Great Advice for Successful Reading Corps!

Editorials 

How to make the most of Reading Corps volunteers

In the three days since Detroit Public Schools CEO Robert Bobb appealed for volunteers to help boost the reading skills of DPS students, nearly 900 would-be tutors from every corner of south east Michigan have responded.

So much for the cynical lament that Michigan’s largest school district is doomed by adult apa thy.

But making effective use of this volunteer army poses a critical challenge to Bobb and his subordinates. Other big city school districts have used volunteer tutors to move the literacy needle, and their successes illuminate some best practices DPS would be wise to embrace:

■ Establish clear goals: Bobb has asked De troiters to commit to assuring that every third grader is reading at grade-level or better by 2015. His school district’s task is to translate that ambitious objective into individualized plans for thousands of aspiring readers. Teach ers and volunteers need to understand each student’s capabilities and adopt realistic timeta bles for expanding them.

■ Train the trainers: Teachers and reading specialists must help volunteers acquire the skills needed to be effective tutors. Mike Casser ly, the executive director of the Council of Great City Schools, suggests that school administra tors begin by visualizing the volunteer’s experi ence from arriving at the school to checking out, then provide the training and materials neces sary to support each step.

■ Train the staff: Employees from principals to building custodians must learn how to recognize volunteers, make them welcome, and direct them to staff responsible for coordinating volun teer efforts. Each participating school should have designated coordinators (and backup coor dinators) to support volunteers and make sure that teachers and volunteers are sharing in formation about each student’s progress and needs.

■ Measure results: Atlanta Public Schools Su perintendent Beverly Hall, whose district’s vol unteer tutoring program has significantly boost ed reading scores there, says one corporate sponsor, Georgia-Pacific, assesses students at the beginning of the year and checks periodical ly to make sure students assigned to Georgia Pacific employees are making steady progress.

“That’s the gold standard of accountability,” Hall says. But everyone who invests in DPS’s Reading Corps — students, teachers, volunteers and sponsoring employers — deserves a means of measuring the return on their investment.

DPS will have to consider the practical needs of volunteers in making other decisions, such as when and where tutoring sessions should occur.

But most literacy experts favor making use of school facilities after schools hours and even on weekends to maximize the number of hours students can read with the support of trained adults.

There is abundant evidence that a volunteer campaign like the Reading Corps can help stu dents make dramatic strides in literacy. If man aged wisely, the time invested by volunteers can have an impact greater than any money-raising effort.

That must be the focus for Bobb and his staff, who are fully engaged in making Reading Corps the structured, coordinated program it needs to be.