Chalkbeat

Pennsylvania will require schools to use evidence-based reading curriculum

2025-11-13T16:57:55+00:00

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Pennsylvania will require schools to adopt evidence-based reading curriculum by the 2027-28 school year and institute new literacy instruction training for teachers.

The new requirements come as part of the state’s 2025-26 budget, which Gov. Josh Shapiro signed into law Wednesday, four months past the budget deadline. Literacy instruction and initiatives will get $10 million in the budget. The $50.1 billion budget deal puts $665 million total towards public schools.

Moments before signing the bill, Shapiro said the budget invests in “something known as structured literacy,” referring to an approach to reading instruction that includes teaching students phonics and phonemic awareness, which research supports as effective.

The approach “puts a renewed emphasis on teaching [kids] to read well and training our teachers to teach reading effectively,” Shapiro said.

Last year, national test scores showed only about 1 in 3 Pennsylvania fourth graders could read at a proficient level.

Some Pennsylvania school districts previously used reading curriculums that did not follow research-backed methods. In Philadelphia, the school district implemented an evidence-based curriculum last school year. But the rollout has been rocky. Students’ reading scores dipped after the first year.

The curriculum mandate brings Pennsylvania up to speed with several other states that have passed laws that require literacy instruction to follow the science of reading, a body of research that has found young children need phonics instruction to learn how to read well.

Under the new legislation, districts can choose their own literacy curriculum as long as it follows research-backed best practices. Districts will have to report which curriculum they use beginning this school year.

It also requires schools to provide all teachers with professional development in literacy instruction from an approved state list beginning in the 2027-28 school year.

Schools also will have to screen students in kindergarten through third grade for reading competency three times each year. If schools find students to be behind in certain reading skills, they’ll be required to provide a reading intervention plan with additional support.

Pennsylvania will require schools to report on literacy progress

Along with instructional requirements, the budget bill also creates new accountability measures.

Districts will be required to report on how many teachers have participated in literacy professional development as well as provide annual data on the percentage of students identified as having a reading deficiency. The bill requires the Department of Education to share some of this information publicly.

“These accountability measures are essential,” said Rachael Garnick, manager of the Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition, which supports the new literacy requirements in the budget. “They ensure that every district moves forward on a clear timeline and that the state can monitor progress toward the goal of ensuring every child receives effective reading instruction.”

It’s unclear how districts will interpret the evidence-based curriculum requirement.

Legislation passed last year required the Department of Education to create a state Reading Leadership Council that would publish a list of recommended reading curriculum by June of this year.

But almost immediately after the council published that list, it received swift pushback from advocates, including the Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition, which said in a statement that “it was not high quality, not user-friendly, and not fully aligned with either the letter or spirit of the law.”

Hours later, the Department of Education removed the list of recommended curriculum from its website. It has not shared an updated timeline of when a new list will be available. The Department of Education did not respond to Chalkbeat’s request for comment.

Garnick said she and others involved in the Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition, which includes dozens of local education groups, have been pushing the Department of Education to publish a recommended curriculum list that aligns with state standards on evidence-based reading instruction.

But she said even without the updated list, the new requirements are a major step forward for improving literacy instruction in the state.

The language in the budget bill largely mirrors previous legislation that had bipartisan support in the state legislature but hadn’t passed.

Rebecca Redelmeier is a reporter at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. She writes about public schools, early childhood education, and issues that affect students, families, and educators across Philadelphia. Contact Rebecca at rredelmeier@chalkbeat.org.

After a $25 million curriculum overhaul, Philly’s reading scores have fallen

2025-10-23T01:35:15+00:00

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When Philadelphia school officials announced preliminary new achievement data earlier this month, one trend was especially concerning: Philadelphia third graders are less likely to be proficient readers than they were a year ago.

The district — like many across the country — has spent millions to try to improve literacy instruction and reading scores. If kids can’t read by the end of third grade, research shows they’ll have an increasingly difficult time catching up.

The initial data is especially notable because during the 2024-25 school year, Philadelphia began implementing a new reading curriculum based on the science of reading at a cost of $25 million. State lawmakers have also pushed for legislation meant to ensure reading instruction follows research-backed methods.

Still, crucial third grade reading rates remain low, with fewer than 1 in 3 third graders able to read proficiently last school year, according to the district’s preliminary data from the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment test. That’s lower than scores the year before, when the district hadn’t yet adopted the new curriculum.

At a school board meeting earlier this month, Superintendent Tony Watlington said that he expected that progress would not be linear. District officials said they plan to continue to invest in training teachers on how to use the new curriculum and provide tutoring to struggling students.

But literacy instruction experts and advocates say the declining scores mean it’s urgent for Philadelphia to improve preparing teachers to teach the new curriculum and support students who fall behind.

“Just looking at the outright percentage of students who are reading proficiently, it’s extremely troubling,” said Laura Boyce, Pennsylvania executive director of the advocacy organization Teach Plus. “It just doesn’t bode well for our future workforce or our city as a whole if we aren’t able to accelerate things.”

New reading curriculum exposed weak points, officials say

At the school board meeting earlier this month, district officials said the low English language arts scores from last school year revealed crucial information.

Along with a dip of nearly three percentage points in the number of third graders scoring proficient or advanced on the state reading tests compared with the year before, the share of students in grades 3-8 with proficient scores also fell slightly. (Officials said further breakdowns of the data will be released in November.)

In addition, the preliminary data shows that the percentage of Philadelphia third graders who read proficiently is lower than it was a decade ago.

“What this curriculum has exposed for us is that many of these students did not have the foundational skills that were provided and what was expected of them on the state assessment,” said Jermaine Dawson, the district’s deputy superintendent of academic services, at the meeting.

Dawson added that to address some of the challenges, the district aims to “make sure that comprehension is more amplified” in English language arts instruction and grow its high-impact tutoring program.

District officials did not respond to Chalkbeat’s requests for information about how the district will address low reading scores. During a discussion of the curriculum at a board meeting last year, Watlington said, “When you try something new, outcomes get worse before they get better. It’s very common in education.”

When Chalkbeat spoke with Philadelphia teachers implementing the new curriculum last year, many shared concerns that they weren’t adequately trained on the new materials. Though teachers said they were glad the new curriculum followed research-backed methods, some said there was not enough support for struggling readers in the program.

Kymyona Burk, senior policy fellow at ExcelinEd, an education policy advocacy organization, said training teachers to implement new curriculum and providing support is essential to achieving results.

“There’s nothing that’s going to be this kind of magic pill,” said Burk, who previously served as the state literacy director at the Mississippi Department of Education, where she led implementation of Mississippi’s landmark literacy law. “It’s the preparation that goes into it.”

Burk and other literacy experts said Philadelphia’s new curriculum, from the curriculum company EL Education, is well regarded.

But to be effective, the curriculum overhaul must include in-depth teacher training, coaching, professional development, parent engagement, and screening of kids to understand what’s working, Burk said. She estimated it takes teachers at least a year to get acquainted with new curriculum materials, even with support.

Though Philadelphia school officials have provided training to teachers on the new curriculum, the low scores indicate more is needed, said Julia Cadwallender, managing director of the local advocacy organization Read by 4th.

As teachers get used to the curriculum, she said she’s hopeful the district’s reading scores will begin to improve, just as the district’s math scores have risen two years after it implemented a new math curriculum.

“We have to recognize the ups and downs that exist in actually creating any lasting change,” Cadwallender said.

This Philly school turned a dusty storage room into a new library

2025-10-02T17:36:51+00:00

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Bahir Hayes, principal of William C. Bryant School, says he learned to love reading in the fifth grade.

That year, he remembers being fixated on a school library book about Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson that he wanted more than anything in the world. His mom preferred that he read Harry Potter instead, and he obliged.

“I was so mad, but it was actually one of the best things that ever happened to me, because that’s where I found my love of reading,” Hayes said.

The effect was immediate. Hayes said that year was a “turning point” in his education. He started spending more time in the school library and saw his reading scores start to soar. He was accepted into a prestigious high school in the city, attended Bloomsburg University, and eventually became principal at Bryant.

From day one as a school leader, Hayes said he’s been focused on one goal: Opening a library so his students could fall in love with books the way he did.

On Wednesday, Hayes finally cut the ribbon on that achievement.

“This was a big dream of mine,” Hayes said. “Opportunities like this can change a child’s complete experience, and actually can change their life. I’m living proof of that.”

Few schools in Philadelphia have libraries within their buildings and only one — Masterman, the city’s most coveted high school — has a full-time librarian on staff. Getting Bryant’s library set up required nearly a year of work with help from several outside partners, including the West Philadelphia Alliance for Children (known as WePAC), Teach for America, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Libraries.

Over the past 10 months, community partners cataloged 5,000 books and cleaned up the dusty top floor of the school that had been mostly used for storage. The new library space has a colorful area rug for group reading, tables for studying, and the sun streams in from the multiple skylights in the ceiling.

What was once a dusty storage room has been transformed into a new library.

Staffing the library will also be a team effort. The school is looking for parent and community volunteers to sign up for library shifts with the goal of increasing parent engagement with the school. Students on Wednesday each received a blue drawstring bag full of books to start their own libraries at home.

Jennifer Leith, executive director of WePAC, said Bryant students have made strong progress in boosting their reading scores over the past few years. She said having a school library will help improve kids’ reading comprehension further.

According to district data, the percentage of Bryant students who scored proficient or advanced on the state PSSA English Language Arts exam increased from 14% in 2021-22 to 24% in 2023-24, the most recent year data was available.

Beyond the benefits of reading books, Leith said the act of selecting what to read helps students learn about themselves, their interests, and the worlds around them and within their imagination.

“Choosing a book can be the one choice students get to make in their school day that’s their own,” Leith said. “It gives them agency.”

Or in Hayes’ case, the book that doesn’t get chosen can be the one to inspire a lifelong love of reading.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Pennsylvania lawmakers push for new science of reading laws

2025-05-27T22:06:23+00:00

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Pennsylvania lawmakers have proposed science of reading laws that would require schools to adopt reading curriculums backed by research and create additional instruction resources for teachers.

The two bills, which both have bipartisan support, focus on ensuring students across the state have access to curriculums that include instruction in phonics, word decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension — all elements that researchers have found help students learn to read.

The proposals are part of a yearslong push in Pennsylvania and nationwide to ensure reading curriculums follow reading science. Last year, only about 1 in 3 Pennsylvania fourth graders could read at a proficient level, according to national test scores. The bills would build on legislation state lawmakers passed last year that established a science of reading training program for teachers, and encouraged districts to adopt research-backed reading curriculum.

One of the bills, which the Senate Education Committee advanced earlier this month, would require that districts adopt a reading curriculum backed by evidence. Senate Bill 700 would also require districts screen all children in kindergarten through third grade for reading competency three times each school year and provide professional development to teachers in reading instruction.

“We know, through a very strong body of research spanning decades, that instruction aligned to the science of reading is the most effective way to teach kids how to read,” state Sen. Devlin Robinson, a Republican and one of the bill’s main sponsors, said in a statement. “This bill follows the successful efforts of other states and requires educators use the most effective methods, programs, and materials that are aligned to the science of reading.”

The legislation does not explicitly state what evidence-based measures they expect curriculums to use. However, it would require schools to annually report their curriculum choice.

Robinson emphasized that the bill allows local education officials to maintain control because it does not mandate that districts select a certain curriculum. Rather, the proposed bill allows schools to choose any literacy curriculum as long as it is based on literacy science.

The state’s Reading Leadership Council, created through legislation last year, is currently in the process of developing a list of recommended literacy curriculum, which it’s expected to release in June. Senate Bill 700 states that districts that adopt a curriculum from that list will be eligible for grant funding to help pay for the costs of training teachers and implementing the curriculum.

The Reading Leadership Council is also expected to release lists of recommended reading screener tests and professional development programs, which the bill requires schools draw from.

“This is all trying to really get a movement going,” said state Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Democrat who represents part of Philadelphia and is also sponsoring Senate Bill 700. He said lawmakers want to ensure reading instruction is rooted in “solid pedagogy, and to also get folks excited about reading.”

Meanwhile, House Bill 684, which is under consideration by the House Education Committee, would provide additional support for schools and teachers to implement science-backed reading curriculum. The legislation would create a grant program for schools to train teachers in the science of reading, develop a reading coach program, mandate reading screenings, and provide funding meant to attract and retain reading teachers.

Funding for those programs would depend on the state budget and other grants.

Several advocates have supported both bills, and are calling on the state to provide additional funding for reading support.

“It’s one thing to say that structured literacy [and] the science of reading is important,” said Julia Cadwallender, managing director of the Philadelphia-based coalition Read by 4th. “But to put funding behind the systems that actually make it possible for that change to happen is really where we’re going to see improvement for kids.”

Pennsylvania reading advocates want state to move faster

Several other states, including Indiana and Michigan, have recently passed bills mandating that schools teach students to read through an evidence-based approach. Reading scores have improved in some states that have already implemented these curriculums, like Mississippi and Louisiana.

But in Pennsylvania, some advocates worry that progress has been too slow.

“These pieces of legislation really work toward addressing the crisis, but we’re up against a deficit here in Pennsylvania,” said Rachael Garnick, Pennsylvania coalition manager at the advocacy group Teach Plus.

To Garnick, it’s vital that the state put money behind its science of reading initiatives to support schools and teachers. But that’s been difficult, she said, especially with a $4.5 billion gap — acknowledged by state lawmakers — between the funding Pennsylvania’s poorest schools need and what they actually receive. Legislators are currently negotiating the next state budget, which is slated to be finalized on June 30.

One test case of new reading instruction in Pennsylvania is already underway in Philadelphia.

Last school year, the city’s school district adopted a new English Language Arts curriculum built around the science of reading. So far, many teachers have welcomed the curriculum, but some have said the district left them scrambling to implement it. Student reading scores in the city remain far below the state and national average, with fewer than 1 in 5 Philadelphia fourth graders able to read proficiently, according to last year’s national assessment results.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said earlier this year that he believes reading scores will improve in the coming years following the updated curriculum’s full roll-out.

Garnick said she believes additional support and attention on the science of reading at the state level could make a big difference in Philadelphia and statewide. Still, she said, the need remains high.

“This is a really good first leap, a good first step,” said Garnick. “And there’s a ton of work to do.”

Rebecca Redelmeier is a reporter at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. She writes about public schools, early childhood education, and issues that impact students, families, and educators across Philadelphia. Contact Rebecca at rredelmeier@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia tutoring program focused on student literacy cut by DOGE

2025-05-06T19:20:34+00:00

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Tyreek Wiggins struggled to read anything longer than three-letter words at the start of this school year.

But with the help of his Joyful Readers tutor Kirra Silver, Tyreek — a third grader at Philadelphia’s Mastery Prep Elementary Charter School — quickly began gaining confidence.

He mastered the challenging and sometimes conflicting “z” and “s” sounds and jumped six units ahead in his studies. Last week, dressed in a sharp grey suit and classic black fedora, Tyreek accepted a 2025 Young Reader of the Year award from the tutoring program to mark his accomplishments.

He held his trophy high to a cheering crowd and triumphantly announced: “Reading is not my best skill, but I am improving.”

Not long before that ceremony, however, David Weinstein, the founder of the Joyful Readers program, got some much less uplifting news. The group’s grant would be terminated effective immediately as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to AmeriCorps through the U.S. DOGE Service.

Joyful Readers is one of the 28 AmeriCorps programs across Pennsylvania that has been gutted by DOGE. While tutors will finish out this school year, its future is now uncertain. Cuts to AmeriCorps have also affected student tutoring programs elsewhere.

Weinstein, a former AmeriCorps member who spent his first year of service at Kensington High School, said the order ending the grants came from DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency and is led by business executive Elon Musk. The order stated that the work Joyful Readers was doing no longer matches the federal government’s priorities.

The anger and sadness came immediately, Weinstein said in an interview with Chalkbeat.

“Since when is teaching kids to read not a national priority?” Weinstein said.

AmeriCorps, created by Congress in 1993, pays young people a small stipend and some money to help offset the cost of a college degree to spend a year working full-time on community service projects. Every year, more than 200,000 AmeriCorps volunteers and workers nationwide work on disaster relief efforts, educational programs like tutoring, environmental stewardship, community health programs, and services for military veterans.

In Philadelphia, AmeriCorps members work with the school district to provide computer science tutoring and mentoring, arts education, academic instruction, social-emotional support, and more to thousands of students through programs like Joyful Readers, City Year, ArtistYear, and Teach For America (TFA).

But in April, federal government representatives informed these program leaders and the state agencies that disburse their grants that some $400 million in contracts would be cancelled across the country — $6 million of that was designated for Pennsylvania

For Weinstein, that would have meant sending a late-night email or making a phone call to his 50 tutors to tell them not to show up to school the next day. Those tutors who told their students “yes you’re going to see me at the next session” would have had to “break that promise,” Weinstein said. And 1,000 Philly kids like Tyreek would have been left to wonder what happened.

Weinstein said he avoided all of that by pulling together enough funding for his tutors to finish the school year.

Weinstein said the program’s grant this year was for some $833,500. As part of the AmeriCorps program, Joyful Readers was required to find matching funds from the Philadelphia community. They applied for an expanded grant next year to support up to 75 AmeriCorps members, but Weinstein said he hasn’t heard back yet.

“It’s hard to imagine we’d receive that grant,” Weinstein said.

Lawsuits say gutting AmeriCorps will have ‘irreparable’ impacts

Weinstein said he’s managed to keep the program afloat for the time being, but he’s eagerly awaiting the results of legal challenges to the AmeriCorps cuts.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed on to a multistate lawsuit alleging the Trump administration’s “abrupt decision to dismantle AmeriCorps flouts Congress’s creation” of the agency and “usurps Congress’s power of the purse and thereby violates the Constitution’s separation of powers.”

“The gutting of AmeriCorps will inflict immediate and irreparable harms on the Plaintiff States, their residents, and the public at large,” the suit says.

According to the complaint, more than 7,700 K-12 students in the Philadelphia area have an AmeriCorps teacher.

Education advocacy groups, community organizations, and the AmeriCorps Employees Union AFSCME Local 2027 have also filed their own suit challenging the cuts.

Without the services provided by AmeriCorps, the teacher shortage in the city would get worse, said Anna Shurak, executive director of Teach For America Philadelphia.

This school year, 120 out of more than 300 vacant positions were ultimately filled by TFA educators. More than 400 TFA alumni work as teachers in Philadelphia classrooms. And nearly 10% of all Philadelphia principals are TFA alumni, Shurak said.

“At a time when teachers are needed more than ever, Teach for America plays the vital role of having folks coming in that are committed, that are interested, that are focused on our students,” Shurak said.

If the AmeriCorps cuts stand, Shurak said, it will not only rip educators away from their classrooms but hamper TFA’s ability to recruit young people into the teacher pipeline — a process that was already strained in the years following the pandemic.

For Philly school leaders, the chaos and uncertainty of the Trump administration’s cuts to education programs has been “consuming,” Lewis Elkin Elementary School Principal Charlotte Gillum said in an interview.

One of Gillum’s students, second grader Saarenn Roberts, also won a Joyful Readers Young Reader of the Year award this year.

While the school works with a variety of programs to meet the needs of their students, Joyful Readers is a standout, Gillum said. She said the tutors work on self-confidence and “make the students believe in themselves” while also working to improve reading skills.

It’s “that mix that allows students to know they can stumble and they can be OK and keep trying,” Gillum said, which delivers real results for her students.

“It is disappointing that there is an attack on education that is going to potentially rob us of that,” Gillum said.

Juny Ardon, Saarenn’s Joyful Readers tutor, said at the awards ceremony that to help elementary school students with reading, “you need more than just methods and strategies. You need heart and humanity.”

Autumn Taylor and her tutor Fionna Farrell celebrate Autumn's Young Reader of the Year award.

Lakia Cintron, whose daughter Autumn Taylor won a Joyful Readers award, said she’s seen Autumn’s reading improve significantly but she’s also “improved as a person as well.” Cintron said, “she’s elevating.”

Tyreek’s tutor Kirra Silver said she’s disappointed the federal government is targeting programs like Joyful Readers.

The more that students and children have access to programs like Joyful Readers, “the better it will be for our society,” Silver said.

Silver’s advice to parents and caregivers if Joyful Readers ends?

“Read to your kids as much as possible, uplift them, tell them it is OK to make mistakes as long as you’re trying,” Silver said.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect more precise teacher vacancy figures from Teach For America.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Citing Pennsylvania students’ low reading scores, advocates form coalition to improve literacy

2025-01-09T23:48:45+00:00

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A new statewide coalition aims to respond to alarming data showing that just 1 in 3 Pennsylvania students — and even fewer in Philadelphia — can read proficiently by fourth grade.

Eighty people from 20 organizations under the umbrella of the Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition met via Zoom Wednesday to push for state policies that will improve student outcomes in reading. These include $100 million to make sure that all districts have access to training in “evidence-based strategies,” including the science of reading, which represents the consensus on the best methods for literacy instruction like a focus on phonics and vocabulary-building.

The coalition is also calling for dedicated resources to support the early screening of struggling students.

The trend in reading outcomes also concerns advocates. Laura Boyce of Teach Plus, a group that’s in the new coalition, cited 2022 data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showing a post-pandemic decline in Pennsylvania students’ reading proficiency, a downturn that occurred nationwide. New NAEP results are expected later this month.

“Given what we know about how early reading proficiency affects future life outcomes, that is something we are focusing on as we talk about the importance of improving literacy outcomes and how that connects to overall economic well being,” said Boyce, the executive director of Teach Plus’ Pennsylvania chapter.

Fourth grade is the target because research shows that is the crucial point when students should be moving from “learning to read” to “reading to learn,” she said.

The Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition plans to screen the film “The Right to Read” in Harrisburg on Jan. 28, followed by a discussion of the issue with lawmakers. It also plans to hold a day-long summit on March 26 to highlight the issue.

In Philadelphia, advocates, school officials, caregivers, and neighbors are taking a communal approach to improving reading scores. The school district has started a new English Language Arts curriculum focused on the science of reading. Advocates are hosting small neighborhood events featuring the “Alphabet Song” for younger children that’s linked with the Freedom Schools model. And Philly’s Reading Captains are taking the effort door-to-door to deliver books and resources to families on their block.

This is the time of year when budget jockeying begins in the state capital. Gov. Josh Shapiro is scheduled to give his annual budget address on Feb. 4.

“We’re waiting for the governor’s budget address, we’re all looking to hear what he will prioritize,” said state Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Democrat and longtime advocate for additional education spending. “Hopefully this will be part of it. We’ll talk to his folks beforehand, this is fundamental to student success.”

Both Hughes and Boyce said that it is important to raise awareness of how Pennsylvania students lag behind other states in proficiency rates.

Democrat Rep. Peter Schweyer, the chair of the House Education Committee, said that he is prioritizing achieving the continuing effort to ensure fair and equitable school funding for all districts, rather than telling them what programs to adopt.

Two years ago, Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer ruled Pennsylvania’s school funding formula unconstitutional, citing wide spending gaps between wealthier and low-income districts. As a result, the state increased overall education spending by $1.1 billion and adopted a new funding formula.

“There’s no way to anticipate now what’s going to make it into the budget,” Shweyer said, noting that it won’t be finalized until June. “What I can say on the topic of literacy is that it is in the forefront of everybody’s mind.”

Rep. Bryan Cutler, the committee’s top Republican, said in a statement that, “It is clear to me that Pennsylvania is behind the times in teaching our kids how to read….I will support ideas that make sure we fund literacy efforts, but also make the necessary changes in how we support our students who are learning to read.”

Ralph Smith, the managing director of the national Campaign for Grade Level Reading, pointed out that recent research from North Carolina shows that there is a wide gap in reading readiness that persists through kindergarten between students from more affluent and low-income backgrounds.

“However you calculate it, low income kids start kindergarten behind better resourced kids, and during the kindergarten year they fall farther behind both developmentally and academically,” he said.

He said it is important to dedicate some resources to informing and training parents, in addition to investing more in schools and early childhood centers, to close the readiness gap before kindergarten starts.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

New English curriculum shows science of reading’s promise but can leave Philly teachers frazzled

2024-10-17T21:26:12+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district’s demanding new English language arts curriculum is getting mixed reviews from teachers.

One of their major complaints is that they must spend a lot of time making sure they can use provided materials in their lessons. They also say there is not enough class time to help lagging readers, and that they haven’t been adequately trained to teach the new curriculum.

At the same time, teachers do not dispute its emphasis on the science of reading, which is now generally accepted as the best method for literacy instruction. There are also indications that teachers are seeing students engage better with reading materials and demonstrate stronger literacy skills.

The new curriculum is part of an ambitious instructional overhaul the district launched last year, when it spent $70 million in pandemic aid on new math, English language arts, and science materials. About $25 million went to the new reading curriculum from EL Education, including Expeditionary Learning for grades K-8 and Study Sync for 9-12. Officials hope this helps students improve on sobering academic outcomes: On last year’s state exams, only about 34% of Philadelphia’s students in grades 3-8 scored proficient in reading.

The curriculum shift also represents the latest chapter in a long-running tug of war in Philadelphia between the value of imposing a regimented, standardized curriculum, and the power of giving teachers leeway to be creative and innovative.

But as with any big initiative in school districts, the devil is in the details.

“It tells you to use [certain] cards or pictures, but they aren’t provided,” said Shelly McKeown, a second grade teacher at the Lowell Elementary School in Olney. “You have to make tons of copies and cut things out yourself.”

Worse, she said, in her school, there aren’t enough books for all the students: “There are only five or six copies of each text.” That means several students share a single book — not great for encouraging emerging readers.

Aly Boyd, a literacy specialist at McCall Elementary School in Queen Village, said she favors the science of reading, which requires systematic instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness as well as promoting fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

But while some of the curriculum makes sense, Boyd said, “overall it’s not cohesive. The tools are not aligned to the objectives. I wish I knew why.”

Many teachers, she said, “are scrambling” to prepare and to cover everything in the time provided, especially when they are facing children with skill levels all over the map.

“You always go back to teacher knowledge as the best tool as long as they know the content area,” Boyd said. “But I don’t think this curriculum makes it easy for teachers to learn.”

In a statement responding to questions from Chalkbeat about the new English curriculum, district spokesperson Monique Braxton said the district has “been thoughtful in providing support” to teachers.

She cited 12 paid — albeit optional — professional development sessions in the spring, an optional summer institute on the science of reading, and additional “mandatory and voluntary” sessions since the school year started.

In addition, she said, the district provides coaches and learning specialists to help teachers.

While the EL Education curriculum is grounded in the science of reading, “texts are more complex than teachers are used to, and the amount of content within each lesson is very dense. It can be a steep learning curve,” said Laura Boyce, the executive director of Teach Plus PA, a teacher advocacy group that supports lessons based on the science of reading.

The teachers’ guide for the curriculum, Boyce noted, is well over 100 pages long for a six-week unit.

New curriculum represents latest pendulum swing for teachers

Through much of the 2010s, teachers could choose from several different programs for reading instruction, Boyce said.

But a 2020 study by the Council for Great City Schools found that district curriculums did not “put enough emphasis on foundational skills in the early grades,” among other deficiencies. About three years ago, city teachers created a homegrown reading curriculum. While some people liked this “by Philly, for Philly” approach, it was never formally evaluated for quality, Boyce said.

When the district adopted the slate of new instructional materials last year, Superintendent Tony Watlington warned people not to expect that the EL Education curriculum would lead to instant improvement. But he did tout its emphasis on the science of reading, and district officials said they had done their research.

“Before we decided on this, we engaged stakeholders, teachers, community members, and asked what they were looking for,” said Dr. Nyshawama Francis-Thompson, the district’s chief of curriculum and instruction, in an interview.

In contrast to the era when Philadelphia teachers often took the lead on choosing or developing curriculum, Mary Williams, a professor of education at La Salle University, said via email that she has heard from teachers that the lessons are too scripted.

“This program is not going to be successful unless the teachers get some flexibility in how it is implemented and get more professional development support and coaching,” she wrote.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers went so far as to conduct a recent survey of teachers on the curriculum, and presented a rundown of the most common complaints to district officials.

Some 800 teachers responded. Among the top concerns were too little time to cover the material, not enough training, and insufficient tools to help students who fall behind, said PFT President Arthur Steinberg.

“We saw there was some unrest with it, people weren’t happy, so we wanted to nip it in the bud and get more information from as many members as we could,” Steinberg said.

The union wants to help create a response to teachers’ concerns “so people in Harrisburg don’t call us failing anymore,” Steinberg said, referring to legislators who decide how much state education aid to send to Philadelphia and other districts. (The PFT has not shared detailed results from the survey publicly.)

State lawmakers are making their own push to get more Pennsylvania school districts to change how they teach reading.

Earlier this month, the Senate adopted a bill passed previously by the House that encourages districts to adopt curriculums based on the science of reading, although it doesn’t mandate them to do so and doesn’t provide corresponding funding.

It would authorize the Pennsylvania Department of Education to create a state literacy council that would develop lists of acceptable curricula, and help schools assess students’ reading skills, among other things.

“This gives kids a fighting chance,” said Rep. Ed Neilson, a Democrat from Northeast Philadelphia, during a House debate on the bill. “My son got lucky to learn how to read. This bill will help kids like mine.”

Boyce said advocates will push Gov. Josh Shapiro to include $100 million in his proposed budget for next year dedicated to this initiative.

Curriculum gets good reviews for older grades, student engagement

For all the issues with the new curriculum, some teachers say their students are benefiting.

“My students are more engaged, they are able to answer comprehension questions more easily, they have a bigger vocabulary in their speech,” said Kristyn Kahalehoe, a kindergarten teacher at John Hancock, a K-5 school in the Far Northeast.

While the rollout hasn’t been perfect, she said her students “are able to answer questions about the text” while also having “a higher retention of letter names and sounds.”

At a seminar last month at Drexel University on the science of reading, first grade teacher Kinu Aneja told attendees that she thought the new curriculum was “strong” due to its emphasis on phonics and because it dictates the need “to meet students where they are.”

But with sometimes as many as 30 students in the class at varying stages of development, she said a teacher can nevertheless get “overwhelmed.”

And the district hasn’t necessarily provided everything teachers might want to use with the new curriculum.

For instance, it includes a “tools challenge” in which students learn about tools and also work on their motor skills. Among the tools needed are spatulas, eyedroppers, and tweezers. But the district did not provide those things, expecting that teachers would bring them from home.

District spokeswoman Christina Clark did say that part of the curriculum is “supplemental” and not mandatory.

Kahalehoe said her students are doing well with the new curriculum but acknowledged that she may have it easier than those in higher grades. “I wouldn’t have the same perspective as a seventh grade teacher,” she said.

Aly, the reading specialist at McCall, said she considered the curriculum to be much stronger in the higher grades than in the lower ones, when phonics is most important.

The new curriculum does not provide a second grade teacher easy access to kindergarten-level phonics tools, for example, that could be useful for students still at that stage of development.

For help, teachers could “click around online,” she said. But that, she said, “is very time consuming. … It’s frustrating.”

Aneja, who spoke at the Drexel forum, is in her fourth year teaching in the district, and her third at Bache-Martin Elementary School in Fairmount. In a subsequent interview, she stressed that kids come to classrooms from different backgrounds and at different academic levels. Adapting to the new curriculum is a “hard adjustment,” she said.

“The big takeaway is that in theory the curriculum makes sense, but it requires a lot of prep and studying on the teachers’ part and right now that’s hard to implement,” Aneja said.

Still, Aneja has high hopes the new curriculum will ultimately benefit students.

“At the end of the year, we’ll be able to see a fuller picture,” she said.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Alliance to bring back Philadelphia school libraries gets $150,000 federal grant

2024-08-09T17:04:16+00:00

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When Deborah Grill was at Roosevelt Middle School in Germantown in 1994, the Philadelphia school district had 176 functioning school libraries with full-time certified librarians.

Today, there is just one full-time librarian.

“People think of it as an extra,” said Grill, who was a teacher, literacy coach, and librarian in her 34 years with the district.

That mentality is now changing. The school district, along with the advocacy group Philadelphia Alliance to Restore School Librarians (PARSL), applied for and received a nearly $150,000 federal grant to develop a plan for increasing the number of school libraries.

Study after study, Grill said, has shown a positive correlation between having a quality school library program and student achievement in reading. It is a correlation, not a causation, she stressed: Schools with libraries are likely to be better funded overall, with a more stable teaching staff and other resources.

But the research also shows that having trained librarians is especially beneficial for low-income districts.

PARSL was founded two years ago by educators, policymakers, business leaders, and others interested in the issue. Deb Kachel, an educator and former school library director in Lancaster County who is a member of the steering committee for PARSL, said the group will look into how other cities, including Boston, rebuilt their school library systems.

“There are not enough librarians,” she said, adding that only about 20 teachers now in the system are certified to do that in Philadelphia. She said the group will investigate what barriers other cities faced in putting their school libraries back into service, what solutions they found, and how they paid for the initiative: “We’ll take those strategies and apply them to Philadelphia.”

The district now has four certified librarians working as such, but three are part time — teachers assigned a few hours a day or week to library duty in their schools. In a few schools, parents and volunteers occasionally staff libraries. The only school with a full-time librarian is Masterman, the most selective in the city.

The Philadelphia district, she said, is in the process of hiring a director of school libraries who will be “instrumental” in developing a plan to recruit and train more people. “We know there are teachers who are interested” in doing this, Kachel said.

The project is one of 35 nationwide that won grants, out of 141 originally submitted, from the U.S. Institute of Museums and Library Service as part of the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. In addition to researching strategies in other cities, the planning group, which will include the district and PARSL members, will also build a pipeline to recruit a diverse group of candidates to obtain librarian certification.

Ultimately, the initiative, slated to begin in the coming school year, will create a “five-year, replicable strategic plan to restore school librarians … crafted and vetted by district officials and community leaders,” including strategies for communications, funding, and university training options, the PARSL proposal for the grant says.

It will also look at existing building conditions in the district’s schools and what needs to be done to renovate and update long unused library spaces. It is creating a website that will include surveys, presentations, reports, research, and findings.

While Drexel University discontinued its school librarian certification, a few other nearby colleges and universities offer programs, including Rutgers University and the University of Pittsburgh, Kachel said. But since the training is online, potential librarian candidates have several options, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Grill, a member of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, an advocacy group made up primarily of former teachers, frequently testifies before the Board of Education about the benefits of school libraries.

She told the City Council during school budget hearings that she was “heartbroken” to learn that the Roosevelt library where she worked was “once a lively resource for…students and teachers [but is] now just a flooded, moldy room.”

The libraries fell victim to severe state and local budget cuts to the district beginning in the 1990s. But that wasn’t the only factor at play. With the rise of the internet, many educators and policy makers felt that the traditional libraries, with shelves of books and multi-volume encyclopedias, were obsolete.

But, if anything, the need for trained school personnel who could help students find their way through the new world of endless information was, and continues to be, more necessary than ever, Grill said.

“Someone has to tell students how to find relevant sites, and reliable sites,” she said. “That is the missing piece. They teach information literacy, media literacy, digital citizenship.”

Those are “durable skills,” she said, that will benefit students throughout their lives.

In advocating for more trained librarians in schools, Kachel would ask principals and other officials about these skills and they would say that they are being taught.

“But when we ask, who is teaching them and at what grade level and is there a written curriculum, then we get silence,” she said. When students get to college, many of them find they are unprepared to do the kind of research they must do for their courses.

Pennsylvania has no requirement for school libraries, she said. Fifty-nine districts in the commonwealth, or more than one in ten, don’t have them.

“Our state requires that prisons have libraries,” Grill said, “but not schools.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

New Philadelphia curriculum goes all in on science of reading

2024-07-26T16:45:08+00:00

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Kristyn Kahahaloe still remembers a little boy from her class in a New Jersey early learning center when she was a rookie teacher starting students on their journey to becoming readers.

The boy, who was in kindergarten, “just couldn’t figure it out the way I was teaching it,” she said. “This bright blossoming flower kept shrinking and shriveling, and I didn’t know what to do.”

Despite her years of teacher education, Kahahaloe, now a kindergarten teacher at the John Hancock Elementary School in Philadelphia, concluded that “my lack of knowledge was why he was not learning how to read.”

For decades, disputes over how best to teach students to read has divided teachers, scholars, and policymakers. Was the answer phonics or “whole language”? What about “balanced literacy” versus “structured literacy”? New terms like “phonemic awareness” and “foundational skills” entered the vocabulary, but didn’t settle the debate.

Like their colleagues nationwide, Philadelphia teachers were buffeted about by the debates. Many received scant training in their teacher preparation programs in explicit reading instruction. And once in the classroom, they were often left with a hodgepodge of materials and resorting to “doing what they think is best,” as Kahahaloe put it.

That is about to change. For the upcoming school year, the Philadelphia school district is putting into practice a new reading curriculum as part of a $70 million investment in updated instructional materials in English Language Arts, math, and science. The early grades language arts curriculum from EL Education replaces a teacher-driven one, and is grounded in the science of reading, the now-accepted consensus on what works best for literacy instruction. Given what recent test scores say about reading skills in district schools — and classrooms nationwide — such an intervention could make a big difference in school and beyond.

“There is no question at this point that the science of reading is the way to teach students to read,” said Nancy Scharff, a literacy expert and professor at St. Joseph’s University and a consultant with Read by 4th, the Philadelphia-based campaign to have all children read proficiently by the time they enter fourth grade.

But adopting a curriculum that matches best practices doesn’t guarantee it will succeed in classrooms. There are concerns about whether teachers have been sufficiently prepared to use it, and the district cautions that it will take some time for educators and students to see results.

‘More continuity for teachers and for kids’

The “science of reading” is built around a five-pronged approach — phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension — that is based on research on how the human brain works.

Concerns about how reading is taught and low reading scores have spurred many states to pass laws recently mandating what approach and curriculum their schools should use, with the science of reading often at the foundation of such statutes.

The Pennsylvania legislature considered putting provisions in its 2024-25 budget requiring districts to adopt the science of reading approach, with mandated teacher training and sophisticated testing of students to detect learning differences. But those provisions — estimated to add nearly $70 million to the budget next year— were cut from the final bill.

For the past several years in Philadelphia, the district had been adhering to a curriculum that was created in-house by teachers themselves. But it often lacked sufficient materials to go with it. Many teachers were stressed out trying to find the right books to use.

“I think this will allow for a lot more continuity for teachers and for kids,” said Meredith Mehra, the district’s deputy chief of teaching and learning. “A lot more resources are embedded that will take the pressure away from teachers to create them.” Teachers “can think more about the kids in front of me than what text I am going to use.”

Just 34% of students in grades 3-8 achieved proficiency on the Pennsylvania reading tests last year, although scores did improve in some respects in 2023.

Research shows that being a proficient reader by fourth grade makes a huge difference in future life outcomes. Yet state test scores show that 71% of city fourth graders are not reading at grade level, notes Read by 4th. And half the city’s adult population is functionally illiterate, according to federal data estimates.

Jennie Bogoni, executive director of Read by 4th, said she sees the new curriculum as a step forward because it will standardize instruction across the district and is grounded in the science of reading.

She also cited a federal report from earlier this year that Philadelphia has been ahead of most other urban districts in making up pandemic-driven learning loss in reading and math.

“The district has made incredible progress bouncing back from the pandemic, and this curriculum should accelerate this change,” she said.

Scharff said that the new EL Education curriculum equips all teachers with the tools “to make sure children learn to read, emphasizing what we call foundational skills.” They include not just instruction in decoding, phonics, and phonemic awareness, but the development of background knowledge.

“If a student can decode a word competently but doesn’t know what it means, it doesn’t matter. Background knowledge needs to be part of the program. This curriculum does that effectively,” she said.

She noted that many children in Philadelphia come to kindergarten without much exposure to books — although many groups are working on access to reading resources — and so lack a strong knowledge base: “The best thing is to teach them to read so they can broaden their knowledge base … .the ‘science of reading’ is not just phonics.”

Third grade teacher K.P. Edwards said has been reviewing the curriculum on his own over the summer and hoped that it will make his job a little easier. Students come to him with a wide range of skills; in one class, he said, he had a girl reading at a seventh grade level and another who could barely recognize letters.

“I am cautiously optimistic,” he said.

Science of reading curriculum isn’t a cure-all

Scharff noted that while a new curriculum that covers all the right bases is helpful, it is not a magic bullet. “It is going to take time for teachers to be comfortable with it, learn it, and become adept at using the new materials,” she said. “We have to be very careful about looking for instant gratification.”

Laura Boyce of Teach Plus, which works to recruit teachers to Philadelphia, is a bit more skeptical.

“Things have gotten polarized in the science of reading debate,” said Boyce. If educators only focus on phonics and don’t develop skills around building content knowledge and vocabulary, “that’s a problem,” she said. So is an approach that assumes students will deduce words from pictures and other cues and downplays explicit phonics instruction, she said.

Boyce is also concerned about whether teachers have been adequately prepared to use the new curriculum: ”From what I’ve seen so far, there’s no evidence of a super strong plan for teacher development.”

The district held a week-long training session earlier this summer that was attended by about 400 teachers, and is planning more professional development in the weeks before school starts after they start teaching. They also plan ongoing teacher coaching throughout the school year.

Mehra estimated that “it will take a whole year’ for teachers to become comfortable with the curriculum and see results. “It’s unfair to teachers to expect more than that,” she said.

K.P. Edwards, a third grade teacher at Philadelphia's Muñoz-Marin Elementary School, said he's "cautiously optimistic" about the ability of the new curriculum to improve students' reading ability, and feels fortunate that he's received prior training that helps him with it.

Edwards, who teaches third grade at Muñoz-Marín Elementary School in Kensington, where all of the students in his school were from economically disadvantaged families and nearly 90% were Latino, many with limited English skills, the school’s demographic data from last year showed.

“I’m lucky, I’ve had a school based coach who helped me develop strategies for teaching literacy,” he said. Those strategies relied on many of the principles embedded in the new curriculum, including explicit phonics teaching.

“I’m hopeful,” he added. “With that model we had some gains. I’m hopeful next year we will have actual workbooks and more resources.”

Kahahaloe’s difficult experience with the boy who wasn’t responding to any of her efforts motivated her to find the proper training for teaching reading.

She enrolled at Fairleigh Dickinson University in north New Jersey to learn the Orton-Gillingham approach to reading instruction, which was designed for students with dyslexia but which can work for all children.

She thinks the new curriculum will help. But for her, the people in the classroom will be the decisive factor for whether it works.

“A curriculum doesn’t teach kids, teachers teach kids,” she said.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

New campaign to improve Philly children’s reading skills relies on time-tested song

2024-07-25T20:20:32+00:00

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Efforts to improve Philadelphia students’ reading skills aren’t confined to classrooms. One of the latest such campaigns to bolster literacy is Right2ReadPhilly — and it relies on a tool rooted in Black history.

The campaign began in early June and is run by Mighty Engine, a local creative agency. The group is building access to reading resources and sign language for children as young as six months old. It works hand in hand with many other groups — including the city’s “reading captains” — that are united in the pursuit of getting Philly kids to read as early and often as possible.

