Being a Person Dedicated to Quality has been a part of Nelson Agholor's life since he helped us open the very-first PDQ in Tampa nearly eight years ago. Agholor has since left Tampa to become an All-American wide receiver at USC and more recently a Super Bowl Champion with the Philadelphia Eagles, and continues to give back to the community in his hometown of Tampa and in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area.
Agholor hosted an awards ceremony on Friday, June 14 at the H.B. Wilson Family School in Camden for the top students throughout the district. Agholor honored the students who excelled at the highest levels as part of the Building Reading Muscles program, a year-long reading challenge with the Camden City School District. The partnership, along with award-winning PDQ restaurants, encouraged students to meet reading goals throughout the school year and included prizes, free food from PDQ and more.
Agholor honored nearly 140 students from 14 schools in the district, including the top five award winners: Jeffrey Vines (Coopers Poynt Elementary School), Christian Moss (Sharp Elementary School), Brazil Nesmith (Thomas H Dudley Elementary School), Julian Correa-Santiago (HB Wilson Family Elementary School) and Victoria Hernandez (Sharp Elementary School). The top five students had the highest combined diagnostic gain, pass rate, and time on task per grade level.
Overall the program reaped significant rewards throughout the 2018-19 school year. Using the i-Ready adaptive assessment that identifies students' strengths and weaknesses, measures growth, and supports data-driven differentiated instruction, the top 5 Camden City Public School students demonstrated the highest overall growth on the i-Ready assessment and, the highest overall time-on-task and the highest overall passing rate pass in i-Ready lessons for the 2018-2019 school year. Many Camden City Public School students have, over the past 3 years, shown gains in growth and grade level performance using i-Ready's Diagnostic and Instruction. Students earned coupons good for free PDQ food throughout the school year. The program reached 7,000 students in Kindergarten through 12th grade in 15 schools in Camden.
“The past year has been one of remarkable achievement for Camden that reflects the focus and hard work of our educators and our students,” said Katrina McCombs, Camden Schools Superintendent. “One integral element in our success has been our very purposeful implementation of the i-Ready digital program as a primary tool for supporting student growth in math and reading, using the diagnostic assessment to understand each student's needs and the online instruction and guidance to chart personalized learning paths for our learners.”
“Nelson is a Person Dedicated to Quality and former team member who continues to do incredible work in the community, and the success of this program in Camden is a prime example,” said PDQ CEO and Co-Founder Nick Reader. “Our PDQ team is extremely proud of today’s award winners, and all of the students who worked so hard during this school year to achieve their reading goals.”