The Pre-college Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence, a program designed to help students of color prepare for college, expanded its scope to Madison elementary schools this fall.
The program, which began in 1999 in Milwaukee high schools, quickly expanded to include Madison middle schools, as well as other high schools across the southern part of the state. This is the first year the PEOPLE Prep Program has tried working with pupils at a pre-secondary school level.
'I think the biggest challenge right now is probably [teachers and schools] losing so many kids way too early,' Tiffany Davis-Baer, the Academic Lead for the PEOPLE Prep Program said.
'Lots of times they're getting written off, as if they have behavior issues, or they're getting written up as having a disability, and some kids are just not met where they are,' Davis-Baer said. 'They're basically being written off [as] a lost cause.'
Fifty-one students across six Madison schools have already enrolled.
According to Lisa Ray Johnson, senior specialist of development and communications for the PEOPLE Prep Program, those schools include: Lakeview Elementary, Lindbergh Elementary, Mendota Elementary, Sherman Middle, Blackhawk Middle and Wright Elementary.
Although the program is free for students, there is an application and interview process. Also, students accepted in elementary school must reapply when they enter middle and high school, according to Davis-Baer. Screeners look for such qualities as commitment, teacher recommendation and, in middle and high schools, grade-point average.
Students that enter the program are expected to work after school for two hours, two nights a week with program tutors who are undergraduate volunteers from the UW-Madison School of Education.
'The most important thing is that we get their homework done,' Davis-Baer said. Following homework, students participate in large- group learning activities, involving lessons in math, reading and writing, followed by small group applications of the aforementioned lessons.
So far, the program has proven effective with older students: Ninety-two percent of PEOPLE's 253 participants went on to college in previous years, according to a Nov. 28 press release.
Maria Delgado, liaison for the PEOPLE Prep Program, expressed optimism about the future of the program's expansion.
'The biggest challenge is just getting [kids] realizing what this journey for them is going to be. It's for the long haul,' she said. 'This program is designed to help them every single year until they get to college.'