“We know families can play a crucial role in turning around our city’s early-learning crisis, furthering recent early literacy gains. But [if only] we could grab their attention with fun, free, proven things that they can do together with their children,” Heseung Song, CEO of Mighty Engine, said in a statement. “The campaign was designed to prove this is possible.”

The backdrop for this work is the school district’s shift to a new English language arts curriculum for the upcoming school year. It will use teaching techniques and materials based on the science of reading and world knowledge. Education officials and advocates hope this change will positively affect outcomes: While students’ scores on last year’s state tests in English language arts improved in some respects, just 34% of students in grades 3-8 achieved proficiency, and fewer than one-third of third graders reached this benchmark.

Although it officially started in June, Right2Read has been hosting small neighborhood events in the city for months, according to a spokesperson. Among other strategies, it has been teaching families the “Alphabet Song” that was taught in Freedom Schools, as well as “simple signs,” which are American Sign Language phrases for young learners.

Although the song’s tune comes from the widely known “I Don’t Know, But I’ve Been Told” melody, it encourages children to say the sound a letter will make — “ah” for A, “buh” for B, “kuhh” for C — instead of just its name. This phonics-centric method forces children to learn the sounds of letters rather than only memorizing the names and orders of letters.

The “Alphabet Song” originated from Freedom Schools, which became popular in the 1960s as a way to provide Black families not just an education, but social, political, and economic liberation as well. Those schools were part of a long line of efforts to educate Black children, including clandestine schools for enslaved Africans.

Sharif El-Mekki, CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development in Philadelphia, said the “Alphabet Song” is linked to reading techniques he remembers learning as a kid in West Philly and that people sang it on porches in his neighborhood.

The song “was a part of this comprehensive pedagogical framework to teach young black children how to read,” El-Mekki said. “Not only were we learning this alphabet song, we were learning: What does it mean to put these blends of sounds together?”

The song resonates with people doing similar literacy work in the city. Elaine Wells, who is a reading captain in Philadelphia and founder of Tiny Trekkers, a local trail and nature group for children, said her 7-year-old granddaughter struggled to learn to read.

“She could recognize ‘oh that’s an A or that’s a D’ but in trying to put the letters together to make a word, she definitely struggled,” Wells said.

But after she learned the song, according to Wells, “She has just been adamant about reading any and everything that she can and she’s been reading so much better.”

Building that kind of phonics-based foundation is crucial, said Marie Clarke, a third grade teacher at Philly’s Henry C. Lea Elementary, even though it’s not the only approach children can lean on to improve their reading skills.

“Context clues will help, that’s a strategy, but they still need the foundation of doing their sounds,” Clarke said.

Right2Read encourages people to put their own creative twists on the “Alphabet Song,” as long as such remixes still teach letter sounds (and are appropriate for all audiences). It even encourages doing double dutch while singing the song. And there are even prizes on offer.

The group takes a multi-faceted approach to helping children’s language skills as early as possible. Right2Read encourages teaching American Sign Language’s simple signs to young learners because doing so “can boost overall language capacity, including speech, and early learning,” according to its website.

“I think it’s important for children to feel both connection to their caregivers as well as confidence to express their wants and needs as early as possible,” said Sara Novic, author and consultant for Right2Read’s sign language component.

In addition, the organization’s website connects families to everything from ways to get free books, to how to incorporate “playful learning” in everyday urban settings.

The group’s impact is on track to stretch well beyond literacy and instructional circles.

Wells said she’s going to go over the “Alphabet Song” at every Tiny Trekker event. That way, she said, she can help instill it “as an easier way not just to recognize what the letter name is but what the sound is.”

Correction, July 26, 2024: This article has been corrected to reflect that Mighty Engine is a local creative agency. It has also been corrected to include the name of Right2ReadPhilly, the spelling of the name of Mighty Engine’s CEO, and the melodic basis for the “Alphabet Song.”

Azia Ross is a summer intern for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. You can reach her at aziaross@chalkbeat.org.

New initiative challenges Philly third graders to read 20 books in 20 weeks

2022-12-16T21:42:58+00:00

This story originally appeared on WHYY.

Third grade students at Fanny Coppin Elementary gathered Wednesday to read the first of 20 books they’ll read in the next 20 weeks.

The School District of Philadelphia will give a prize to every third grader who completes the challenge, though district officials haven’t decided on a specific prize yet.

Officials will track participation at the school and district levels. All third graders who complete the challenge will also be entered into a special raffle, said La Tanya Miller, the district’s executive director for academic supports.

“Literacy is the foundation of all learning, which is why proficient reading by the end of third grade is so critical,” Superintendent Tony Watlington said.

Third grade is the final year when children should be learning to read as opposed to reading to learn, according to reading experts. Students who aren’t proficient readers when they begin fourth grade are far more likely to fall behind their peers, not just in reading, but in all subjects.

A long-term study from the Annie E. Casey Foundation published in 2012 found students who weren’t proficient in reading by the end of third grade were four times more likely to drop out of high school.

Watlington pointed to the district’s 70% four-year graduation rate as one of several reasons why he plans to invest more district resources in early literacy.

The 20-week challenge is meant to complement classroom instruction by helping students grow their love of learning, he said, while practicing literacy skills at home like vocabulary and reading comprehension.

All third grade students will receive 10 books selected through the district’s partnership with Scholastic. The district will spend just over $550,000 on the program, officials said.

The books, which district officials described as “culturally relevant,” are meant to help students reach the 20-book reading goal and build their at-home library, Watlington said. The books are written at a variety of reading levels, district spokesperson Marissa Orbanek said, in recognition that different students need different materials.

One of the books is “Looking Like Me,” written by acclaimed children’s book author Walter Dean Myers and illustrated by his son Christopher Myers.

Third graders at Fanny Coppin Elementary school listen as Superintendent Tony Watlington reads aloud from ”Looking Like Me” by Walter Dean Myers. The book is part of the district’s new reading initiative aimed at third graders

Watlington and Dominic, a third grade student at Coppin, read the book aloud to Dominic’s classmates Wednesday.

“I looked in the mirror and what did I see? A real handsome dude looking just like me,” Watlington read.

“He put out his fist. I gave it a bam. He said Jeremy. I said that’s who I am.”

Watlington passed the book to Dominic who picked up the story. The two alternated pages, with the third grader reading confidently.

“I’m a writer spinning dramas that dance across the stage, a poet weaving mysteries that live upon the page,” Dominic read.

As they progressed through the book, Watlington encouraged the other children to chime in.

“She put out her fist — I bet you can finish the next line,” he said.

To which the kids gladly shouted: “I gave it a bam.”

While Dominic read the book with ease, many of the district’s third graders likely would have struggled if placed in his seat.

Just 28.2% of Philadelphia third graders scored proficient or higher in reading on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) during the 2021-22 school year, a slight decrease from the pre-pandemic rate which was 32.5% in 2019.

The district’s third grade reading performance as measured on the PSSA has been flat for over a decade, Watlington said. As a whole, third through eighth grade reading scores on the test increased by four percentage points during the same time period.

The scores are below the goals Philly schools have set for themselves.

During the 2020-21 school year, the Philadelphia school board said it wanted 62% of third-graders to be proficient by August 2026. To be on track, 44.3% of students would need to be reading on grade level this year.

Watlington said Wednesday that the district is looking at research on reading instruction and talking to successful teachers to help build a better district-wide approach.

“We know there’s a lot of research now about the science of reading. We’ll be talking about that more over time here in the school district,” he said.

Several states, including Mississippi, have seen dramatic gains in literacy after turning to the science of reading, which stresses the importance of foundational skills such as phonics.

For decades, many schools relied on an approach to reading known as whole language, in which students are taught to recognize words by sight rather than sound them out. While the debate over the best way to teach reading is ongoing, many have spoken out against the whole language approach.

Watlington pointed to Mississippi on Wednesday and the decision of other districts to invest in the science of reading.

“The New York City schools are going to invest,” he said, adding that the School District of Philadelphia will invest, too.

The district shifted its reading curriculum in 2019 to focus more on the science of reading, including phonics.

Brooks said teachers use a “tiered approach” in the classroom to make sure children who aren’t reading on grade level don’t fall further behind.

As a whole class, lessons typically use material that is age-appropriate, so all students are exposed to the content. Teachers or reading interventionists then pull students who are behind aside to work on specific skills to help them increase their reading level.

In addition to literacy coaches in schools, Orbanek said the district also offers an online tutoring program as part of its approach to remediating learning loss following the pandemic.

Watlington said no matter what reading level a student is at it’s important to expose them to material that challenges them.

“What we can’t do is say ‘Kids can only read at this level, so we’ll never expose them to grade-level appropriate content,’” he said. “I say it all the time, we will never remediate our way to excellence.”

Philadelphia officials optimistic about early literacy efforts despite disappointing test scores

2022-12-07T11:25:00+00:00

This story is featured in Chalkbeat’s 2022 Philadelphia Early Childhood Education Guide on efforts to improve outcomes for the city’s youngest learners. To keep up with early childhood education and Philadelphia’s public schools, sign up for our free weekly newsletter here.

Mayor Jim Kenney had a question for the 30 or so four- and five-year-olds arrayed before him at the Little Einsteins child care center in Germantown just before Thanksgiving.

After reading to them from the book “Our Favorite Day of the Year,” about holidays, food was on the mayor’s mind.

“What do you like to put on top of your pie? I like vanilla ice cream,” he said.

“Pizza!” one little boy shouted.

“Pizza on top of your pie?” the mayor responded in mock disbelief. The little boy giggled.

Soon, it was a free-for-all. “French fries!” “Hot dogs!” “Nuggets!” children shouted.

“Now you’re being silly,” the mayor said, appearing to enjoy every moment as the children basked in the attention.

During November, Kenney visited several child care centers to highlight what he considers one of his biggest achievements as mayor: making affordable, high-quality early childhood education available to an additional 4,300 students through PHLPreK, an initiative that supplements state and federal programs including Pre-K Counts and Head Start.

The focus on prekindergarten is part of the city’s effort to ensure that all students can read on grade level by the end of third grade. This Read by 4th campaign began in 2015, and has brought together universities, foundations, businesses, and other institutions to emphasize literacy activities in everyday life as well as in the classroom.

As a target on the road to universal proficiency, the Philadelphia Board of Education has set a goal that 62% of third graders will be proficient readers by the 2025-26 school year. Yet while many systems have been put in place to help the city achieve its goal, the results so far have been mixed — at least as measured by standardized test scores.

Just 28.2% of Philadelphia third graders scored proficient or advanced in reading this year on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the state test scores. That is not only a decline from pre-pandemic proficiency of 32.5% in 2019, but more than 10 percentage points below the goal set by the Board of Education for the 2021-22 school year for the district to be on track for its goal of 62%. (In 2020, the state did not administer the PSSA; in 2021, a relatively small share of students took the PSSA due to the pandemic, and officials have warned against comparing those scores to results from other years.)

Overall for grades 3-8, 34.7% of students scored proficient in reading on the PSSA in 2022. That’s below the interim target of 42.5% the district set for 2021-22 in order to stay on track to reach its goal of 65% proficiency by 2026.

Recently released scores from this year’s federally administered National Assessment of Educational Progress for fourth and eighth graders — known as “the nation’s report card” — revealed promising but also worrying signs for Philadelphia’s younger students when it comes to literacy.

While fourth graders’ NAEP reading scores dipped nationwide and in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia’s fourth grade reading scores did not change significantly from 2019, the last time the NAEP test was administered. At the same time, Philadelphia’s fourth graders scored significantly below the national average and the average for Pennsylvania. (NAEP is administered to a representative sample of students, not all of them.)

Despite worrying signs in the data, those working in the field also see encouraging signs.

Donna Cooper, executive director of the advocacy group Children First, called it “amazing” that Philadelphia’s fourth grade NAEP scores in reading “didn’t tank” for 2022 after all the pandemic-related disruptions.

And others point to the foundation for future success in literacy that Philadelphia has put in place recently through a diverse set of initiatives inside and outside schools. “We feel we’re in a much better place than we were seven years ago,” said Jenny Bogoni, executive director of the Read by 4th campaign.

Early literacy efforts focus on coaches and curriculum

The initiative started in the wake of research showing that students reap lifelong benefits if they are reading proficiently when they start fourth grade. A 2012 study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, for example, found that students who do not reach this milestone are four times less likely to graduate high school on time than those who do.

Despite the added pre-K seats in Philadelphia over the last several years, inadequate availability may still be hindering efforts like those to improve early literacy.

About 12,000 children, or nearly half of those eligible for those seats based on family income, still don’t have access to affordable early childhood education, Cooper pointed out.

That could contribute to the reality that despite “tons of effort” after seven years “we’re not seeing movement” on the traditional measures of children’s literacy, she said.

Still, while the percentage of students reaching proficiency on the PSSA has not shown the progress people would like, the share of students scoring “below basic” (the lowest level) on the test did fall across various student subgroups from 2015 and 2019. For example, the percentage of Black male students scoring below basic on the English Language Arts test declined from 46.5% in 2015 to 41.5% in 2019, according to the district.

“We haven’t quite gotten to putting more in the proficient bucket, but we’re bringing up the bottom,” Bogoni said.

Starting in 2019, the district overhauled its early reading curriculum by hewing more closely to the science of reading, said Nyshawana Francis-Thompson, the district’s deputy chief of curriculum and instruction.

This shift in instruction seeks to couple comprehension skills — including vocabulary development, background knowledge, and verbal reasoning — with more explicit phonics instruction, decoding, and phonemic awareness, or the relationship between letters and sounds.

With the curricular shift, “We’re more focused on foundational skills,” said Malika Savoy-Brooks, the district’s chief academic support officer.

The district is also working with local colleges of education to make sure that teachers planning to work in the early grades get more rigorous training in reading instruction. And since 2015, early-grade teachers have received summer training in best practices for teaching reading.

Beyond that fundamental shift in core instruction, the district has also hired literacy coaches recently to work in many schools. Officials have also sought to raise awareness among parents about the importance of exposing them to books from a very early age.

Outside of school, the Read by 4th campaign has enlisted the help of “reading captains.” These are community residents who conduct literacy activities in the neighborhood at libraries, schools, parks and other settings.

Diane Castelbuono, the district’s director of early childhood education, said there is “a small army of reading captains out there engaging friends and neighbors in how to raise a reader, and how families can access the resources they need.”

Separately, the district is working with book publishers and funders to obtain more diverse books, and enhance classroom libraries to make sure most of the books and teaching materials are more culturally responsive to the children in the classroom, who are overwhelmingly Black and brown.

Francis-Thompson said the district is drawing on materials and philosophy from Dr. Gholdy Muhammed, an associate professor at Georgia State University who emphasizes the importance of cultural affirmation and appropriate reading materials to children’s development of literacy skills.

“Significant work has been done making sure there are books in children’s homes, making sure the distribution of children’s books is culturally responsive and in different languages,” Castelbuono said.

While curriculum is important, so is making sure that the teachers of early learners also focus on children’s social and emotional needs, said LaTanya Miller, executive director of the district’s office of academic supports who works on adaptive curriculum for students with disabilities.

And with respect to English language learners, who make up 12% of the district’s students, the district has also gradually shifted its approach to stress that speaking and understanding a language other than English is an asset, not a liability.

Over the past several years, the district has invested in modernizing kindergarten through third grade classrooms to include centers devoted to reading, writing, and LEGOs.

And officials are ramping up other initiatives, including playful learning, in which opportunities for reading and conversation are present in places all around the city, including parks, laundromats, and buses.

The ultimate goal of all these efforts, Francis-Thompson said, is to prepare students to be critical of the world around them and “not just a passive consumer” of information. Beyond just teaching skills, creating literate students is about “accepting them and embracing all that they are in a learning environment,” she said.

As with many other education initiatives, the pandemic has disrupted efforts to improve early literacy. Bogoni said almost two full years of remote learning has taken its toll. But she stressed that the city is now in a better position to make badly needed progress.

“We were feeling we were on the cusp of making good progress as the pandemic hit,” she said. “Now the task is to double down. The foundations are in place that should allow us to move forward in this space of urgency.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Two Philly fathers aim to hook students on reading early

2022-06-17T20:25:13+00:00

Brent Johnstone and Akeiff Staples met at Temple University, where they were both on the football team. Each went on to a career in social work, where they would cross paths from time to time. But as they put it, something else was “meant to be.”

Five years ago, the two started a Philadelphia program to help fathers returning from prison re-engage with their kids through reading. They had seen firsthand how a lack of male role models, combined with frustration stemming from an inability to read, could lead to poverty, violence, substance abuse, and worse.

“You can almost guarantee a positive impact in a child’s life by just reading to your child,” Johnstone told Chalkbeat. “And that’s only at an average of 20 minutes a night.”

Johnstone and Staples decided “to attack early literacy through the vision of fathers engaging” with their kids, Johnstone said. They committed to work full-time for their new venture, FathersRead365, even though they had no funding commitments at the time.

Before long, the project expanded. Staples and Johnstone began holding fun, high-energy reading events for kids in daycare centers, inviting adults — particularly fathers — to join in. FathersRead365 is now in about 150 centers and has received almost $400,000 in funding to date. It’s also given away 100,000 books to Philadelphia schoolchildren.

“One of the main reasons we do this is we just don’t feel like people realize how important children not knowing how to read past a third-grade reading level is, and how that impacts crime and violence,” Johnstone said. A study found that just 33% of Philadelphia third graders were proficient in reading, he noted.

That’s important because “no one’s teaching your kid to read after third grade,” he said. So if children aren’t reading on grade level by then, “there’s a great chance they won’t be on level the rest of their lives.”

When the pandemic hit and in-person events were not an option, the team decided to focus on book distribution. It discovered major discrepancies in the availability of reading materials among kids in different neighborhoods, Johnstone said.

Through their FathersRead365 initiative, Akeiff Staples, left, and Brent Johnstone drive home the importance of reading and parents being involved in their child’s schoolwork.

He pointed to a study from 2001 that found there were about 300 children for every book available in a high-poverty section of Philadelphia, while each child in a middle-class neighborhood had access to about 13 age-appropriate books.

That figure gave the two the idea of putting 13 books in a bookbag and distributing the bundles to kids at their schools. FathersRead365 partnered with 14 city schools and the William Penn Foundation to put together and distribute the parcels. This past school year, they gave 13 books and a bookbag to each of roughly 1,000 students.

“When the pandemic set in, our whole model kind of shut down, because we’re interactive, in your face, inviting a ton of people to engage in these activities,” Johnstone said. “It made us pivot, and it’s probably one of the best things that could have happened to us.”

They have also raised money for a “Book Bus” that will travel to schools and distribute books, he said.

A visit from FathersRead365 helped jump-start the “Lions Roar for Reading” program at T.M. Peirce Elementary School, said Assistant Principal Austin Wallace Jr. “Their program fit perfectly with what I was trying to bring to our school in terms of having male representation in the classrooms to expose students to literature,” he told Chalkbeat.

“Young males aren’t exposed to male voices reading to them, or male figures in front of them reading,” Wallace continued. “We wanted to expose the young men to that,” particularly in the lower grades when “foundational skills are solidified,” he said.

Wallace had drafted every male staff member working at Peirce, from principal to custodian, to spend 10 to 15 minutes each Friday reading to a class within the pre-K-3 range. When Staples and Johnstone came in as part of that effort, “that was pretty much what solidified the program as a recurring thing,” Wallace said.

“I look forward to working with FathersRead for as long as they’re willing to work with me,” said Wallace, who in the fall will be principal of Delaplaine McDaniel, a K-8 school, in South Philadelphia.

Johnstone and Staples have plans to expand, though it takes work. They’re building their YouTube channel so kids can remain engaged, and hope to be able to board the “Book Bus” and distribute those gifts of 13 books and a bookbag around the country.

And the art of fundraising, Staples said, is something they’re learning about constantly.

“When it comes to fundraising for Black-led nonprofit organizations, it can be tough,” he said. “You have to run through hoops.”

Staples and Johnstone connected with their group’s first funder, the William Penn Foundation, at a 2018 literacy event. “Akeiff and I were really into our program, with absolutely no funding in sight. We just went up there and were ourselves and had a heck of a time,” Johnstone recalled. A William Penn program officer reached out to them after the event, and “from there, the relationship has grown,” Johnstone said.

Philadelphia School Board member Reginald Streater said efforts like FathersRead365 are much appreciated.

“As we know, often the first teacher or information leader is a child’s parent,” Streater told Chalkbeat. “Parents are already partners,” he said, but “some parents just don’t know how to be the partners that the school district needs.”

Chalkbeat Philadelphia Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun contributed reporting.

Just 32% of Philadelphia third graders read on grade level. Freedom Schools Literacy Academy could be a model to change that.

2021-08-05T14:16:37+00:00

Editor’s note: This article was updated to properly attribute material that appeared in a Johns Hopkins University press release and to remove language that appeared in a Temple News article.

Philadelphia Councilman Isaiah Thomas was a prolific reader as a kid.

Reading became routine for the councilman growing up in Northwest Philadelphia, mostly because his father was a teacher. It was also at Philadelphia Freedom Schools where Thomas enhanced his ability to read — noting authors such as Bob Moses, who wrote “Radical Equations” and Randall Robinson of “The Debt.” He read both books at Freedom Schools.

Thomas visited the Freedom Schools Literacy Academy, or FSLA, at Mastery Harrity Elementary School in West Philadelphia on Tuesday to engage with students on the importance of reading.

The councilman, who was a Freedom Schools student in the 1990s, believes the literacy program can be a model that could help the city with its youth literacy numbers — and its lack of Black teachers.

“When you’re talking about learning and content, the foundation of that is reading,” Thomas said. “It’s tough to be a good math student, if you don’t read; it’s tough to be a good science student, if you can’t read. So the foundation is reading.”

A report this year revealed only 32% of Philadelphia third graders read on grade level, a number that angered members of Philadelphia’s Board of Education.

