Schools Of Hope Tutor Program Raises Reading Scores

After writing about the Schools of Hope tutoring program last year, I decided to become a reading tutor.

The goal of the program was simple: to improve children’s reading scores by pairing tutors with children. And quite frankly, since my daughter graduated from high school last year, I missed those little kid giggles you often get when reading books together.

So, for many Wednesdays throughout the school year (and sometimes it wasn’t as many as I would have liked), I spent an hour with two second-graders – a girl and a boy – from Mrs. Margis’ second-grade class at Olympia Brown Elementary. I often heard classical music coming from her classroom on the days I would visit and there was this unmistakable sense of peace in that room, which I always felt a little awkward about interrupting. When I arrived, Mrs. Margis would look at me, call out my child’s name and then there was this magical smile that came from the kids as we walked out to the hall to get to our intended task.

We read books about gardens and fishing expeditions, aliens and princesses, and frogs and fire-breathing dragons. They read to me, and I read to them. There were days when the words seemed to just pour out of their little mouths and days where they sometimes struggled with those big old clunky words. But they kept reading.

On Tuesday, we celebrated our year together. And, I didn’t realize the power of this program until Mrs. Margis told me that they MAP test the students in several areas, including reading. At the second-grade level, they expect the kids to improve at least by 13 to 14 points over the year. But looking at the School of Hope kids, they had improved their reading scores by an average of 22 points.

That’s a huge improvement and one that needs to be celebrated in the community as a win for these children, but it also represents a significant collaborative effort by this community. The Schools of Hope program is a community-based program that is funded by the United Way and the business community. It also has the support of the Racine Unified School District, Joan Kuehl, the principal of Olympia Brown, Mrs. Margis, and the parents of those students.

But really, I think this program speaks to the honest footwork we need to be doing in solving our community’s problems, which we cannot afford to ignore. So often we’re quick to focus on the “failure” of the Racine Unified School District and our teachers, but I didn’t see failure at all. I saw commitment, enthusiasm and support from our schools, our school officials, our business community, our parents and our students.

But I realized... this community does care -- so much so that the program is being expanded from 257 students to 300 students next year.

And if you are interested in becoming a Schools of Hope volunteer, call Jessica Safransky Schacht at 898-2251.