COLUMBIA — Dozens of children gather at the Columbia Bethlehem Community Center each afternoon to romp, play, sing ... and read books.

The center provides a reading program, free of charge, to 43 children, with a student-to-tutor ratio of 8 to 1.

"We realize how critical it is to be literate. Reading is essential for success in school and in life," says Lena Stevenson, the center's executive director.

That's why she is excited about a new initiative called Parents & Adults Inspiring Reading Success.

PAIRS is "the most worthwhile project of the decade," Stevenson said. "The world will be a better place because of it."

The world is a tougher place for people who do not complete high school, says Harry Miley, who performed a study on graduation rates for the South Carolina Education Oversight Committee.

Not having a high school diploma limits one's career opportunities, he said. He found a $3,910 difference between the average annual wages of a South Carolina resident with a high school diploma ($25,093) and without one ($21,183).

Only 48 percent of ninth-graders graduate from high school in four years, compared to a national completion rate of 67 percent, said Harold Stowe, a businessman and EOC board member.

"We've got to do better than that," both to help young people have a brighter future and to help South Carolina "compete globally in the future," Stowe said.

Miley cited a close correlation between the rate of graduation and the rate of reading proficiency, prompting the EOC to explore ways to help South Carolina's children improve their literacy skills.

They came up with PAIRS, which was officially launched Tuesday in Columbia.

"PAIRS is envisioned as an umbrella organization to encourage and support the achievement of grade-level literacy of every child in South Carolina by energizing broad collaborations and involvement in the local community through school programs, mentoring programs, literacy initiatives," Stowe said.

"Young people learn best when nurturing, caring adults provide motivation and support. We want affiliations with existing organizations that incorporate adults getting together with children to read," Stowe said.

PAIRS is starting out with about a dozen affiliates — including, in the six-county T&D Region, the Barnwell County First Steps Partnership, based in Blackville — and intends to recruit more affiliates rapidly.

"We will offer encouragement, support and networking. We're trying to help these people get the synergy that can come from those groups knowing about one another and building off each other's ideas and get some real insight," Stowe said.

Having those kind of resources available will help the Bethlehem Community Center fulfill its mission, said Joe Kinney, a board member.

"I think it's extremely important. Many organizations such as ours don't always have the experts that can help them in terms of helping them go to another level," he said.

Without collaborations, each facility must use trial and error to find out what works best, not knowing which concepts didn't work elsewhere and "don't need to be tried again," Kinney said. "We don't have the time to waste."

Stowe cited statistics that support this sense of urgency: Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test results in grades 3-8 show that as students get older, fewer and fewer score proficient on the reading portion.

T-shirts distributed at the program's launch read: "PAIRS, a project of South Carolina's daily newspapers, is administered by the South Carolina Education Oversight Committee."

"When the publishers of South Carolina's daily newspapers were approached by the EOC last year about the idea of partnering with this initiative, we seized the opportunity," said Cathy Hughes, publisher of The Times and Democrat.

"We recognize the role we have as the information source in our local communities, and we understand the importance of an educated population that is proficient in reading," Hughes added. "We believe it's in everyone's best interest and it is also our responsibility to support and promote literacy."

"The role of the newspapers is to provide a face to PAIRS and serve as the local conduit for all who say they want to help," Hughes said.

"We can all do something. We can promote reading and literacy by becoming tutors or mentors, or simply encouraging reading in our homes," Hughes said.

Another supporter is Ann Caulkins, publisher of The State newspaper in Columbia. "There's nothing we feel more passionate about than reading, education, literacy and the future for our young people," she said. "So when the idea for PAIRS came to us, this was something that the 15 publishers of the 16 daily newspapers could get around and enthusiastically endorse and want to help spearhead," Caulkins said.

"Who better than the newspapers to find out what programs are in existence in our communities, what they are doing, the best practices, and be able to share that information with other communities so that we can all benefit from the success of reading programs, mentoring and those teaching our young children?"

The EOC is an independent, non-partisan group made up of 17 educators, business leaders, legislators and parents who are appointed by the state Legislature to monitor and review the implementation of the state Education Accountability Act of 1998.

For more information, contact Dana Yow at the EOC office, Blatt Building, Suite 227, PO Box 11867, Columbia, SC 29211, phone 803-734-6164, fax 803-734-6167, e-mail danay@eoc.state.sc.us.

On the Net: www.scpairs.org.

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