“These trends are not surprising to any of us, now we have to talk about what we can do about it,” said school board member Mallory Fix-Lopez.

The report showed gaps among racial groups and low scores for students with disabilities and English language learners. It also showed that regardless of overall achievement at all schools, there were racial achievement gaps, with Black and Latino students scoring below whites and Asians.

Black and Latino students in the top-tier schools are on track to reach the goal of 62% proficiency by 2026, with about half reaching the mark now. But two-thirds of white and Asian students in those schools are already there.

“We definitely find that about 60 to 70% of the students who come to our program are not reading on grade level,” said Erika Asikoye, director of FSLA. “We know that we’re going to get a range of children who just finished kindergarten, first grade or second grade who could benefit from our help.”

The literacy program focuses on “phonemic awareness, reading comprehension and positive racial identity” and spends a lot of time on letter sounds, Asikoye said . This awareness is a critical development skill for children and is linked to early reading success through its association with phonics.

In its success, the academy links reading with cultural awareness.

The Freedom Schools movement began during the civil rights movement and Freedom Summer of 1964. The original Freedom Schools were proposed by Charlie Cobb, a member of the Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee (SNCC), to focus on literacy, positive racial identity, political education, and empowerment of Mississippi children who were suffering from “sharecropper” and “Jim Crow education.” SNCC recognized that the oppressive state of education in Mississippi was “geared to squash intellectual curiosity and different thinking” of Black children – the children and grandchildren of the adults SNCC was there to help.

City Councilman Isaiah Thomas listens attentively during a third-grade reading class at Freedom Schools Literacy Academy.

SNCC leaders envisioned Freedom Schools as a model that could support Black children “to articulate their own desires, demands, and questions” and “to find alternative and ultimately new directions for action.”

In the late 1980s, civil rights attorney Marian Wright Edelman, who founded the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), rebooted Freedom Schools through community-based organizations across the country. Philadelphia’s Freedom Schools can trace its roots to the CDF model.

Philadelphia Freedom Schools was founded in the 1990s by a coalition of Black educational leaders; Dr. Greg Carr, Erika Asikoye, and Dr. Ayesha Imani, who worked in the School District of Philadelphia, found support from David Hornbeck, former superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia. They would later form their own version of Freedom Schools, Philadelphia Freedom Schools (PFS), adding a high school component to bolster the inter-generational model.

Sharif El-Mekki, former teacher, principal, and founder of The Fellowship: Black Male Educators for Social Justice, draws much of his educational framework from his elementary school, Nidhamu Sasa, a small African Freedom School in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, started 50 years ago by Black activists and parents. His experiences at Nidhamu Sasa and in literacy classes as one of the many Black 4-year-old children who learned phonics on the indoor porch of his cousin, Dr. Suzette Abdul-Hakim of West Philadelphia, continue to inspire El-Mekki decades later.

These informed El-Mekki’s desire to use the Freedom Schools model to develop a national Black teacher pipeline – a model that provides Black high school and college students the opportunity to teach literacy and positive racial identity to first-third graders.

El-Mekki, founder of the Center for Black Educator Development, told Chalkbeat that using a community-based approach, one that involves an intergenerational model, adds capacity and strength in teaching youth how to read. It’s also linked to recruiting more Black teachers through the Black Teacher Pipeline.

“We need to double down on these efforts to use the science of reading and youth leadership to solve the complex issues that we face as a city and country,” El-Mekki said. “We’ll know we’re serious about the success of our future as a city when we hold ourselves accountable for the literacy rates of our youth. You can’t have a world class city without a highly literate citizenry - and all really does mean all.”

A group of third-grade students patiently wait for their turn to speak during reading class at Freedom Schools Literacy Academy in West Philadelphia.

According to studies like those led by Constance Lindsey of the University of North Carolina, Black students do better when they have Black teachers.

A separate study from John Hopkins University found that Black students with at least one Black teacher are more likely to graduate high school and enroll in college, and if they have one Black teacher by the third grade, they are 13 % more likely to go to college. The percentage increases to 32% if they have two Black teachers.

“I think of literacy in terms of a human right - something that warrants our best efforts, investments and commitments,” El-Mekki said. “When we see countries that America loves to disparage, Cuba and Iran for example, but see how they prioritize literacy amongst their children and citizens we have to wonder, who actually has it backwards and is Third World?”

Though school board members vowed to make improvements to students’ reading skills, Thomas thinks the government should contribute in some form.

“Spend the money on programs that work,” Thomas said. “Even in the case of the school district, the federal government has allocated a significant amount of money to address the learning gap. So it’s up to the school district and the city to spend money on quality programs that do just that.”

Kristina Wilkerson, a parent of an academy student, said she’s pleased with the progress her son Dominic has made.

“Dominic loves to read. During the pandemic school year he would get off his regular school work to read books. So this program has helped to elevate that. He also gets to see teachers who look like him and says,. ‘Mom I can be whatever I want to be.’”

Educators and advocates fear pandemic will widen Philadelphia’s literacy gaps

2021-03-31T19:23:48+00:00

In Valerie Haley’s kindergarten class at Rowen Elementary in West Oak Lane, the shift to virtual learning affected students differently: The students who have parents at home, have materials at their disposal, those are the ones who seem to be more engaged than others.

Across the city, at McCall Elementary, Iwa Cliggett and her team of English as a second language teachers noticed that students who already struggled in the classroom were the ones most affected by remote learning. Students with attention issues had a harder time focusing. Students who were easily frustrated became more so, and students who were just beginning to learn English were increasingly isolated.

Educators and literacy specialists have been worried that the pandemic and the resulting shift to virtual learning could exacerbate existing gaps in literacy rates, largely along socioeconomic and racial lines. That’s one reason Superintendent William Hite wanted to get the district’s youngest students, most of whom are learning to read, back in school buildings this spring.

“We know that children, especially our youngest learners, and those with complex needs, learn best in person,” Hite said earlier this year, noting particular concern about children learning to read.

The abrupt shift to remote learning a year ago has raised concerns about the long-term effects on early childhood literacy rates, particularly in a city where only 17% of public school fourth graders read at or above “proficient” standards, according to 2019 test data from the National Association of Educational Progress, or NAEP.

“Our students were already being underserved in their literacy instruction. And so now with the pandemic, it’s only gotten worse for many students,” said Sharif El-Mekki, CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development.

Data on the effects of the pandemic still are limited, but there is some evidence that the pandemic has not yet had the disproportionate effect on already disadvantaged students that many fear.

District officials released a report in January that found a significant decline in internal reading assessments for grades one to five between the winter before the pandemic began and the fall of 2020. (No tests were given last spring.) Students who were in kindergarten last year and first grade in the fall had the most dramatic drop, of 15 percentiles.

Most racial groups, however, were affected about the same: Black, white and Asian students all saw scores decline by about 6 percentiles, while Latino students dropped by about 5 percentiles.

Similarly, students considered “economically disadvantaged” dropped about the same as their wealthier peers. The testing, which was done on the same group of students from one academic year to the next, provides a small window into the pandemic’s effects.

Nyshawana Francis-Thompson, executive director of the district’s Office of Curriculum and Instruction, said the limited data the district has so far has not seemed to show that disparities among groups have worsened, but they also haven’t improved. Wide pre-pandemic disparities in early literacy rates across these groups combined with across-the-board learning loss is a significant cause for concern, she said.

“The achievement gap is not new during the pandemic,” said Francis-Thompson, adding that early literacy has become an area of particular focus for her office beyond the immediate effects of the pandemic.

Board members discussed literacy rates at a meeting on Jan. 28 in which district officials noted that nearly 72% of first graders scored either “below average” or “well-below average” on the district’s reading assessments this fall. Additionally, only 32% of third graders were reading at grade level.

The report, prepared for the Philadelphia Board of Education’s “goals and guardrails” initiative, starkly outlined how the largest disparities in early literacy break down on racial and socioeconomic lines, though all students were far from the district’s final literacy goal. The few schools where most students are at grade level enroll fewer students and are disproportionately white.

“I think it’s those who work in literacy and education are pretty certain that children, while they’ve been given education this year, it’s different,” said Jenny Bogoni, executive director of Read by 4th, a coalition working to ensure that Philadelphia students are reading on grade level by fourth grade. ”They’ve likely not absorbed the same level of instruction as they would have in a normal year.”

Bogoni noted that the toll the pandemic has taken on literacy is expected to affect communities experiencing poverty “at a much higher rate or in a much more negative way” than others.

Students living in poverty are more likely to have parents who had to juggle jobs while finding child care, lack internet connectivity in their households, or may not have materials in the home to promote reading. They are also more likely to live in communities that lack resources and experience instability.

“You’re talking about the racial stress, the racial injustice, the educational injustice that’s been heaped on these communities for generations,” said El-Mekki.

Even before the pandemic, a recent Temple University study showed that 72% of teachers felt unprepared to work in urban classrooms, while 62% felt unprepared to teach “culturally diverse” students.

“Now we’re talking about literacy on top of that?” said El-Mekki. “This is a double whammy that is very hard for children to just ‘overcome’.”

Both the district and Read By 4th believe that more data is necessary to fully understand the ways in which student learning has been affected by the pandemic.

According to district data, Black, Latino and Native American students are the racial groups farthest from the district’s literacy targets. Only 31% of Black students, 23.5% of Latinos, and 22% of Native American students in kindergarten through third grade are at or above grade level in reading. Similarly the report found that only 20% of English learners, 26% of students in special education, and 30% of economically disadvantaged students were on grade level in reading.

Failing to reverse this trend can have lifelong consequences.

“There’s tons of data and research that supports that early literacy is connected to students’ outcome with graduating. And post-secondary,” said Francis-Thompson. “So we need to get our youngest people back in front of us so that we are addressing their needs.”

Beyond the pandemic, she said that her office is looking at several strategies. First they are transitioning early literacy instruction to be more focused on the “science of reading.” But Francis-Thompson said that is not enough to address the disparities.

The district also is writing new curriculum units designed for early grades that center the experiences of students of color. The Philadelphia school district is predominantly Black and Latino.

“There is a need to look at the identity of Black and brown children,” she said.

By fourth grade, students are less likely to get targeted reading instruction and instead start to be given material to read for learning.

“Not only is your reading skill going to be behind and you’ve got less of a chance to make it up,” said Bogoni, “but it means when you’re sitting in science class and asked to read a paragraph about whatever the science lesson is, or reading a math problem or reading your social studies material, you get behind in all these other subjects because you’re behind in reading.”

For El-Mekki, the solution is multi-faceted. Not only does he think there needs to be a shift in the way teachers are trained to teach reading, they also need to know better how to engage students of color. And there needs to be more funding for districts like Philadelphia.

Francis-Thompson said that the district is trying to do just that over the long term. More immediately, for students most affected by the pandemic, officials are discussing a wide range of options, including more one-on-one instruction and an extended school year.

Cliggett agrees that more individualized support is necessary. “Even in small groups, sometimes it is not enough,” said Cliggett, “not when students can be so far apart.”

Bogoni also agrees. For her son, who was a struggling reader, one-on-one tutoring was the only intervention that worked. She sees this as a crucial strategy for lagging readers.

The concern with one-on-one tutoring is cost and scalability. The district already has a pilot program that matches high school students who fail English or math courses in the first semester with one-on-one tutors. Francis-Thompson believes that if that program shows meaningful results it could be expanded to lower grades. On the question of scale, she thinks that expanded partnerships with tutoring services and programs could make it work.

Read by 4th is currently doing research into this area. “I think we do have to look at how to scale tutoring in a way that makes it accessible to all families,” Bogoni said. Even having more trained adults in the classroom would make a difference. “If I’m thinking about policy and how to use the stimulus dollars that are going to be flowing, I think we probably need more adults trained around supporting teaching and reading in classrooms in the coming years.”

Another option is more effectively using the summer as an extension of the academic year. The summer break often results in what’s known as the “summer slide,” in which a student’s skills regress after a summer off. After the past year, educating students throughout the summer has taken on particular significance (with some wondering whether it is time to rethink the academic calendar entirely).

El-Mekki’s Center for Black Educator Development runs the Freedom School Literacy Academy, a program that trains high school and college students in proven literacy teaching strategies and in ways to more effectively reach Black students. Not only does this set up a pipeline for Black educators to enter the profession, but it more effectively reaches some of the communities most affected by the city’s gloomy literacy rates.

The Academy, focused on kindergarten through second grade, combines a strong emphasis on phonics and phonemic awareness and fluency with culturally specific instruction that targets Black students. This will be the fifth year of the summer program and the center believes it is more important than ever.

El-Mekki said the summer academies are in high demand and the hope is to double their capacity to reach 200 students. But even then El-Mekki said they expect there will be a waitlist. They also hope to run an extended program throughout the year starting this fall.

Francis-Thompson said that the district is also looking seriously at more options to extend instruction into the summer as a way to get students most significantly impacted by the pandemic additional help, although the details have not been released yet.

One thing everyone is clear about: making sure the youngest students have the building blocks to literacy has become a top priority.

“Anytime we are talking about being a world-class city and we have a populace this high that can’t read on grade level, we’re lying to ourselves,” said El-Mekki. “Being able to read is a human right.”

How to address the COVID-19 slide in early literacy? Philadelphia teachers, experts talk effective reading strategies

2021-03-03T19:48:06+00:00

When kindergarten teacher Alyxe Fields was a young student, she had trouble reading.

Decoding words was tough for her. Though she grew up to be a successful teacher at William Rowen School in West Oak Lane, the experience of struggling to read as a child has influenced how she approaches her 5-year-old students.

“It’s important for reading skills to be addressed early on so it doesn’t get passed over and then they just move on next year,” Fields said.

Remote learning has made a difficult task - teaching young children how to read - even harder.

As schools approach the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic, educators, parents and policymakers in Philadelphia are increasingly concerned about how the youngest students are learning to read. The shift to remote learning has exacerbated existing concerns in the city about early childhood literacy and the long-term effects on achievement.

Teachers and reading specialists report that students who regularly attend their virtual classes are indeed learning – a testament to both the remarkable ways teachers have been able to quickly adapt to their new teaching environment and the resilience of students – but educators fear that their students are not nearly as far along as they would have been in a normal school year.

“We are looking at significant regression in terms of students’ learning,” said Dawn Brookhart, associate director of the AIM Institute for Learning and Research in Conshohocken, which focuses on reading research and how to train teachers in evidence-based instruction through professional development and continuing education.

Literacy has been a longstanding concern in the Philadelphia school district. According to a district report presented at a Board of Education meeting in January, only 32% of third graders read on grade level. As part of its “goals and guardrails” initiative, the school board has taken up early literacy as a particular point of focus, aiming for 62% of students to be proficient in English language arts by 2026. In response to the report, Superintendent William Hite announced that the district would move away from a “balanced literacy” approach, which incorporates elements of whole language instruction, toward a model that is more focused on phonics and phonemic awareness.

Whole language instruction focuses on teaching reading by inferring information about a word from the larger context. Proponents of the “science of reading” point to research studies showing that children need direct instruction, with a particular focus on phonics, to learn how to decode words. Balanced literacy is an attempt to combine the two approaches.

Hite also said teachers need more long-term professional development for reading instruction. This is in line with advocates who argue many elementary teachers also aren’t trained in the science of reading. For them, sustained professional development is necessary so that teachers stay up to date on the research.

Brookhart said that many classrooms are still using a “broken model,” that uses strategies like the three cueing system where students are meant to draw information about a word from three contextual sources: visual (like an illustration), syntax (the role of the word in the sentence), and graphic (recognizing the letters themselves). Brookhart said that contrary to popular belief, learning to read is “not a natural process.”

“It’s not like language. It takes a very skilled practitioner to be able to understand how to truly teach reading,” she said.

Jen Lutz, a reading specialist at Community Partnership School in North Philadelphia, taught first grade before becoming a reading specialist. She said she was not armed with the knowledge she needed to most effectively reach students.

“Initially I didn’t really learn how to teach reading. I took one class and it showed me how to read picture books to kids,” she said.

It wasn’t until she earned her masters degree and a reading specialist certification — largely sparked by asking questions about why certain kids were learning to read while others weren’t — that she learned proven techniques.

While the mechanics of how we teach reading has been debated among researchers and educators for decades, the question has taken on new urgency for reading specialists, elementary school teachers, and school administrators alike during the pandemic. In many ways, the success of remote learning has been dependent on children’s individual situations – the ability to focus, whether they have a parent or guardian to help oversee school, the amount of distractions, inconsistent internet connection — so it’s likely that students in the same grade will come out of the pandemic with wildly varying reading levels.

For Lutz, the question has become about solutions: “Ok so what is going to be the most effective way to get kids back on track?” she said.

In that answer, she sees room for improvement beyond the pandemic. “The research is there. I think there is a lot of opportunity here for people to look at the way things were done and what can we do to accelerate how we fill in these gaps?”

Brookhart objects to the idea that this year of upheaval will lead to a generation of early learners with lower literacy outcomes. Instead, this may be an opportunity for the district to rethink how it teaches reading as it moves towards a more effective model.

“In all other industries, they’ve been forced to pivot, they’ve been forced to change. Unfortunately, education still, even as we look at schools that have gone back to in-person instruction, they’re still very much committed to that old traditional model.”

For Brookhart, Lutz, and a growing number of elementary teachers and reading specialists, a “new model” doesn’t necessarily mean shiny new hardware or buying fancy software. It means relying on and adopting the “science of reading” to guide which teaching techniques work best for the largest number of children.

Many reading specialists interviewed pointed to research that shows that while 40% of students will learn to read regardless of the kind of reading instruction they receive, the other 60% need a “structured literacy” approach. That means “explicit, systematic teaching that focuses on phonological awareness, word recognition, phonics and decoding, spelling, and syntax at the sentence and paragraph levels,” according to the Iowa Reading Research Center. These techniques have more often been used to target struggling students, but have been shown to be valuable and effective for all early readers.

At Rowen, where Fields teaches kindergarten, the school has been part of a partnership with Wilson Language Training to use the Wilson Fundations program, which is based on the kind of research that Brookhart and Lutz advocate using. The program originally developed strategies for students struggling to read, but has since developed a reading curriculum for the general classroom based on the same principles. Community Partnership School, the independent school targeting traditionally underserved communities in North Philadelphia where Lutz teaches, also uses Wilson Fundations.

Access to the program, which has been implemented at Rowen for a few years now, has been especially crucial during the pandemic, Fields said.

“I will sing the praises of the program in person — the way that they break down individual letters, letter sounds, and then the way that they slowly transition into blending them together,” she said.

But since the shift to virtual learning, it has become “our lifesaver,” giving teachers specific sequential lessons and materials that have been adapted for virtual learning including instructional videos, letter and sound flashcards, and tiles that students can use to build sounds, words, and eventually sentences.

Without it, Fields said, her students would be much farther behind.

Not all schools in Philadelphia have access to programs like these, virtually or even before the coronavirus. The pandemic has only thrown the need for more effective strategies to teach reading into even sharper focus.

Brookhart said teachers with the best of intentions try “a lot of interventions without really understanding what our students need.”

After the pandemic ends, schools across Philadelphia also may have to contend with teachers who are exhausted and demoralized from the extra work that comes with the remote teaching, shifting their pedagogy to react to a new virtual classroom experience, and ongoing stress about reopening.

Still, Brookhart sees the change already starting to happen. Throughout the pandemic she has seen an increase in the appetite for AIM’s evidence-based literacy course platforms and has been struck by the requests for more resources. “We are seeing now that more teachers and administrators are recognizing that they need to approach this differently,” she said.

The Institute also has a partnership with the Philadelphia school district to provide professional development and implementation, a relationship that Brookhart hopes will grow coming out of the pandemic, especially given the renewed emphasis the district is putting on early literacy.

“I think the opportunity is now for us to really reimagine education.”

Mighty Writers programs are more popular than ever

2019-08-07T17:44:38+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Miguel Martinez-Valle, a reporter from NBC and Telemundo, spent a recent week at the Mighty Writers site known as El Futuro to show a group of 11- to 13-year-olds how to report, organize, and write a news story.

He helped them do original interviews, showing them how to set up the camera and ask questions. They studied and edited the clips, got the necessary follow-up shots, and worked together on intros and “outros,” or wrap-ups.

Each student was able to practice roles such as cameraman, producer, and reporter while creating a script and planning as a group for their interviews.

“This is a super young immigrant community,” said Martinez-Valle. “Their aunts and uncles own a lot of shops around here, and so it’s important for them to be able to report and talk about their communities.”

For the last 10 years, Mighty Writers has been providing free instruction for children to help them improve their writing. The programs offered at the seven centers, including one in Camden, NJ, are specific and centered on a particular genre and style. The organization brings in volunteers from groups including the Peace Center, based in Langhorne, which has a mission to reduce violence in society. The center works on issues from bullying to the border detentions of immigrant children.

These organizations often partner with the specific community that the site serves, and in return, the students get exposed to a new style of writing and to a profession they may not have had on their radar before.

“They [Telemundo] want to reach that [Latinx] audience,” said Nelia Diaz, program director. “They want to get that content, and we get to see what they have to offer [in return].”

“What’s interesting about Mighty Writers is that they’re sited in needy communities in terms of literature,” said Sandee Mandel, a retired teacher and a Mighty Writers volunteer. “This is a wonderful program to supplement the learning in Philadelphia schools.”

Each site involved with Mighty Writers is different. Some of its programming is generic, but for the most part each location offers specific programs relevant to its own community.

“[Each of these sites] reflect[s] the communities that they exist in,” said Mandel.

A mural at the El Futuro site of Mighty Writers. It says, “I dream of an afternoon in the future.”

