GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS IN THE READING SKILLS REPORTS
’Tis the season … for the release of reading scores through the National Assessment of Education Progress, Common Core/ Smarter Balanced, and Program for International Student Assessment.
These three reports hit our community at almost the same time.
Internationally, 20% of U.S. 15-year-olds have not mastered the reading skills that are expected of fifthgraders. More locally, 33% of fourth-graders in the San Diego Unified School District read below a basic level. New Smarter Balanced scores show that 46% of fourth-graders in the district did not meet the standard for language arts.
While these reports are disheartening, there’s good news, too, and some of it is in our own back yard:
At the same time that adults in the city of Chula Vista are ranked among the least literate in our region, Chula Vista Elementary School District’s (CVESD) students are showing high academic performance.
While 68% of fourth graders in the neighboring South Bay Union School District are not meeting the Smarter Balanced language arts standard, this figure is just 34% for the CVESD.
The district has succeeded, in part, through strategic investments in staffing. It provides resource teachers for struggling students, social workers for foster youth and psychologists for disadvantaged students. The district is also credited with offering a well-planned, well-staffed bilingual education program.
Some programs defy doomsday statistics.
The Words Alive program puts a high value on motivation and spending more time on reading. Words Alive provides inspirational reading opportunities to more than 3,000 toddlers, teens and families in San Diego.
Many of the children being served face homelessness, poverty or teen pregnancy or are affected by their engagement in the juvenile justice system.
Regardless, these students are reading.
Rachael Orose, Executive Director, Words Alive, says, “66% of the families we serve now report having a routine for looking at books at home. One hundred percent of our elementary school teachers report that their students showed improvement in reading. Almost half of our teens rated themselves as good or great readers; three times as many students now rate reading as a good, or great, way to spend time. These figures are documentation of powerful, life-altering reading habits.”
At Euclid Avenue and Market Street in San Diego, the Diamond Educational Excellence Partnership (DEEP) has mobilized dozens of partners, including five elementary schools, all committed to improving reading outcomes for children in southeast San Diego before they reach fourth grade.
Says Gina Gianzero, the executive director of DEEP, “We are addressing an array of issues both inside and outside schools that contribute to the third-grade reading challenge. This critical support is focused on families before children enter kindergarten, on educators during the school day, and on children through extended learning opportunities after the school day and during the summer.”
From Reach Out and Read, Tara Milbrand, the associate director of American Academy of Pediatrics, CA3, says, “When parents bring their babies to our pediatricians for physical check-ups, they learn about the growing brain and the important role that they, as parents, play in their child’s education. At these visits, parents receive read-aloud tips and a new book to take home to read with their child. The children who participate in this program are read to more often and have higher language scores than other children from similar socio-economic status.”
Strategic resourcing, partnerships and simple innovations are paying off.
These programs, all but one that is directly affiliated with the San Diego Council on Literacy, are serving as a safety network for children who are at-risk for not emerging as readers. The local council’s network of 28 programs are defying the odds every day, united in a shared vision of literacy for residents of all ages.
Lasting success in enhancing quality of life still requires a village. So let’s remember to be fair to our teachers and school administrators.
They love their jobs and they love their students. In return, we give them students who lack exposure to words and print and students with chronic illnesses, poor school attendance, funding inequities or empty family histories of high school graduation or college attendance, and young people who are living with social-emotional challenges. It’s not a good list.
However, we should not be intimidated by these circumstances. With the right interventions, we are overcoming poverty, ZIP codes and other overwhelming matters.
Now, more than over, we need to replicate success and apply it on varying scales. With a shared vision, passion, skills, resources and planning, we can overcome anything.
In a world where we steal ideas from everywhere, let us be copycats of this success.
’Tis the season, every day, for practices that make reading happen, everywhere.
Let’s remember to be fair to our teachers and school administrators. They love their jobs and they love their students.
is chief executive officer for the San Diego Council on Literacy.