Tutors Raise Hope and Test Scores

On the eighth floor of Riverside Church, high school students shuffle into a small room and unpack their textbooks and binders. They pull out their homework sheets and college admissions essays and hand them over to their tutors—Columbia students who are just a few years older, but in many ways, a world apart.

Columbia University stands as a locus of higher education in an area where college is a dream that’s not accessible to everyone. New York City’s public schools are infamous for overcrowding, under-funding, and a slew of other problems that fail to adequately prepare students. High school graduation rates are notoriously low.

But, over the past two years, these rates have been going up, according to a recent Department of Education study. It seems that floundering schools are now trying to step up on college prep by taking action earlier in their K-12 programs to get students ready.

Elaina Kristine Crockett, a freshman at A. Philip Randolph Campus High School on W. 135th Street, says she wants to go to college “to extend my learning and experience living away and being independent.” Crockett is one of the local college hopefuls who work with undergraduate and Teachers College tutors from Talent Search, a branch of the University’s Double Discovery Center that provides group tutoring, SAT prep, and mentoring to students working towards college.

Syndy Durugordon, a fellow tutee, has attended the program since sixth grade. Science is her toughest subject, but she wants “to get ahead.”

Two evenings a week, another group of Columbia students rides the subway uptown to offer an SAT prep course at Frederick Douglass Academy on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. The college crew meets with students in small groups to build math and verbal skills for the test. They tutor through Let’s Get Ready, a student-run higher education access program.

This semester, LGR coaches are tutoring 73 Frederick Douglass Academy students. Last semester, SAT scores increased by an average of 140 points by the end of the program. Co-Director Matt Clements, CC ’09, explained that the group tries to foster a close bond between tutors and students. Most LGR students are eligible for free or reduced lunch in the public school system, and 80% of those participating in Talent Search will be the first in their families to go to college.

“There is a definite move to try to show our students that there is no difference between them and other college students,” Clements said. He said that, at times, discouraged students can be pessimistic about their chances of attending college. “That’s one of the main things that we tell our coaches to combat,” he continued, “because that’s the first thing that’s stopping them.”

But thirteen-year-old Oriana Gonzales, who attends the downtown School of the Future, is determined. “It starts now,” she said of her early focus on college. “A lot of people think that they can mess around in ninth grade. You have to start preparing.” She hopes to be an OB/GYN and attends Double Discovery’s tutoring sessions several times a week. Gonzales noted that not many of her friends participate in similar programs.

For those without access to tutoring, college may be even more of a reach. At school, “the teachers tell you that you have to do your homework and stuff so you can go to college,” Gonzales said, though she pointed out that the level of guidance and commitment to the college goal is not the same.

Karl Roesler, Assistant Director for Talent Search and a guidance counselor to the students at Riverside Church, explained how Double Discovery got its name. “The mission is to not only service students from the Columbia community but for Columbia students to also learn from [local high school] students,” he said.

The meeting of Columbia students and high schoolers seems to be breaking down stereotypes in both directions. Cameron McClure, CC ’11, worked over the summer for DDC and faced lot of assumptions about her own background as well as those of her students.

“There’s a view, especially of Ivy League students—upper class, white, two-parent families, private high schools, and that wasn’t most of our backgrounds at all,” McClure said. “And it was kind of comforting to students to see that there are a lot of options and a lot of ways to get where you want to go.”

And they do. Nathalie Lissain was tutored at Riverside Church and is now a Barnard first-year. “My college counselor and my tutor for two years, Cyndi, are the reasons why I was able to drastically improve my grades in high school and work my way up to straight As,” she said. “Without them and without this program, I would not be able to attend Barnard College on scholarship.”

alicia.outing@columbiaspectator.com