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Our mission is to ignite the academic success of students. We do this by working with students, teachers and principals to improve base language and math proficiencies and raise the high school graduation rate, as well as by engaging parents, businesses, agencies, neighborhood associations and community representatives to create a partnership of support for the students we serve.
By helping students achieve a high standard of literacy and a love of reading, we improve school performance, raise the graduation rate and build a stronger future for our communities.
The NW Coalition focuses on bringing together the interested people and organizations so that as a team we can help children gain basic reading skills in the early school years.
The NW Coalition for Better Schools is a nonprofit working to improve literacy and raise overall graduation rates in the schools and community of Denver Colorado. We use three methods to accomplish this goal:
First, we encourage literacy via the North Star Tutor/Mentor program, which uses upper grade students to tutor first, second and third graders, helping them develop confidence and academic success.
Second, we provide training to tutors, parents, organizations, and the general public on how they can more effectively help the young learn and master the skills necessary for literacy.
Third, we actively partner with other organizations to help connect our students with support agencies and opportunities for self-advancement. With some organizations, we train the adults to deliver our tutor training package, and they implement the program at their site with their funds. This is possible because our tutor training package is self-paced and fully written out.
Over the past 20 years the North Star Tutor/Mentor Program has directly helped over 4,700 elementary students improve literacy skills.
More than 1,700 middle and high school students have developed responsibility as tutor/mentors in this after school program.
Collaborations:
The Coalition as a coalition has collaborated with other organizations through most of its life. We are now involved in additional collaborations:
Last year we partnered with Catholic Charities to deliver the tutoring program at two schools. That collaboration and staff have moved over to the Denver Boys and Girls Club to continue the program.
The I Have A Dream Foundation is pairing two sets of dreamers: the 10th graders at North are tutoring the 6th graders coming at West Denver Prep Highlands campus. A grant from the Piton is supporting the 10th graders' stipends for tutoring twice a week during this school year, plus the NW Coalition's tutor training and monitoring. The I Have a Dream Foundation is providing program management and coordination.
The History of the Northwest Coalition for Better Schools
and the North Star Tutor/Mentor Program
The Northwest Coalition for Better Schools was initiated in 1986 at North High School by community leaders who were dismayed by the large dropout rate in their neighborhoods. They approached Lino Gonzales, the new principal of North High, who agreed and asked, How can you help? Together, they established this organization with the full participation of the administration and the high school's feeder schools.
Parents, principals, students, teachers, churches and businesses each formed their own Action Groups, coordinated by a Steering Committee. NWCBS is community-focused on improving student achievement.
Efforts to improve graduation rates have been the impetus for the following projects during 20+ years of existence: articulation between schools, ninth grade retention activities, community forums, conflict resolution training, joint teacher/staff in-services, mobility and attendance projects.
Adapting to changing needs and budgetary constraints, NWCBS became its own non-profit organization in 1990, governed by an independent board responsible for funding all projects. Housed within the Denver Public Schools (DPS), the partnership exchanges in-kind support for cooperative work on behalf of the at-promise children.
The Teacher Action Group initiated the Coalitions direct service program for reading improvement in 1989. Their goal was to better prepare students to have the skills to graduate. Students reading on grade level by the end of third grade are more likely to graduate from high school! This gave rise to the cross-age tutoring program named the North Star After-School Tutor/Mentor Program. Helping all children achieve this continues to be the over-arching goal of the Coalition.
The North Star After-School Tutor/Mentor Program has been active since 1990. Designed with the help of United Way to prevent early student deficits, older peer tutors are trained to work directly with elementary children on reading skills and help them with homework to reinforce the concepts taught during the day. Older students are supervised by classroom teachers at elementary sites after school, meeting twice a week during the school year.
North Star has helped thousands of younger students and stimulated the maturity of hundreds of middle and high school students as tutor/mentors. The tutors as well as the tutored reap benefits.
Our current program focus is on increasing the training of the teachers and tutors on study skills and barriers to learning, retaining the tutors for multiple years and further developing their responsibility level and leadership skills. Today the Coalition is a well-established organization with programs that have made a difference in student achievement.
