They have gone beyond efficient to become a team. I won't say it's seamless, because what's really nice is that they're two very different people. A lot of them select the children our tutors work with and supervise tutoring activities. In Chelsea, they provide the curricular content. I think it's more meaningful when it's a partnership.
People are very concerned with students being able to read with proficiency by third grade.
That was certainly the way President Clinton spoke about the America Reads Challenge when it was first set forth, but now, on a more local level, we're talking about putting more resources at the second-grade level so that more children are reading with proficiency in the third grade. Certainly the tutoring program can't solve that problem, but it can provide a resource and the support for what's going on in schools or a reinforcement after school. And by improving students' reading skills, the tutors help them improve in other areas of their education as well. If they can't read, they can't do math, geography, or history - it holds them back in subjects they might be doing well in. The program does a lot for the students and for their academic futures.