THE REST OF THE STORY
On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, July 18, 19 and 20, 2004,  the the  Chicago Tribune devoted half its front page, plus full inside pages of the first section of the paper to a Special Report: No Child Left Behind.  The focus of this series was ona little girl named Rayola.  The title was:  "One Girl's Struggle to find a Future".  You can read this series at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/   It does a great job of drawing attention to the challenges kids living in inner-city neighborhoods face.

In Chicago during the 2003-04 school year, 270,000 students were eligible to transfer to better schools. 19,000 applied to transfer.  1,097 were granted transfers and 536 actually transferred.  The student profiled in this series was one of those who transferred.  As the series unfolds, readers see the struggle.  In a July 22 editorial, the Tribune summarizes the problem by saying, "as the story of Rayola shows, no well-intentioned law, no well-intentioned school, can succeed without the follow-through of a child's parent." 

In short, blame the parent. The T/MC agrees that the parent is a child's primary tutor and mentor. However, families living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty face many struggles that families in other neighborhoods don't face. Unfortunately this series did not show this part of the problem, or how few family support systems are in place in this area. Nor did the series provide a path for involvement to volunteers, business leaders and others who might want to become an extended family of support for children like Rayola. 

That's THE REST OF THE STORY. The map below shows the Englewood neighborhood where Rayola lives and the location of Holmes school, which is on the NCLB watch list.  It shows that this is a neighborhood with high concentrations of poverty and many poorly performing schools.  Thousands of K-12 children live in this area. The all need extra help. 

Here's how you find out where you can help: Search the Find A Program link on this web site to determine what (if any)  tutoring and/or mentoring programs are operating in this neighborhood (search 60609, 60615, 60636 and  60621 zip codes).  These are  places  where you can be a volunteer, leader, donor or business partner. In this case,  there are too few programs, and not enough comprehensive programs.  If  you search the resource links on this site, or on the http://www.tutormentorconnection.org site, you can find examples of outstanding programs operating in other neighborhoods and other cities. These types of programs could be in this and other poverty neighborhoods of Chicago if there were a greater involvement from those who have the ability and resources to help.   

We encourage Volunteers, Donors and Leaders to turn this negative into a positive. Get involved.  Together we can help assure that No Child in Chicago is Left Behind. Visit the T/MC Map Gallery to see more maps like this.   

This map is a service of the Tutor/Mentor Connection, a small non-profit organization. If you'd like to make a contribution to help us produce more maps like this, and maintain the Program Locator service, email tutormentor2@earthlink.net for information.