(WACO, Texas)— Lakia Scott, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction with Baylor University’s School of Education, has the opportunity for research alongside teaching undergraduate and graduate level classes. She decided to dedicate her research to improve urban literacy.

“My research for the last three years has been on the Freedom Schools Program,” Scott said, “and that is a summer literacy initiative that is sponsored by the Children’s Defense Fund that helps to lessen summer reading loss.”

Scott said students who don’t have access to resources like summer enrichment programs or tutoring opportunities typically fall six to nine months behind when returning to school in the fall. 

“They’re actually returning to school as if they are in the mid year of their previous academic school year,” Scott said. “But the program in which I’ve created and continue in partnership with the national Children’s Defense Fund model, it seeks to reduce that learning loss, that summer reading gap, so that students can go back to school in a better frame of mind academically.”

Scott said the Freedom Schools Program uses culturally relevant texts at all levels that are developmentally appropriate to increase students’ exposure to reading. The students have three different opportunities to engage with texts throughout the day.

“They’ve become more fluent readers. They also build comprehension skills because they’re reading things they really really care about, and that makes all the difference,” Scott said. “Where as a sixth grader may come to me on a fluent reading level of fourth grade or right under fifth grade, they may leave Freedom Schools in a 30 day time span over the course of two months at a seventh grade level.” 

Scott said the students who participate in this program are also positively impacted because they are appreciative of reading, academically motivated and likely to become leaders in their classrooms and communities. 

“I know reading is only one of those core subjects taught,” Scott said, “but reading is seen in every other subject. And so if we don’t equip our students with those foundational literacy skills, it has longterm impacts.”

Waco ISD has a reading proficiency of 30%, which means 30% of the students in the Waco area are reading at or above grade level. 

“My goal, if I were able to cast this larger vision for the City of Waco, would be to see that reading percentage increase exponentially to the 90 percentage range,” Scott said.

Scott said the community has already been doing a lot to help achieve this goal, but she would like to continue to see community members making their presence known in the schools with opportunities like mentoring programs. She also encourages sororities, fraternities and other service-based organizations to continue being advocates in school settings.

However, Scott also said there are other, less direct ways to increase the literacy levels.

“Something that I think is really overlooked is attending school board meetings. The presence of community members at school board meetings is powerful because so much happens there— the ways budgets are allocated, the ways resources are allocated— all of those things are talked about and discussed and voted upon at the school board level,” Scott said. 

Scott even encouraged community members to run for school board positions and community leadership opportunities.

“If we are really serious about making change in ways that are going to positively affect the students that are in the community,” Scott said, “we need to be more vocal about it.”