PEAK Award Reading Program raises achievement, makes all teachers specialists

By Madelynn Coldiron

Staff Writer

Theresa Humes braced herself for the reading problems she was sure her son, Alex, would encounter in the first grade.

A student in Hardin County Schools since he was 3, Alex was always below grade level and struggled with reading and letter sounds. "He would become increasingly frustrated at home and would cry for hours because he didn't want to do his homework," Humes said. "I worked with him continuously but he just couldn't get it."

But within a week of starting first grade, Alex suddenly was excited about reading, demanding that his mother duplicate at home some of the exercises he was doing in school. He's now reading at grade level.

"As a parent, my heart shines when Alex reads to me," his mother said.

The difference between the old Alex and the new Alex can be summed up in two words: Literacy First.

The reading reform process was implemented last year in many Hardin County elementary schools and has already shown positive results.

Here are two more words to sum up its success: PEAK Award.

The reading program is the latest honoree to receive KSBA's PEAK (Public Education Achieves in Kentucky) Award. The award singles out a program that improves student achievement and thereby helps promote public education in Kentucky.

Literacy First has three goals:

To make sure 85-90 percent of students in the program for three full years will be reading on grade level by the end of the third grade.
To provide intensive professional development that will make every elementary teacher a reading specialist.
To decrease the district's minority achievement gap.

The program initially involved grades K-2 in six of the district's 12 elementary schools. This year, it has expanded to include one more school and grades 3-5 in the six original schools.

"This is more of a reading reform process," explained Ron Bryan, associate superintendent for instruction. "There are no textbooks for it. You use whatever reading materials you have already."

The Hardin County schoolboard decided to go with the Literacy First reform when it made literacy the district's instructional priority in its strategic plan.

"Obviously it's been proven over and over and over that before a child can learn he needs to learn to read, so you should put reading first," explained board Chairman J.R. Cardin.

What teachers get

The teachers in their first year of Literacy First get five extra days of professional development in reading instruction. Schools have the leeway to decide whether those days are part of, or in addition to, regular professional development days.

A Literacy First consultant - the district has contracted for two - visits each teacher for a total of six days during the school year to observe, model lessons and help plan. In their second year, the teachers get three additional days of training and continued visits from the consultant. At the end of three years, all the teachers involved will be reading specialists.

In addition, each participating school must name a literacy resource specialist, funded through Title I. The school's principal, who is required to spend the equivalent of one hour a day in classrooms during the reading block, also must get the same training as the teachers.

Some administrators and resource teachers also are being trained.

"I, as most classroom teachers, have never had training how to identify specific reading weakness and know what to do specifically to help master that deficit. Literacy First helps make each teacher a reading specialist," said Linda Lewis, a kindergarten teacher at Vine Grove Elementary who has been teaching for 30 years.

What students get

Pupils receive diagnostic assessments devised by Literacy First, a program produced by Professional Development Inc. of Washington state, which also furnishes the consultants and training in instructional practices.

The assessments, combined with the teacher training, take the guesswork out of figuring out where students are having problems and what should be done to address those deficiencies, Bryan said.

In Literacy First, students may be moved among the various skill groups at any point, depending on their progress. The program also uses literacy centers for children to work on reading activities and devotes two hours each day to reading.

Funding

The first-year cost of the effort was $101,000, a figure that a little more than doubled this year with the addition of another school and more grades. The school board picked up one-third of the tab the first year, with the schools chipping in the rest. This year, the cost is almost evenly shared. However, the cost will be much less next year as more teachers are fully trained. The district will be able to go it alone after three years.

Results

First-year students in the Literacy First process in Hardin County made significant progress. For example, kindergarten students posted mastery scores of over 90 percent in phonological awareness and phonics.

"Our first grade teachers this year are amazed at how ready new students are," Bryan said. "They were able to start at a much more sophisticated level in our skill sequence."

A statistical analysis of the Hardin County program by the University of Louisville showed its potential for closing the minority achievement gap.

"In five out of six comparisons, there was no relationship between the ethnicity of a student and his or her Literacy First outcome…the results for reading achievement in the lower grades are promising in that they show it is possible to implement a curriculum aimed at a crucial educational skill - reading - and produce outcomes that are roughly comparable across different ethnic groups," the analysis concluded.

In the long term, the process may well impact other areas in the curriculum. "We're hearing teachers say, 'Gosh, I can use this in other content areas,'" Bryan said.

- The PEAK Award will be presented to the district in a ceremony at Woodland Elementary School. The deadline for submitting an entry in the next round of PEAK nominations is March 28, 2003.

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What teachers get

What students get

Funding

Results

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