Paul Hammel: Mentoring programs are great, but more focused effort needed to improve reading skills
Mentoring programs are a great thing.
They help kids — mostly kids in single-parent families — gain confidence, and learn leadership and life skills from adults.
Paul Hammel
I’ve seen first-hand how beneficial they are, first as a “big brother” in the Big Brothers-Big Sisters program, and then as a participant in the TeamMates Mentoring program.
My “little brother” was the first in his family to graduate from high school (imagine that!) and my TeamMate graduated from high school despite problems with attendance and discipline.
But I gotta say, when I read a recent story from the Flatwater Free Press about how much money the TeamMates program was getting via a state literacy program, I was more than a bit surprised.
The nonprofit news site and its reporter, Sara Gentzler, reported that during the first three years of Gov. Pillen’s administration, TeamMates received $11.6 million in state taxpayer funds. That amounted to about 80% of the money granted out via the “READ Nebraska” program, which seeks to “expand mentorships throughout the state of Nebraska to improve the reading levels of elementary students.”
Since I no longer chase state senators through the halls of the Legislature, I’ve got the time to volunteer at a Lincoln elementary school. Many kids need help with reading, there’s no doubt about that.
And, as stated above, mentoring programs like TeamMates and Big Brothers-Big Sisters are great programs that accomplish great things. (Anyone with the time, who wants to help kids, should sign up.)
But I never imagined that my work as a TeamMate was designed to help my kid’s reading proficiency.
We played games in the school library, or shot baskets or played catch with a football in the school gym. And we talked about what was happening in his life, and what his goals might be in the future.
I don’t recall any specific work on my TeamMate’s reading skills, or a directive to do that.
As most of us know, TeamMates was founded by former Nebraska football coach Tom Osborne and his wife, Nancy. And we all know that Gov. Jim Pillen was a player for Osborne at NU. Pillen also served on the Board of Directors of TeamMates before becoming governor, and is a huge advocate for mentoring.
So there’s an appearance that this cash outlay from the state shows favoritism by the governor to a mentor of his. A representative of Common Cause Nebraska, a state government watchdog, said as much.
A spokeswoman for Pillen, as well as Coach Osborne, disputed that in the Flatwater story, pointing out that the READ grants are handed out on a per-capita (per-mentor match basis), and TeamMates has the largest number in the state.
To be sure, TeamMates was able to recruit about 2,400 new mentors to match with students over the past three years.
Much of the state funds received by TeamMates was spent on recruiting new mentors, and the costs of recruitment events. So the money is expanding mentoring. That’s a good thing.
But it’s worth noting that the second-largest recipient of the money, Big Brothers-Big Sisters, used its state money, $851,000 over three years, on specific “literacy support programming.” That sounds like an effort to improve reading skills.
I want to be clear — mentoring programs are a great thing. They instill confidence in these kids, provide them with a friend and life guidance coach, and — it’s been shown — help increase graduation rates.
It’s also clear that reading proficiency is dropping, and something needs to be done. “Reading mentoring,” where someone works with a student three to four times a week, has been proven to work.
If Nebraska wants to increase mentoring, then this READ Nebraska program is doing that.
But if the goal is improving reading proficiency, there has to be a better, more focused way to do that, other than playing “Scattergories” or “War” in the school library or shooting hoops in the gym.
Paul Hammel has covered the Nebraska state government and the state for decades. Prior to his retirement, he was senior contributor with the Nebraska Examiner. He was previously with the Omaha World-Herald, Lincoln Journal Star and Omaha Sun. A native of Ralston, Nebraska, he loves traveling and writing about the state.
