Helping Children and Youth Achieve Their Academic Potential
United Way of McLean County is focused on Education. Working with our community, we will provide the opportunity and support necessary for all children to achieve their greatest academic potential. We recognize that education services offered to children and families lie within a chronological continuum that begins at birth. While services offered at any point along the continuum may have benefits, local research identified five key points along the continuum that are critical for student success.
Outcome 1: Children enter kindergarten ready to learn.
Outcome 2: Students are reading at grade level.
Outcome 3: Students are promoted to the next grade level each year.
Outcome 4: Students are prepared for their transition to high school.
Outcome 5: Students are graduating from high school.
Based on input from key stakeholders in our community, United Way has identified specific strategies for each of these critical points that have the best chance for getting the student and their family back on track for academic success or to prevent them from falling behind. These outcomes and strategies will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of direct service programs and community impact initiatives funded under the Education area.
Children enter kindergarten ready to learn.
Strategies:
- Promote early screening and intervention for medical, dental and developmental concerns that inhibit children’s educational success
- Provide supports and interventions to ensure children are developmentally on target
- Support and engage families to improve relationship with educational system
- Provide quality early childhood education
- Provide kindergarten transition activities to children and their families
Students are reading at grade level.
Strategies:
- Provide one on one reading tutoring
- Provide peer-driven, student-to-student reading intervention programs
- Provide reading level appropriate reading materials for students to read at home
- Provide literacy rich environments and activities
- Equip parents and adult role models to read interactively with students and use appropriate literacy intervention techniques
- Provide individual assessment of student reading levels and provide appropriate interventions
- Offer family literacy programs and activities to help improve literacy of both students and their families
Students are promoted to the next grade level each year.
Strategies:
- Utilize early warning signs to keep students on track during the school year
- Address attendance issues and chronic absences
- Assist students to improve their grades and maintain passing grades
- Encourage student participation in school/extra-curricular activities
Students are prepared for their transition to high school.
Strategies:
- Provide summer activities to prepare students for high school
- Promote student participation in school-sponsored transition activities
- Educate students and families on the changes they’ll face in high school
- Participate in transitional events with families
- Provide peer driven intervention programs to prepare students for high school
Students are graduating from high school.
Strategies:
- Provide interventions that assist students to earn enough core credits each year to be promoted to the next grade
- Provide ongoing identification of student barriers to success and provide interventions that allow students to overcome those barriers