Dyslexia battled; Bancroft, St. Peter lead efforts.

AuthorReis, Jacqueline
PositionLocal

Byline: Jacqueline Reis

WORCESTER -- A class that was small even by private school standards met recently in a fashionably appointed classroom at Bancroft School.

"What are some of the family sounds we know?'' asked teacher Laura Hamel.

"Ing, king,'' responded one of the three second-grade students in front of her.

"Ank, tank,'' said Charlotte Barrett.

"Pink, ink,'' said Benjamin Condon.

"Unk, trunk,'' said Charlotte.

The three took turns reading a book with Ms. Hamel, and at times turning to sound charts in the room for help.

In a fifth-grade classroom upstairs, seven students read part of a book with teacher Joyce Campion and broke down longer words like "evasive.''

The classes are part of the Hope Graham Program, a specialized program Bancroft started this fall. It is named after a former head of Bancroft's Lower School and is open to students in Grades 1-8 with dyslexia and other language-based learning differences. The students spend some of their time in specialized classrooms beside their regular "companion'' classrooms, and the rest of their day with their peers at Bancroft.

Bancroft's decision to create such a special program within a traditional private school is rare in Central Massachusetts. Eagle Hill School in Hardwick focuses exclusively on teaching students with language-based learning differences and diagnoses such as attention deficit disorder.

St. Peter Central Catholic School in Worcester, a parochial school, has had a strong reading intervention program for such students for more than 20 years, but participants, while spending part of their day in support classes, are not considered part of a separate program.

Bancroft's Hope Graham falls somewhere in between, both in terms of how separate its students are and the price of enrollment. Students in Hope Graham spend part of their day in specialized classrooms and the rest with their Bancroft peers and pay $8,000 more than other Bancroft students (for a total of $31,700 for Grades 1-5 and $34,900 for Grades 6-8), but that's still less than Eagle Hill's rate for day students. St. Peter, on the other hand, charges everyone the same price: $4,475, according to its website.

Bancroft started the Hope Graham Program not only to attract new families but to keep currently enrolled families there, said Hope Graham Director Jyoti Datta, who is also head of Bancroft's Lower School.

"It's almost the next logical step for us as a school, because we do have students with language-based...

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