Parents, educators and others appealed to the Little Rock School Board on Thursday to preserve and expand the district’s Reading Recovery program in which specially trained teachers work one-to-one with struggling first-grade readers at 13 schools.
Superintendent Dexter Suggs told the crowd Thursday that he will make a more detailed presentation next month on his plan for a revamped reading support program. That program in general will expand services to all 30 of the district’s elementary schools and serve six times the number of children who are now getting extra help with fundamental reading skills.
The new plan, already presented to the Reading Recovery teachers and elementary literacy coaches, will do away with one-to-one instruction in favor of a reading teacher working with groups of three to nine pupils at a time.
Suggs has said in interviews that the plan will not only treat all schools equitably but will also save the district almost $2 million a year by cutting the total number of 125 instructional coaching jobs - which includes the reading teachers - to 100. The district is seeking ways to trim costs in anticipation of the loss of about $37 million a year in state desegregation aid after the 2017-18 school year.
Suggs told the audience Thursday that of the 10 schools that made the greatest achievement gains in literacy on state tests last school year, only two had Reading Recovery teachers.
Jim Ross, a parent, told the School Board that the district should not get rid of “this Mercedes-Benz of a reading program for an untested second-hand program.”
He said he agreed with Suggs that the district’s reading program needs “a strong and fresh look as it has failed us systematically for years.”
“I agree with him that it needs to be expanded beyond the kids we now serve,” Ross said. “Why in the world are we in 13 of 30 schools? It’s a crime. Our reading program must reach into every grade and at every school, including the secondary schools.”
Reading Recovery provides 30 minutes of time per child. Any replacement program in which a teacher works with as many as nine children for 30 or 40 minutes, he said, could give each child about 3 minutes and 33 seconds of individual attention. He said that’s not adequate time.
“The Reading Recovery plan needs to be the central part, not the only part, but a central part of a new comprehensive reading plan,” he said.
Janet Behrend, a Reading Recovery trainer at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Center for Literacy, said the district needs to keep and expand Reading Recovery, which was brought to Arkansas from New Zealand more than two decades ago by Hillary Clinton, who was the state’s first lady at the time.
“Simply an extension of the core curriculum isn’t going to work,” Behrend said. “If the core curriculum was working for these children, they would not be behind.”
Behrend also cited the recognition Reading Recovery has received from the U.S. Department of Education, which awarded a $45 million grant nationally to expand Reading Recovery. That wouldn’t have happened if there wasn’t research showing the program’s effectiveness, she said.
“To replace a highly effective intervention with one that has no research on its effectiveness boggles the mind,” she said.
Joy Springer, an assistant to civil-rights attorney John Walker and a former desegregation monitor in the district, questioned whether district leaders had reviewed past evaluations of the Reading Recovery program and the elementary school literacy program in developing and justifying the components of a revamped reading support program.
Cathy Koehler, president of the the Little Rock Education Association union of district employees, proposed that the district keep the current Reading Recovery teachers and program in their present 13 schools and put the new program in the remaining 17 schools during the coming year, and then use an independent evaluator to assess the success of each.
Earlier Thursday, Suggs told reporters that Reading Recovery is an outstanding program of one-to-one instruction and that one-to one instruction in any subject - reading, math or basketball - is highly effective.
But he also said it’s a luxury, and it is not necessarily the “silver bullet or golden ticket” to educating children.
“In an urban district with 25,000 kids, it’s not do-able,” he said about the one-to-one instruction. “But we can’t use that as an excuse. We have got to find a solution. It’s my obligation and responsibility to educate all students in the Little Rock district.”
The final plan he intends to present to the School Board next month is an extension of the reading and writing instruction that is already in the classroom.
“We’re looking for a sustainable, systemic plan for educating our kids,” he said.
Reading specialists - one per elementary school - will meet with three to nine struggling readers in 30- to 40-minute blocks of time, resulting in those children getting instruction in class and in small groups, “a double dose” of literacy instruction, he said.
The district now has 17 Reading Recovery teachers working in 13 schools. Suggs said he hopes those 17 teachers - “some of the best reading teachers in the state” - will be among those that apply for the 30 new reading teacher jobs.
Asked why it’s necessary for those Reading Recovery teachers to apply for the jobs, Suggs said the job description has changed, requiring that the job opportunity be open to all who are interested.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 02/28/2014