Birmingham Talks

Babies’ brains reach 90% of their adult size by the time they turn 5. Investing in early childhood education lays the foundation for lifelong learning in a cost-effective way. At Birmingham Talks, we know that when we invest in children early, our whole community wins – and when we delay that investment, our whole community loses. 

We believe children deserve the very best from the very beginning, so we’re working to make Birmingham the best city in America to raise a child under 5. Investing in early childhood development is key to building a better future for our city. This vision is ambitious - but achievable. We are working to create a city where every child has access to high-quality education and care, where parents and caregivers are supported and empowered, and where communities come together to build strong foundations for our youngest citizens.

Our mission is to incubate and scale early education initiatives that are grounded in evidence-based practices and centered around the needs of the community. We work closely with local stakeholders - including parents, caregivers, educators, and policymakers - to identify the most pressing needs and develop innovative solutions that meet those needs. We believe that community engagement is essential to the success of our mission. We work to build strong partnerships with local organizations, businesses, and individuals who share our commitment to literacy, equity, and economic mobility.

Our core values are: 

Embody empathy. We assume the best of our community, our partners, and one another. Kindness and trust are hallmarks of our culture. We don’t engage in drama or gossip. We consistently put ourselves in the shoes of our partners and participants, always looking for ways to improve their experiences.

Center equity. We work to ensure people of all backgrounds can access our programs and thrive on our team. We pursue antiracism. We amplify the voices of those most impacted by the issues our organization seeks to solve. 

Demonstrate curiosity. We ask rigorous questions about both our work and the systems surrounding it. We acknowledge the limitations of our perspectives and seek out feedback. We welcome opportunities for growth. 

Engage with tenacity. When confronted with problems, we seek solutions. We’re realistic about challenges while maintaining a courageous optimism about the future of our community. We have a relentless belief that all children in Birmingham deserve the very best.

Make an impact. We pursue excellence, measure what matters, and constantly assess our progress. We set ambitious goals, focus on the big picture, and execute accordingly. We evaluate every decision by the outcome it will produce for children and families.

The Team Lead for the LEAP Project is Raven Johnson, our Program Director. Raven plays a crucial role at Birmingham Talks, ensuring the successful implementation and growth of our programs. With a focus on our two signature programs, Start and Grow, she oversees all aspects of these initiatives. This includes analyzing program data, managing the implementers responsible for delivering the programs in childcare centers and with families, ensuring adherence to program guidelines, and maintaining program quality.

Another one of Raven’s key responsibilities is to actively recruit new childcare centers and families to participate in our programs. This involves building partnerships, conducting outreach efforts, and effectively communicating the benefits and impact of our initiatives to the community. By expanding the reach of our programs, she helps us extend our positive influence and support to more children and families in Birmingham. 

Finally, Raven is actively engaging with new initiatives. This includes identifying, designing, and implementing new programs as they align with our work and values. She has been instrumental in the successful design of our new phonics program (the focus of this proposal). Raven has provided oversight, guidance, and support to ensure the program will be effectively integrated into our organization.

Our team is laser-focused on delivering the high quality, evidenced-based opportunities to children in our community. The LEAP Project is an unparalleled opportunity that will receive the highest attention from the entire Birmingham Talks team. As an organization, we have prior experience collaborating with external evaluators, including esteemed national partners like Brown University and local partners such as the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARCA) and University of Alabama at Birmingham, demonstrating our ability to engage in rigorous research and evaluation processes.

Although our organization is small, this opportunity is regarded as high stakes and has garnered attention from every level of leadership. Recognizing the importance of identifying new program opportunities and expanding our reach, our team has prioritized this initiative. Our commitment to evidence-based practices and program effectiveness aligns seamlessly with the goals of the LEAP Project.

Additionally, one team member in particular brings extensive experience with research and data. Their background in conducting studies, analyzing data, and interpreting research findings equips them with necessary skills to contribute to the project's success, if needed. 

By leveraging our team's prior experience with external researchers, the executive team's dedication to evidence-based decision-making, and the knowledge of our research-oriented team member, we are well-prepared to support the LEAP Project effectively. Birmingham Talks is fully committed to allocating the necessary resources and attention to ensure the success of this project and its potential to make a significant impact on the lives of children and families.

Phonics Power leverages parental involvement and the science of reading to build a foundation of literacy for children.

Birmingham, Alabama is known as “the Magic City” - but for third graders enrolled in our public school system, it is less than magical. In 2019, only 35% of third-graders in Birmingham City Schools were reading at or above grade level. This means that roughly 3 in 10 children in our city are being prepared for the opportunities that they deserve. 