El Futuro itself is a special site, even within Mighty Writers. Located in the Italian Market area around Ninth and Washington in South Philadelphia, it caters to the Mexican immigrant population in the area. It is the only Mighty Writers site that is bilingual, and students also learn about Mexico and Mexican culture.

“Mighty Writers helps us to learn stuff like the numbers and what is Mexico,” said Mabelline, 7. “We learned how to talk different languages and 10 minus 5, and we tell stories.”

Said her friend Briana: “We learn about Mexico – what they do there, what they have there, and we learn about the food. We learned that they have horses there, [and] that they have very different foods.”

Diaz regularly uses connections like Telemundo to enhance what is available at El Futuro’s site. The week that the Peace Center volunteers came in, the theme was bullying. And programming is year-round. Drexel and Temple Universities have found ways to support their programs, including the Academy, a program that helps students with homework and provides writing support four times a week during the school year.

“Kids need so much help, and the school doesn’t provide so much,” Diaz said. “It’s a real issue, and unfortunately they don’t have [sufficient] support in Philadelphia schools.”

Over its history, Mighty Writers has grown considerably. Starting in 2009 with about 100 students, there were 1,300 in the summer camp program this year. Despite increasing capacity at its sites by about 500 students, Mighty Writers was still not able to accommodate all the students who applied this year.

Diaz notes that in the case of the El Futuro site, the issue is having enough space. She said she rotates different age groups week by week to give everyone a chance to participate.

The yearlong writing support that the program provides is crucial, she said.

“They’re glad for this chance,” said Diaz. “The immigration that’s happening, they’re looking for programs where they can speak English.”

However, Diaz notes that El Futuro does not really appeal to people outside of the Latinx community in South Philadelphia, which now includes immigrant families from all over the world, including Asia and Africa. Therefore, she believes that El Futuro’s popularity had to do more with people talking favorably about the program to friends and neighbors.

Advertising is limited, she said. “It’s all more word of mouth.”

Although Mandel has volunteered at multiple Mighty Writers sites, including Mighty Writers West, she finds El Futuro to be special.

“I’ve seen little shy kids come alive, I’ve seen camaraderie happen, I have seen kids from the same culture come together,” she said. “It’s such a fascinating place.”

District expands program that gives books to young readers

2019-06-04T02:15:31+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Shelly Alston said that her granddaughter Jewel is always reading.

When she brings Jewel to the gym and works out, the girl sits on the side reading a book. In the back seat of the car, Jewel reads a book, Alston told the gathering at Spruance Elementary School, where she teaches 5th grade.

“Her love of reading has really grown,” Alston said of her granddaughter, a 3rd grader in Barbara Kennedy’s class at Spruance, in Northeast Philadelphia.

Jewel wasn’t an avid reader until a program came along at Spruance called BookTrust, a national nonprofit that, along with local philanthropies, provides up to three books a month to kindergarten through 3rd-grade students.

The key: The children can pick out the books themselves, depending on what they’re interested in.

“BookTrust made me a better reader by showing me all the choices out there,” Jewel said solemnly, her head barely reaching above the lectern set up for the adults. Her favorites: the Black Lagoon adventure series.

BookTrust, which was started in Colorado in 2001 by the Schatz family, has since spread to 21 states, reaching 57,000 children.

Superintendent William Hite and officials from BookTrust traveled to Spruance on Monday to announce that Philadelphia’s pilot program of 10 schools would be expanded to include all elementary schools in the District within four years, a step made possible by a $1.3 million grant from the William Penn Foundation.

Philadelphia is the first city to go districtwide with the program, said Tiffany Kuehner, president and CEO of BookTrust. She and Kristy Adams, the organization’s senior director of philanthropy, flew from Denver on Monday morning to attend the announcement event.

Jewel, with her grandmother Shelly Alston, explains how BookTrust nurtured her love of reading. Alston is a 5th-grade teacher at the school.

Kuehner asked the students to guess how many books the children at Spruance had received so far. Estimates ranged from “more than a thousand” to “gazillion billion.” The answer: At Spruance, a pilot school, 644 students have received 11,663 books.

BookTrust’s goal is to close a gap between low-income and more affluent communities. The organization cites research showing that in poorer communities, there is just one book for every 300 children, while in middle-income households, the average is 13 books per child.

Hite said the program fits well into the District’s early literacy initiatives. One of his “anchor goals” is for all students to leave the 3rd grade reading on grade level. Research has shown that children who reach that milestone have a much better chance of graduating from high school and moving on to secondary education.

Although there has been considerable progress in the last few years, more than half the city’s students still don’t reach that goal.

Elliot Weinbaum of the William Penn Foundation said that one goal is to create lifelong readers.

“We want all students to have a love of reading,” he said. At the end of the four years, the program will reach 150 elementary schools and 43,000 students in 2,000 K-3 classrooms. The program also includes resources for teachers.

“In a system of this size, every school and every teacher needs effective practices,” he said.

As part of the program, students take books home to create personal libraries that supplement those in their classrooms, which have been assembled as part of the city’s Read by 4th initiative, also supported by the William Penn Foundation.

Teachers and instructional leaders at Spruance heaped praise on the program.

“It’s amazing what an opportunity this is,” said Barbara Kennedy, as her students lined up to receive their books for the month of June. “It’s more than just giving them a love of reading.”

She explains that it sharpens their thinking skills because every month each child gets a “budget,” and they have to make decisions about what books they want based on how much there is to spend. And she said she also likes how the students express generosity. “They’ll say, ‘I want to get this for my little brother or sister.'”

Kierra Cooper picked a book about two best friends because it came with a little bracelet. “I can give it to my friend,” she explained.

Peter Ayodele picked a coloring book about Ninja Turtles, “because you get to color, and it also teaches you how to draw Ninja Turtles. And my sister’s an artist,” he explained earnestly.

Degrees are important, but so are skills

2019-05-15T19:21:28+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

It’s time for balloons, bouquets and the annual blizzard of mortar boards tossed high in celebration.

Pomp and Circumstance, definitely, but what does a diploma really signify?

The labor market knows the stark reality: People who lack skills in literacy and numeracy (referring to basic math skills), won’t command the highest wages in job market, even if they’ve managed to earn enough credits to wrangle a college diploma.

“We’re focused on the wrong thing,” said Paul Harrington, director of Drexel University’s Center for Labor Markets and Policy and the co-author of two recent studies linking skills and earnings in the labor market.

Because it’s easy to measure, educators and policy makers push for “attainment,” chalking up markers for every diploma. Instead, Harrington said, they should pay more attention to skill acquisition.

With policy changes, “you can get pretty rapid gains in high school completion, but there’s not any evidence that skills are building. There are higher fractions of people getting diplomas, but the skills aren’t there,” Harrington said.

And that has a big impact long after caps and tassels have been stowed in the closet. At the college graduate level, higher skills yield higher pay. At the high school level, those skills tend to be measured by certificates known and accepted by local employers.

“American employers really value skills,” Harrington said.

Prestige and status and a diploma may get employees in the door, “but the labor market doesn’t award status and prestige,” he said. “It awards skills. And, in the labor market, we get rid of people without skills. The American human resource system is very good at weeding out people with low skills.”

Harrington, working with his longtime collaborators Neeta Fogg, a research professor, and Ishwar Khatiwada, an economist, scoured various educational measures, bumping those findings against employment and demographic data from the U.S. Census and the U.S. Department of Labor. They particularly relied on results from the Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The PIAAC, a project of the international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, surveys the abilities of adults in 38 countries.

One out of every five bachelor’s degree holders, among employed graduates aged 21 to 65, falls below proficiency in literacy, denoted as PIAAC level three, with the top score being five.
One out of every three bachelor’s degree holders scored below a level three in numeracy.
Even those at the doctoral degrees fell short: One in eight graduates scored below a level three in literacy and 12 percent scored lower than three in numeracy.
College graduates who scored four or five on a five-point scale with five being the highest literacy or numeracy level earned more than those who were merely proficient – 44 percent per month more for high math scores and 38 percent more for higher literacy scores.
In general, U.S. skill levels rank well below skill levels in other developed nations.

Attention to skill development is critical at an early age. Only 36 percent of the Philadelphia School District’s eight-year-olds are reading at grade level by third grade, according to the School District’s 2017-2018 score card. It’s up marginally from the previous year. Graduation has inched up from 65 percent in 2013 to 69 percent last year, including alternative schools. Excluding alternative schools, 79 percent of the District’s students graduated last year, up from 75 percent in the 2012-2013 year.

“When you have low skills, it reduces your odds of getting into college,” Fogg said. “Even if you get in, it reduces your odds of completing, wasting time and money. If you manage to persist and complete college, you may have the college degree, but you still won’t have the skills needed in the labor market.”

Literacy is particularly important, she said. “You could be Einstein, but if you can’t communicate, what good is it? The ones who communicate the findings are the ones who earn the most.”

Charity Hughes, immediate past president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management, the nation’s largest network of human resource professionals, agrees that the labor market quickly discovers who has skills.

“HR is typically able to weed out [low-skilled workers] pretty quickly and pretty accurately,” said Hughes, founder of Pathfinder Leadership Group LLC, a boutique human resources firm in Aston, Pa., who has held top human resource leadership positions at two major Philadelphia employers.

Hughes said, “As they show up to work, if their skills aren’t up to par, they will be invited to exit or else they will self-select out.”

So, what about that diploma?

Employers see the bachelor’s degree as a “basic test of whether someone can learn and get through a somewhat rigorous program,” said Meg Shope Koppel, chief research officer at Philadelphia Works, the city’s workforce development board. Philadelphia Works manages Pennsylvania’s CareerLink job matching service.

Aligning schools to employers’ needs

“The high school diploma doesn’t have a lot of bearing in the literacy and numeracy sector,” she said. “Without a college level diploma, it’s really hard for people to demonstrate that they have skills.”

That’s why, she said, employers would rather lure experienced workers away from other employers than take a chance. “We try to push relationships between the employers and the schools, so the schools can be better aligned with what employers need,” she said.

That’s what Stephen Jurash, president of the Manufacturing Alliance of Philadelphia, hears from his organization’s members. Employers hiring for the factory floor tell him that many high school graduates can’t read a tape measure and aren’t entirely comfortable with the concept of 9/10ths.

What they like, he said, are technical certificates, such as the welding certificate earned at Edison High School, or some of the manufacturing programs at Benjamin Franklin High School.

“That’s where the rubber hits the road,” he said. “When students graduate from high school, we don’t
know precisely what they’ve learned, but I know precisely what they’ve learned with a technical degree.”

Those students, he said, also tend to be more motivated and less likely to shy away from subjects such as algebra because they see its use as they learn their skills.

Harrington said that four-year colleges tend to have more success in weeding out high school graduates with low skills. They simply don’t get through the admissions process. Community College of Philadelphia (CCP), with its open admissions, tests its incoming students, many of them from Philadelphia public schools, for literacy and numeracy.

Whatever they didn’t get in high school, they have a chance to gain those skills if they stay in college and attain a four-year degree. If they don’t, Harrington said, their earnings potential is only marginally higher than if they had skipped college all together.

Need for remediation in college

Approximately 30 percent of CCP’s new entrants test into developmental literacy classes and about half require developmental mathematics courses, said Samuel Hirsch, vice president for academic and student success.

“We are definitely building up their skills and it’s not for the short term. This is not about a quick fix. This is about long-term skill gains for long-term success,” he said. He noted that about 50 percent of CCP’s graduates transfer to partner schools including Drexel and Temple University. “Our students do well,” he said.

For example, Rhodes Scholar Hazim Hardeman, now at Oxford University, nearly failed high school and started at Community College in developmental classes. He transferred to Temple University after graduation and earned one of academia’s highest honors.

“He built capacity [here] to move on to Temple, and then on from there,” Hirsch said.

James Allen. Photo by Jane Von Bergen

Frankford High School graduate James Allen, 37, back in college after decades, had to take remedial courses.

“It was actually a breath of fresh air,” he said. “I scored low in the pretests and one of the reasons I scored low is I haven’t been active in any type of reading and math since I graduated. Me being older, I didn’t feel any type of way about the tests because my ego isn’t on my shoulder. Why not use all the services to be the best that you can be?”

So what difference does a degree make? At Philadelphia Works, Meg Shope Koppel tells the story of a large financial employer seeking Java programmers among college and highschool graduates who said they knew the software language.

The company devised a simple programming test. Regardless of degree, “some couldn’t do it; some did it incredibly well,” Shope Koppel said.

But the employer’s recruiters noticed a stark difference between equally-abled Java programmers who had college degrees and those with high school diplomas. The college graduates looked for ways to push the programming for use in other applications, Shope Koppel said.

Those who had only graduated from high school, she said, “stopped at the task.”

New ‘Good to Great’ grants seek to boost early literacy

2019-05-03T00:08:44+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Ten elementary schools have received grants from the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia with the goal of strengthening early literacy programs. The new “Good to Great” grants, which range in size from $20,000 to nearly $75,000, were funded by the William Penn Foundation.

The grants, which totaled nearly $536,000, were designed to help schools tackle challenges faced by particular student populations, and they focused on grade-level reading proficiency by 3rd grade. The District already has early-learning initiatives and is committed to reading proficiency for all students, but the grants were meant to give schools funding for projects that would assist them in ways that work for each school.

A grant review team from the District and the Fund narrowed the 78 applicants down to 20 finalists, then chose the winning schools. The schools came up with projects with specific outcome goals and outlined how their proposed ideas would contribute to increased reading proficiency.

Because all elementary school teachers in the District received the same training, the Fund wanted to create a more individualized grant program, according to president and CEO Donna Frisby-Greenwood.

“Rather than just do something across the board for every school, it’s now time for schools to take a look at their data and figure out what they can do specifically to address those areas where they need to improve,” said Frisby-Greenwood.

“The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia developed this smart new grant program as a way to help schools build on the progress they have already shown in implementing the School District’s comprehensive early literacy framework,” said Elliot Weinbaum of the William Penn Foundation. “By giving individual schools the resources to implement the specific early-literacy intervention that their students most need, these grants will address the diversity and nuances that exist in every classroom and school and certainly within a large urban school system.”

The grants will last 18 months. Then the Fund will evaluate their impact. If the grants appear to be effective, the Fund would like to do “many, many more of them,” said Frisby-Greenwood.

The following District elementary schools were selected for the first round of grants::

Alexander K. McClure School: $45,855.72; enhancing classroom libraries with additional reading collections.
F. Amedee Bregy School: $57,654.99; books and resources to build The Nest, a dedicated family library.
General George G. Meade School: $40,000; on-site professional development, materials, and resources to support the launch of writing workshops for teachers and students.
Henry C. Lea School: $68,449.20; enhancing classroom libraries with additional reading collections.
James Logan School: $67,352.22; books and technology to implement the already-successful 5th-grade journalism program in its K-3 curriculum to support writing instruction.
John H. Taggart School: $74,158.20; professional development for teachers, and technology and reading resources for English for Speakers of Other Languages classrooms.
Lewis Elkin School: $19,995.58; resources and professional development to expand phonics instruction.
Olney School: $74,880.80; smartboards for all 11 K-2 classrooms to enhance literacy instruction.
Watson Comly School: $37,762.26; work with Columbia Teachers’ College for professional development and resources to support teachers in writing instruction.
William H. Ziegler School: $49,718.00; support for the 100 Book Challenge program and a library self-checkout kiosk to build a culture of reading.

Marciene Mattleman, ‘a force of nature, an immovable object, an irresistible force,’ dies at 89

2019-03-31T19:47:07+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Marciene Mattleman had a philosophy: If you care enough about something to complain about it, then you should care enough to do something about it.

And she did.

Throughout her long career in Philadelphia as an educator and social entrepreneur, she focused her attention on big-picture problems that needed solving: the need to address the functional illiteracy of more than a quarter of Philadelphia adults. The need for children to be safe and productively occupied during after-school hours. The need to help low-income, first-generation students gain admission to college and persist once they were there.

So she thought up and founded Philadelphia READS, After School Activities Partnerships (ASAP), Philadelphia Futures, and Youth Education for Tomorrow.

Mattleman, who had Parkinson’s disease, died Friday at age 89.

“Marciene had the strongest bias for action of anybody I’ve ever met,” said Ralph Smith. He first met her in 1982 when her husband, Herman, was president of the Board of Education and Smith was chief of staff to Superintendent Constance Clayton. “There wasn’t a single problem about which she complained or cared about that she did not figure out how to take some action around it. In many respects, that made her seem peripatetic, but that was the animating principle on which she worked.”

She was legendary for never taking no for an answer.

“She was a force of nature, an immovable object, an irresistible force,” said Smith, who now heads the national Campaign for Grade-Level Reading.

In 2015, when her health was just beginning to fail, three Philadelphia mayors were among the more than 100 people who came to honor her when she retired as chair of the board of ASAP.

The current mayor at the time, Michael Nutter, gave her a citation from the city that noted, among other things, that she “started more service programs than any other person in the city’s history.”

He also spoke wryly but affectionately about the “immovable object” part of her character.

“My general policy is whatever Marciene is calling about, just say yes and save a half-hour,” said Nutter.

Former Mayor Ed Rendell told his favorite Mattleman story – not coincidentally, one that struck the same tone as Nutter’s.

Roughly, it went this way: She would call on a Monday with her latest big idea. The mayor would politely say “no” and gently hang up.

But that was not the end of it. She would keep calling.

“By Thursday, I realized that you should never say no to Marciene Mattleman,” said Rendell, who called her both “impossible” and “truly an angel.”

When former Mayor Wilson Goode was in office, he started the Mayor’s Commission on Literacy at Mattleman’s instigation. She became its first executive director. At the 2015 tribute, Goode called her “one of the most unselfish, dedicated public servants I’ve known.”

Adult literacy was an issue close to his heart; Goode’s father, a farmer in the South before moving here, could not read or write. At the time, it was estimated that 40 percent of Philadelphia adults struggled to read.

“I did not know that I would find the perfect person who would be the director and take it beyond all my wildest expectations,” Goode said. “I did not need to give her instructions; she had a different idea every day, sometimes two, or three, or five. No other mayor in the country had a literacy program anywhere near what we had here.”

Joseph Torsella, now the state treasurer, is a protege of the Mattlemans, first meeting them when he was still a student at the University of Pennsylvania and they were all working on Goode’s campaign. He said at the 2015 event: “She is one person who, through sheer force of will, can change an entire city.”

He said he learned from Marciene “the power of relentless compassion.”

Philadelphia Futures and its flagship program, Sponsor-A-Scholar, grew from the inspiration of Eugene Lang and George Weiss, wealthy philanthropists who, in the 1980s, each offered free college educations to a randomly chosen group of low-income students. Their programs – and one later founded by city educator Ruth Wright Hayre – also offered the students tutoring, mentoring, and generalized support as they pursued their college dreams.

Mattleman reasoned that people who couldn’t afford such generosity could nevertheless contribute either smaller amounts of money or their time as mentors or tutors to help individual students. Sponsor-A-Scholar has helped more than 1,000 students since 1989.

Last June, although she was using a wheelchair and finding it difficult to talk, she honored the Notebook by attending our annual fundraiser, which was held at the National Museum of American Jewish History.

On learning of her death, civic activists posted tributes on Facebook. David Fair, a longtime advocate and former city official who is now an executive at Turning Points for Children, wrote that she made “the future brighter for generations of Philadelphia children and tirelessly focused on creating opportunities to help young people succeed.” Her work lives on through the organizations that she founded “and through the inspiration, her life of service to the betterment of the community will continue to provide to new generations of children’s advocates,” he wrote.

Born and raised in Wynnefield, and educated at Temple, Mattleman said in a 1993 profile that her businessman father and homemaker mother set an example for her.

“They found causes they thought were important,” she said. “They were not people necessarily who were well-schooled, but they knew what was important in life. … I got that sense of giving back.”

That profile was written when she was being awarded the MCP/Gimbel Philadelphia Award, one of the city’s most prestigious honors, given annually to a woman in the region and occasionally to a national figure. Begun in 1932 by the founder of the Gimbels department stores, other recipients have included Eleanor Roosevelt and Sandra Day O’Connor.

In 2008, she won the Philadelphia Award, the highest civic honor the city bestows, for her work in creating “successful, innovative programs to help inner-city students compete academically.”

Mattleman started out as a 6xth-grade teacher and raised three children while completing her Ph.D. in education at Temple, where she then taught for many years. In addition to her husband, to whom she was married for more than 68 years, she is survived by daughters Barbara Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan, who is the city’s chief integrity officer; son, Jon; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Donations in her memory can be made to the Marciene Mattleman Founder’s Fund at After School Activities Partnerships, 1520 Locust St., Suite 1104, Philadelphia 19102, or to a charity of the donor’s choice.

Why millions of kids can’t read, and what better teaching can do about it

2019-01-02T21:43:16+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Jack Silva didn’t know anything about how children learn to read. What he did know was that a lot of students in his district were struggling.

Silva is the chief academic officer for Bethlehem, Pa., public schools. In 2015, only 56 percent of 3rd graders were scoring proficient on the state reading test. That year, he set out to do something about it.

“It was really looking yourself in the mirror and saying, ‘Which 4 in 10 students don’t deserve to learn to read?’ ” he recalls.

Bethlehem is not an outlier. Across the country, millions of kids are struggling. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 32 percent of 4th graders and 24 percent of 8th graders aren’t reading at a basic level. Less than 40 percent are proficient or advanced.

Educators have long pointed to poverty as an explanation for poor reading performance. Bethlehem, a small city in eastern Pennsylvania that was once a booming steel town, has plenty of low-income residents. But there are fancy homes in Bethlehem, too, and when Silva examined the reading scores, he saw that many students at the wealthier schools weren’t reading very well either.

Silva didn’t know what to do. To begin with, he didn’t know how students in his district were being taught to read. So, he assigned his new director of literacy, Kim Harper, to find out.

