MSU, Louisville Partnership Paying Off

Participating in the DREAMS in-school program at Fair Elementary School are, from left, student Avery Forrester, MSU Interventionist Tiffon Moore, students Vontavious Triplett, Montgevious Goss and Carmello Williams. Photo submitted

Participating in the DREAMS in-school program at Fair Elementary School are, from left, student Avery Forrester, MSU Interventionist Tiffon Moore, students Vontavious Triplett, Montgevious Goss and Carmello Williams. Photo submitted

STARKVILLE, Miss.–Now in only its second year, an after-school and summer program named for a late Mississippi State alumna is making an impact in Winston County.

In 2013, the Mississippi Department of Education awarded a nearly $2 million grant to the university’s College of Education and Louisville Municipal School District to help boost at-risk student achievements through academic tutoring, interventions, and literacy and mathematics enrichment. Part of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers programs, the project focuses on at-risk students in the district’s kindergarten-fourth grades.

College of Education Associate Dean Teresa Jayroe, who is also principal investigator, said, “The grant specifically supports the Dillard’s Reading, Enrichment, Arts, Mathematics, and Science (DREAMS) after-school and summer enrichment program. DREAMS is a memorial to Dr. Susan Gregory Dillard, an award-winning district English teacher and MSU doctoral graduate who died in 2010.”

Jayroe said that DREAMS has served more than 200 students since its launch. The program has provided extra attention needed to improve reading and mathematics skills at Fair and Louisville elementary schools, along with Nanih Waiya and Noxapater attendance centers. Daily in-school sessions typically involve four or five students in 45-50 minute time slots, she added.

Angela Mulkana, a lecturer in the department of Curriculum, Instruction and Special Education (CISE) is the grant’s co-principal investigator. “Students work on reading skills every day by reading passages to work on fluency and comprehension,” she explained.

Associate professor in CISE Rebecca Robichaux-Davis is DREAMS other co-principal investigator. “DREAMS after-school participants engage in standards-based, problem-based mathematics activities that develop their conceptual understanding of mathematics content,” Robichaux-Davis said.

Belinda Swart, Louisville Elementary principal, said “the everyday, intense intervention provided to them by the program has produced great results for the students’ test scores.”

Through DREAMS, Swart said, “We’re beginning to target students we know can improve from the program, and since the program’s implementation, our percentage of students below their respected reading proficiency levels has steadily decreased.”

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