Birmingham Talks was founded in 2019 to help children under 5 build lifetime literacy skills—to ensure their school readiness and future economic mobility. Our evidence-based work ensures that all our children can have the future they deserve. We believe that early childhood literacy development is critical to breaking the cycle of poverty and providing children with the foundation they need to succeed in school and beyond. Our big idea: leverage the power of parents to provide evidence-based phonics instruction to preschoolers, interrupting the opportunity gap before it widens. 

In Birmingham, the science of reading is not being widely implemented in educational practices, creating a crucial need for our programs. Many schools in the area have yet to embrace evidence-based instructional approaches that prioritize phonics and other foundational reading skills. This is a local manifestation of a national crisis: literacy approaches that are not grounded in the science of reading. By utilizing the methods derived from the science of reading and emphasizing the importance of phonics, our programs fill a significant gap in the educational landscape, offering effective and research-backed strategies to support children's reading development. Through our initiatives, we aim to bridge this knowledge gap and provide children with the necessary tools and instruction to become confident and proficient readers. 

Investment in early childhood literacy and education can have significant advantages for children and society as a whole. Children who develop strong literacy skills in their early years are more likely to succeed academically and have better outcomes in their adult lives, including higher earnings and better health. Furthermore, investing in early childhood education has been shown to have positive economic benefits. Every dollar spent on high-quality early education returns as much as $13 dollars in long-term outcomes for kids in vulnerable communities. Our program will serve preschool children who mirror the demographics of Birmingham City Schools, which serves primarily Black children who are impacted by poverty. While this idea will be piloted in Birmingham, we anticipate that it could have wide-spread applicability to other communities across the country and would be interested in scaling the idea and/or providing support to other communities interested in replicating the model.

Our new phonics initiative is designed to provide accessible, effective literacy instruction to children in Birmingham with the aim of further closing the opportunity gap. Research shows that children’s sensitive period for language acquisition begins to close by age 6; in order to maximize effectiveness, this program will be offered to preschoolers between the ages of 3-5. Led by an early literacy expert from the community, the program will utilize parental instruction, high quality literacy manipulatives, and supplemental video lessons to engage children in a rigorous, developmentally appropriate way.

The initial pilot program will address single letter sounds, with potential to extend the curricula to include digraphs following the initial pilot. The pilot curriculum is sequenced based on children's developmental needs, with each unit including high production value lesson plans, materials, and links to videos of exemplar lessons. There are 6 units in the series, reflecting 5 sound groups and a supplementary session offering additional phonemic awareness activities. Lesson plans are broken down into daily chunks and provide 1 month of activities per unit. Parents, after receiving training from qualified early literacy guides, will deliver lessons to their children weekly. Each month, parents (with guided supervision) will assess their child's mastery of concepts addressed by the current unit. Based on children's progress, new units will be issued. 

Every parent brings their newborn baby home full of hope for what they’ll become. In Birmingham, six of every ten babies who are born - brimming with potential - won’t be reading proficiently in third grade. This is unjust and holds our entire community back from prosperity. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Using evidence-based literacy instruction at the earliest possible moment provides the best chance for children to succeed and our community to thrive.

We have conducted mainly foundational research. Research has consistently highlighted the critical role of phonemic awareness in children aged 5 and under. Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken language. Numerous studies have demonstrated that strong phonemic awareness skills are closely linked to early reading success and overall literacy development (National Center on Improving Literacy; National Early Literacy Panel Report).

Children who develop solid phonemic awareness skills are more likely to acquire essential reading skills, such as decoding and word recognition, which form the foundation for future reading comprehension and academic achievement. Research has shown that early phonemic awareness interventions contribute to improved reading abilities, vocabulary expansion, and enhanced language development in young children.

In parallel, research has emphasized the significant impact of parental involvement in early childhood education outcomes. Studies consistently demonstrate that when parents actively engage in their child's education, it leads to improved academic performance, higher motivation, and increased school readiness (National Association for the Education of Young Children; National Center for Family Literacy; Harvard Family Research Project). Parental involvement fosters a supportive learning environment, strengthens the parent-child bond, and reinforces the value of education.

Our belief in the effectiveness and necessity of our phonics program is rooted in the above research. By combining the importance of phonemic awareness development with the positive outcomes associated with parental involvement, we recognized the need for an early phonics intervention program that actively engages parents. 

