- One struggling reader plus another may equal a boost in reading skills for both [Perry Street Prep PCS]
- High-profile Head Start center in the District loses federal funding
One struggling reader plus another may equal a boost in reading skills for both [Perry Street Prep PCS]
Greater Greater Education
By Paula Amann
August 12, 2014
A DC nonprofit called Reach Incorporated hires struggling high school readers to tutor struggling elementary school readers. It may sound counterintuitive, but both groups seem to benefit.
Fewer than 20% of DC 8th-graders read at a proficient level, according to national test results last year. The proportion of proficient 4th-grade readers is only slightly better.
Where others might see just a yawning educational gap, Mark Hecker saw a potential bridge. Hecker, a former social worker, envisioned a program that would train 9th-grade students to teach younger ones, and in the process, help the older students make up lost ground.
Hecker launched Reach Incorporated in 2010 and serves as its executive director. The program matches high school students with second- and third-graders.
Although the teens start out reading at a 4th- to 6th-grade level, Hecker says 75% of the program's 11th-graders end up reading at grade level or above after 3 years in the program. And as paid workers with a purpose, they save face.
"Instead of handing them a Dr. Seuss book, we hand them a Dr. Seuss book and a 7-year-old, and that eliminates the stigma" of school failure, explained Hecker, who expects to have 100 Reach tutors on the job serving a like number of students at 4 elementary schools this fall.
During the school year, tutors spend 4 hours a week in the program, two of them mentoring students and the other two learning the skills needed to teach reading. Over the summer, the program ramps up to 4 paid hours a day for older participants, who read books, craft resumes, visit workplaces, and tour colleges.
With the help of two college art students and one professional writer, the teens also team up to create something still rare in libraries: picture books that reflect the lives of low-income children. "We thought the best way to address the lack of material was for the teens to write it," Hecker said.
Last summer, the program produced 4 of these volumes, with titles such as One Lonely Camel and The Airplane Effect, about a sick boy who throws a paper airplane out of the window, setting off an unexpected chain of events. This summer, 5 original books are underway.
Importance of empathy
The teens bring a crucial strength to their work: empathy. "They recognize what it's like to be a struggling reader," Hecker said, "and so they want to prevent that from happening to someone else."
Za'Metria Froneberger, a rising 11th-grader at Perry Street Preparatory Public Charter School, began working for Reach roughly a year ago. Her task was simple but daunting: to help Makea, a struggling second-grader at Burroughs Elementary School, learn to love reading. The high schooler discovered the younger child had a penchant for humor and responded to funny books.
"It changed my personality," said Froneberger of her tutoring. "It taught me to be more patient, that you can change the impact of a child's life by the things you do."
It's no accident that the Reach program targets students in the mid-elementary grades. Hecker cites the research suggesting that between third and fourth grades, children shift from learning to read to reading to learn. "Our goal is to prepare them for that transition," Hecker said.
One professional observer of the Reach model counts herself "thoroughly impressed," and she has the data to prove it. As academic intervention coach for District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), Jennifer Johnson serves as liaison between Reach and one of the schools it serves, Simon Elementary.
"Oh, my goodness, we saw great gains," Johnson said, pointing to Reach results from the last academic year: Some 50% of the second-graders served (12 children) boosted their reading ability significantly, she said. Among 3rd-grade students in the Reach program, that was true for 83%.
Yet even those gains are insufficient for some students, cautions Johnson. She cites the case of one boy in the program who shot up 6 reading levels yet still failed to meet the benchmark expected for his grade. He had started too far behind.
"They come with so many needs, so many deficiencies that for them, 25-plus in the classroom may be too much," Johnson said, referring to typical class sizes in the early grades. "If we had more tutors, we'd definitely have students to receive the services."
Tutor on the honor roll
The tutors benefit as well. Sarita McCard says her son Rico, a rising junior at Eastern High School, joined Reach during a tough transition to 9th grade. At the time, McCard says, "he wasn't making A's and B's." She credits the program for giving him the confidence and motivation to attain the honor roll for every marking period in 10th grade.
"He's more focused, more inspired," said McCard of her son. "He feels he's doing something greater than simply working and making a paycheck."
Yet such striking turnarounds, even multiplied by 80 to 100 tutors recruited annually by Reach, represent only a sliver of the achievement gap affecting tens of thousands of District students. Asked about the modest size of his program, Hecker says he is deliberately growing it slowly, in order to preserve "depth over breadth." But he hopes to double the number of participants over the next few years.
Meanwhile, inquiries about Reach have been streaming in from across the country and from as far away as South Africa and Curaçao, Hecker says. He has a simple message for those who wish to replicate the success of his fledgling program.
