Our 40th Summer Tutoring Program wrapped up on July 16th. For 2021, we offered a mixed format with 15 students participating in-person on our campus and 33 students participating virtually. ReadingCorps members, who throughout the year work with our students across 17 school-based reading labs through an innovative partnership between the Settlement, local school districts, and the AmeriCorps federal agency, conducted the tutoring sessions. In addition to our regular reading, math, and writing tutoring, we also offered students instruction in the arts. Sarah Kate our traditional arts education director, did a wonderful job booking different artists and writers to support creativity, imagination, and skills.
Overall average gains on the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test in reading for in-person students were 4 months in word identification, 1 year 2 months in word attack, and 7 months in passage comprehension for an overall average gain of 8 months. WRAT overall average gain for math was 1 year 7 months for in-person students. All this was achieved in just five weeks!
Overall average gains for virtual students in reading were 5 months in word identification, 1 year 4 months in word attack, and 8 months in passage comprehension for an overall average gain of 9 months.
While we were not able to offer math instruction to our virtual students this year, we did offer the program to three students on a trial basis. Gains for those students were 2 years 1 month, 1 year 2 months, and 1 year for an overall average gain of 1 year 4 months. As those scores are consistent with the scores of in-person students we believe we can now offer our math program to virtual students in the future.
Just because summer school has concluded doesn’t mean that our work is finished. All of our students are eligible to participate in our after-school tutoring program this fall. We are pleased to once again be able to offer in-person tutoring this fall on our campus. We will also offer virtual tutoring two nights per week for those students who are unable to travel to Hindman. While students are being tutoring by ReadingCorps members, parents will participate in educational workshops and sessions to help them support their child.
