Hillsborough County Public Schools Elementary Literacy Supervisor Yolanda Vasquez says it’s only been in the last few years that the science of reading has developed an understanding of how the brain really learns to read.

“What we’ve done nationwide is we’ve neglected the word recognition side of what the brain needs to be able to get to language comprehension,’’ Vasquez says. “So what we see now is a clear understanding of the cognitive science around how kids’ brains learn to read. And that it does require explicit foundational skills instruction in order to make sure they have the foundation necessary for language comprehension, which is why we see that uptick in UFLI around the nation.’’

Vasquez says another program, called Thrive in Third, focuses on the “particularly large” gap between second grade and third grade that exists because second graders are finishing learning foundational skills “so that we can get them into comprehension.’’

As one part of that effort, the Hillsborough district has launched a classroom observation initiative where as many as 25 third-grade teachers at a time will sit in on a class being taught by one of seven third-grade teachers who have been designated as proficient in teaching the UFLI Foundations system. It allows teachers to learn from one another, Vasquez says.

“And that really is the key here, when teachers get the opportunity to engage with one another, they learn fast,” she says.

Nonprofit programs

Parents and Children Advance Together Literacy Ministries is one area nonprofit that specializes in helping students who are behind in reading. Teachers and volunteers tutor children ages 5 to 7 years for two hours after school, two days a week. The program works with 90 students at Ruskin Elementary and 40 students at Sulphur Springs Elementary, says PCAT Literacy Ministries Executive Director GiGi Moise.

Moise says students that participate typically improve their reading by at least two levels, “some of them even more.’’

The key to PCAT’s success, she believes, is that the kids work one-on-one with tutors or in small groups. 

“Sometimes in a larger class setting students aren’t able to get all the help they need,” Moise says.

The tutoring group also works with parents so they can continue the education at home by reading to their children for 15 to 20 minutes every day and encouraging a learning environment at home, she says.

“We find that parents who are more engaged in their students’ learning, those students tend to do better, because they have a supportive environment that helps them continue to want to do well,” she says.

For more information, go to Early Literacy Resource Guides Thrive by Five Connects, and Children’s Board Family Guide