Who We Are
A non-profit organization
Children’s Literacy Initiative (CLI), founded in 1988, works with teachers to transform instruction so that all children can become powerful readers and writers. Our goal is to close the gap in literacy achievement between disadvantaged children and their more affluent peers. To teach reading and writing to children entering school with little early literacy experience, teachers need high-impact strategies and techniques. We know that when instruction improves, children will learn.

An advocate for effective literacy instruction
CLI offers professional development for pre-kindergarten through third grade teachers across the country.  We provide coaching and seminars, lesson plans, a prekindergarten curriculum, and collections of high-quality children’s literature.   Our programs promote research-based methods for teaching reading and writing.  Classroom by classroom, we strive to improve teachers’ content knowledge, instructional practices, and classroom environments. Teachers report raised expectations for their own

instruction and for student achievement.

A proven partner
Independent research studies have demonstrated that CLI interventions are
successful in improving children’s early literacy skills.   Our programs are rooted in the most current research on best practices and our own experience in hundreds of classrooms in high-poverty communities. We help teachers not only increase children’s scores on standardized tests, but also introduce their students to the joy of reading and writing.

Where CLI's Programs are at Work Children's Literacy Initiative is involved in large projects in the public school systems of Philadelphia, Newark (NJ), Camden, Baltimore, and Boston, as well as training in the school districts of Bristol Borough, Lancaster, Neshaminy, Upper Darby, and Yeadon, PA.

CLI is currently training Head Start and other childcare teachers and aides in the District of Columbia, North Carolina, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, as well as continuing the annual training Institutes for the Comprehensive Day Care Centers of Philadelphia. We have provided Institutes and workshops in California, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and on Native American Reservations.

Organizational History
The first few years of CLI were devoted to producing a children's book event, Children's Expo. The event provided parents and teachers in the area with the world's biggest children's book and record store for two days at the Philadelphia Civic Center. Dozens of Caldecott authors signed books, performers such as Levar Burton, Tammy Grimes, Ossie Davis, and Eartha Kitt read aloud; an orchestral Peter and the Wolf was presented, and over 14,000 adults and children attended and purchased tens of thousands of quality books (no licensed characters allowed!)

A Writing Center is designed to encourage reading, thinking and writing.

CLI went on to produce the radio program, Mrs. Bush's Story Hour, which was heard from October through December for five years over the ABC Radio Networks, in all major U.S. markets. Celebrities from Oprah Winfrey to General Norman Schwartzkopf, Bill Cosby, Peter Jennings, Bugs Bunny, and Bullwinkle joined Mrs. Bush in reading aloud. The program's major sponsor was Chase Manhattan Bank, with TimeWarner and Compaq Computers joining in.

Since that time, CLI has worked with thousands of Head Start teachers, and concentrated on early childhood teachers in Philadelphia, Newark, Camden and Baltimore, grades kindergarten through 2nd grade. Our work has been studied and validated by distinguished university researchers, including Drs. Richard Allington, Anne McGill-Franzen, Barbara Heyns, Susan Neuman, and Virginia Walter.

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