By Caralee AdaHow Administrators Can Help Rescue Failing Readers
• Create a school wide consensus that helping low-achieving readers is a top priority.
• Thoughtfully examine test data to find ways to deliver language and content instruction simultaneously.
• Provide common planning time for teachers to communicate and work together to serve students.
• Weave reading instruction across the content areas, in addition to providing extra intensive instruction.
• Offer professional development to teachers on instruction for ELLs and the intervention approach in your school.
• Consider having the entire school screened and use the intervention strategies for all students, not just for those identified as needing reading help.
• Avoid labels for poor readers or placement in special education classes. Instead, encourage everyone to seek out reading support services, as needed.
• Form a team within the school to collaborate on reading intervention efforts.
Principal Yvonne Leimsider has supportive parents and a grant program that provides a computer for each of her 750 students at I.S. 204 Oliver Wendell Holmes Middle School in Long Island City, New York. But when she looked at the group of struggling readers who were sliding farther away from grade-level achievements, she knew she needed more.
Like many schools across the country, I.S. 204 has a growing population of English-language learners (one in five students) and an even higher proportion of students who read below grade level (one in three). After eight years at the school, the last three of which she's been principal, the achievement gap wasn't shrinking fast enough to satisfy her. The challenge Leimsider faces may not be unique, but her solution certainly is different.
Leimsider used two dramatic decisions to try to affect change. First, she put two teachers in every language arts class at Holmes. This allows the students to be split by ability and receive more personalized instruction. It also presents a serious budget and programming concern, but Leimsider is committed. "It's important enough that I'm willing to spend the money to hire extra personnel to reduce the ratio of teachers [to] students," she says.
The second change was how students learn. Holmes brought in System 44, Scholastic's computerized reading program for struggling students. The software allows students to progress at their own pace, allowing them to see their gains clearly and use that momentum to build achievement.
Providing time for plenty of professional development on the technology has been critical to the program's success. "You can put any system into the building, but if the teachers aren't comfortable with it, they seem to put it off to the side," Leimsider says. Also, every classroom in the building has a library and kids are required to read one book a week.
The result: Students at Holmes are showing substantial reading improvement. School-wide English Language Arts scores increased from 42 percent at grade level in 2007–08 to 65 percent the following year. With higher reading scores, students can apply to any high school in the area and feel comfortable they are reading on level, says Leimsider. "The students have high expectations. Now they know they can do it."
The problem with lagging readers in middle school and beyond is easy to diagnose—but too often there's no system in place to fix it. Being two grade levels behind by sixth grade is a recipe for disaster as students enter classes that are more about content and less about teaching the building blocks necessary for good reading. Teachers want to help but they need resources, says Carolyn Denton, associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. There is not as much research on adolescent literacy as on teaching beginning readers, but there is a new emphasis on secondary intervention, she says.
"These students come with a history. They've built up ineffective strategies and developed habits," says Denton. "They have all the emotional baggage of having experienced failure."
Without help, their spiral accelerates and they can develop a host of problems, such as a higher incidence of suicide, incarceration, and dropping out. To save these kids, educators need to make helping low-achieving readers a priority.
Complicating the reading problem is the growing population of students whose first language is not English.
How are schools serving the reading needs of this group? "Abysmally," says Kathleen Leos, president and CEO of the Global Institute for Language and Literacy Development in Washington, D.C. "The issue is not about good intentions. It's the system; it's not knowing what to do," she says. The burning question in the field for teachers is: How? Teachers want someone to show them how to effectively teach ELLs in their classroom, not just tell them, she adds.
To help ELLs, Leos says research shows that three areas have to be combined: teaching language development, teaching through content, and teaching at grade level. These students should be in the general classroom during core instructional time because students must learn language through the content—math, science, etc.—and teachers must have high expectations for all students.
Denton also maintains that successful reading intervention programs are well coordinated and purposeful and provide reading not only in language arts class but also across the curriculum. "Some schools get too carried away with too many strategies," says Denton. Her research concludes that it's most effective to give teachers a few strategies and show them how it impacts learning in content areas. The following two examples show that while struggling readers is a problem each district faces, the solutions can happen in elementary schools and in high school.
Finding Success One Student at a Time
Students lagging behind in reading have long been a concern to educators in Hall County, says Gerald Boyd, school improvement specialist for the county in Gainesville, Georgia. The rapid influx of Hispanic students in the past 15 years has increased the number of ELL students to 19 percent in the school system.
In the past, the county has tried a variety of approaches, from establishing transition programs for middle school reading to adding remediation courses to developing intervention programs to give at-risk and failing students intensive instruction to master reading skills.
In 2007, Hall County received a state grant of $2.6 million and spent it on language acquisition academies at six elementary schools. It set up technology labs with special software from Lexia Learning aimed at individualized instruction for students lagging in reading and math. The efforts proved successful with students, especially ELLs. "In a computer lab setting, students can work individually, depending on their level," says Boyd. Students could also access the Web-based program after school and from home.