The Board of the Northwest Coalition for Better Schools
Dustin Tidwell, Chair
Partner/Financial Advisor
Latitude Financial Group
Robert Swift, Immediate Past Chair
Senior Vice President, Trust Officer,
Colorado State Bank and Trust
Kevin Slevin, Vice Chair
Analyst, Colorado Department of Health
Artis Selby-Jacobsen, Secretary
Elementary Teacher, Brighton School District
T. Michael Doyle, Treasurer
Retired Business Manager, West Highlands resident
Claudia Hernandez-Ponce
North High School Graduate, former North Star tutor
Admission Counselor & Group Visit Coordinator
Office of Undergraduate Admission
University of Denver Outreach
Dorolyn Griebenaw
District School Improvement and Accountability Council
Katie Doyle
Retired Teacher, West Highlands resident
Jonathan Lucero
Attorney at Law
Jennifer Draper Carson
North H.S. Collaborative School Committee
DPS parent
Donna Lucero
Executive Director
Edward C. Krug, Ph.D.
Program Director
On May 13, the Northwest Coalition for Better Schools received the Denver Teacher's 2011 Helen Phelps Organizational volunteer Award for outstanding service to the teachers of Denver Public Schools, supporting them through an array of activities beyond its after-school tutoring program.
"Past activities of the Coalition include the NW Area Schools Publication which provided information to parents on now to help their children, the Annual School Fair which provided an opportunity for schools to showcase their programs and their students, and the First Day Counts Initiative which created opportunities for parents to become involved in their children's school from the first day."
Donna Lucero accepts the Denver Teachers Award from David Wise.
Click her to go to the CDE report
Analysis of our results, more good news:
Based on a three years of accumulated data, being a tutor reduces a child’s drop-out rate!
We have been analyzing the effects of our tutoring program on the older children who have served as tutors.
Of 129 current and former students-as-tutors, only 2 dropped out as they went through the ninth grade. Normally, 13 would have dropped out.
Our former tutors have a dropout rate one sixth that of the Denver Public Schools ninth graders.
English Language Learners, Special Education and general population students gain in reading proficiencies with this program.
Recently we have started examining student reading growth by sub-groups of students. The three groups we have examined are children with Special Educational needs, English Language Learners (ELL), and the rest of tutored children. English Language Learners were those listed as taking the reading assessment in Spanish.
We found that our 43 non-ELL, non Special Education children gained on average 1.36 years growth in reading level.
The 21 ELL students averaged 99 percent of a year's growth in reading.
The 30 Special Educational students averaged 88% of a full year's growth.
Because our program uses one-to-one and one-to-two tutor-to-student ratios, it is possible to effectively serve a mixture of ELL, Special Education and general student population in the same classroom tutoring setting. We have had ELL students comprising 32 percent of a 41 student tutoring site, and Special Education students comprising 37% of 41 students at the same high achieving program.
The super stars are the many classroom teachers who recruit, supervise and coach the older children as they work with the younger children.
Dr. Krug is in charge of the North Star Tutor/Mentor Program and Study Skills Training. He currently implements and monitors programs using middle and high school students to tutor and mentor struggling elementary students, focusing on homework, reading and math. He served as Executive Director of the Coalition for 4 years as well as Program Director, and is now focusing full-time on programming.
He gained valuable experience creating and administering DPS Learn & Earn Program, which has evolved into the Dell TechKnow Program. He organized donors and trained middle school students to refurbish, learn and earn the computers. In this program, over 3,500 students & parents have learned and earned computers since 1998!
Dr. Krug's 20 years as a research scientist collecting and analyzing data has given him skills to help improve our services. His analysis of data for the North Star Program led to the implementation of a specific training package and more intense training of tutors. He has used extensive best practice research to refine the tutoring program and increase student success for both for tutors and students in the North Star Program.
Donna has 22 years experience as Executive Director of non-profit organizations, including the NWCBS, Skinner Community School and the NW Family Assistance Center dba Ellen Torres Bienvenidos Food Bank. With strengths in fund-raising, program expansion, and volunteer enhancement, Donna has grown each organization to better serve its clients.
Donna's experience in administration and governance, combined with a broad network within the community help to highlight the work of the Coalition and to expand the reach of our programs. She is a former elementary teacher who developed her organizational skills in order to gather resources to increase academic achievements of our precious children.
For the past 3 years, Donna has concentrated on assisting in program management and handling fiscal responsibilities of the Coalition, including invoices, payroll, insurance, donor campaigns, grant expenditures, financial reports, budget analysis and projections.
