Kids Read Better With Experience Corps Tutors – Much Better
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If anybody needs evidence of the cost-effectiveness of the major national service legislation that awaits only President Obama’s signature, it’s in a new study that shows that elementary school students with Experience Corps tutors made over 60 percent more progress in crucial reading skills than students without Experience Corps tutors.
That’s the same kind of improvement you’d expect to see in a classroom with many fewer children, a much more expensive alternative.
About half of the 2,000 members of Experience Corps, adults 55 and over, are part of the AmeriCorps national service program and receive stipends of about $3,000 a year.
The bipartisan Serve America Act, passed by Congress this week, would more than triple the number of AmeriCorps opportunities annually, from 75,000 to 250,000 a year.
“Experience Corps puts a growing national resource, experienced Americans, to work on a pressing national need — giving all students the reading skills they need to succeed,” said Lester Strong, the CEO of Experience Corps.
“Most Experience Corps members come from the neighborhoods where they serve,” he said. “They know these kids, they believe in these kids, and they see a future in them.”
Experience Corps tutors spend about 15 hours a week is classrooms, mostly kindergarden through third grade, working one-on-one with students. The personal attention reaches those who need it most. Half of the students they work with have reading skills below the 16th percentile for their grade, and a quarter of them use English as a second language.
Experience Corps helps boys and girls equally. It helps children of all races, ethnicity and English proficiency and even classroom behavior, according to the researchers at Washington University in St. Louis who conducted the two-year study of more than 800 first-, second- and third-graders at 23 schools in three cities.
The study is “great news for parents, children, educators and the many people of all ages who want to respond to President Obama’s call to service and want to know that their efforts will make a significant difference,” said Jean Grossman of Princeton University, an expert in youth mentoring.
Read the full study (pdf).
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Experience Corps helps kids and tutors
There’s another excellent article about the effectiveness of Experience Corps in the Baltimore Sun.
In addition to dramatically improving children’s reading comprehension, reporter Liz Bowie points out, “Since the tutors began, schools have documented a decline in officer referrals and suspensions, as well as calmer school climates.”
Bowie describes the grandparent-like relationships that some of the children form with Experience Corps volunteers.
There are benefits for the tutors, as well. Bowie says the study found, “About two-thirds of the Experience Corps volunteers who had said they weren’t very active before they began volunteering said that they had become more physically active and more ‘engaged in social and community events.’”
Experience Corps Validation: Let's Act
The remarkable spate of stories in different parts of the country about the success of Experience Corps has deeper and broader significance than the Experience Corps program. But let us not miss the beat: the Experience Corps story has its intrinsic merit of helping children, helping grandparents as they coach and mentor and having unexpected consequences that are downright positive such as reducing officer referrals.
People serving in these programs have a passion to serve. They are in it because they have the stamina and it is tremendously This isn’t based on romantic utopianism of Victorian men and women doing good. The hunger comes from knowing that people who are serving are working with others to realize their potential, to use their gifts. These grandparent age folks are comfortable with the joy and psychological and emotional benefits they get from their work.
When President Obama signs the Serve America Act, named after the lion of the Senate—Edward M. Kennedy, our public work increases. That’s all to the good. Here’s what we have to do to create the intensity and demand that will warrant full funding for Serve America:
1. Encourage non-profits to understand the idea for Encore Fellows.
Then help identify possible Encore Fellows.
2. Use a measurable portion—in the neighborhood of at least 10%—
for the added Americorps slots for people 50 and over.
3. Be creative about using on-line qualifications to advance
educational awards and Silver Scholarships for Experience
Corps internships. There can be lots of learning, beyond education
matters, to further advance the Encore idea in health, poverty,
working with veterans and in renewable energy .
Remember that by convening non-profits in your community to tackle the major social issues outlined in Serve America, Encore Fellows, and other participants in the program, can draw on their experience to have practical ways that will deal with the problems being addressed and thereby improve people’s lives.
Such action provides the basis for showing that public funds are needed and deserving. The funds create the space for programs that address needs and that at the same time build community. We will be a people who have a stake in our community that will cross generational lines.
Great coverage of Experience Corps results
Here are links to some of the media coverage:
Boston Globe
Beaumont (Tex.) Enterprise
Christian Science Monitor
Chronicle of Philanthropy
David Bank
Editor, Encore.org