“What happens if you’re a cross country runner and you don’t run all summer? Then August rolls around and it’s the start of the season, since you didn’t practice all summer you’re a little behind. It’s the same thing with reading and comprehension,” said Mr. Wieczorek, principal at South Campus.

                Wieczorek, as well as other teachers, have seen the drastic improvements shown from just making a small change in their course outlines, the Achieve 3000 program. So why not elongate this program and make it available not just during the school year, but a year round opportunity as well?

Most students would roll their at eyes and walk away at the thought of doing homework over the summer, but incentives and prizes make Achieve 3000’s look less like a chore and more like an opportunity.  The goal of the summer program isn’t to turn us all into bookworms; it’s to maintain our reading levels and comprehension abilities for the following fall when we take the WKCE’s. Since North Campus classes don’t normally participate in the Achieve 3000 program the incentives are only offered for this year’s freshmen.

The articles don’t even have to be done every day, in all you only have to read 8 achieve articles and do 8 activities. That’s about 80 minutes and 64 questions; and a score above a 65% on your first attempt. It’s that easy. For just setting aside a few minutes each week you could have a chance to win one of 75 gift cards. There’s such a wide range of prizes for freshmen who participate this summer: gift cards 15-25$ for iTunes, Best Buy, Hillside theatre, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks are up for grabs.

The reading must be done sporadically throughout the summer, on average one a week. Unlike the school year, you can’t procrastinate all the achieves until the last week of August.

“Most students tend to procrastinate all of their left over articles until the week they are do, but if they take them week by week and embrace this opportunity their reading levels will skyrocket,” said Wieczorek.

So why not? There are only advantages with continuing this program throughout the summer. The improvements are bold and can easily be seen when looking at a simple comparison graph.

“Reading WKCE scores have jumped through the roof when comparing this year to last year. The only difference in our teaching styles between the two years has been Achieve 3000,” said Wieczorek. As Wieczorek talks about the progress Arrowhead has made in the last year he gets excited and starts pulling out graphs and charts.

“A year ago we were here,” he points to a column labeled 2007; below it shows the average 88% reading level for Arrowhead. “Now we are here,” again he points to the chart, but this time to the 2008 column which reads 94% reading level. That’s a 6% jump compared to the expected annual 1-2% increase. In just one short year Arrowhead had moved from the 12^th strongest school in Wisconsin, to the 8^th. As the state average stayed the same, Arrowhead’s average was on the rise slowly but surely. Then once the Achieve program was introduced the results soared. 

Using this program you can’t go wrong, with the rising improvements of Arrowhead’s WKCE scores and students’ reading levels climbing why not continue into the summer?