Read the rest of this story at WHYY News

For Halloween, students at Sheridan Elementary hold a literacy parade

2018-10-31T21:47:11+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Philip H. Sheridan Elementary School in Kensington held its first ever “literacy parade” on Wednesday. Students in every class, from kindergarten to 4th grade, chose their favorite books and dressed up accordingly. Classics like The Rainbow Fish, 101 Dalmatians, and The Magic School Bus made appearances, as well as more recent books, such as Pete the Cat and Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!

Lisa Sandner, who has worked at Sheridan for four years as literacy lead teacher, organized the parade.

“We know our students don’t celebrate Halloween very often, but we wanted them to be excited to come to school and really celebrate their love of books,” Sandner said.

Sandner, who was dressed as Curious George, the monkey from the eponymous children’s book series, also served as emcee for the event, announcing each class and their chosen book as they took their place in the parade. Roughly 675 students participated — the whole school —as well as teachers and parents.

Parents crowded around the schoolyard and leaned over the gates to watch their children parade in colorful costumes and wave signs.

“Our parent turnout was amazing,” said Sandner. “I don’t think we normally have that many parents come to events, so it was really cool to see the parents show up for their kids.”

After every group had paraded in the schoolyard, teachers and other staff who dressed up made one round while their students clapped and cheered. The school mascot, the Sheridan Tiger, also bounded around the yard and elicited especially excited cheers from the younger students.

John Rossos, Sheridan’s reading specialist, said the literacy parade would be an annual event.

“We’re just trying to celebrate literacy, get kids excited about reading books,” said Rossos, who was dressed as The Man in the Yellow Hat from Curious George.

Sheridan is also holding a book fair in conjunction with the literacy parade until early November. All book sale profits will go toward buying new books for classrooms.

Making a chore educational: Grocery store experiment aims to inspire learning

2018-09-10T13:31:03+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

If you’re grocery shopping in Philadelphia over the next year, you might run into a cherubic cartoon character named A.J.

Though his wide smile and trendy haircut impart a sense of whimsy, A.J. has a serious purpose: transforming an everyday supermarket trip into a learning laboratory.

A.J. is the face of “Talk It Up,” a pilot project aimed at inspiring interaction among parents and kids. At strategically placed sites across 10 Philadelphia grocery stores, A.J. appears on small, laminated signs and prompts shoppers to play a quick game.

One example: In the produce section of a Southwest Philadelphia ShopRite, A.J. asks kids to pick a nearby product, guess its weight, and then use the scale below the sign to check the accuracy of their estimate.

The task involves numbers and mathematical concepts such as estimation. And the sign itself is carefully constructed to include so-called sight words, the kind that kids often have to memorize as they grope through the early stages of reading.

Above all, the prompts are supposed to inspire conversation. The hope is that parents will see household tasks as opportunities for learning instead of chores to endure.

Based on research that suggests parent-child interactions boost early learning, Talk It Up hopes to inspire a paradigm shift in how adults think about educating their young ones.

Read the rest of this story at WHYY News

Read to Succeed program back for a sixth year

2018-07-11T17:30:28+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The aim is to increase children’s reading. But the problem is simple math.

State Sen. Vincent Hughes, D-Philadelphia, said that young students who don’t keep up their reading skills during the summer lose an average of three months of the skills and knowledge they gained in school – the so-called “summer slide.” Then that time has to be made up.

That, Hughes said, theoretically adds up to three years’ lag by the time a student graduates from high school.

Hughes spoke to a crowd of parents and news media on Tuesday at the Overbrook Educational Center, where he announced the sixth year of the Summer Reads: Read to Succeed program.

The program aims to counteract summer slide. In Philadelphia, there are 12 locations serving 475 students entering 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades.

Joining Hughes at the news conference were Democratic State Sens. Art Haywood and Sharif Street. With them were Patrick Clancy, CEO and president of Philadelphia Works, a citywide workforce development program; John Barber, chief development officer at the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, and Quiana Davis, parent of a student in the program.

Hughes, who had the initial idea for the program and enlisted fellow legislators to drum up corporate and other financial support, said there is evidence that the program works.

“Our research indicates that the average participant in our Read to Succeed Program when they start school in September are six months ahead” of comparable students who did not participate, Hughes said.

Another math problem: If students fall three months behind during the summer, it takes another three months to make it up.

Hughes said their goal is to have all students reading at grade level throughout their 13 years in school, and he feels that this program can help do that.

“The solutions are locked in their brain. It’s our job as adults to unlock those solutions and let them flourish,” Hughes said. “We believe Read to Succeed in its intentional efforts to get every child at grade level reading is a key and fundamental way to make that happen.”

Haywood compared students falling behind in reading to a relay race. If the first runner falls behind, the subsequent racers must push that much harder to catch up. Haywood said students like the program and seem eager to improve their reading ability.

The dozen or so students present for the announcement all had their noses buried in books.

An adult volunteer reads with children at the Overbrook Educational Center.

“If we do something that the children want to have, I have not seen any one of these students run away from wanting to participate. They all want to be involved,” Haywood said. “When they see a loving and smiling teacher, when they get the firmness from Mom and Dad, they want to get engaged, and they clearly perform better at the end of the program.”

Haywood said Read to Succeed also checks students’ vision to determine whether they need glasses. If they do, the program provides two pairs.

Street said it is important to develop reading early, so that students have enough words in their vocabulary to properly express themselves.

“My staff pointed out to me statistics that I found to be astounding, that young people can fall as many as 30 million words behind” by the time they enter school. He was referring to an often-quoted study estimating the difference in the number of words that low-income children have been exposed to through conversation compared to middle-class children.

“Then we wonder why there is a need for folks to incorporate colloquial vernacular, as we would say,” Street said. “But I think it’s important, because to the extent that young people don’t have the words to express themselves, they’ll find those words.”

Clancy said Philadelphia Works is employing 36 young people for Read to Succeed, placing three at each of the 12 locations. Philadelphia Works is also paying for some of the books and supplies.

The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, the District’s charitable arm, is contributing $10,000, Barber announced.

Quiana Davis, whose son Emanuel is entering 3rd grade, reported that from the parent’s point of view, the program incorporates many important skills for young children to learn.

“It’s not just about reading. They also do math incorporation as well. There’s also community volunteers,” Davis said. “There are police officers that come out to talk to children about street smarts, there are firefighters that come out also to teach them about what they do and encourage them to have fire knowledge.”

Jinaki Bright, the director of the Read to Succeed program, said they are trying to go above and beyond what they can do to help children become better readers.

“After doing some research, I found out that children that are exposed to at least five books during the summertime will maintain their reading level,” Bright said. “This year, we’ve implemented that students are reading at least five books a day.”

Bright said the program doesn’t just stave off summer slide in children, “but we’re [preventing] summer slide in families and communities.”

As Philly kids learn to read, ‘coaches’ help them along

2018-02-22T12:57:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Shalia Alejandro moved to Philadelphia from Puerto Rico when she was 6, just about the age that kids are starting to read.

Unlike her peers, though, she was also trying to learn a new language and new customs. The swirl of unfamiliar things left her confused and lacking confidence.

“A lot of times, it was really discouraging seeing everyone speak English and you’re just off in the corner like, ‘OK, I need to find a way to be able to relate to them,’ ” she said.

She broke through in 2nd grade, under the tutelage of a teacher who would give students an hour or more simply to read and grow more comfortable with books.

Today, Alejandro is a confident high school senior at Mariana Bracetti Academy Charter School who plans to work in early childhood education some day. After school, she goes back to her alma mater, William Cramp Elementary in North Philadelphia, and employs the same strategy that her 2nd-grade teacher used.

Read the rest of this story at WHYY News

The bottom rung of U.S. education: Stories from an adult literacy class

2017-11-28T18:09:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

At the bottom rung of America’s education system, you will find someone like Sandie Knuth.

Knuth teaches English for adult learners on the 10th floor of a Center City office building, in a room of carpeted plainness that suits the invisibility of its inhabitants. The students in Knuth’s class are at varying levels of illiteracy, placed here because an entrance test found that they read below a 3rd-grade level.

They’re here because they think — despite years of setbacks and stacked odds — that they can earn the basic education promised to all Americans. Knuth’s task is to set them on the journey toward that distant goal.

Class begins at 5:30 p.m. on a Wednesday in April.

At least that’s when it’s supposed to begin. There’s a 10-minute grace period for students to arrive — and about a 10-minute grace period informally tacked onto that grace period for those who straggle in even later.

As Knuth, 25, waits for everyone to show up, she scribbles a question on the whiteboard.

What do you hope to get out of class?

Read the rest of this story at Keystone Crossroads

Eight schools get upgrades to early childhood classrooms

2017-08-25T07:22:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Superintendent William Hite visited Allen M. Stearne Elementary School in Frankford to tour the newly renovated pre-kindergarten to 2nd-grade classrooms. New lighting was installed in each room and the walls were painted with vivid colors to create an environment conducive to learning.

The renovations are a part of the District’s $1.1 billion capital program, designed to bring needed improvements to its huge infrastructure.

District officials focused on capital and environmental improvements, Hite said.

“And not just thinking about environments in terms of HVACs and roofs, but also the appearance of classrooms and the learning environments of classrooms,” he said.

Stearne, built in 1966, is one of eight schools to receive these improvements. The others are Pennell, Locke, Lea, Duckrey, Gideon and Meade Elementary Schools, and Haverford Learning Center, part of the District’s Bright Futures early childhood programming. The schools’ selection was based on their low literacy scores.

“It’s really important that our young people, our staff members, and quite frankly, our families experience something very different than the old, dark buildings that we traditionally have,” Hite said.

“What we want to do is brighten these up. We wanted to begin thinking about the environment in terms of feel and look and making sure that educationally, they’re conducive to engaging young people in the things we need to engage them in.”

In addition to paint and lighting, the rooms received an upgrade in furniture and learning tools. New desks, chairs, cabinets, closets, area rugs, and more were selected and designed to promote a classroom environment in which small groups of students can learn in different designated areas of the classroom.

Teachers will receive professional development training and assistance throughout the year so they can make the most out of their new classroom model. Also, a survey will be distributed to the schools to see what is or isn’t helpful to the teachers.

Stearne is expecting 560 students for the 2017-18 school year, and there is excitement among the faculty and staff about the improvements.

“We’re just very appreciative that Stearne was selected to even take part in this modernization,” said principal Mecca Jackson. “And our staff is ready to tackle this challenge this year when we implement, with fidelity, everything they’ve brought to us.”

The upgrades cost more than $5 million, with $700,000 coming from the William Penn Foundation.

But in a cash-strapped District, where schools are in need of serious repairs ranging from leaky roofs to electrical systems to new construction, why focus on these classroom upgrades? For instance, the malfunction in Munoz-Marin Elementary School’s air-conditioning system caused mold all over the school that could delay its opening.

“We still have the leaky roofs. We still have to fix that,” Hite said. “But we also have to give some attention to the environments where our young people are learning and where educators are teaching.”

He added, “This is not just about buying new furniture, but about buying the things that will be conducive to the literacy that we know, based from the evidence, are effective.”

The ultimate goal is to make these upgrades in classrooms throughout the District, but for now, some schools will receive some improvements.

“While we’re starting with these eight,” Hite said, “this is a project we want to take throughout the School District of Philadelphia so that the children are actually experiencing something very different.”

More than 800 teachers take part in third annual summer literacy institute

2017-06-29T08:00:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

For about an hour Wednesday morning, Ricki Straff and about 20 of her fellow teachers went to Hawaii.

Well, not exactly. They were in Classroom A125 at Fels High School in the Northeast, attending the District’s third annual Early Literacy Summer Institute. And the leaders of a session on “Writing Objectives and Lesson Planning Using the Curriculum Engine” thought it needed something to spruce up what sounded like a dry and technical exercise.

So there were beach balls and paper leis, bells and recorded hula music.

“Well, it’s summer, and we’re in a vacation mindset,” explained Brenee’ Waters, who led the session with Ginger Smith. “And we wanted people to be more receptive to what we’re telling them.”

That’s because the mission of the summer institute is serious – teaching young children to read fluently by the end of 3rd grade, a benchmark that predicts with sobering accuracy a child’s future life chances. For instance, students who miss that milestone are four times more likely to drop out of high school, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Waters and Smith are school-based literacy coaches, and the “students” were all kindergarten through 3rd-grade teachers.

For Straff, a 28-year District veteran who has seen everything, the professional development offered by the Institute “is one of the most informational offered to teachers. It really breaks down the whole literacy framework.”

Teaching young children to read is difficult, requiring broad skills, knowledge of many strategies, and the ability to diagnose a child’s learning style and reading impediments and to adjust instruction on the fly.

“Many people underestimate how complicated it is,” said Diane Castelbuono, the District’s deputy chief for early childhood education. Especially in a city like Philadelphia, “where you have a classroom of 30 kids, some learning-disabled, some English language learners, some who just struggle with the basic foundations. Teaching in that environment is not easy, and we are hoping to provide our teachers with evidence-based tools that can help them.”

The week-long institute is run by the District’s Office of Early Childhood Education and the Office of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, with money contributed by the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia and the Lenfest and William Penn Foundations. For the third consecutive year, it was held during the week after school closed for the summer. Partners include the Children’s Literacy Initiative, which pioneered many of these techniques and has been working in Philadelphia for more than two decades to help teachers fill their classrooms with words, books, and writing. CLI has received major grants from the U.S. Department of Education to scale up its work.

In 2015, teachers from 40 schools were trained. Last year, they came from 53 schools, and this year, more than 850 teachers from 57 schools signed up. All the District’s schools with early grades are now covered.

The teachers are paid for their time, but the institute is voluntary. Eighty-five percent of the eligible teachers signed up, Castelbuono said. Once each school’s teachers participate, the school gets “leveled libraries” for K-3 classrooms to use in instruction. Books are coded based on difficulty, and students know what level they are on and can pick appropriate books, which motivates them to read and to improve.

Session topics included creating a literacy-rich environment, early literacy for students with disabilities, developing writers, using data to inform instruction, and working with English learners.

“Teaching reading is a very individualized process. Each child learns at a different speed and progresses at a different pace,” said Castelbuono.

Straff, who most recently taught 2nd grade and has spent 25 years at Andrew Hamilton Elementary in West Philadelphia, is about to transition to being a literacy coach herself.

“This is giving me information I can take back to my teachers,” she said. Her main takeaway: The training “will make you a better teacher, but you have to pick and choose what will work for you and your students.”

That is the daunting task facing Elizabeth Picarella, a newly minted graduate of Temple University with a degree in early childhood and in special education who is about to embark on her first job at one of the District’s most impoverished schools, Meade Elementary in North Philadelphia.

“So far, as a new teacher, this has been phenomenal,” she said of the institute. “It’s great to talk to veteran teachers, to hear from experts, to see what really works and learn the research behind it, and be shown examples of how you can implement the best strategies.”

Especially helpful to her? A practical session on how to keep other students productively occupied when a teacher is running “guided reading” for a group that needs extra help. “In order to get the most out of that time, you need other students to be working on things that are beneficial to them,” she said.

The other session that stood out for her was a session on developing writers. The instructor, she said, was “so enthusiastic about writing. She’s in love with her students and the work that she does. She had handouts, examples of student work, things I can use in the classroom. As a new teacher, it’s great to get anything.”

Another relatively new teacher, Anna Phelan, said that she found the sessions invaluable, also stressing their practicality. Phelan did her undergraduate work at the University of Scranton and got a master’s degree as a reading specialist from St. Joseph’s University. She taught two years at a Catholic school in Olney and will start teaching kindergarten at Overbrook Educational Center in September.

“One thing that sets this institute apart – it’s not only theory, but also practical implementation and what exactly you can do to improve literacy in the classroom,” she said. “As important as theory is, like learning why students should read independently, as a teacher, you are looking for real solid practical ways to take that theory and put it into practice. What has been so incredible about the last three days is how much practical advice we are getting about what we can do.”

In a session on developing writers, she asked about how to know when students were ready to revise their work or were still in the drafting stage. “Multiple teachers said, this is what I do, one shared her rubric with me. There’s a real culture of sharing ideas and brainstorming, and it’s so incredibly helpful.”

The session run by Waters and Smith was not so much about modeling particular classroom strategies as it was to help teachers understand how to use the “curriculum engine” on SchoolNet, the District’s online platform. The District uses several different reading series, and this tool helps teachers match the books and the lessons with specific state standards and learning goals.

“It’s not online lesson plans; it’s more like resources so you can make your lesson plans,” said Waters. “It’s how to access resources for literacy in your particular grade.”

Learning how to use it effectively can save teachers time and give them different ideas for approaching instruction so the two-hour literacy blocks don’t become repetitive and boring. It also helps teachers integrate literacy-building exercises and strategies into social studies, science, and math lessons.

The institute attendees start each day hearing a keynote speech from a nationally-known speaker on literacy topics, including Pedro Noguera, who specializes in how schools are influenced by social and economic conditions. Karen Mapp, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, will speak Friday on family engagement.

Superintendent William Hite stopped by the institute on Wednesday morning to visit sessions and talk with teachers.

“This is important work for us, our signature initiative,” Hite said. “If we get children reading on grade level by 3rd grade, we solve a lot of other problems.”

Company co-founded by Philly teacher targets books to kids

2016-09-15T14:32:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Regina Bartels had tried everything.

She could not get her 5th-grade son, Sam, to read. Seeing how he loved the iPad, she tried e-books, but he wasn’t interested. She took him to the bookstore and let him pick any book he wanted, but no luck. As an educator herself, she knew the long-term benefits of cultivating a love of reading, but eventually she resorted to forcing Sam to read, a strategy she knew could quickly become unproductive.

But this summer, Meenoo Rami, an author and former Philadelphia public school teacher, came to Bartel’s hometown in Texas with a possible solution – information about Readocity, a company designed to improve literacy skills.

Rami helped launch the company with Vidya Joshi, a frustrated parent with a background in technology, while fulfilling her first year as a teaching fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Joshi had reached out to Rami to see whether she’d be interested in creating a platform that would help overwhelmed parents and teachers improve children’s literacy. Rami was interested, and this year, the two started Readocity.

The premise of Readocity is threefold:

Give parents and teachers a free app that provides easy access to targeted book recommendations for individual students.
Open up communications between parents and teachers about the books read in class so that discussion can continue at home.
Offer a subscription service that provides child- or classroom-specific book bundles that are chosen by expert reading coaches based on a survey of needs and interests.

“In today’s world, you have two-career families with intense time commitments with work," Rami said. "I think it can be quite overwhelming to support your child as a reader.”

According to a study released by the American Educational Research Association, "a student who can’t read on grade level by 3rd grade is four times less likely to graduate by the age 19 than a child who does read proficiently by that time.” That process starts with practices like reading out loud to children at home and ensuring that children are regularly reading independently. Research consistently shows that the more a child reads, the better his or her reading skills become.

Readocity aims to pick up some of that work. A three-month subscription costs $75, and each book bundle is created specifically for one child based on an extensive survey that the parents and children fill out about interests, reading level, and other factors. Then a “pathfinder” — a group made up of educators, literacy coaches, reading specialists, and librarians — picks out three books to send to that child per month. The parents can leave feedback about the books they received so that the process becomes progressively more targeted to that child.

A beta version of the app and the subscription service were launched in July. The fully functional app will launch Sept. 15. In the two months that Readocity has been available, about 45 people have signed up for the subscription service, and the beta app has had about 75 users.

Susan Dee is a literacy coach who works for Readocity on a pathfinder group. She says part of her job as a literacy coach is to stay on top of all the children’s books that are published and think critically about which books would benefit different types of children. According to the American Library Association, more than 20,000 children’s books are published per year. When she heard about Readocity, she figured that her expertise could be useful for overwhelmed parents.

“There are just so many books to choose from," she said. "How do parents know which books might be the best fit for their kid?”

For many parents, the answer is: They don’t.

Game-changer

When Bartels heard about Readocity, she wondered whether the personalized model would work for her son and signed up the next day.

When the first packet came, Sam was reading on the iPad, but he put it down to see what had come for him in the mail.

“He was so excited to get a package. Kids love to get mail,” said Bartels. “He ripped the package open, looked at all the books. The books were great!”

Sam started reading, and when Bartels checked an hour later, he was still reading. He read all the books in the pack in four weeks and asked when the next package would come.

“That is unheard of. I was blown away!” said Bartels.

Next month, the same thing happened. Now Bartels wants to sign up for her younger son as well. She thinks that because someone outside of the child’s typical authority figures is picking the books, the process seems more fun and not a “chore” imposed by a parent or teacher.

The price of the subscription service makes it difficult for some families to afford, but both Rami and Bartels stressed that the average price (three books for $25 per month) offers books for below the retail price at a bookstore or through Amazon, with the added benefit of experts curating the selections.

For those who can’t afford the subscription service, the Readocity app provides an up-to-date list based on the child’s age. If there is a specific book that a parent wants to try for their child – on the list or otherwise – the parent can look up the book and either buy it directly from the app or find out from the app which three closest libraries have the book.

“Those equity issues are problematic for someone like me who has taught in almost every single zip code in Philadelphia and knows the difference that access to good resources makes in the lives of readers,” said Rami.

She said that she hopes to work with libraries in "book deserts" to make it easier for parents to put a book on hold through the app, but that will take the cooperation of complicated library systems.

“I want to make it as easy as possible for a parent who has just finished their pay-by-the-hour job who is waiting for the bus to feel empowered,” she said.

A support for teachers

As a teacher, Rami is also excited for the company’s potential in the classroom. One of the goals is to support teachers who face the daunting challenge of finding the right match between the book and the child when the students have vastly different reading needs. Readocity also allows teachers to scan the ISBN number of a book read in class and send it to all the parents in his or her classroom so that they know what book was discussed. Teachers can also include a short question or comment about the book so that the classroom conversation can continue at home.