Donna is committed to working with staff, volunteers, teachers, principals and the community, to further the reach of Coalition programs and to ensure that every child has the opportunity for academic success.
Objectives:
1. To increase the percentage of students whose reading and math are on or above grade-level by the end of the third grade.
2. To use after school time to master content presented in the school day.
3. To increase the percentage of students who enjoy reading while in the early grades.
4. To keep students safe, in an on-site after-school program.
5. To increase the percentage of students who experience the pride of doing well in school.
Core Value:
1. Any child can succeed, given the help of a competent tutor.
Best Practices (Program Design):
1. Correcting academic deficits is most effective in the earliest years of schooling.
2. Helping children catch up or stay up with their peers academically is the best drop-out prevention.
3. Using a teacher from the student's second or third grade as a coach is essential for an effective program.
4. Using an additional teacher from the grade level of the tutors increases tutor performance and growth.
5. Working with older students keeps younger students looking forward to tutoring and willing to work hard to show off what they can do.
6. Using older students as tutors expands the amount of individual and small-group assistance available to students.
7. Training the tutors well raises the success of both tutor and student.
8. Frequently asking "Who worked out the word or problem?" addresses the biggest failing of tutors, showing the child instead of allowing them to work it out.
9. Ongoing tutor training and coaching during tutoring sessions improves tutoring.
10. Frequent site visits and coaching the coaches is essential to keep quality and focus high.
11. The tutors benefit from the tutoring/study skills training and from the experience of helping others.
12. In K-8 schools, upper grade students tutoring lower grade students improves school climate.
13. Encouraging principals and teachers to use and take ownership of North Star Tutoring leads to increased student growth.
14. Delivering tutoring for the full year prevents children from falling behind and losing interest.
The North Star Tutoring Program is a teacher-supervised cross-age tutoring model.
Our program uses the school’s collaborators and staff to deliver the tutoring program. We provide the program training, implementation guidelines, and decades of experience on what works. We provide the program, but the school adapts it to reach those children most in need of the extra help.
Each program is independent and can be implemented in an inner city or rural k-5 or k-8 public, charter, or religious school with equal ease. There are people in each community who want to help their children, and only lack an understandable and implementable program. That is what we bring.
The parts of the program are presented visually below:
Tutors tutor at anywhere from a one-to-one ratio to a maximum of a one-to-three ratio.
The teachers adjust the tutor to student ratios based on individual student needs and the tutor's skills.
The tutors also maintains a folder on each child to track the needs and progress.
One elementary grade teacher recruits and supervises the tutored children. He also directs the tutors to address specific needs as discovered during the daytime classes.
An upper grade teachers recruits, helps train, supervises and coaches the upper grade students as tutors.
We use one teacher from the grades of the children tutored and a second teacher from the grades of the tutors. The use of two teachers in the tutoring room gives a high level of comfort for the teachers and strong supervision of the tutors and tutored.
This after-school tutoring in the elementary grade class room focuses on practicing after school those materials presented earlier in the day or week. The teachers can get the individualized help to the children that they would not get otherwise. The focus is on reading, math and homework. We include homework because that is where reading and math concepts are assigned for practice.
The design of North Star is a "Harmonious Alignment of Forces." The little children love the attention of the older children, while the older children love the adoration of the younger children. The older children, as tutors, know they are helping, which on its own raises self respect, pride and maturity. The teachers are pleased to see the growth and dedication to learning in both tutors and tutored. The principals are pleased that they have an after-school program that uses teachers as the supervisors and focuses on the same academic areas they are working to improve. The parents are pleased because their children are safe in the after-school time period, are working on their school work, and perhaps largest of all, the children usually change their attitude about homework, treating it as a fun activity.
NW COALITION FOR BETTER SCHOOLS
PO Box 11264
Denver, CO 80211
Office: 720-423-2706
Fax: 720-423-2708
www.NWCoalition4BetterSchools.org
Donna Lucero,
E: Donna_Lucero_dpsk12.org
C: 303-902-1744
Edward C. Krug
Ph.D., Programs Manager
E: EdwardKrug_comcast.net
C: 303-903-6716
Make a Donation 720-423-2706
NW Coalition for Better Schools achieves highest K-3 reading growth with the lowest per student cost of all the No Child Left Behind funded after-school tutoring programs in the state!
See pages 9 and 16 of the Colorado Department of Education report.
