Congratulations to Charleston County Schools AmeriCorps Program for shwoing signs of impact already! Below is an excerpt from the most recent progress report from one of South Carolina's new programs.

In response to the Performance Measure "Number of Students with Improved Academic Performance, measured by MAP scores"

We won't know if we have met this target until the Spring MAP test, however, we will have an interim measure with the Winter MAP reading scores (msot schools will be wrapping up that testing by the end of this month). In the meantime we do not have a fair amound of qualitative (anecdotal) results.

One of our members was approached by a school's special education teacher who asked if the AmeriCorps member was working with a particular little girl. When the member confirmed that she was, the Special Education teacher said "I don't know what you're doing, but don't stop! I've seen such improvement in her reading, she's finally starting to get it!"

One member's students have all nearly doubled their scores on the MAP reading test.

A principle has told me thhey are seeing great improvement among the 2nd graders in reading based on the MAP scores and that she is confident that it is a direct result of Project HERO. (This school has the highest percentage of 2nd graders below the 25th percentile...approx. 70% of the 2nd graders.)