Expanding the Crusade for Literacy

From 2016 to 2024, Peter Meyer ran an in-school journalism program in the Hudson City School District called School Life News. The program showed measurable results in improving students' literacy skills, but in 2024, former HCSD superintendent Juliette Pennyman put an end to the program. 

"Mr. Peter" bidding farewell to fifth-graders at Montgomery C.  Smith in March 2024

Now, Meyer has launched a "Race to Literacy" campaign. offering his School Life News program to other area school districts. The press release that follows explains.

School Life Media (SLM), the 15-year-old non-profit dedicated to school improvement, and its popular and successful in-school literacy program, School Life News (SLN) have launched a “race to literacy” postcard campaign, offering school districts within a 40-mile radius of SLM’s home in Hudson, NY, a chance to help boost their students’ State English Language Arts (ELA) grade level proficiency scores. The campaign reached out to 40 schools with grade-level proficiency levels of 40 percent and below, says Sarah Nolan, SLM’s Director of Social Media, who compiled the list using State education data. 

“We reached out to the schools with drawings by local artist Bobby Atwell, who creates his own literacy lessons for his grandkids,” says SLM Board president and Hudson native John Cody, who has been on the board since its inception in 2012. “For our postcards he has a racecar made of #2 pencils speeding across the Higher Test Scores finish line.”

Both SLM and SLN are the brainchild of Peter Meyer, a former News Editor of Time and Life magazines, reporter and Manuscript Editor at Harvard’s Education Next, and a former member of Hudson’s Board of Education. 

“I tried to merge the best of our curricular thinkers, like content guru E.D. Hirsch (“the more you know, the more you can know”),” says Meyer, with what he thought were the best practices for hands-on learning: journalism. “With much new research and interest in how young minds work,” concludes Meyer, “it turns out that journalism is one of the best classroom exercises to build working memory, which is the engine of all learning.” 

SLN, which trains teachers in using its unique program, has been especially successful at making students “better readers,” with over 3,000 students–third through ninth grades–taking some or part of SLN’s comprehensive and detailed 20+ lesson program since 2016. “One fifth grade class (150 students) raised its ELA scores by 11 points,” boasts Meyer.  

“We saw real growth in the students’ ability to write non-fiction text,” says Mark Brenneman, principal of MC Smith Elementary School in Hudson. “SLN staff’s dedication and caring for our students made this program a complete success.” Says former fifth grade teacher Megan Sullivan, "My students were more eager to write and more attentive to details around them and in texts. Teaching students to be journalists is incredibly valuable as they grow as writers and imaginative learners."  

“The global reach of journalism’s interests and applications,” says Meyer, “has allowed us to access our children’s insatiable curiosity about, and interest in, anyone or thing. Popular assignments for these junior journalists include `an interview with my shoe,’ a press conference with Tate the barber, and a close reading of a New York Times story about making robotic stick bugs.”   

“SLM delivers evidence-based instruction on gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information,” concludes recently retired Hudson superintendent Maria Suttmeier. “The program gained strong support and respect from our teachers.” 

Words to Learn By 

“Learn to read, you will be forever free." —Frederick Douglass  

"The best education for the best is the best education for us all."  

—Robert M. Hutchins, President, University of Chicago (1929-1945)

“Excellence does not happen by accident.”  —Aristotle