The Kenneth Rainin Foundation believes every Oakland child should have the literacy skills they need to communicate, learn and thrive. Our newest grant program, Accelerating Literacy Leadership, set out to improve student literacy outcomes by investing in school principals’ capacity to support educators, students and families.
Last July, I wrote about how we collaborated with our Community Advisory Council to create this program. Our goal was to build on the success of California’s Early Literacy Support Block grant and Literacy Coaches and Reading Specialists grant, the first of which led to a three-month gain in learning while the second resulted in over a month’s gain in learning. Our hope is to replicate positive results and make the case for policy shifts and sustained public funding. In this blog, I share learnings from Accelerating Literacy Leadership’s pilot year at six Oakland public elementary schools and how we reshaped the program for its broader launch to 11 schools.
Piloting The Prototype And Learning From Grantees
To expand school-level literacy support and capacity, Accelerating Literacy Leadership funded coaching for principals along with a variety of flexible resources and activities. These included additional coaching and training, parent-involved literacy programs and sponsorships for Oakland leaders to attend conferences.
Our evaluation partners at Informing Change interviewed our grantees at three points during the pilot year, convened principals and coaches in the spring and synthesized what they heard. This process supported our ability to learn, adapt and refine the grant program.
Many thanks to the participating schools and partner organizations in the pilot year:
- Burckhalter Elementary
- Carl Munck Elementary
- Fair Schools
- Families in Action
- Franklin Elementary
- Hoover Elementary
- Horace Mann Elementary
- La Escuelita Elementary
- Lead Liberated
- Oakland Public Education Fund
We gained four insights into principals’ needs and the impact of targeted support around those needs. We learned that:
- Principals desire more points of meaningful connection with other principals to discuss effective strategies and challenges.
- Principals care deeply about student data and desire more help in translating data insights into action, especially given the district’s new literacy screener and phonics curriculum.
- The flexible funding we awarded as part of the pilot resulted in more time and capacity for staff to prepare instruction and respond to data.
- When principals had meaningful connections with one another, received coaching to translate data insights into action and used funding to expand educator time and capacity, all schools reported meaningful learning and growth.
At the close of the pilot year in May 2026, Informing Change facilitated an event with the school leaders. We listened as they shared how they allocated their flexible funding, spending every dollar with care and intention. Most supported literacy coaching, teacher planning time, training and family engagement events. Principals described the powerful impact of the coaching they received and highlighted how the funding, paired with their leadership capacity to steward resources, supported educators, families and students.
All of this underscored that the targeted supports provided are leading to literacy progress among students and honoring principals’ roles as key decision-makers. While quantitative literacy gains weren’t significantly stronger than those of comparison schools in the pilot, qualitative data shows that partner schools perceived powerful value in the interventions, with coaching as one of the most consistently celebrated.
Lessons We’re Applying
1. Accelerating literacy leadership requires public-private partnerships.
Principals reported that flexible funding and coaching had a positive impact on their leadership and efforts. They also reported that the district’s curriculum and assessment choice, professional development series and substitute teacher pool contributed to student literacy attainment. They were grateful for the investment that the Eat. Learn. Play Foundation is making in one-on-one tutoring and professional learning opportunities.
These public and private investments in schools, which required intentional collaboration between district and philanthropic leaders, expanded principals’ capacity to lead literacy efforts within their communities.
2. Accelerating literacy leadership requires letting principals lead.
Principals bring deep knowledge of their schools and the communities they serve. Public and private partnerships can expand what is possible, but lasting impact depends on principals having the capacity and agency to shape how investments are used.
In the design process, we initially assumed that collaborating with the Community Advisory Council, comprised of several school, district and nonprofit leaders, would result in the most aligned and effective grant. However, during the pilot, in which schools were awarded flexible funding within key literacy-focused categories, district leaders revealed differing perspectives about the program’s flexibility. This led to a more prescriptive design in funding levels, eligibility and support in the subsequent grants awarded following the pilot in March.
We look forward to learning more about the impact of this shift on principals’ capacity and students’ outcomes, and we remain committed to making adjustments for improvement.
3. Accelerating literacy leadership requires testing proven models in local contexts.
The pilot program was heavily influenced by the Early Literacy Support Block and Literacy Coaches and Reading Specialist grants in funding allowances but varied from the grants in terms of school profile. The reshaped grant targeted schools that share the same high level of need as the Literacy Coaches and Reading Specialists grant, but at the increased rate of spending in the Early Literacy Support Block grant, which averaged $1,000 per early elementary student. This focus is illuminating our understanding of the true cost of supporting all students to achieve literacy, and it’s shaping our policy advocacy investments.
Accelerating Literacy Leadership Participants
We are grateful to the 11 schools and five partner organizations that have committed to this continued journey.
Accelerating Literacy Leadership School Participants
- ACORN Woodland Elementary
- Allendale Elementary
- Aspire College Triumph Academy
- Burckhalter Elementary
- Carl Munck Elementary
- Fred T. Korematsu Discovery Academy
- Hoover Elementary
- Horace Mann Elementary
- La Escuelita Elementary
- Laurel Elementary
- Oakland Academy of Knowledge
Accelerating Literacy Leadership Partner Organizations
- 3Ls
- Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation
- Fair Schools
- Families in Action
- Oakland Public Education Fund
