1995 Public Journalism Project Reaps Big Results
The Schools of Hope Literacy Project in Madison, Wisconsin, which began as a 1995 public journalism initiative, is reaping so many positive results in the schools that it will now be expaned into Preschools of Hope - to help younger children.
Wisconsin State Journal, which initiated the project with WISC-TV, writes in part:
Buoyed by rising reading scores in the Madison School District, leaders of the Schools of Hope Literacy Project agreed Friday to spawn a program - Preschools of Hope - to help younger children.
And, for the first time, they’re seeking ways to spread the tutoring project to other Dane County school districts with growing minority enrollments, particularly Sun Prairie and Verona.
The initiatives coincide with a new evaluation of the Schools of Hope project - the most comprehensive to date - showing it has had an overwhelmingly positive impact on students.
“It was an even better report card than I thought we’d get,” said Leslie Ann Howard, who coordinates the leadership team as president of the United Way of Dane County.
The story adds:
Schools of Hope began in 1995 as a civic journalism project of the Wisconsin State Journal and WISC-TV (Ch. 3) to examine Madison’s public schools. It grew into a community effort to narrow the racial achievement gap.
The literacy project component began in 1998. Last year it involved 600 tutors serving 1,850 children in 23 schools. An additional 351 people tutored 491 children in middle school math.
And the results:
…the percentage of third-graders reading at the state’s lowest proficiency level has shrunk dramatically across the board in the past 10 years, essentially eliminating the gap between the scores of white, black, Hispanic and Southeast Asian students in that category.
