Our Members

Member Spotlight

August Member Spotlight: Breakthrough New York
Interview with Rhea Wong, Executive Director
Interviewed By: Marissa Lowman, NPEA Program Associate
Contact Rhea for more information.

Snapshot of Breakthrough New York
Founded: 1999 (part of Breakthrough Collaborative, which has 33 locations across the nation and abroad
Grade Levels: rising 7th-9th graders (summer program), 9-12 (post summer program)
Number of Students: 140 students across entire program over 6 years Middle School Program: 82 students (approximately 32 students per cohort)
Average Number of Teachers: 20 (team teaching model, average teacher: student ratio is 1:7)
Teachers: high school and college students (40% are former students)

Q: How was Breakthrough New York founded?
A: Sam Marks, a former Providence Summerbridge teacher, started his career as a teacher at the Town School. It was a happy coincidence that the head of the school at the time was Joyce Evans, who happened to be at San Francisco Day School when Summerbridge San Francisco began. She and Sam launched Summerbridge, which is now Breakthrough, at the Town School. The school administration wanted a way to reach out and provide services to the larger school community since it felt the school was in a position to help other children who were not as fortunate.

Q: What is the effectiveness of using high school and college students as teachers?
A: The magic of students teaching students is that our middle schoolers respond to our teaching interns in a completely different way than their year-round teachers. We use the idea of peer role modeling since most middle schoolers really look up to high school and college students. When we put these very smart, very motivated high school and college students in front of our middle schoolers, we are able to enforce the message that it is cool to be smart.

Q: What services do you provide for students after they have completed the 3 summers?
A: We are now a 6-year program, which represents a shift in our focus over the last couple years, and everything is mandatory. During high school, we offer SAT preparation, college guidance, college visits, and tutoring. While our core competency is really in the middle school years, we noticed our students were dropping off the map a little bit, and we wanted to ensure they remained on the path to college. Although we help place our students in academically rigorous high schools and work with organizations that offer high school programming, our role becomes more auxiliary during the high school years. However, because of the close relationships we form with students and their families, we always have a presence.

Q: What is the biggest challenge in terms of growing the program?
A: (laughs) Funding. We are making plans right now to expand to Brooklyn by 2012. Our biggest obstacle has been finding the appropriate resources in this particular economic climate. However, we are hopeful that we will be able to find initial investors given the effectiveness of our programming. There is high demand for our services, particularly in Brooklyn, which has many more students who demonstrate financial need than Manhattan. Since the recession, we have noticed many families have been forced to move further and further into the boroughs due to increasing living costs.

Q: Can you give an example of a student who has benefited from the program?
A: Chantaneice Kitt, currently a sophomore at Wesleyan, is also teaching with us this summer. She is the first in her family to go to college. Through Breakthrough, she was able to attend a boarding school. She grew up in East Harlem under pretty rough circumstances. Had it not been for our program, she probably would not be where she is today. Although she is an incredibly smart, hardworking and driven individual, she happened to be in a situation that did not necessarily lend itself to being college bound. Despite this, she has really been able to come full circle and give back to the organization.

Q: What is the gender balance in your program?
A: It is fairly evenly balanced. In the past year, we have been particularly sensitive to the needs of young boys of color, which has mainly been guided by recent conversations about the achievement gap, especially in New York, and the ways in which we serve or do not this population. We are also particularly pleased because this is the first year we have been able to recruit at Excellence charter school, an all-boys charter school in Brooklyn. In a sense, we have come full circle because Jabali Sawicki, the school principal, was also a Breakthrough student in San Francisco with me.

Q: How are students recruited for the program?
A: We have six feeder middle schools throughout New York City, but any 6th grade student is eligible to apply. Our senior recruitment director speaks to roughly 800 middle schoolers who have been identified by their teachers, guidance counselors or principals as students who are particularly motivated. We speak directly to students during the recruitment process because we want students who will take the initiative to bring home the application and submit it. In general, we look for highly motivated students who are at or above grade level who also demonstrate financial need and exhibit characteristics, such as living in a single parent household, being a first generation college student, and speaking English as a second language, that are associated with low college attendance.

Q: How do you measure success for your students?
A: We assess our students throughout the summer with pre- and post- tests, and we have been working with the University of San Diego Math Diagnostic Testing Project (MDTP). Throughout the school year, we make sure our students are on track. We also provide SSAT prep to ensure that we are positioning our students to be able to enter college preparatory high schools. Currently we place at public, private, and parochial schools. We continue to track grades and extracurricular activities throughout high school. In addition, we pay attention to four-year college attendance. This year, 95% of our seniors will be attending four-year colleges.

Q: How have you benefited from being a NPEA member?
A: We have benefited immensely from the knowledge sharing in the weekly updates. NPEA has also been incredibly useful for sharing best practices and being in a peer group.