U.S. Dream Academy Adds Indianapolis Learning Center, With Help of USA Funds

High-school dropouts account for 80 percent of America’s inmate population.

Of the 1.2 million students who will fail to graduate from high school this year, most are members of minority groups.

To help change these statistics, and to make a positive impact on the learning environment at John Marshall Middle School in Indianapolis, the U.S. Dream Academy is opening a learning center at the school.

At a Nov. 12 press conference, U.S. Dream Academy founder and CEO Wintley Phipps announced the center’s opening. USA Funds^® and OneAmerica will provide financial support for the opening. Indiana’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and Eastern Star Church in Indianapolis also are supporting the program.  

Phipps, a Grammy-nominated gospel artist, founded the U.S. Dream Academy in 1998. U.S. Dream Academy offers programs that help address the cycle of intergenerational incarceration and school failure among children.

The academy’s learning centers provide online, values-based, interactive, tutorial and remedial after-school-education programs. The programs target children of prisoners and those children in danger of school failure due to a lack of proper academic, social and financial support. Children in the program work each day on areas in which they are struggling academically, and meet with their individual mentor once a week after school.

Teachers and principals refer students who need assistance to the learning centers.

“We look for a prescription to the problem,” says Phipps. “If a child gets a poor grade, there’s no prescription on how to solve the problem. We use assessment tools to determine where a child needs help and then work with that child to bring the child up to proficiency.”

John Marshall Middle School’s vision of education is to take at-risk students and transform them into students who have opportunities. Each student will have an academic plan from the student's first year on, and students and parents will be asked to commit to that plan.

“IPS is in the midst of a revolution that is changing the way we educate and meet the needs of our youngsters,” says Eugene White, superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools, the district in which John Marshall Middle School is located. “We can’t make revolutionary changes in a vacuum. These kinds of collaborations are critical to stemming the dropout crisis and ensuring all of our young people have the ability to be successful adults.”

Phipps started singing in prisons and saw that many of those prisoners were young African- American men. Two-thirds of men in prison come from families with a family member in prison, or families with a long history of incarceration. The goal of the U.S. Dream Academy is to break the cycle by increasing the number of caring, loving adults through mentoring, and interactive tutorial and academic support.

“Doing well in school creates a protective barrier,” says Phipps. “This center is a convergence of community, corporate and private sectors and a school system all working to truly implement change. This center will be a role model for the city and state.”

During the past four years, USA Funds has awarded $500,000 to support the U.S. Dream Academy — including the $100,000 leadership grant to support the opening of the new learning center in Indianapolis.

The U.S. Dream Academy, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary next year, operates nine other centers in the following areas:

• Baltimore.
• Washington, D.C.
• East Orange, N.J.
• Memphis, Tenn.
• Salt Lake City.
• Houston.
• Orlando, Fla.
• Philadelphia.
• Los Angeles.

“We are impressed with the results that Wintley and the Dream Academy are producing,” says Carl Dalstrom, USA Funds president and CEO. “We are very excited to have this asset in our hometown.”