We designed our phonics program to not only target the essential phonemic awareness skills in young children but also to actively involve parents in the learning process. By incorporating parental involvement strategies, such as providing educational resources for home use, facilitating parent-child activities, and offering guidance on supporting phonics development, our program aims to optimize children's learning outcomes.

While we are able to demonstrate the theoretical foundation of our phonics program through desk-based research, we are eager to further enhance our evidence base by showcasing tangible improvements in children's phonemic awareness. This program is currently in pilot stage - before expanding further we believe that it is crucial to substantiate our claims with real-world data that explores the effectiveness of our program in enhancing children's literacy skills. To put it simply: while we have many reasons to believe this will work, we need to ensure that it actually works. This also speaks to the question, “why now?” We currently have a significant waiting list for this program and want to ensure that we are providing clear value to the children and families we seek to serve. 

As this is an emerging solution, we also have a lot of questions regarding the best implementation method of this initiative. Foundational research is clear that a) phonics are the building blocks for reading, and b) parental involvement is key. That leaves us wondering things like - how often do children need to engage in literacy activities to see benefits? How extensive does parental training need to be? Research and data regarding these questions is foundational for the long term success of this program.

1. What's the impact of the program on children that participate in the program vs. children that don’t participate? 

2. How does the frequency of the program's dosage affect its impact? For example, does attending the program every week have a more significant impact compared to attending every other week?

By participating in LEAP, our goal is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the program's efficacy, allowing us to make informed decisions about its implementation and impact on children's learning outcomes.

Our primary objective is to understand the impact of different dosages, or frequencies, of the phonics program on children's learning outcomes. Throughout the 12-week program, we aim to gain valuable insights into the optimal dosage required for maximum effectiveness. We want to carefully consider factors such as the duration, intensity, and frequency of the program sessions on children’s learning patterns and progress. By manipulating these variables throughout the initial research phase, we aim to understand how different dosages of the program impact children's learning outcomes, specifically phonemic awareness as it relates to our curriculum. 

Simultaneously, we will also address the second outcome of the LEAP Project, which involves designing an RCT. This RCT will be implemented after determining the appropriate dosage through the initial research. The RCT design will enable us to establish a causal relationship between the dosage of the phonics program and the observed learning outcomes. By incorporating a control group that does not receive the program or receives a different dosage, we can compare the effects and evaluate our program's true impact.

The outcomes we seek from the LEAP Project are twofold. Firstly, we aim to gain a comprehensive understanding of the impact of different dosages or frequencies of the phonics program on children's learning outcomes. Secondly, we want to design an RCT that will serve as a solid foundation for future research and evaluation and enable us to determine the optimal dosage of the phonics program.

Firstly, based on the comprehensive understanding gained through the initial research phase, we will make informed decisions about the implementation of our phonics program. We will carefully consider factors such as the duration, intensity, and frequency of program sessions, taking into account their impact on children's learning patterns and progress. By manipulating these variables, we can optimize the program's effectiveness and maximize the benefits for the children participating in the program.

Additionally, the insights obtained from the initial research will inform the LEAP Fellow about the design of an RCT, which we plan to conduct after the appropriate dosage has been established. The RCT will involve the inclusion of a control group that either does not receive the program or receives a different dosage. This will enable us to compare the effects and rigorously evaluate the true impact of our phonics program. 

Furthermore, we will use the insights gained from the RCT to inform continuous improvements and refinements to our phonics program. We will carefully analyze the data, draw conclusions, and derive actionable recommendations from the results. This will enable us to enhance the program's effectiveness and ensure that it aligns with the highest standards of evidence-based practices.

Our desired short-term outcomes for the LEAP Project are twofold:

For our organization, we aim to strengthen our skills as researchers and evaluators, leveraging this expertise to enhance the quality of our programs. We would like to be able to use the work stemming from the LEAP Project as a model to run RCTs on future programs. 

For our program, we aim to obtain substantial data and insights through the pilot program and the subsequent design and implementation of the RCT. The insights we acquire through the LEAP Project will have a significant impact on the future of our phonics program. By thoroughly examining the outcomes and impacts generated through the research and RCT, we will determine whether to advance beyond the pilot stage and invest in both local and national expansion. 

Regarding long-term outcomes, Birmingham Talks seeks to achieve sustainable growth and impact. The LEAP Project will help us understand the necessary steps we need to take to ensure our programs are efficacious and scalable. By utilizing the information from the LEAP Project, we will be one step closer to being able to establish our phonics program as an effective intervention for early literacy development.