Big Brothers Big Sisters initiative finds success in Cape schools

Ashley Beggs has seen some troubled children in her time as executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri.

She also can tell you plenty of stories about the resiliency of the human spirit.

For Beggs, the story of two little boys who desperately needed the stability of their Big Brothers particularly stands out.

"I'm talking about horrific things that were happening to them -- death in their family, families picked up and moved from place to place," she said.

Their mentors stayed with the young students in the Cape Girardeau School District, tracking their progress in school. At first, the data wasn't good. Progress reports following academics, attendance and behavior, bled red.

"Over the course of the next couple of years, the boys got them down to literally no red marks, or red flags," Beggs said.

The students saw pronounced improvement in their behavior, in their math and reading scores, and they were showing up to school every day.

"You talk about resilient kids," she said. "When the world was falling in on them, they were being able to pull out good grades."

Over the past six years, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri has tracked the Cape Girardeau School District students it mentors through the ABC Education Initiative. "ABC" stands for Attendance, Behavior and Classroom success in reading and math. Officials say the initiative, a pilot program launched in Cape Girardeau that has become a nationally recognized example of educational best practices, is building stronger relationships and delivering academic success.

Beggs provided the Cape Girardeau School Board an update on the program at a board work session Monday.

As of the end of March, there were 219 active students in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program in Cape Girardeau, Jackson and Scott County. Of those, 176 are enrolled in Cape Girardeau's school district, and tracked through the ABC initiative. In 2010, 333 students received one-on-one mentoring, and Beggs expects the numbers could hit 350 this year. The executive director said Big Brothers Big Sisters would one day like to be able to gauge student performance at the other schools it serves.

The ABC Education Initiative tracks five school-related categories: Attendance, tardies, discipline referrals, and reading and math scores. Through three quarters of the 2010-2011 school year, 90.9 percent of students are deemed as "succeeding" in attendance, with eight or less absences, according the the report. That's a huge increase from last year, when 77 percent of students were reported to be succeeding.

Beggs said school administrators believe the district's tougher attendance policy has played a big role in driving up the numbers. She said sometimes the simplest things make the biggest difference. One little girl who wasn't getting to school on time said she didn't have an alarm clock. A Big Brothers Big Sisters staff member took an alarm clock to her home and taught the girl how to use it.

"In the next quarter she wasn't tardy once," Beggs said.

The report, however, shows 83 percent of students succeeding in limiting tardies to less than 10 through the first three quarters of the school year, down from nearly 90.6 percent last school year.

Fewer students, 84.7 percent, were succeeding in keeping discipline referrals to less than four. The standard is less than five for the entire school year. The rate was nearly nine percentage points higher in the 2009-2010 school year, at 93.5 percent.

Success in reading and math scores are up slightly so far this year. The report shows 84.1 percent of students posted a C or above in reading through the third quarter, up from 83.5 percent during all of last school year, while in math, 82.9 percent of students received Cs or better, compared to 82.8 percent last year.

Beggs said it's difficult to access the exact causes of the changes, but the initiative is based on learning and evolving with the data to better serve the little brothers and sisters.

The success of the program is garnering attention nationwide, according to Becky James-Hatter, president and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri. St. Louis public schools have adapted the Cape Girardeau pilot program, and now the Normandy, Mo., School District has picked it up, James-Hatter said. The organization recently was invited to present its experiences to the America's Promise Alliance's national Grad Nation Summit, and a Washington, D.C.-based education think tank is including the ABC initiative in its best practices report, she said.

"We are forever grateful to Cape Girardeau, and we still consider Cape to be very much our [research and development] center," she said. "We are trying new things with the model, forever learning."

mkittle@semissourian.com

388-3627

1610 North Kingshighway Suite 305, Cape Girardeau, Mo.