Ready for reading

One in a series of editorials on the state's new early-education initiative

THERE ISN'T much that is a better for a 4-year-old than a two-person book club: time spent reading and talking over books with an attentive adult. This is an endearing image, but it's also a research-based strategy used by Jumpstart, a nonprofit organization in Boston that's kicking off an expansion into 26 Roxbury preschools today.

Jumpstart pairs 4-year-olds in preschools with college students for eight months of the school year. The child and the college student meet twice a week, and the students are trained to use the ''dialogic reading method," which blends reading out loud with asking children about the book and responding in ways that spark conversations to build language, literacy, social, and imaginative skills. College students also spend time in the preschool classrooms as an extra resource for teachers.

Founded in 1993, Jumpstart is headquartered in Boston but operates in 24 states and Washington, D.C. Expanding in Roxbury -- reaching hundreds of children -- is a chance to prove that more reading time can benefit an entire community. It's a smaller version of the approach that educator Geoffrey Canada is taking in New York with the Harlem Children's Zone: surround children in a defined area with rich resources.

Jumpstart tries to close social gaps. Children of all ages are ready to learn, according to a study done by Rutgers University. But while ''disadvantaged children learn just as much in the first years of school as others," they write, ''they start school so far behind that many are soon branded failures."

Thirty Jumpstart college students work at Jamaica Plain Head Start, where staffers try to enroll the neediest children and where English, Spanish, and Somali are spoken. ''The children all love the special attention," says the program director, Joyce Tanner. Jumpstart college students come during winter and summer breaks to do extra work.

The college students are paid using federal work study funds, part of their financial aid packages, so the program doesn't need new money, just more volunteers. Jumpstart's CEO, Rob Waldron, says some of the students will become teachers, adding needed members to the ranks. Currently 2,100 college students work with 7,875 Jumpstart students nationwide. Waldron wants to employ 20,000 college students and estimates that 10 percent could become early-education professionals. This could prove crucial to Massachusetts now that legislators are building a universal system of early education care.

Great change could come from simply asking 4-year olds if they've read any good books lately.