Instructor Sybil Pruitt, standing, works with an inmate in the Davidson County jail’s computer lab.

-- Photo: Lyle Graves | Nashville Ledger

A smile jumps onto his face when Antonio Gooch is asked about the day he got his GED. The 22-year-old convict, in an orange jumpsuit, remembers being in his jail pod with about 60 other offenders when his teacher, Edward Marks, walked in and shouted Gooch’s name.

“Don’t worry, I’ll come to you,” Marks told his star pupil.

“And he was smiling and he shook my hand and said, ‘Congratulations!’ And I was like, “Hey everybody, I got my GED!”

The other guys burst into applause. Gooch called his mom to tell her the good news, and she spread the word to his relatives and friends.

“It was just great. I felt good. The whole day was great,” he says. “It was wonderful.”

Gooch, in Davidson County Sheriff’s Office custody on drug charges, hopes to take his GED and go to barber college. He eventually hopes to go to TSU and then Howard University to study architecture.

And the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office hopes to have many more success stories like Gooch’s. The DCSO – which helps about 80 offenders get GEDs each year – wants to double that number with the help of a new education software program called PLATO.

They are hopeful that that could happen because the online program allows inmates to keep going and not lose their place in GED education when they transfer from one facility to another.

“This allows you to pick up where you left off,” says Paul Mulloy, programs director for the Sheriff’s Office.

“That was one reason inmates would say, ‘[Forget] it, I ain’t doing GED. I have to start all over again. The hell with that.’”

The PLATO program – used in many higher-education facilities outside prisons and jails – also has more sophisticated graphics and teaching programs than the old program the DCSO began using in the late 1990s.

“Now we can say we have 21st Century, top-level educational software, and we’re comparable to school districts,” says Sybil Pruitt, a DCSO educator. “It’s a good thing.”

Edward Marks helps an inmate with the PLATO software system, a new learning tool the Sheriff’s Office hopes will help increase the number of inmates earning their GEDs while incarcerated.

-- Photo: Lyle Graves | Nashville Ledger

Jail computer techs are being very careful that offenders won’t have access to other online sites while working on the PLATO system.

So, while staffers are switching over to PLATO – and when the computers are down – the sheriff’s office goes back to good, old-fashioned classroom teaching.

The sheriff’s office got away from that in the 1990s because many inmates were hesitant to show ignorance in front of other inmates.

“If you can’t read, you’re considered an idiot, and that’s why a lot of people shut down. Any weakness can be exploited,” Mulloy says.

“Many folks have fourth grade reading levels, but no one knows that except the teacher, the student and the computer. Now I can focus and concentrate because I don’t have to worry about what everybody else is thinking.”

But two inmates told the Nashville Ledger that they prefer a teacher-classroom setting because they learn better that way.

Says Gooch: “I really feel like a group thing with a teacher reading off the paper was better for me. I bring it in better when somebody reads it to me rather than me trying to read it on a computer and have to think about the questions and answers.

Inmate Ileana Reyna, 22, a Mexico native in jail on drug charges, agrees.

“I like it more with a tutor. They can explain more,” she says. “A computer just tells you what you did wrong. It doesn’t have time to explain.”

And the human touch helps inmates stay motivated. Gooch says when his pending case got tough, he stopped going to GED classes.

“I even stopped eating, I just laid there all day,” Gooch says.

“But Dr. Marks, he stayed on me. At first it was frustrating, him waking me to come to class. ‘I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go.’ Later, I’m glad he did that, so that when I came in here, it’s not just wasted time. I came in here and made a big step in life.”

Still, both instructors Pruitt and Marks say that the PLATO system does a better job of teaching than the old software, and they have high hopes that PLATO will be more effective. And human tutors always will be part of the mix, constantly monitoring the computer labs.

And both point to success of any GED program.

National statistics show that at least two-thirds of offenders are back in jail within five years, but that only one-third of offenders who get GEDs are re-arrested.

Local stats bear that out. In 2006 in Davidson County jail, 30 female inmates got GEDs. Twelve of those have been back.

Only about 20 percent of inmates take advantage of education programs, but Sheriff’s Office staffers say it’s important to keep offering the programs.

“Why do we spend money? You know what? They’re coming back to your zip code and your community,” Mulloy says.

“I think jail’s a great place for people to reorganize. Don’t get us confused for bleeding hearts, because we’re not. But we’re in corrections, and that’s what the word means.”