Verona elementary school students who participated in the United Way of Dane County-led Schools of Hope tutoring program showed better-than-expected improvement in reading and class-participation last year, according to program organizers who are kicking off a major volunteer recruitment effort this week.
The Schools of Hope program began in 1995 in Madison as a journalism project by the Wisconsin State Journal and WISC-TV (Ch. 3) examining Madison ‘s public schools, and it grew into a countywide effort to reduce racial disparities in achievement patterns. Schools of Hope provides reading and math tutoring for children from preschool through fifth grade.
In 2005, the program expanded to Sun Prairie, and in 2006, it expanded to four Verona-area schools. There, organizers said two-thirds of the 30 third-grade students who received tutoring for the full year showed significantly greater progress on their Measure of Academic Progress reading tests than anticipated. The MAP is a national nonstandardized test that measures individual academic improvement in students.
Also in 2006, the United Way reported that the percentage of third-grade minority students in participating Madison-area schools who had below-average reading ability had declined from 28.5 percent to 5.5 percent from 1995 to 2005.
According to evaluations from participating Verona schools, 95 percent of school staff felt the program contributed to student success, and all staff expressed a wish to continue to work with volunteer tutors this year.
Such results, coupled with the enthusiasm of teachers, parents and volunteers for the program, has fueled the expansion of the program to almost 30 schools in Madison, Sun Prairie and Verona.