{"id":25188,"date":"2015-11-30T13:32:58","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T19:32:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/?p=25188"},"modified":"2023-05-10T16:04:55","modified_gmt":"2023-05-10T21:04:55","slug":"study-shows-spark-early-literacy-helps-congress-takes-notice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/study-shows-spark-early-literacy-helps-congress-takes-notice\/","title":{"rendered":"Study shows SPARK Early Literacy helps: Congress takes notice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SPARK Early Literacy, created by Boys &amp; Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee in collaboration with UWM\u2019s School of Education and the Milwaukee Public Schools, participated in a Congressional panel\u00a0in late October.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_25189\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-25189\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/Spark_b.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-25189\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/Spark_b.jpg\" alt=\"UWM's School of Education provides support and tutors to the SPARK Early Literacy program.\" width=\"200\" height=\"138\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-25189\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">UWM&#8217;s School of Education provides support and tutors to the SPARK Early Literacy program.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The panel, sponsored by the Annie E Casey Foundation, organized by The Center for Research and Reform in Education, and moderated by Sarah Sparks, assistant editor of Education Week, brought together Department of Education Investing in Innovations (i3) grant recipient programs that have proven to be both innovative and effective. SPARK was invited to participate because it is one of the four (of 49) 2010 grant recipients whose independent evaluations found statistically significant positive impacts.<\/p>\n<p>The randomized control trial\u00a0evaluation of SPARK, conducted by UWM\u2019s Office of Socially Responsible Evaluation in Education (SREed), concluded that SPARK had significant positive impacts on both reading achievement and regular school day attendance. \u201cThe impact we found in our evaluation suggests that SPARK is both building the literacy skills of students and addressing the underlying issues that cause students to fall behind,\u201d said\u00a0Curtis Jones, director and senior scientist at SREed and principal investigator of the SPARK study.<\/p>\n<p>Pat Marcus, director of program development from the Boys &amp; Girls Club,\u00a0represented SPARK on the panel. Marcus said\u00a0that \u201cIn addition to providing concrete evidence that SPARK has a positive impact on the students we serve, the evaluators helped facilitate the creation of tools and procedures that make the program stronger and more efficient.\u201d In addition to doing the independent evaluation, UWM\u2019s School of Education provides support and tutors to SPARK Early Literacy, which the Boys &amp; Girls Club\u00a0makes available to kindergarten through third grade students in selected Milwaukee Public Schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SPARK Early Literacy, created by Boys &amp; Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee in collaboration with UWM\u2019s School of Education and the Milwaukee Public Schools, participated in a Congressional panel\u00a0in late October. The panel, sponsored by the Annie E Casey Foundation, organized by The Center for Research and Reform in Education, and moderated by Sarah Sparks, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":839,"featured_media":25189,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[174,200],"tags":[249],"section":[],"display_categories":[],"related-coverage":[207],"uwmnews-feed":[347,148],"class_list":["post-25188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-news-in-brief","tag-community-engagement","related-coverage-teaching","uwmnews-feed-community-engagement-professions","uwmnews-feed-education"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.4 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Study shows SPARK Early Literacy helps: Congress takes notice<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"SPARK Early Literacy, created by Boys &amp; 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