Monday, June 12, 2000
Reading exam doubles CPS summer school
Kids who fail 3rd-grade test must enroll
By Mara H. Gottfried
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Todaythousands of Cincinnati children will trade tag in the park and a splash in the pool for reading lessons in the classroom.
Forty-two percent of Cincinnati Public Schools' second-graders and 20 percent of its third-graders will be in summer school, thanks to the district's new reading guarantee — and it's not optional.
The number of students attending traditional summer school remains steady. But with the addition of the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, CPS summer school enrollment more than doubles.
Students in the second and third grades who did not pass the state's reading proficiency test are now required to attend summer school. Third-graders will be retested at the end of the summer, and those who still do not pass may not be promoted to the fourth grade without an exemption from their teacher and principal.
The district wants to get a head start before the state-mandated Fourth Grade Reading Guarantee goes into effect in the 2001-2002 school year, said Kathleen Ware, associate superintendent.
“Reading is really the basis for learning all other subjects,” she said. “Literacy is the core of the students' work, especially at the primary level.”
The district has increased the number of schools offering summer school programs from 19 last year to about 40.
The reading guarantee is not meant to be punitive, educators say.
“Some students simply need more time to meet reading standards,” Ms. Ware said. “It's a fallacy to think they can all meet the same standards in the same amount of time.”
Under the state's Fourth Grade Reading Guarantee, students can take the test twice during the school year and must attend summer school if they are not reading at their grade level. After summer school, students are retested. If they still don't pass, they may not be advanced to the fifth grade, depending on the decision of their principal and teacher.
Gov. Bob Taft was not available for comment on Cincinnati's plan, but spokesman Scott Milburn said the
governor thinks reading is crucial.
“You're not doing students any favors to move them along if they're not qualified,” Mr. Milburn said. “Anything that individual school districts can do to help the reading skills of their students, the governor supports.”
Other school districts, such as Chicago, have had success mandating summer school. The Chicago Public Schools' program to end social promotion began four years ago and includes math and reading components. The current summer school program includes first-, second-, third-, sixth- and eighth-graders. In the 430,000-student district, 25,000 are mandated to attend summer school this year, said Cozette M. Buckney, the district's chief executive officer.
A 1999 study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research found that many more students were meeting promotion standards in reading and math than had been before the new policy. In 1995, 4 percent of at-risk sixth-graders met the promotion crite ria in reading, which rose to 34 percent in 1997. In 1995, 55 percent of all third-graders met the criteria, compared with 77 percent in 1997, according to the study.
Students' progress in Chicago was inconsistent between schools after the first year.
“We realized that the curriculum was not uniform in the schools,” Ms. Buckney said. “Some students had materials and some didn't. We decided to standardize the process to provide a structured curriculum for each teacher.”
And that has made all the difference in Chicago's yearly success, Ms. Buckney said.
Cincinnati students will spend five weeks in summer school, until July 14, and transportation is provided for students in the Third Grade Reading Guarantee program who live more than a mile from their neighborhood school.
Since the reading guarantee is mandatory, those students who don't attend will be considered truants, as they would during the regular school year. Parents and children could be cited to court.
Although the program is required for second- and third-grade students, first-graders whose reading skills fall below grade level have the option of attending if their teacher recommends it.
During the summer session, nine schools will use a pilot program, Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Success (DIBELS), for teachers to evaluate students' progress each day.
“We don't want to spend five weeks doing something that's not meeting a certain child's needs,” said Lisa Campbell, a teacher and summer school principal at Vine Elementary School, one of the schools using DIBELS.
But one educational expert warns that daily evaluation might be excessive.
“If you have too much evaluation, children feel threatened. They feel that they can't make a mistake,” said Alan Frager, a Miami University professor who teaches courses on the diagnosis and remediation of reading difficulties. He is also the director of the university's summer reading clinic.
Dr. Frager stresses that there are several factors, both in the schools and in the children themselves, necessary for success in summer school reading programs.
Schools must provide books that are appropriate to students' individual reading levels, he said. Teachers should tell their students that they have the ability to learn, which Dr. Frager calls “success orientation.”
On the part of the students, Dr. Frager said a certain mind-set is necessary.
“If the students think, "Well, I better do this to move on to the next grade,' they're going to bemore motivated, and motivation will lead to success,” he said.
Making sure children view schools as a safe place is necessary to allow them to take more risks in their reading.
“Learning to read is a risk-taking activity, so children need to feel that it's OK to fail and that it's OK to make a mistake,” Dr. Frager said.
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