In recent weeks, there has been a great deal of attention focused on the frequency of violent acts in our community. Rightfully, people are asking, "Why can't someone do something about this?"
The answer is that someone can do something.
The person is you. The something is to volunteer as a tutor with AR Kids Read to help a first-, second- or third-grader to simply become a better reader.
Children who read below their grade level are at risk of future failures in the classroom and in our community. The lack of educational achievement is the most important factor in determining the number of future prison beds.
Seriously, that means we are currently making plans to incarcerate children later in life because we know that 65 percent of poorly performing students will drop out of high school, increasing the likelihood they will fare badly in the job market, continue to live in poverty, require more public assistance, and far too many of them will indeed fill those future prison beds.
From 2012-14, Arkansas had the nation's fastest growing prison population (up 23 percent); housing prisoners costs our state $600 million per year--the second largest budget item for Arkansas. If nothing changes, we should be alarmed as currently 69 percent of our state's fourth-graders are reading below grade level.
Children involved in AR Kids Read who spent just 30 minutes each week with another person who cared enough to help them read a book--one book--increased their academic scores by more than 95 percent this past school year.
Those children who are literally still "learning to read" are on the threshold of "reading to learn" once they enter the fourth grade. This is a critical moment for any child's chance to succeed in school--and far beyond the classroom.
Anyone in the community can volunteer with AR Kids Read. The only requirements are that you read at an 11th-grade level, pass a school-district administered background check, and agree to spend at least one hour a week with first-, second- or third-grade students (30 minutes per student).
AR Kids Read began in 2011 with eight schools, and has expanded to serve students in 46 schools. In the past, we've benefited from more than 400 volunteer tutors working with nearly 1,000 students.
Over the summer, 2,000 students also participated in Read for Success offerings in an effort to combat summer learning loss. The children are the real beneficiaries. Their improvements in the classroom extend beyond reading into subjects like history, science and math. They're truly learning how to learn.
Students are also taking five books back with them into low-income homes where, sadly, there is only one book for every 300 children on average. In contrast, a middle-income home has 13 books per child.
Recently, we were encouraged to see an endorsement of AR Kids Read by Congressman French Hill, who wrote that reading-improvement efforts in the four school districts of Pulaski County "... are laying the foundation for our Arkansas youth--one book at a time."
We simply need more volunteer tutors to read more books with more children.
Join us. Open a book with a child. In doing so, you also open a path that leads to more opportunities to learn and move beyond a cycle of predictable--and projectable--failure.
It's in the interest of us all to do so, from employers to homeowners, and everyone else in our community who feels frustrated when they see another tragic story in the local news.
Someone can do something to change the way that story plays out.
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John Riggs IV and Virgil Miller are on the AR Kids Reads board.
Editorial on 08/24/2017