“Something as simple as that prompt or question can create powerful conversations around the dinner table, on the drive to the soccer game, or walking back from the bus stop at the end of the day. And that’s what we want to do. We are not asking parents or teachers to do one more thing just for the sake of doing it. We are creating this loop between home and school and the child, as the reader, lives in the middle,” said Rami.

Readocity also offers a classroom version of the subscription service. For example, if a teacher needs more biographies of people of color for his or her classroom, a classroom subscription can fit those needs. Right now Readocity has a back-to-school offer that includes 10 months of deliveries for 10 classrooms for an average price of $210 per classroom. Rami hopes that something like this will be used by administrators or librarians, but her experience in Philadelphia’s public school system has taught her that for many districts, this is unlikely, if not impossible.

“We think that there should be 100 percent fully funded and staffed libraries," she said. "We are not a replacement for teachers or librarians. We are simply one more tool in your toolbox.

“But if I am a first-year teacher and I walk into a classroom without any books – it only has textbooks that are 20 years old and there are no books that reflect the diversity of my students and their communities – and I don’t have a librarian or a functioning library in my school, and I am already overwhelmed by all the things I have to do, can Readocity help that teacher? Absolutely.”

And for many teachers who use their own money to pay for resources for their classrooms, including books, this could be a more economical and effective way for them to add to their classroom libraries.

“Unfortunately, as a teacher in Philadelphia, I paid for many, many books. I often had second and third jobs just so I could buy books for my classroom,” Rami said.

Dee, who is a pathfinder for Readocity and has tried the service herself as an educator, said that the price “seems like a lot, but when I thought about that investment for myself, I thought that I know that the 30 books I’m getting are going to be the best of the best and it’s going to help me because someone else has already vetted them. So for me that seems like a cost-effective way to allocate resources.”

Part of the reason that Readocity is promoting the “10 for 10” package is because Rami and Joshi believe that the program would be most powerful if multiple teachers in the same environment are getting new books and can collaborate around the different ways of teaching literacy.

“If you really want kids to be critical writers, readers, and thinkers, you have to go beyond packaged curriculum and packaged textbooks. You have to go to books that allow kids to see themselves in between the pages and allow them to see the world in new and different ways,” Rami said.

New books arrive to help improve literacy in young students

2016-09-06T17:21:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

At George W. Nebinger Elementary School, Tuesday was one for the books.

Nebinger is one of 53 schools in the School District that will receive new children’s books to help kindergarten through 3rd-grade students learn to read. The books are categorized by reading level. The 130,000 books will be placed in 650 classrooms led by instructors who received extensive literacy training. They’ll also receive support from literacy coaches provided by the Children’s Literacy Initiative. The teachers will create reading programs tailored to individual student’s literacy levels and learning abilities.

Nebinger principal Anh Nguyen-Brown was joined by Superintendent William Hite and Donna Frisby-Greenwood, president/CEO of the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, to unpack the new books.

“These books are designed to help our youngest readers,” said Hite, “and to provide them with the confidence they need to get them reading on grade level. If we give children a book not matched to their reading level or learning style, [then] they’ll think they don’t have what it takes to be good readers.”

The effort is a collaboration among the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, a nonprofit organization that links private investments to the District; American Reading Co., the Children’s Literacy Initiative, READ! by 4th, the William Penn Foundation and the Lenfest Foundation.

Kids share their favorite summer reading titles with the mayor

2016-08-15T13:58:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Jess Pastore, a literacy coach with the Education Works summer program at Blankenburg Elementary School in West Philadelphia, said her students’ “meeting” with Mayor Kenney has been one of the high points of the sessions.

In a voicemail message for young callers, the mayor, whose favorite childhood books included The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss, urges them to “Share your favorite books with me.”

Kids can call 267-689-READ (7323) and leave messages for the mayor.

Pastore said that after she explained who the mayor was and what he did, the students “hunched down over their notebooks and began writing messages to Mayor Kenney as fast as they could."

“As their friends and campmates took turns holding my phone to their ear to listen to the mayor’s message and leave voicemails about what they were reading, the kids danced around, hands to their mouths in excitement.”

The messages for the mayor are part of the Read by 4th campaign’s Ring and Read program – just one front in the battle against summer learning loss.

Without assistance, a student can fall back three months of reading skill level every summer, putting them a full year behind by the time they enter fourth grade. Summer learning loss tends to be particularly acute in low-income families, and it is a major cause of the achievement gap between income groups.

The citywide campaign, coordinated by the Free Library, enlisted the mayor’s help.

“Summer reading is so important,” he said in a message to the kids. “And I want to hear what you’re reading."

Abigail Thaker, who heads the Ring and Read campaign, says that more than 150 children have called the mayor so far this summer, summarizing books and saying why they enjoyed them.

All told, the Free Library hopes to have 50,000 children participate in summer programs, each reading at least six books.

The programs include more than 100 summer camps, delivery of books to children’s homes and drop-in programs, and classes at more than 50 library branches.

For full information on summer reading programs, click here.

K-3 teachers spend week learning literacy strategies

2016-07-01T08:04:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

School has only been out for a week, but teachers are already back in the classrooms. This time, however, the teachers are in the role of students, sitting in desk chairs, raising their hands, and learning from one another.

These teachers are taking part in the Early Literacy Summer Institute, a weeklong program sponsored by the School District that is designed to give K-3 teachers, special education teachers, and teachers of English language learners the skills they need to teach reading and literacy most effectively. About 800 teachers from 53 schools attended this year’s program, being held June 27-July 1 at Samuel Fels High School.

“Our most important resource is our teachers,” said Diane Castelbuono, the School District’s deputy chief of early childhood education. “This is all about investing back in our teachers.”

This mission – to give teachers the training and support they need to help students – provided the framework for the activities throughout the week. Each day, teachers participated in different sessions that gave them strategies toward specific goals. They included helping students to write, working with ELL students, strategies for promoting independent reading, and engaging families in children’s literacy development.

The Institute, funded by the William Penn Foundation, the Lenfest Foundation, and the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, is part of a citywide push to get students to read on grade-level by 4th grade. Known as READ! by 4th, the campaign stresses that students who are reading by 4th grade are more likely to stay on track throughout their academic career, including graduating high school, and even later on in life.

Students who don’t reach this benchmark are far less likely to have a successful academic career and graduate.

In Philadelphia, where poverty, among other things, poses a challenge to academic success, the benefits associated with literacy offer a brighter path.

“Education has to be the pathway to opportunity,” said Pedro Noguera, a professor at UCLA, who was the keynote speaker at the institute on Wednesday.

Noguera was one of five keynote speakers this week. The others were Susan Neuman, Nelson Flores, Carol Jago, and Karen Mapp. Each approached the topic of literacy from a different perspective. Neuman is an educator and former U.S. assistant secretary of secondary and elementary education. Flores is an assistant professor in the educational linguistics division of the University of Pennsylvania, and spoke about bilingual students on Tuesday. Carol Jago is the former president of the National Council of Teachers of English, and Karen Mapp is the faculty director of the Education Policy and Management Master’s Program at Harvard University.

Noguera discussed some of the challenges that schools across the country face and offered ideas about the type of environment that students need in order to thrive. He also stressed the importance of building support and placed it within the context of reducing inequity.

“Poverty is not a learning disability,” Noguera said.

For many teachers in the audience, this message struck a chord.

“[Noguera] really seemed to be in touch with what was going on in Philly,” said Catherine Memmolo, an English language arts teacher at Kirkbride Elementary School. “I think everybody needed to hear that.”

Memmolo, who has been working in Philadelphia schools for 14 years, then attended the session on how to develop writers among the youngest students. Carol Roth, a former teacher, guided participants through different steps involved in teaching writing to K-3 students. First, they observe what the teacher does, then they help, and finally they write on their own. Teachers also worked in groups to discuss a sample of a student’s work for each grade level from kindergarten to 3rd grade.

The Institute sent teachers home with new resources, skills, and the ultimate prize: books for their classrooms for “leveled” libraries. These classroom collections include books that are color-coded for different reading levels. They support the instructional strategy of meeting students where they are; the children know which books they can handle and they have an incentive to move up to the next level.

Gregory Sacharok, a 1st-grade teacher at Nebinger Elementary School said the books were an incentive to attend.

In addition to a leveled library for K-3 classrooms, each school whose eligible teachers successfully complete the weeklong program also receive a literacy coach.

Many teachers said that they valued the opportunity to work with other schools this week and that they recognize that how they use their new training will prove to be most important.

“I think we all kind of have a mutual feeling about learning in general and taking something home with you,” said Devonie Upchurch, a kindergarten teacher at Carnell. “It could just even be something small that somebody does in their class that’s more effective than something that you do in yours that helps with the students or makes something that you do more effective.”

Are education grads ready to teach early literacy?

2016-05-17T12:08:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

When Da’Veeda Clark walked around the classroom at Fox Chase Elementary School, she saw the faces of antsy 3rd graders who were eager for an afternoon lesson. This was one of Clark’s last days as a student teacher. The rest of her semester would be marked by finals and commencement. She graduated May 6 from Temple University and has been moving forward in the process of becoming a teacher in the Philadelphia School District, which will allow her to teach from pre-kindergarten to grade 4. “I feel prepared,” said Clark, who was one of more than 600 students to graduate this spring from Temple, which is the District’s biggest feeder school for teachers. But what does it mean to be prepared to teach in early education? The answer has a lot to do with literacy. “We know that a vast majority of teachers enter the field underprepared to teach,” said Nancy Scharff, an early literacy expert with the city’s READ! By 4th coalition. “We need teachers to be trained in evidence-based reading instruction before they enter the classroom.” Yet a growing bulk of research shows that few teacher-preparation programs expose students to the science behind how kids learn to read. Some schools of education are making changes to address these findings, but on a scale and at a pace that still leaves graduates at a loss. At Temple, the budding early education track didn’t even exist before 2011. And the need for high-quality early educators couldn’t be more urgent. Last year, just 33 percent of the District’s third graders scored proficient or advanced on the English Language Arts PSSA, a number that forecasts bleak outcomes for children and the city. A child’s ability to read on grade level by the time he or she leaves 3rd grade is a major benchmark for future success. Three-quarters of students who are poor readers in third grade will remain poor readers in high school, according to one study. The fledgling readers in Clark’s classroom finally got what they waited for: a math lesson on surveys and collecting information. Despite feeling weary after taking their first math PSSA ever that morning, the students thrust their skinny arms into the air each time Clark asked a question. And when it was time for group work, the students, clad in their navy and crimson uniforms, crowded around the desks in clusters of four, longing to please their teacher and collaborate with their peers. “Literacy is a part of every subject,” said Clark. “Math, science, history. So I try my best to make sure it comes first.” Clark said she feels especially prepared to teach reading because of the strong instructors she has had at Temple. But as a student teacher, she said, "I first had to get over the shock that so many kids and adults in this city can’t read.” A graduate of Cayuga Elementary, Roberto Clemente Middle School and Philadelphia High School for Girls, Clark was the first person in her family to go to college. Her desire to be a teacher was affirmed when she met a 45-year-old man in her neighborhood of West Oak Lane who said he couldn’t read and had a 200-word vocabulary. “I knew I wanted to help people, and not being able to read is a serious problem,” said Clark. After attending the Community College of Philadelphia for two years as a nursing major, she transferred to Temple to attend the College of Education and pursue dual certification in early childhood and special education. At Temple, Clark’s courses have included “Child Development: Birth Through 4th grade,” “Language and Literacy Development in Early Childhood,” and “Differentiated Reading Instruction.” These courses are all designed to provide a mix of theory and practice. Last year, through Temple’s practicum program, she spent time in a variety of schools, from Francis Scott Key Elementary School in South Philadelphia to MaST Community Charter School in the Northeast. The program places students in classrooms as early as sophomore year for three to five hours a week as teaching assistants. “Temple has tried its best to give us the tools we need,” said Clark. But although she says she feels prepared to help students learn to read, some of her peers aren’t so sure. When asked whether he is learning how to teach students how to read and be literate, Joe Tierney, a junior in Temple’s College of Education, replied, “No, absolutely not.” He had just walked out of his 8:30 a.m. “Methods of Literacy” class, where students were reviewing for the course’s final at the end of the week. The teacher trainees in the classroom, mostly White women, were grouped together for the trivia-like review exercise. Each team prepared questions according to broad topics such as writing, comprehension, and vocabulary. When it was one team’s turn to ask the questions, like a game show host, the other teams vigorously buzzed in on flimsy Staples Easy Buttons to share their answers. The time was filled with the wannabe teachers shouting out what they had covered over the semester: sequencing, word learning strategies, plot, and root words were a few of the answers. Within the next week, the class of rising seniors would also have to submit a final project, a comprehensive lesson plan. For Tierney, courses such as this one aren’t doing enough. “What we’re learning is very superficial, and in higher education, at a level like this, there should be more, especially if we’re going to be in the field teaching one day,” Tierney said, referring to a culture of instructors who mostly read from PowerPoint presentations during class. He added, “We need to be looking into studies about what we’re going to be teaching. I want to look at the research, delve into the numbers, and learn about different [instructional] approaches.” Tierney, like Clark, is set on teaching in the School District of Philadelphia once he graduates, and his practicum experience this semester at Cayuga Elementary Promise Academy in North Philadelphia has strengthened his resolve. There, he has spent time working with a 2nd grader, who, when tested for literacy skills, didn’t even come up to the lowest level of the Developmental Reading Assessment. This student missed about 90 days of kindergarten and about 50 days of first grade, but somehow got passed along into second grade, Tierney noted. And although he says practicum has been useful, he wants a forum where he can discuss his classroom experiences. The practicum coaches work with at least 12 students per semester, with two hourlong observations apiece, so they don’t really have time to sit and debrief, Tierney said. “I don’t know that there will be a course that will specifically teach me how to move a kid up who is significantly behind in reading, but hopefully everything will come together next year,” he said. Some of Tierney’s peers in class that morning, exposed to the challenges of urban education through practicums, were in awe of those who plan to work in Philadelphia. They have decided it is not for them. Said one student who plans to make a beeline for the suburbs upon graduating: “I give major props to anyone who can teach here, I can’t mentally handle that environment; 35 kids [in one class] is a lot. The kids are sweet, though.” Other students commented that teaching literacy is hard because the preferred methods are “constantly changing.” “There’s a big focus on decoding now, and that’s not how we learned it when we were growing up,” another student said. Young program The College of Education’s Early Education Program was implemented five years ago when the Pennsylvania Department of Education changed how it certifies teachers for working with students in the formative early years. Temple administrators say they are continually reviewing and revising it. “We are in a constant state of examining our program,” said Kristina Najera, an assistant dean and professor. Changes to the curriculum are made based on data about programming and students’ field experiences and based on feedback from instructors and the School District of Philadelphia. The school is considering three main adjustments for the fall. First, it is making a push to infuse cognitive science into methods courses. Although the curriculum already requires students to take “cognitive development,” the information is often forgotten by senior year. Najera said the effort is to help the students make more connections so they can draw on the underlying science while they are teaching the children. Mental health will also be a focus, with Temple moving students to think more about how to support children’s mental health while pushing them academically. The school also wants to build on its commitment to social justice, by giving students more opportunities to interact with and understand the communities where they will teach. And to improve its curriculum in the long run, Temple is also looking to advance its communication with the District, particularly around student teaching, which some Temple students have described as a “hit-or-miss” arranged marriage, depending on where and with whom they are matched. Community partners, such as the READ! By 4th coalition, have also moved Temple to consider becoming accredited under the Center for Effective Reading’s Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading, which identify the course content and teacher competencies necessary for quality literacy instruction. And how do administrators know whether their program is producing high-quality teachers? At this point, their evidence is mostly anecdotal. “When we’re out visiting schools, principals will tell us, ‘I love Temple grads,’” said Juliet Curci, the college’s director of school and community partnerships. “A lot of them speak to [alumni’s] resilience to engage in meaningful ways with students and with colleagues, not shying away from challenges.” The school also relies on a portfolio of documents that students submit throughout their time at Temple, which includes pieces such as a child study or a unit of lesson plans. Instructors are able to judge student work with a rubric based on Temple’s own standards. “We know students meet our internal expectations, but we don’t know [exactly] how their performance translates out,” Curci said. But an 18-month, $476,497 grant recently awarded to Temple by the William Penn Foundation to research the connection between pre-service teacher preparation and student outcomes may help fill in some gaps. And the District, which plans to hire 800 new teachers for the fall, now has feedback for schools of education since it started collecting information about teacher applicants just last year. As part of a revamped application process, teacher candidates are required to complete a data-analysis task. They are given student performance data and asked to make specific instructional recommendations. From last year’s process, the District reported that, across the board, applicants could draw broad conclusions – for instance, “this student struggles with phonics”– but struggled to make specific, targeted instructional recommendations for what to do next. Curci acknowledged that there is a national movement to improve teacher preparation programs. Although that is necessary, she said, she wants Temple to be deliberate about changes. “We are not resting on our laurels,” she said. “We want things to be carefully thought out. We want to feel comfortable [about the changes] based on our knowledge and expertise in the profession and not just on political pressures here and there.” But with the knowledge they’ve gained, adequate or not, some pre-service teachers say they expect to hit the ground running. Clark said she feels ready to make a difference. “I do anticipate having challenges in a classroom with an array of needs. I have to be realistic about what’s going on,” she said. “I need to know their weaknesses and strengths, and build up on their strengths and highlight what they can do.” Her background, she said, is a help. “To actually have the title of teacher means I can change lives. In terms of urban education, I’ve lived here. I have experienced the realities of it," she said.

Lacking a librarian, a school tries to promote reading

2016-02-24T13:37:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Just nine school librarians work full-time in the School District of Philadelphia’s 218 schools. This can be disastrous for literacy development in poor neighborhoods, where families often don’t have books at home.

Studies are clear that students, particularly those from low-income backgrounds, perform better academically when they attend schools with functioning libraries. A report from the Library Research Service found that states that gained school librarians showed greater increases in 4th-grade reading scores than states that lost librarians.

And the more library access that students in grades K-3 have, the more likely that they will graduate from high school.

Still, over the last decade, budget constraints have forced many schools to lay off or not replace librarians and to bolt the doors of their libraries, leaving students with even fewer opportunities to read books.

Henry C. Lea Elementary in West Philadelphia is one school working to make up for its lack of a librarian. The school’s last librarian left about four years ago, when school funding was cut.

To help fill the void, the administration at Lea weaves together community-led literacy and reading initiatives to meet students’ needs. Two days a week, volunteers from WePAC, the West Philadelphia Alliance for Children, run a library program at Lea for children in grades K-3.

“As much as we would like that to be a real library, it’s a library program,” said Sarah Joseph, WePAC’s library program manager.

Joseph emphasized the difference between WePAC’s program and a school library with a full-time certified librarian.

The program allows students in grades K-3 to visit the library once a week. There, volunteers read books to students and students are able to return and check out books.

WePAC, which operates library programs in 13 schools across West and Southwest Philadelphia, gathered parents and other community members to curate the books in the library and maintain an updated collection.

“The impact [of the library program] has been incredible,” said Christian Edge, Lea’s engagement coordinator. “[The students] get so excited about what books they get and what they want to read. They’re excited about the text, and that’s what we really want. We want to foster literacy and a love of reading.”

At the start of Black History Month, WePAC donated to Lea a Little Free Library, an outdoor structure that contains books. There are more than 10,000 Little Free Libraries in the world. At Lea, it’s in the school’s yard and resembles a large birdhouse. It operates on a “take a book, leave a book” system that encourages students to read in settings outside of the classroom. Once the library was in place, principal Jennifer Duffy painted it herself with birds and clouds.

“We’re always looking for new ways to expand kids’ access to books to get them more engaged in reading,” Joseph said.

“The little library will probably operate more as ‘take a book,’ and kids will have regular access to books on weekends and on days when we’re not in the library. Kids who are not maybe great on returning their books will have another chance,” she added.

Lea and the Penn Libraries of the University of Pennsylvania will make sure the Little Free Library remains stocked.

“The Penn libraries have been working very closely with WePAC to bring libraries to schools,” said Ansel George, a community outreach librarian with Penn Libraries.

“[What we do at Lea] is run a library program, not a library. We are aware of the limitations in the District’s budget, but we would like to eventually put ourselves out of business and get those librarians back. Volunteers and librarians are not the same,” said George.

George was planning to retire in 2015, but then decided not to after he heard of the opportunity to help expand Lea’s library.

“Since February 2015, we have increased the quality of books and we have modernized the selection and made it more contemporary,” George said.

In addition to maintaining the selection, George and other university volunteers have created other avenues for bringing the latest books to the shelves at Lea.

“During the holiday season, we created an Amazon registry with a book wish list,” said Ralph DeLucia, associate director of the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Programs at Penn.

“And we sent the list to a lot of people on Penn’s campus and alumni worldwide. We asked them to buy some books while they made their Christmas purchases to support kids’ learning.”

At the start of the month, 201 of the 534 listed books had been purchased.

“[The Graduate School of Education] has taken to this, and even students there and some undergrads are coming in between their classes to volunteer their time and read to kids,” DeLucia said.

“People have a connection here, and as we look to expand [the library program], we are raising awareness in the Penn community. A core group of people have already been here and they are helping to champion the mission of learning. That was the impetus behind [the book wish list].”

George hopes to expand the library program at Lea to include students in grades 4 through 8.

“In the meantime, we are making library cards for the upper grades so that they can come to the library to check out books,” he said.

In addition to the support of volunteers, Lea also benefits from the University’s “A Book a Day Program,” through which Lea and Penn Alexander school each receive two quality, hardcover books every week. Penn Libraries select the books to match the curricular needs of the schools.