In 2006, there were 11 Hall County schools on the "Needs Improvement" list. Now there is only one. "We have had good results," says Boyd, who attributes the gain to the technology-based reading intervention program and improving the system of identifying students in need of reading help. Additional instruction within regular classes has made the difference, says Boyd.
Extending RTI to High School
As hard as it is to catch up lagging middle school readers, the challenge is even greater if students have managed to make it to ninth grade with severe reading problems. Of the 750 students at Berkeley Springs High School in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, about 10 made it through the system without learning how to read.
In recent years, the failure rate has been as high as 30 percent for freshman. Principal George Ward decided to attack the problem at its source, so he ramped up the school's reading intervention programs in recent years—and it's working.
In 2001, the school had a "resource room" where students went when they were pulled out of the classroom for extra help. Then, a collaborative model was used in which special education teachers taught with general education teachers. The school had some limited success with reading, but overall, students were not showing much improvement.
The administration realized more was needed and the school instituted an intervention program for struggling readers. (By 2012, West Virginia will require that all high schools have an RTI program, and Berkeley Springs teachers will receive additional training and be fully aligned with others in the state.) With the district's new approach, achievement began to improve.
Moving away from special education labels, the school called the intervention "High School Survival" and reached out to any student who was struggling with reading in a content-specific way—getting help with reading in science or reading in social studies, for instance. When the focus was on special needs students, kids were reluctant to ask for help. But that changed with the new format. "Kids began to put forth effort and found a connection with an adult," says Ward.
The school staff realized they needed to look at what was driving the students' behavior and difficulty with reading. By looking at the whole child, they learned what was happening at home and built trust. When staff members began to work with kids emotionally one-on-one, students learned to cope while improving their academic skills, says Michael Marsh, a counselor at the high school.
At Berkeley Springs, an intervention team of motivated teachers and staff was assembled to tackle the issue of low-achieving students. "The key for us is communication and collaboration," says Ward. "We've transferred ownership to a team in the school, rather than one person. We shifted to the concept that we all have responsibilities." The team talks informally daily, but meets once a month as a group and once a marking period with the principal. This allows problems to be addressed rapidly by staff.
Berkeley Springs is seeing an impact of its efforts. In 2001, just 36 percent of graduating seniors went on to college. In 2008, about 85 percent did. Test scores are improving and the failure rate for freshmen is dropping. More kids are academically eligible for sports and an increasing number are involved in after-school activities. "Self-esteem follows achievement," says Ward. "There is a big difference in the culture of the school. There is an attitude that if we need help, we can get it. Kids feel that this is our school. There are people here who care about us. Kids are happy. They feel that they belong."
• Create a school wide consensus that helping low-achieving readers is a top priority.
• Thoughtfully examine test data to find ways to deliver language and content instruction simultaneously.
• Provide common planning time for teachers to communicate and work together to serve students.
• Weave reading instruction across the content areas, in addition to providing extra intensive instruction.
• Offer professional development to teachers on instruction for ELLs and the intervention approach in your school.
• Consider having the entire school screened and use the intervention strategies for all students, not just for those identified as needing reading help.
• Avoid labels for poor readers or placement in special education classes. Instead, encourage everyone to seek out reading support services, as needed.
• Form a team within the school to collaborate on reading intervention efforts.
Principal Yvonne Leimsider has supportive parents and a grant program that provides a computer for each of her 750 students at I.S. 204 Oliver Wendell Holmes Middle School in Long Island City, New York. But when she looked at the group of struggling readers who were sliding farther away from grade-level achievements, she knew she needed more.
Like many schools across the country, I.S. 204 has a growing population of English-language learners (one in five students) and an even higher proportion of students who read below grade level (one in three). After eight years at the school, the last three of which she's been principal, the achievement gap wasn't shrinking fast enough to satisfy her. The challenge Leimsider faces may not be unique, but her solution certainly is different.
Leimsider used two dramatic decisions to try to affect change. First, she put two teachers in every language arts class at Holmes. This allows the students to be split by ability and receive more personalized instruction. It also presents a serious budget and programming concern, but Leimsider is committed. "It's important enough that I'm willing to spend the money to hire extra personnel to reduce the ratio of teachers [to] students," she says.
The second change was how students learn. Holmes brought in System 44, Scholastic's computerized reading program for struggling students. The software allows students to progress at their own pace, allowing them to see their gains clearly and use that momentum to build achievement.
Providing time for plenty of professional development on the technology has been critical to the program's success. "You can put any system into the building, but if the teachers aren't comfortable with it, they seem to put it off to the side," Leimsider says. Also, every classroom in the building has a library and kids are required to read one book a week.
The result: Students at Holmes are showing substantial reading improvement. School-wide English Language Arts scores increased from 42 percent at grade level in 2007–08 to 65 percent the following year. With higher reading scores, students can apply to any high school in the area and feel comfortable they are reading on level, says Leimsider. "The students have high expectations. Now they know they can do it."
