October 28, 2005 - Low Income Children Can Achieve

The Post reported this week that gains in reading and math scores among fourth and eighth graders are disappointing two years after the No Child Left Behind initiative was implemented to increase accountability for improved student performance.

Ross Weiner of the Education Trust pointed out that, “Students of color and low-income students continue to be educated at levels far below their affluent peers.”

At For Love of Children, we are also disheartened at the enormous gaps in learning that we experience every day with students in our Neighborhood Tutoring Program. In September, we enrolled “Andre,” a high school freshman, whose pretest showed his reading level is 1.8 – as if he was in his 8 th month of first grade. Andre struggles to read one syllable words like “fox”, and cannot recognize common words like “because.” Halfway through the pretest, given to assess each student's entry point into our Neighborhood Tutoring curriculum, Andre told the tester, “You know I don't know these words – can we stop now?”

As we saw from the Post 's reporting, there are thousands of students like Andre. Eighty-nine percent of fourth graders read at or below basic proficiency in the District. And school and city officials are questioning the effectiveness of tutoring offered by private education companies and funded by the Supplemental Education Services provision of NCLB.

But despite the grim statistics, For Love of Children is convinced this picture can change - that “low-income children of color” can achieve grade level skills if they have a chance to get the basics in place.

Ten years ago, long before NCLB, For Love of Children was looking for a way to help the low-income children we serve to gain grade level reading and math skills. We realized there was no point in helping a 12-year old with 7 th grade work if he is reading at a third grade level, so we developed a back-to-basics one-on-one tutoring program designed to start at the beginning, and re-teach every step, at each student's own pace.

At no cost to parents, the school system, or the federal government, using devoted volunteers and a growing army of work-study students from George Washington and other universities, and CityYear Corps members, For Love of Children is reaching hundreds of students each year with one-on-one attention, and our students are achieving results. Neighborhood Tutoring students gain an average of more than one year in grade level reading and math skills in just 22 hours of one-to-one instruction – and some do much better. Last fall, “Randy” entered our Tuesday night teen tutoring program reading three years below his grade level. A year later, he is a junior in high school, reading at college level.

One great benefit we have seen from No Child Left Behind is that low-income parents are becoming aware that their children deserve better support, and that they do not have to accept the status quo of low performance and low expectations for their children. These parents are becoming advocates for their children and are seeking out programs - including ours – to get them the help they need to succeed in school.

To reach more of the 55,000 children in the District of Columbia who are performing at or below basic proficiency, For Love of Children began replicating our program five years ago, training other community-based organizations to administer the NTP curriculum, to recruit and train tutors, and to evaluate student progress. Today, our excellent partner organizations, such as Beacon House, Centro Nia, Community Family Life Services, and Asian American LEAD, are all offering For Love of Children's Neighborhood Tutoring Program curriculum to their students, and are achieving the same rates of success.

With or without Supplemental Education Services, nonprofit agencies in DC are working successfully to give students a chance to make the most of their education - one child at a time.

 

Timothy Payne

Manager, Neighborhood Tutoring Program

For Love of Children