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The Carmel Hill Fund’s focus on education developed
naturally and early on in its history. Shortly after its
founding in 1986, The Fund accomplished its first major
success: the revitalization of a block in Harlem. Bill
Ruane, the benefactor of Carmel Hill, selected a destitute
block on 118th Street ravaged by drug abuse and property
neglect. Teaming up with the Children’s Aid Society,
Carmel Hill worked to get the drug sellers and addicts
off the block, bring the buildings up to code, and obtain
vital social services rendered to tenants.
Bill’s goal from the beginning had been to elevate
children from the most desperate living conditions into
stable situations so as to break the cycle of poverty
in a cost-effective and replicable way. After Carmel Hill
petitioned the proper authorities to restore the buildings
and worked with Children’s Aid Society to begin
providing services to the block’s residents, Bill
took a closer look at the children who lived on 118th
Street. He discovered that on just that one block, 80
elementary grade students were attending 26 different
schools. Bill realized that a strong sense of community
could be threatened with the block’s children scattered
in so many directions, so he did a search for one school
that they all could attend. Soon enough, he hit upon St.
Paul School, a small Catholic elementary school a few
blocks away that was on the verge of closing due to insufficient
funds. Bill supported the school to keep it from closing
and established a scholarship program that allowed the
118th Street children to attend St. Paul for only a nominal
fee.
The 270 students enrolled in St. Paul were very much in
need of an intervention to improve their reading ability,
so in 2001 Bill purchased Renaissance Learning’s
Accelerated Reader program at the suggestion of St. Paul’s
then-principal Agnes Sayaman. The results were quick in
coming and overwhelming in their magnitude. Between 2001
and 2003, St. Paul’s overall school score on the
Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) went up by 70%. St. Paul
went from scoring near the bottom quartile as compared
to schools nationally in 2001, to scoring 8% above the
national median in 2003. For the full story of St. Paul’s
results and accomplishments, please see our Video Spotlight.
Because of Accelerated Reader’s tremendous success
at St. Paul, Bill decided to bring this program to other
schools in need. In addition to pursuing other initiatives
to enhance youth education, The Carmel Hill Fund Education
Program is the branch of The Carmel Hill Fund responsible
for working with schools to integrate Accelerated Reader
into their curriculums. |
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