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Project PASS helps Youngstown school kids improve reading skills
YOUNGSTOWN
An evaluation from the Ohio Education Research Center reveals Youngstown City School District second- and third-grade students are 29 percent more likely to meet Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee.
The Third Grade Reading Guarantee is a program to identify students from kindergarten through third grade who are behind in reading and to help them sharpen those skills, according to the Ohio Department of Education’s website.
From January to May 2015, Youngstown State University students majoring in education tutored Youngstown elementary school students in a program called Project PASS – Penguin Assistants for Student Success.
The evaluation compared 248 PASS students with non-PASS students who had similar demographics, attendance and benchmark scores in the winter of second grade.
PASS tutors worked with students weekly and their final test results for the Third Grade Reading Guarantee showed improvement.
Seventy-four percent of the PASS students met the Third Grade Guarantee as opposed to 45 percent of non-PASS students who also met the Third Grade Guarantee, according to the OERC’s Youngstown Reading Program Evaluation.
“This finding suggests that participating in PASS at any point ... was beneficial for students’ reading achievement,” according to the evaluation.
Krish Mohip, Youngstown City Schools chief executive officer, said the individualized attention PASS students received displayed positive results – results that he hopes to keep moving forward.
“We believe the Project PASS model can be replicated throughout the state between other universities and urban school districts,” he said.
This program benefited not only elementary-school students in sharpening their reading skills, but also YSU undergraduates who received real-life training in their prospective field.
YSU President Jim Tressel said Project PASS is proof that “when a city’s two largest education institutions join forces, good thing happen.”
“It also demonstrates the feasibility of other university-district partnerships to enhance literacy and could prove to be an example that can be replicated across the state,” he said.