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Renewed Support from Target Highlights Literacy Gains for Students

Written by William Schmitt on Friday, 04 October 2013.

Notre Dame ACE Academies in Tucson & Tampa Bay Innovate as Grants Affirm “ACE Readers”

ACE Readers, an innovative reading program for Catholic elementary school children in Tucson, AZ, and the Tampa Bay area of Florida, aims to continue its sharp boosts in student proficiency scores this year, thanks to renewed grant support from Target.

The civic-minded retailer is conducting a campaign of generous grants to initiatives to improve literacy education for children across the country, and it finds a natural ally in the Notre Dame ACE Academies, a unique and innovative model of university-school partnership. The ACE Academies’ ACE Readers program is a recipient of a Target grant for the third consecutive year.

A research-proven childhood literacy program, ACE Readers is made possible by Target’s support. It combats the achievement gap that plagues students from at-risk communities. Now in its third year, the program is paying off, says Dr. Christian Dallavis, founding director of the Notre Dame ACE Academies initiative.

"Through programs like ACE Readers, the Notre Dame ACE Academies are proving that demography is not destiny,” said Dallavis, who recently assumed the role of ACE’s Senior Director of Leadership Programs while retaining oversight of the ACE Academies. “ACE, with the help of visionary benefactors like Target, is committed to creating extraordinary educational opportunities for all students.”

From the start of the partnership in Tucson in 2010 to the most recent round of assessment in April 2013, the three ACE Academies there have seen a 21% increase in the number of students reading at the “proficient” or “advanced” level. At the same time, the percentage of students reading “below basic” decreased by more than half, from 7.8% to just 3.4%.

Students who began with the ACE Academies in preschool are showing the greatest benefits of the partnership: kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade are reading in the 76th percentile, and kindergarten students score in the top 10% among their peers across the country.

These clear signs of success prompted Target to renew its annual grant to support ACE Readers in the 2013-14 school year. This is the third year of ACE Readers through all grades in ACE Academies Tucson schools and the second year of the same literacy instruction innovations in two ACE Academy schools in the Diocese of St. Petersburg, FL.

These five Catholic schools adopted the comprehensive ACE Readers literacy approach as a key component of the critical changes occurring in their classrooms. Broader shifts in pedagogy, management, and school culture, undertaken through the ACE Academies partnership, contribute to the scope of their recent success and the transformation at each school.

The Target grant to ACE supports the pursuit of comprehensive literacy gains. ACE Readers combines research-proven methods to strengthen reading curriculum, instruction, and assessment to ensure every child is reading at or above grade level by grade three. New resources and focused teacher development spanning the kindergarten to 8th grade curriculum are transforming literacy education for hundreds of Latino children from low-income families, many of whom do not speak English at home.

“To ensure more students are reading proficiently by the end of 3rd grade, and in turn graduating from high school on time, Target is dedicated to providing resources to help bring learning to life,” said Laysha Ward, president of community relations at Target. “We’re proud to partner with Notre Dame and the ACE Academies as part of our ongoing commitment to invest in innovative education programs that help keep children on the path to high school graduation so they’re ready for post-secondary education and a career.”

Target will provide grants to educators, schools, and nonprofit organizations across the country to remain on track towards achieving their goal of giving $1 billion to education by the end of 2015.

The Notre Dame ACE Academies partnerships in Tucson and Tampa Bay go hand-in-hand with other ACE initiatives, including the Catholic School Advantage campaign to increase Latino families’ access to a high-quality Catholic school education. Since its founding 20 years ago, ACE has generated dozens of innovations to sustain, strengthen, and transform Catholic schools with a special emphasis on service to under-resourced schools and disadvantaged children.

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