Defining the Problem
The problem with lagging readers in middle school and beyond is easy to diagnose—but too often there's no system in place to fix it. Being two grade levels behind by sixth grade is a recipe for disaster as students enter classes that are more about content and less about teaching the building blocks necessary for good reading. Teachers want to help but they need resources, says Carolyn Denton, associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. There is not as much research on adolescent literacy as on teaching beginning readers, but there is a new emphasis on secondary intervention, she says.
"These students come with a history. They've built up ineffective strategies and developed habits," says Denton. "They have all the emotional baggage of having experienced failure."
Without help, their spiral accelerates and they can develop a host of problems, such as a higher incidence of suicide, incarceration, and dropping out. To save these kids, educators need to make helping low-achieving readers a priority.
Complicating the reading problem is the growing population of students whose first language is not English.
How are schools serving the reading needs of this group? "Abysmally," says Kathleen Leos, president and CEO of the Global Institute for Language and Literacy Development in Washington, D.C. "The issue is not about good intentions. It's the system; it's not knowing what to do," she says. The burning question in the field for teachers is: How? Teachers want someone to show them how to effectively teach ELLs in their classroom, not just tell them, she adds.
To help ELLs, Leos says research shows that three areas have to be combined: teaching language development, teaching through content, and teaching at grade level. These students should be in the general classroom during core instructional time because students must learn language through the content—math, science, etc.—and teachers must have high expectations for all students.
Denton also maintains that successful reading intervention programs are well coordinated and purposeful and provide reading not only in language arts class but also across the curriculum. "Some schools get too carried away with too many strategies," says Denton. Her research concludes that it's most effective to give teachers a few strategies and show them how it impacts learning in content areas. The following two examples show that while struggling readers is a problem each district faces, the solutions can happen in elementary schools and in high school.
Finding Success One Student at a Time
Students lagging behind in reading have long been a concern to educators in Hall County, says Gerald Boyd, school improvement specialist for the county in Gainesville, Georgia. The rapid influx of Hispanic students in the past 15 years has increased the number of ELL students to 19 percent in the school system.
In the past, the county has tried a variety of approaches, from establishing transition programs for middle school reading to adding remediation courses to developing intervention programs to give at-risk and failing students intensive instruction to master reading skills.
In 2007, Hall County received a state grant of $2.6 million and spent it on language acquisition academies at six elementary schools. It set up technology labs with special software from Lexia Learning aimed at individualized instruction for students lagging in reading and math. The efforts proved successful with students, especially ELLs. "In a computer lab setting, students can work individually, depending on their level," says Boyd. Students could also access the Web-based program after school and from home.
In 2006, there were 11 Hall County schools on the "Needs Improvement" list. Now there is only one. "We have had good results," says Boyd, who attributes the gain to the technology-based reading intervention program and improving the system of identifying students in need of reading help. Additional instruction within regular classes has made the difference, says Boyd.
Extending RTI to High School
As hard as it is to catch up lagging middle school readers, the challenge is even greater if students have managed to make it to ninth grade with severe reading problems. Of the 750 students at Berkeley Springs High School in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, about 10 made it through the system without learning how to read.
In recent years, the failure rate has been as high as 30 percent for freshman. Principal George Ward decided to attack the problem at its source, so he ramped up the school's reading intervention programs in recent years—and it's working.
In 2001, the school had a "resource room" where students went when they were pulled out of the classroom for extra help. Then, a collaborative model was used in which special education teachers taught with general education teachers. The school had some limited success with reading, but overall, students were not showing much improvement.
The administration realized more was needed and the school instituted an intervention program for struggling readers. (By 2012, West Virginia will require that all high schools have an RTI program, and Berkeley Springs teachers will receive additional training and be fully aligned with others in the state.) With the district's new approach, achievement began to improve.
Moving away from special education labels, the school called the intervention "High School Survival" and reached out to any student who was struggling with reading in a content-specific way—getting help with reading in science or reading in social studies, for instance. When the focus was on special needs students, kids were reluctant to ask for help. But that changed with the new format. "Kids began to put forth effort and found a connection with an adult," says Ward.
The school staff realized they needed to look at what was driving the students' behavior and difficulty with reading. By looking at the whole child, they learned what was happening at home and built trust. When staff members began to work with kids emotionally one-on-one, students learned to cope while improving their academic skills, says Michael Marsh, a counselor at the high school.
At Berkeley Springs, an intervention team of motivated teachers and staff was assembled to tackle the issue of low-achieving students. "The key for us is communication and collaboration," says Ward. "We've transferred ownership to a team in the school, rather than one person. We shifted to the concept that we all have responsibilities." The team talks informally daily, but meets once a month as a group and once a marking period with the principal. This allows problems to be addressed rapidly by staff.
Berkeley Springs is seeing an impact of its efforts. In 2001, just 36 percent of graduating seniors went on to college. In 2008, about 85 percent did. Test scores are improving and the failure rate for freshmen is dropping. More kids are academically eligible for sports and an increasing number are involved in after-school activities. "Self-esteem follows achievement," says Ward. "There is a big difference in the culture of the school. There is an attitude that if we need help, we can get it. Kids feel that this is our school. There are people here who care about us. Kids are happy. They feel that they belong."
