FALL 2009 Synergy 7 ...continue from Elad & Lauren Louis’s public schools. In the 2007-2008 academic year, almost half of high school students in the St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) dropped out. The district hasn’t been accredited for the past 10 years. Yet, even in the face of all of these obstacles, St. Louis has found a way to push forward. The city of St. Louis is experimenting with fundamental systemic change, such as the inclusion of magnet and charter schools. Some of the SLPS schools are participating in new experimental academic initiatives. The district is also willing to accept help from volunteers, organizations, and local colleges, but the mass mobilization and organization necessary for lasting improvement has yet to be centralized. And that’s where we come in. Why do we focus on elementary summer schools? We want to support learning before student achievement gaps become too wide. We work with kids who complete 1st and 2nd grade but cannot spell 3-letter words. One 2nd grader did not know the alphabet. Many students who are supposed to be in the 5th grade are unable to pass the required exams to progress from 4th grade. The summer is an opportunity to bring all of these students closer to grade level. How are we doing this? Our organization, the Education Exchange Corps, encourages community engagement in local urban school districts. This past summer, we teamed up with DukeEngage, which ran a group program based on the individual project we started two summers ago. Duke students served as teachers’ assistants in elementary summer schools and worked on projects with the directors of various departments at SLPS headquarters. We are also working with many local colleges and universities in St. Louis to create a sustainable program bringing students of higher education to nearby elementary schools. Targeting local colleges furthers our mission to foster community interaction, and expanding the program locally
raises awareness in a community that clamors for change but has yet to realize effective reform. In total, we placed over 90 college students in three summer elementary school sites, serving close to 900 SLPS students in only our second year of existence, and we are currently running a pilot program bringing over 40 college participants into one elementary school. Ultimately, we want these experiences to impact everyone involved, and we work with college participants to take their experiences back to the classroom in the forms of discussion, reflection, and research. And St. Louis is only the beginning. In the longterm, we plan to export our model to urban centers all across the nation in an effort to improve opportunities for all of this country’s children. Through the service expansion, the research component will grow as well. A student researcher working in one city will be able to link with a student researcher in another city, and the collaboration will make both research projects stronger. Fact: Poor students do worse in school than wealthier students, and much of this achievement gap can be attributed to disparities in summer opportunities. Fact: Students do not get enough attention in the classroom, but the results are often only measured in high school. Around 7000 students drop out of high school per day. Fact: There are no networks connecting college student researchers working in the field of education. The Education Exchange Corps aims to address all of these issues by focusing on at-risk schools, engaging college students in classroom assistance, and encouraging research to make reform efforts more impactful. Simple ideas, but ones that have been neglected for far too long. We cannot let our negligence rob the futures from today’s kindergartners before they can recite the alphabet. u