DECATUR - Five-year-old Bailey McGlasson had no trouble solving most of the 26 rhyming riddles she heard, one for each letter of the alphabet.

She and her classmates at New Horizon Family & Child Development Center piped up with a steady stream of answers such as "Giraffe!" and "Kangaroo!" and "Moon!" as York Powers read "It Begins With an A" by Stephanie Calmenson.

A copy of that book also went home this weekend with Bailey and more than 200 other children in the Anna Waters Head Start program who will start kindergarten this fall. Each was accompanied by a letter inviting parents to read it and do a related activity with their children for a chance to win a LeapPad Learning System.

It's all part of a continuing effort to make sure youngsters starting school are ready to do the work.

That effort and others aimed at raising the achievement of students attending Decatur public schools are starting to pay off, according to progress reports made Thursday at the Madden Arts Center to the Decatur Area Education Coalition and its community roundtable.

About 80 people listened as Powers, hired as the community's kindergarten readiness coordinator a year ago, and Gloria Davis, who became superintendent of the Decatur School District in 2006, outlined their accomplishments.

Powers said 667 of Decatur's 772 kindergarteners this year received a developmental screening before school started, compared to 494 incoming kindergarteners the year before.

Out of the 186 found not to be ready for kindergarten, he said 155 received help by attending the school district's summer school or experiencing the "Preparing For Success" curriculum, developed by the Community Foundation of Decatur/Macon County, in their child care setting, neighborhood park or home.

Powers said he also contacted the families of the target children monthly, "just to be a friendly face and a resource for parents that they didn't have before."

He added that testing done shortly after school started showed that at least 83 of those children achieved at least one of three benchmarks incoming kindergarteners are expected to meet.

Davis presented numbers showing that the percentages of Decatur students meeting or exceeding state learning goals increased in reading and in math from the 2005-06 school year to 2006-07, not only for the total enrollment, but also for key subgroups such as white students, black students, those in special education and those who are economically disadvantaged.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act required 55 percent of all students and subgroups of students to meet goals in 2007, a target the school district still missed in reading for black children and low-income students and in reading and math for low-income students.

"We have shown growth," Davis said. "Is it where we want it to be? No, but the myth that we're not improving is just that: a myth."

Among improvements Davis listed were the district's new student services department, the placement of teaching assistants in all kindergarten and first-grade classrooms, increased graduation requirements, the new "School After School" at the middle and high schools and a proposed gifted education center.

Lucy Murphy, executive director of the community foundation, said the education coalition has hired Joe Allen as program director and is close to hiring a project manager to help make the coalition's vision of making Decatur the most educated community in the state a reality.

Walt Hupe, general manager of Caterpillar Inc.'s Decatur plant and chairman of the coalition's steering committee, said there are several candidates and committee members are excellent.

"We've got a really strong team," Hupe said. "All of us have our hearts, our minds and our souls into this. We're really going to make a difference."

However, in response to a question from Barb Beck, an operations manager with AmerenIP, Jay Connor, chief executive officer of The Collaboratory for Community Support, said the momentum to improve education levels is in the hands of the people who chose to attend Thursday's meeting and be part of the coalition's community roundtable.

"Without you, everything we do is just programs and institutions," Connor said. "It's not the community."

Theresa Churchill can be reached at tchurchill@herald-review.com or 421-7978.