Public school aims to help middle, high schoolers who struggle to read
Kaylee, an eighth-grader in a light blue hoodie, read a list of words, one by one, to teacher Jessica Thurby. She stumbled on a few: Debate came out “deblate,” sacred turned into “secret,” and defend became “define.”
The pair went over the missed words. As Kaylee took another stab at “sacred,” she said, “It looked like the word ‘scared.’ ”
“It did,” Thurby said. “So, our brain automatically guessed. We’re trying to get out of that, remember?”
For students who reach middle school without strong reading skills, these misread words turn into roadblocks that impede understanding and make it harder to learn. A new program at Alameda International Junior/senior High School in Lakewood seeks to help.
Launched last fall, Bright MINDS provides intensive reading help to 14 seventh- and eighth-graders with dyslexia or other reading challenges. School leaders plan to add a grade every year until Bright MINDS runs through 12th grade — with the ultimate hope that it will serve as a model for other schools in the 78,000-student Jeffco district and across the state.
Bright MINDS unfolds at a time when Colorado education leaders are keenly focused on improving early elementary reading instruction, with efforts including new training requirements for kindergarten through third-grade teachers, and stricter guardrails on reading curriculum. But aside from a modest literacy grant program, state policymakers have given scant attention to the tens of thousands of secondary students who struggle with reading.
Students who can’t read proficiently face long-term consequences. They are at greater risk of dropping out, earning less as adults and becoming involved in the criminal justice system.
Leaders at the state education department say their role in addressing older students who can’t read well is minimal because there’s no law equivalent to the 2012 READ Act, which mandates help for struggling young readers.
“Because there isn’t a statute similar to the READ Act, there is not a structure around literacy [in grades] four through 12,” said Floyd Cobb, executive director of teaching and learning at the Colorado Department of Education.
“That responsibility is largely that of the districts.”
Confidence killer
Dyslexia, a learning disability that affects 15% to 20% of the population, can be uniquely soul-crushing for students, making routine school tasks stressful and embarrassing.
In elementary school, Elise, a 13-year-old Bright MINDS student, stuttered when she read aloud and was called stupid by other kids because she was a slow reader and poor speller.
The seventh-grader, who has trouble hearing the sounds that make up words, remembers finally memorizing the word “people” because her teacher got so frustrated with her.
“I memorized a lot of words that way because I was scared of her getting mad at me,” she said.
Even after students are identified with dyslexia, problems can persist when they don’t get the right kind of help. Brody, a Bright MINDS student, was diagnosed with dyslexia and qualified for special education services in fifth grade. But his mother Kristina Trudeau said he still wasn’t making progress at his Adams County school.
He was reading at a kindergarten level, recognizing only basic words like “cat” and “dog.” At one point, she discovered the reading program Brody’s teachers were using wasn’t recommended for students with dyslexia.
Trudeau has seen the real-life impact of Brody’s reading difficulties. One night, she found him crying alone in the laundry room. He’d planned to fix himself dinner, but couldn’t read the directions on a package of pot stickers.
“It just broke my heart,” Trudeau said. “He thinks differently. He learns differently. He deserves to have those needs met.”
How big is the problem?
A dearth of data makes it hard to quantify how many middle and high school students struggle with reading in Colorado.
More than half of Colorado’s middle school students scored below proficient on state literacy tests in 2019, the most recent year that sixth-, seventh- and eighthgraders took the test. It’s a blunt measure, however, in part because the state doesn’t separate reading and writing results.
Many students with reading struggles are never flagged because their problems aren’t severe enough in the early grades or they mask weaknesses with advanced vocabulary, well-developed verbal skills or other compensation strategies.
That’s what happened to Collin, a lacrosse-loving seventh-grader who lives in the Jeffco district and is enrolled in the Bright MINDS program.
His mother Leslie Dennis said up through second grade Collin could take reading tests using a tool that read text passages to him. Her son always did well on the tests, but in third grade he had to read the passages himself and his scores plummeted. Collin only got help with the ability to read with speed, accuracy and appropriate expression.
It wasn’t enough. Collin got average grades throughout elementary school, but still stumbled over words, hated reading aloud and called himself “dumb.”
Dennis knew there was a bigger problem, but said, “I couldn’t pinpoint what it was.”
Finally, in fifth grade, on the advice of another mom, she got her son privately tested and found out he had dyslexia.
Equity and access
Bright MINDS — the second half of which stands for Multisensory Intensive Dyslexia Support — was the brainchild of Jeffco’s former Superintendent Jason Glass, said Todd Ognibene, Alameda’s school psychologist and the Bright MINDS coordinator. Other administrators forged ahead with the plan after Glass left in 2020.
“I was jumping for joy that this was finally something that the district … recognized the need for,” said Ognibene.
Alameda, where nearly three-quarters of students qualify for subsidized meals, was chosen to house the program because of its central location. Ognibene and the school’s Assistant Principal Andrea Arguello designed Bright MINDS with Thurby, a special education teacher, and Sarah Richards, an English as a second language teacher whose daughter has dyslexia.
To ensure accessibility, they don’t require a dyslexia diagnosis, which can cost hundreds of dollars to obtain through private testing. Instead, the team screens applicants from Jeffco and other Denver metro districts for characteristics of dyslexia or related reading problems.
Finding a structured dyslexia program inside a public school is a welcome surprise for many families. Private schools with similar services are pricey.
Some parents tell Ognibene, “This was more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack.”
Students in the program get 80 minutes a day of reading instruction.
About half get the most intensive help, using a state-approved intervention program called Wilson Reading System. The other half, whose reading skills are somewhat stronger, use “Just Words,” another Wilson program.
Bright MINDS is still in its infancy, but early results are promising. From fall to winter, participating students made 68% more growth in reading than would typically be expected.
“I’m thankful … It’s exactly what I’ve been fighting for,” said Trudeau, Brody’s mom. “You shouldn’t be going in debt $30,000 a year just so your kid can have an appropriate education.”