Ending of literacy program questioned
Both trustees, teachers in Fort Bend ISD raise concerns about new reading plan
Fort Bend Independent School District trustees have questioned the district’s decision to end a literacy program.
The program, called Reading Recovery, is a short-term, intensive intervention for stu- dents who struggle to learn to read and has been at district elementary schools since 1994.
“What the board is saying is be careful, because we’ve watched when big change has happened quickly,” school board president Grayle James said at a Feb. 8 board meeting. “Sometimes we flounder, and we can’t lose any of those students, and we can’t let a year go by and first-graders not learn how to read.”
At that meeting, the district presented its decision to replace Reading Recovery to trustees only to keep them informed; the board does not have authority to vote on the change, Superintendent Charles Dupre said at the Feb. 8 meeting.
But trustees still recommend that the district pilot the newprogram before launching it at every elementary school.
Dupre said he and his staff are working to provide board members with additional information. As of presstime, James said the district has not told her when they will address the topic again.
Dupre said would consider the board’s concerns but wants to get the new program in place quickly.
“We feel an urgency to meet the needs of these students,” Dupre said. “This is not going from something that is stellar to something that is zero. This is going from working well for a finite number of students to a broadbased plan.”
At the Feb. 8 meeting, trustee Dave Rosenthal said, “My concern is always that we’re looking at new models and we get rid of things that work,” which prompted applause from the nearly 50 Fort Bend ISD Reading Recovery teachers who attended the meeting to oppose ending the program.
Reading Recovery teachers rolled eyes and shook heads as Kristi Corbitt, the district’s director of elementary curriculum, presented the new plan to help struggling readers, which the district intends to implement at the start of the 2016-17 school year.
In contrast to Reading Recovery, where teachers meet with first-grade students individually for 30 minutes a day for about 20 weeks, the new plan would have literary intervention specialists work with small groups of students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Instead of working with four students per day, as Reading Recovery teachers do, the specialist would work with 56 daily.
The specialist would also coach general-education teachers to improve reading and writing instruction.
“It’s not going to work,” one teacher said under her breath during the presentation.
Reading recovery teachers argue that the one-on-one time between the student and the teacher is critical and that the program benefits students.
“It meets the needs of the lowest-achieving firstgraders and gives them what they need to become strong reader and writers,” said Cynthia Bogle, one of Fort Bend ISD’s three reading recovery coordinators.
The district decided to replace Reading Recovery after reviewing its early learning literacy program as a whole, which includes several different interventions. The primary one is Reading Recovery. Before this review, the most recent was conducted in 2005.
The new plan fits the district’s new goals of reaching more students who might have trouble learning to read and providing guidance for general education teachers on how to help them. It will also cost substantially less, Corbitt said.
“I don’t want to dispar- age Reading Recovery,” Corbitt said. “Reading Recovery has served us well since 1994, obviously; so I think the goal of this program is to expand services and reach more students.”
Reading Recovery costs about $4,247 per student and serves 864 students per year, while the new model would cost about $862 per student and serve 2,520 each year, Corbitt said.
The annual cost of the new program would be about $2.2 million, compared to the current $3.7 million annual cost of Reading Recovery, Corbitt said.
The new program would replace the 108 Reading Recovery positions with 47 literary in- tervention specialists, but the district does not plan to reduce its staff and is encouraging Reading Recovery teachers to apply for the new positions, Corbitt said.