READING, Pa. — On the second day of class at Reading Senior High School, teacher Eric Knorr directs his students’ attention to the banners hanging on the wall. Syracuse. Temple. Brown. Penn State. All of them brought back by former students who bucked the odds and went to college.
“You need to make sure you have a plan,” Knorr exhorts the class. “Because your plan will lead to a banner, OK? It will lead to an opportunity to go to college.”
Long seen as a way out of poverty, higher education eludes most students at Reading High. The public schools here are plagued by low test scores in reading, math and science; the school district has one of the highest dropout rates in the state; and, in a city where almost 60 percent of the population is Hispanic, many students’ parents speak little or no English.
Yet, as another school year gets underway, Reading’s Alvernia University is placing a $10 million bet that it can help kids in one of the nation’s poorest cities get ready to do college work—and to succeed once they get there.
The first five students selected for the Reading Collegiate Scholars Program joined Alvernia’s freshman class last week, flush with full-tuition scholarships and plenty of support to help them make the transition from a high school where fewer than seven in 10 graduate.
“I want to be the best that I can, and I just push myself,” said Melisa Rivera, 18. “There’s no obstacle I can’t overcome.”
Alvernia, a small, private school started by Roman Catholic sisters, has partnered with the city’s Olivet Boys & Girls Club on a program that aims to help hundreds of high school students get ready for college—any college—through an intensive four-year program of tutoring and mentoring. That effort launched in the spring.
