WASHINGTON, D.C., SEPTEMBER 30, 2020. The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (CGLR) announced the Pacesetter communities across the United States that exemplify extraordinary vision and best practices for their work during 2019 in six community solutions impact areas: School Readiness, School Attendance/Chronic Absence, Summer and Afterschool, Healthy Development, Parent Success and Grade-Level Proficiency.

CGLR is a collaborative effort by funders, nonprofit partners, business leaders, government agencies, states and communities to ensure that more children in low-income families succeed in school and graduate prepared for college, a career and active citizenship. CGLR focuses on promoting early school success as an important building block of more hopeful futures for children in economically challenged families and communities.

“At this challenging time, we have much to learn from each other. These Pacesetter and Bright Spot communities are leading the way in the six impact areas that we know matter. We congratulate them for this achievement and encourage our entire network to learn from them,” says Ralph Smith, managing director of CGLR.

CGLR announced the 29 Pacesetter finalists in July, recognized on the basis of their having filed stories that were highly rated by peer reviewers from GLR Network communities. The stories describe successful strategies, approaches or programs that are being implemented by the finalists in their communities.

As the next step in the process, a Technical Review Team read the original stories and assessed supplementary data filed by the finalists to substantiate observable progress in one or more of the six impact areas.

The following communities are honored as Pacesetters for reporting significant observable progress in one or more of the impact areas: