In September, Pikes Peak United Way and Leadership Pikes Peak released the 2010 Quality of Life Indicators for the Pikes Peak Region.The report is organized by major factors affecting the region’s quality of life – the economy, health care, transportation, safety, education and arts, culture and recreation.A vision council consisting of local volunteer experts monitors key measurements for each factor.This year, members of the Education Vision Council noted that
- The more educated people are, the longer they live.
- A high-school dropout is four times more likely to be unemployed than a college graduate.
- Increasing the average level of education in a community by one year is associated with a 30 percent decrease in the community’s murder rate.
- Nearly 75 percent of inmates in state prison did not complete high school.
Last year, the Education Vision Council identified a child’s ability to read as a major factor in determining the child’s success in school.The council decided to do something to improve success rates for children, so they started the Brainy Bunch Project to encourage parents to fill their homes with books and read with their children.”The Brainy Bunch Project is one of the big, positive things to come out of the QLI report last year,” said Vicki Fox, a QLI volunteer and head of the Pikes Peak Library District’s Children’s Services Division.The council held a book drive to collect children’s books and then distributed them through hospital birthing centers, pediatricians’ offices, home visits with new parents and early childhood learning centers.Eighty-five percent of brain development occurs by the age of 5, but most of the public investment in education occurs after that age, said Noreen Landis-Tyson, president of the Community Partnership for Child Development and co-chair of the Education Vision Council.It’s really important to give kids that early start, to give them the pre-reading skills they’ll need when they start school, Fox said.With television, computers and video games competing for kids’ attention, many kids just don’t develop the reading skills that will help make them successful in school.But research shows the only way to improve kids’ reading skills is for them to read more, she said.The Brainy Bunch Project focuses on low-income areas in the Pikes Peak region.”Often, the kids who most need help get the least,” Fox said. “They have busy parents who haven’t grown up in a culture where [reading] is pushed.”It’s too soon to know the impact the Brainy Bunch Project will have on success rates for children.According to the 2010 QLI report, based on Colorado Student Assessment Program scores, 26 percent of third-graders in the region’s public schools are reading below grade level.Falcon School District 49 is doing slightly better, with 24 percent of third-graders reading below grade level.Throughout the region, including D 49, more third-graders are reading below grade level than last year, with D 49 declining by 3 percentage points.According to the QLI report, these scores are important because in third grade students are expected to use their ability to read to learn other subject material – science, history and social studies.”Leaving one child behind, not educating them to fulfill their potential is just terrible,” said John Wilson, who works at the Pikes Peak Workforce Center and volunteered for the Education Vision Council.”I know there are a lot of factors and no one group or one entity is to blame, but [school reform] is why I got involved.”To ensure long-term sustainability, the Brainy Bunch Project is now managed by the Pikes Peak United Way’s School Readiness Initiative.To conduct a book drive or volunteer, call 719-955-0746.To see the full 2010 QLI report, visit www.pikespeakqualityoflife.org/indicators.
