“Nearly 70 percent of inner-city and rural fourth graders cannot read even at a basic level. Imagine that: in the greatest, wealthiest nation the world has ever known, nearly seven out of every 10 fourth graders in big cities and rural areas cannot read. It is our greatest failure as a nation. It is our greatest failure as a people. And we must do something about it.” – Ron Paige, U.S. Secretary of Education

Faced with this and other grim statistics, a group of UCSB graduates are participating in a program that strives to counteract this educational disadvantage by confronting the endemic teacher shortage in the United States. UCSB alumni Melissa Pe