Education The Bridge Project uses community volunteers to meet with the children after school to help them understand and complete their homework and improve their literacy skills. Results - Seventeen of the twenty children we work with are second language English speakers. That means when they learn they have to internally translate from English to Spanish to understand. This extra processing step slows their learning and causes them to gain only half a year of skill for every year of school. Consequently, they begin feeling like failures by the time their in junior high and this explains the high drop out rate for Latino students in high school. In September 2008 the average Jasmine student was reading 1.5 years behind grade level. So a 6th grade student was reading at a 4.5 grade level and by 7th grade they would be at a 5th grade level, 2 years behind. In June 2009 we retested all the children and their reading level had increased so that they were now behind at a 1.2 grade level average. In other words, they not only didn’t fall behind, as would be expected, but they actually develop more skills than the average Caucasian student by .2 grades. That is 2.4 times as much as they would have learned without the Bridge Project. At this rate all of these students will be at an equal level with Caucasian students within 5 years. Our best performer was a 6th grade student who improved his reading level from a 3.0 grade level to 6.0 grade level. Book Club The most important skill in school is the ability to read and understand what is read. The Book Club is intended to help the children learn reading and comprehension skills. The children are all tested for their reading levels and divided into groups of three to five. Then skill level appropriate children's literature is selected and the children participate in a discussion guided by their responses to the text. Reading comprehension strategies are modeled and explicitly taught throughout each reading selection. Participation in literature discussion groups increases the children's reading comprehension, engagement, and motivation. This happens every Monday - Thursday from 3 - 4 pm. Homework Club The parents of many of the children in the Bridge Project do not have the English proficiency or educational background to help them with their homework. Homework Club is a way to help the children make sure they understand and finish their homework. This happens every Monday - Thursday from 4 - 5 pm. There are two aspects to homework club. First all of the children meet at tables with others near their same age. Each table has an aide that facilitates and guides the children through their homework activities. If there are more aides than tables those children who are most behind in school are separated out and meet one-on-one with a homework tutor. The tutor focuses homework support on the child's greatest area of need. Actually completing homework serves a dual purpose: first, it helps the children progress educationally, and maybe more importantly is helps them come to believe they can succeed. Why This is Important Although they are the largest minority group in America’s schools today, Latino/Hispanics lag behind non-Hispanics in almost all categories of education. A recent policy brief compiled by the League of Latin American Citizens (2003), reported that one in five Hispanics in the United States between the ages of 16 and 24 left American schools without either a high school diploma or an alternative certificate such as a GED. Latino immigrants not only have higher drop out rates than the rest of the population, they also tend to drop out earlier. The 2005 National Center for Educational Statistics reported that among Latino immigrants 18 years or older 17% had less than 7 years of schooling, 15% had only 11 years of schooling, and only 29% graduated from high school. The reasons for the educational gap are both environmental and systemic. The Pew Hispanic Center/Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a national survey of Latinos on Education in 2004. According to the survey. Most parents said that the following reasons account for why Latino students are not doing as well as their peers:
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