"What makes Reach work is that the teens feel cared about, supported, and empowered," Hecker said. "The model is helpful, but it's the relationships that matter."
High-profile Head Start center in the District loses federal funding
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
August 12, 2014
When Congress reauthorized Head Start in 2007, a little girl named Cynthia Martinez-Cardoso from one of the District’s longest-running Head Start centers sat in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lap as she signed the bill.
The law put into motion sweeping changes designed to improve the quality of the nation’s largest preschool program for poor families, in part by introducing competition and cutting off funding for the lowest performers.
Seven years later, scores of grantees have lost their awards, including the one that served Martinez-Cardoso.
The Edward C. Mazique Parent Child Center has been a backdrop for political news conferences and a destination for foreign dignitaries. Now it’s among the first in the Washington region to lose its grant.
“It was a shock. It was definitely a shock,” said Almeta R. Keys, the center’s chief executive, who began her Head Start career more than 30 years ago as a Head Start mother.
The Mazique Center, which served about 275 children and families in four sites in the past school year, is operating under transitional funding through the end of this month to help its families make new plans.
But Keys hopes to keep the doors open and continue providing the same child-care, medical and social services, albeit without the $3.1 million in federal funding she said the center received last year.
“There is a great need in this city for the types of services we offer,” Keys said. “There is no way we can think of closing.”
Head Start, which costs about $8 billion a year and serves a million children and families nationwide, has been under pressure to improve quality amid reports of fiscal mismanagement and questionable academic outcomes.
Reforms reflect shifting political priorities for Head Start, from the anti-poverty program that began in the 1960s to an increasingly education-oriented program aimed at reducing the achievement gap between students from rich and poor families.
The 2007 reauthorization raised the education requirements for Head Start teachers and changed the grant-making process.
Traditionally, Head Start grantees lost funding only in extreme circumstances. Under the revised law, grantees were given five-year awards.
Strong performers would be renewed, but those flagged for quality concerns would have to compete for continued funding.
Approximately 360 of the nation’s 1,700 Head Start grantees have been required to compete for continued Head Start funding, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. And of 245 grantees who competed and received final decisions, 171 — about 70 percent — were awarded new grants.
For Mazique, the trigger for competition was a concern identified during a review that was not promptly addressed, according to federal records.
The review found that the center had not provided adequate staff training for eligibility, selection, recruitment and enrollment procedures.
Mazique competed as part of a pilot group that was encouraged to design innovative programs spanning the birth-to-5 age group. Typically, centers apply separately for Head Start and Early Head Start grants.
Keys said she submitted the application in May 2013 and then saw an announcement about the winners online the following February. The list included Bright Beginnings ; District of Columbia Public Schools; Rosemount Center; and United Planning Organization.
It did not include Mazique. The notice was marked “preliminary,” but Keys started planning accordingly. She said she was not officially notified of the ruling until this summer.
Keys told her staff first. Then she called a meeting with her families.
“It’s like your home is being foreclosed,” said Shannon Jeter, a nursing assistant and Mazique mother whose three sons have gone through the program. “It’s scary. . . . You don’t know what you are going to do.”
Keys said she laid off about 34 people and then called many of them back to work temporarily after she got two months of transition funding.
Many advocates for early childhood education say the new system is necessary to improve the quality of Head Start but it could use some improvements, including more timely notification for grantees.
They would also like to see the quality of instruction — rather than regulatory compliance — play a more prominent role in determining which grants are selected to compete.
“I would be surprised if there were not some bumps in the road, but overall I think this is a very good thing,” said Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.
Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Office of Head Start, said the government “makes every effort to reduce risk of disruption for children, families and staff,” in particular by timing the transitions for the summer.
Keys said she does not fault the process.
Four of her five children went through Head Start in Louisiana, and she has spent her career with Head Start, including a stint as a fellow in the federal office.
“I’m rooted in Head Start. I’m vested in Head Start, not just because I have a job but because I have a mission,” she said.
The Mazique Center’s main office on 13th Street NW is covered with plaques and certificates and pictures of Keys with children’s advocates and politicians, including President Obama, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and former secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius.
“People say, ‘Do you want to see a good, high-quality program? Visit Mazique,’ ” Keys said.
Now she is hoping to keep the doors open with local child-care subsidies for parents who are working or in school, by admitting fee-paying families, and by expanding special-education services.
Mazique also got a grant from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education that will help open new classrooms at a birthing center in Northeast Washington.
Keys said she expects to have about 130 children enrolled in September and to continue to rebuild.
She also plans to apply for another Head Start grant, but she is cautiously optimistic.
“I know it’s a competitive process,” she said.