Heidi Gross, Lea’s literacy consultant from Penn, has made efforts to increase students’ literacy through reading at home. Gross coordinated a program that allows children to take books home several times a year. At the end of January, each kindergartner took home Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, a colorful book about the alphabet by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault.

“It’s nice to have brand new books,” said Joseph. “At the very minimum, we are providing access to books that they might not have on a regular basis. We’ve found that only one-third of students in schools that we send our library programs to go to the public library.”

She added, “Our larger goal is to get kids excited about reading and to see the library as a place that is fun. In September before we open up, they’re knocking on the door, and [during the school year] they are asking when they get to go to the library again.”

The concerted effort to increase students’ access to books at Lea demonstrates a community’s investment in improving student outcomes.

“Principal Duffy has revolutionized the way our partners work together,” said Edge. “They communicate effectively to increase opportunities for our kids. It has been a group effort.”

“I keep thinking, what would this look like without WePAC and without the volunteers?” asked George. “These are hundreds of thousands of kids. If WePAC decided they were done with this, what would happen?”

A book fair with multicultural appeal

2016-02-02T18:18:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

It’s uncommon for children of color to learn whole truths about their history in school. Finding books about it on their own is another challenge, but the community wants to fill this gap.

To jump start Black History Month, the African American Children’s Book Project will host its annual African-American Children’s Book Fair this Saturday, Feb. 6.

The event, which will take place from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Community College of Philadelphia, is free and open to the public.

The fair’s mission is to preserve and promote multicultural literature and foster a joy of reading within children in the community.

“Books empower our children,” said Vanesse Lloyd-Sgambati, founder of the African-American Children’s Book Project. “But children have to read books that reflect their image. And they have to read outside of their normal school coursework.”

Children of color make up about 85 percent of students in the School District of Philadelphia, where 51 percent of students in the 3rd grade could not read at grade level in 2012.

The Book Project’s response? Introduce children to books that can mean something to them. Nationally, there is no concerted effort to assure the inclusion of culturally relevant literature in school curricula, and there are still reports of books that give children misleading and sanitized accounts of history.

“Our children need to find books with stories about themselves and about the people who made them,” said Lloyd-Sgambati. “The past does dictate the future, and this doesn’t always have to be negative. They need to know about their ancestors.”

The book fair, attended by about 3,500 each year on average, will give attendees free books and the opportunity to purchase affordable books from the largest selection of African-American children’s books in the country.

“We put the books at eye level, because we want everyone to feel comfortable. We don’t want them to feel intimidated when they walk in,” said Lloyd-Sgambati.

Children will get free books through activities like a reading circle hosted by NBC10 and TELEMUNDO62, and a literary salon hosted by PECO.

Over 20 renowned authors and illustrators will have their work featured. And award-winning illustrator will lead children in a book illustration workshop and David Miller, author of Khalil’s Way, a book about facing challenges, will host a bullying workshop. Karen Thompson, author of Crocheting with Lucy Loop will teach attendees how to crochet using the story she tells in her book.

The educator’s book giveaway — sponsored by Wells Fargo, Health Partners Plans, Health Partners Foundation, Always Best Care Senior Services, and Tierney — will donate books to teachers and librarians who present identification at the fair.

This is an opportunity for educators to learn about the multicultural books they can bring into their classrooms, said Lloyd-Sgambati, citing Ira’s Shakespeare Dream by Glenda Armand and illustrator Floyd Cooper, a book about 19th century Black American and British actor and playwright Ira Aldridge.

This is a great way to connect children of color children to Shakespeare and theater, Lloyd-Sgambati said.

For parents, Councilman Kenyatta Johnson, Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, and Universal Companies have sponsored a book-giveaway that will take place at the fair. The Book Project’s Preserve a Legacy, Buy a Book campaign aims to ensure that children have books to read at home.

Lloyd-Sgambati stressed the importance of giving books that present children with possibilities.

“When a child reads something they are not interested in, it discourages them from reading. We need to put more thought into what we have them read.”

A challenging path to affordable, accessible pre-K in Philadelphia

2016-01-12T13:53:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

When Jim Kenney took the oath of office last week as the city’s 99th mayor, he outlined a vision to help “make every Philadelphia neighborhood the best it can be.”

He highlighted expanded pre-kindergarten as a key part of this vision.

“For a young family, affordable pre-K can make the difference of whether or not they save for college,” he said.

The mayor’s push to expand pre-K is not coming from out of the blue.

It is in line with the city’s voter-approved implementation of the Commission on Universal Pre-K in June of 2015. Tasked with developing a plan for adopting affordable and accessible universal pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds across Philadelphia, the commission has been grappling with how to ensure that all children have access to high-quality care.

“There are quality deserts across the city, and if we were to look at a map we’d find that the areas with the highest need have low numbers of high-quality programs,” said Sharon Easterling, executive director of the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children and co-chair of the commission. “We must start with these neighborhoods.”

A shortage of about 7,000 high-quality child care slots exists across the city, according to a report from The Reinvestment Fund, which uses investments to create opportunities for Philadelphia’s low-income community. In particular, Center City, the far Northeast, Strawberry Mansion, the River Wards in North Philadelphia, and Southwest Philadelphia have the most critical shortages.

Studies have found a strong correlation between high-quality early education and long-term positive outcomes such as K-12 cost savings, higher high school graduation rates, reduced crime, and an increased likelihood of college attendance and employment. Poverty is also less likely to persist from generation to generation.

Research shows there are short-term benefits, too. Shared Prosperity Philadelphia, the city’s comprehensive anti-poverty plan, reported that high-quality early learning promotes school readiness by improving early literacy.

“In Maryland, they have had pre-K for about a decade,” said Anne Gemmell, the city’s new director of pre-K, “The First Five Years Fund found that the vast majority of children [there] who had quality pre-K were ready for kindergarten.”

“By extension … kindergarteners who were ready to learn were reading on grade level by 3rd grade. Right now [in Philadelphia], our kids are going to school unprepared to learn.”

Funding the expansion

The commission will make recommendations on how to finance a universal pre-K system, but the “full costs” associated with expanding high-quality pre-K are still not understood.

A study from the Nonprofit Finance Fund, supported by the William Penn Foundation, reported that early care and education programs universally operate on the financial edge with no financial safety nets. They make short-term decisions from paycheck to paycheck because of their small, unreliable cash reserves and lack of operating surpluses.

The inability such programs to cover their expenses each year is a direct result of their financial model, the study found.

“It’s difficult to cover the high, fixed cost of care since the dollars follow the low-income students,” said Elliot Weinbaum, a program director at the William Penn Foundation, which funds research on early childhood education.

The financial model also prevents providers from setting high tuition rates. Government subsidies cover about 75 to 85 percent of a child’s true cost of care, which ranges between $10,300 to $12,800 per child depending on provider quality, according to the Nonprofit Finance Fund. Providers must complete an extensive process to collect all tuition fees.

“There are gaps in funding,” said Weinbaum. “No funding source is reaching the cost of care for each child.” Providers deal with an overly complex financial management system that required them to combine multiple revenue sources with child care subsidies, the NFF study reported.

Funding for pre-K in Philadelphia has traditionally come from the federal government in the form of Head Start funding and the Child Care Fund, with Pre-K Counts and entitlement dollars also helping to serve the city’s early education needs.

“There is nothing predictable about the the state budget,” said Gemmell, “We’re hopeful the state budget is resolved and a few extra million dollars come to Philadelphia for early ed, but we’re prepared to operate without it.”

The quality issue

Funding proposals are challenged by the need to increase not only the number of slots available, but also the quality of available slots. “It’s a balancing act between quality and quantity,” said Gemmell.

“Right now we’re talking about providing quality pre-K to children who currently lack access. We are estimating [it will cost] about $60 million,” said Gemmell. “We are looking to add local funding and better coordinate the existing investments, so we can get the most for our children out of existing funding.”

The commission has cited other, more long-term figures. To fully fund pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds in the city, it is going to take another $500 million, roughly $120 million in state money each year for the next four years on top of what the state is already spending, said the pre-K commission’s Easterling.

“State governments aren’t dripping in extra money, but it has to come from somewhere,” she said.

Wolf’s release of an emergency half-year spending plan recently granted Philadelphia 1,500 new Pre-K Counts seats.

“While this number sounds large, it is a small step in the right direction, considering the need in all counties,” said Gemmell. It’s a “common sense investment in what we know works for children and families,” she said.

Winter break is here, but the reading continues

2015-12-23T16:56:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Learning happens inside and outside the classroom, and children of all ages can strengthen their literacy skills even when school is in recess.

Across the city, partners in the READ! by 4th campaign to promote early literacy are supporting year-round learning with a number of events and opportunities during winter break and beyond. Parents, students, educators, and organizations are encouraged to explore and take advantage of these opportunities.

Free eBooks

Until Jan. 15, the American Reading Co. is providing 50 free eBooks and a coaching guide for Philadelphia students. Families can access these books on a browser or through the free Bookshelf eReader on any Android, iPhone, or iPad. Find out more here.

Winter break activities and events

The School District has compiled a list of resources to support children’s literacy growth over winter break. Resources range from early childhood weblinks to reading kits in English and Spanish for students in grades K-3. Access the District’s page of resources here.

The READ! by 4th campaign team is hosting one-hour winter break camps at three library branches around the city. Children and families that attend the camps can expect to participate in word rap battles, vocabulary dance parties, and group storytelling. Each child will also walk away with a free book and other prizes. Camps are geared toward children ages 3-10. Children under age 7 must be accompanied by an adult. For more information, email Gigi McGraw at mcgrawg@freelibrary.org or call at 215-814-4112.

Nicetown-Tioga branch, Dec. 28, 1 p.m.
Greater Olney branch, Dec. 28, 3 p.m.
Kingsessing branch, Dec. 29, 1 p.m.

Free books

The READ! by 4th campaign will soon receive 25,000 books through a donation from First Book. The shipment will mostly contain books for children ages 0-8, and books that are most suitable for read-alouds and independent reading. Educators and partners are encouraged to apply for as many books as they need. Teachers interested in requesting books for their classrooms should pool their requests with other teachers to meet a 200-book minimum request. Email Abby Thaker, READ! by 4th’s director of strategic partnerships, at thakera@freelibrary.org with your request or inquiry.

Teachers put their literacy training to work at Taylor Elementary

2015-11-06T16:16:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

“Es tiempo de limpiar y regresar a sus mesas,” said Carolena Lescano as she called the attention of the 26 2nd-graders in her dual-language classroom at Bayard Taylor Elementary School in North Philadelphia. Then in English: “It’s time to clean up and return to your tables.”

It was the last few minutes of guided reading time. Near the windows, Eli, Fernando, and Jacqueline were lost in their headphones listening to stories on the site Raz-Kids. Stretched out on the carpet, a handful of students independently paged through picture books.

In the center of the room, Randy and Jeremy, one of five pairs, switched between English and Spanish as they used colorful magnetic letters to spell out “high-frequency,” or common vocabulary words at the “word work” center. Nearby, four upturned faces hung on to every word as Lescano read El Papalote by Alma Flor Ada, a story about a mother who passes on a family tradition of kite-making to her children. “¿Cual es esta palabra?” Lescano asked Yasarie, a girl with dark shoulder-length hair in the group. “What’s this word?”

“¿Que sonido hacer esta letra? What sound does this letter make?” she asked, pointing to words on the page. The teacher continued around the circle like this, asking Maria, then Ingrid, and then Anelis, who all read at a 1st-grade level, to pronounce words and read sentences until they covered each page of El Papalote. The girls were learning that strong readers self-monitor their understanding by stopping to ask questions while reading.

When guided reading time was officially over, students scrambled back to their seats. “Dame un abrazo,” some said as they hugged each other. A few students settled for high-fives. Before long, they were quietly awaiting Lescano’s directions for their seven-minute exercise break.

As random as it might seem, the scene in Lescano’s classroom is carefully scripted, part of Philadelphia’s renewed effort to make sure that all children can read proficiently by the time they leave 3rd grade. Over the summer, the District held a weeklong early literacy institute for K-3 teachers from the District’s lowest-performing schools. Nineteen of Taylor’s 26 K-3 teachers were among about 700 who attended the training, which was grant-funded as part of the city’s READ! by 4th campaign.

The goal is for children to spend more time practicing “authentic reading and writing” while freeing up the teacher to spend more time with individual students and smaller groups, explained Sara Lazrow, Taylor’s early literacy specialist. That approach is known as “balanced literacy,” and it allows instruction to meet the needs of all students, despite the disparate reading levels in one classroom.

“We’ve adopted the District’s balanced literacy framework and we’ve adopted the Children’s Literacy Initiatives’ (CLI) best practices,” said David Laver, now in his second year as Taylor’s principal.

CLI, which has promoted best practices for teaching young children to read since 1988 in Philadelphia and elsewhere, is working with Taylor to make instruction consistent across classrooms.

“A lot of teachers were doing great things, but everybody was doing their own thing to a large extent,” said Laver. Significantly, most teachers did not break down their classes into small groups so students could get more focused attention.

Helping teachers like Lescano do this effectively is Lazrow’s main job. She coaches Taylor’s K-3 teachers through CLI in partnership with the District and tries to see each teacher at least twice over a three-week period.

Throughout classrooms in Taylor’s main building and annex, balanced literacy was in evidence. In Samantha Cafaro’s morning literacy block, she led a whole-group activity around “word families” with her 2nd graders. Students raised their hands to volunteer “family” words, meaning words that are related, for example, because they end with “-an,” “-en,” “-in,” or “-un.”

Subsequently, students dispersed around the room into small, differentiated groups. They organized words into word families at their desks, put together word parts using Legos, or picked among the color-coded books to reach their independent reading goals.

In Cheryl Veney’s 1st-grade classroom, students read in pairs. Under this model, the two students switched between the role of coach and reader.

This independent reading was also mirrored in Nicole Molino’s 3rd-grade classroom.

“I like to read with others so I don’t get bored and I understand the book better,” said 3rd grader Seinnel Cruz, who read a book titled Animals of the High Mountains by Judith E. Rinard with a classmate.

With a grant from United Way, Taylor implemented a 100-Book Challenge this year, through the American Reading Co., which supplied leveled libraries to all K-3 teachers who attended the District’s summer institute.

“We adopted the 100-Book Challenge because students in one classroom may be on different reading levels,” said Leah Perucci, Taylor’s school-based teacher leader. “The challenge allows students to read on their independent level based on a book’s color band, and as students’ skills go up, they change color bands. It allows teachers to set power goals, and pretty soon all students will know these goals.”

As part of the challenge, Christian, a 3rd-grader at Taylor, reads on level 1-Red, equivalent to 2nd grade. To make it to the White level, which represents where he needs to be for 3rd grade, Christian must meet his goal of decoding three-syllable words, said Lazrow.

To meet such goals, students spend at least 30 minutes a day reading and practicing their skills in school and at home.

In addition to the schoolwide shift to balanced literacy and the 100-Book Challenge, teachers at Taylor have physically altered their classrooms to establish a student-centered classroom culture.

“Coming out of the summer training, the focus of my coaching at the beginning of the year was the physical environment,” said Lazrow. “Teachers needed a lot of support with that. The physical environment includes setting up basic classroom procedures, teaching children around the classroom culture, and making sure small-group and large-group areas exist.”

In keeping with student-centered spaces, no K-3 classroom at Taylor has a teacher’s desk. Students handcrafted all the alphabet charts on the walls. The colorful posters that catalogue classroom rules and procedures are living community documents – students build on them as the year progresses.

“Be Safe, Be Respectful, Be Responsible,” was a phrase that appeared on a bulletin board in every room, accompanied by a list of student-friendly action steps to help them meet these class culture goals.

“I like to have responsibility in class,” said 9-year-old Louis Duprey. He explained: “That can mean that I only interrupt the class if I have an emergency.”

Veney established her classroom culture around the book I Like Being Me, by Judy Lalli. “I’m so glad they introduced it to me at the training this summer,” she said.

“The poems in the book give my students ideas they can relate to, and I’ve formed a community in my classroom because of it," she added. "They talk about their feelings and they learn about the feelings of others. This goes a long way with management and the learning process. Not much teaching can go on without this kind of community.”

This strong sense of community is also what kept the doors at Taylor open in 2013, when the District attempted to shutter the school for low performance on standardized tests.

The school’s 2013-14 progress report shows that 20.5 percent of 3rd graders scored proficient or advanced on the PSSA, compared to the District’s 41 percent average. The results were similar in grade 4 with 20.3 percent of students at Taylor meeting proficiency, compared to 41 percent in the District.

“Our biggest challenge is our very large ELL [English language learner] population,” said Laver, the principal. “This is a Latino community, so a lot of students are coming from homes where English is not the primary language. They don’t have that base when they get to us in kindergarten. A lot of them don’t have that literacy foundation in either language.”

Taylor is located among rowhomes adorned with Puerto Rican flags and Latino establishments like Ashley’s Dominican Beauty Salon, Diaz’s food market and Iglesia Evangelica Bautistia. Students at Taylor are a part of this culture.

Three-quarters of students identify as Latino, and 19 percent identify as Black, with the remainder identifying as Asian or "Other." All of the school’s students are classified as economically disadvantaged.

“It’s great that we allow them to use their first language to learn,” said Lescano. “It gets challenging, because I have a lot of kids with strong literacy skills to begin with, but I also have kids who are very low because they have low background knowledge. This is a 2nd-grade classroom and a lot of them are reading at a kindergarten level.”

Veney, the 1st-grade teacher, saw similar patterns in her classroom. Of her 20 students, she said, “I have five on grade level, which is a level J in the leveled library. The rest are on the yellow levels, levels A and B for pre-K.”

To address students who are far below proficiency, teachers regularly use AIMSweb, a screening and progress monitoring system, to track student reading levels throughout the school year.

“We have a lot of challenges,” said principal Laver. “We are working with parents and the community, and with these new implementations, we are moving in the right direction."

Fabiola Cineas’ coverage of early literacy in the Notebook is supported by funds from the Free Library of Philadelphia.

What’s new: Classroom libraries and report cards

2015-10-30T14:00:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

This year, as part of a more focused approach to literacy instruction, many K-3 classrooms in District schools have new libraries. Students’ report cards will also look different.

Here is a brief guide to the classroom libraries and the new report card, from an interview with Diane Castelbuono, the District’s deputy chief for early childhood education.

In 40 schools, K-3 classrooms received extra funds from a grant to create “leveled libraries.” Books are sorted into bins, each with a letter indicating the reading level, progressing from A to Z.

In kindergarten, the letters will likely be A through D; in 1st grade, E through J; in 2nd grade, K through N, and up through Z for higher grades. Students take a diagnostic test to determine their levels.

Instruction is delivered in three ways: whole group, small group, and independent reading. Students are regrouped as they progress.

“As a kid, I know what my reading level is – I’m at A and I want to get to B,” said Castelbuono. “It’s like the karate-belt system.”

The report card will show three sets of letters: the target where the child should be for his or her grade and quarter; the instructional level used in the group he or she is assigned to, and the independent reading level.

For instance, if in the fourth quarter of kindergarten, a child should be at D, the instructional level is likely at D, and the independent reading level should be at D. If the independent reading level is at B or C, the parent will know the child is behind; if it is at F, that indicates the child is ahead. Each classroom has books in the range of its students.

“These are not lending libraries,” Castelbuono said. “They are primarily for use during the day for instruction.”

When practicing their skills during independent reading, students choose books at their level or a little bit higher.

“Nothing is more of a turnoff for kids to reading than to give them a book they cannot read,” Castelbuono said. “They’ll decide they’re a failure when they are not. Here they’re given the ability to be successful and keep growing.”

READ! by 4th director explains goals of campaign

2015-10-29T12:19:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The Notebook sat down with Jenny Bogoni of the Free Library, READ! by 4th’s executive director. In the interview, she outlines the mission of the campaign, its strategies, and challenges.

What is the READ! by 4th campaign’s main goal?

Ensuring all children can read on grade level by the time they enter 4th grade.

Why does Philadelphia need this campaign now?

For decades, we have had a high percentage of kids not reading on grade level. There is research nationally and locally that shows that kids who aren’t reading on grade level by the time they reach 4th grade are set on a path where they’re unlikely to be successful.

They are four times more likely to not graduate high school on time. Research also shows that if you don’t graduate on time you are more likely to not attend college and earn less than a family-sustaining wage in your lifetime.

As the pedagogy shifts from learning to read to reading to learn, students are essentially no longer being taught how to read. They have to use their reading skills to learn other things. And if they’re not reading on grade level, they’re then not learning those other things effectively. All of these things just pile on each other.

Reading by 4th grade is the gateway benchmark to a life of success. And if we are not fulfilling this benchmark for kids, we’re not giving them this fundamental skill that they need for everything else and our city’s got no hope. This is the foundation of everything else. Philadelphia is trying to become a world-class city. This is why we need this campaign now.

Previously you’ve talked about the four strands of the campaign: increasing parent involvement, improving student attendance, strengthening instructional strategies, and creating avenues for outside-of-school learning time. Would you say that any of these four is more important than another?

No. It’s the interlocking nature of the four that is key. Parents need to understand how they can be the best and first teachers of their children. We need to give them the tools and the strategies to do that and to feel empowered to do it. I don’t know a parent anywhere who doesn’t want their kid to learn how to read.

Once kids are supported in the home and in their communities, we need kids attending school regularly. If they can’t attend school regularly, every day and on time, they’re not going to be there to learn from the specialists. And with instructional strategies, more and more people are [saying] that teaching reading is rocket science. It is complicated. It’s not something you can just do casually. It’s extremely critical to have those trained professionals with best practices in reading instruction.

And then we need out-of–school time and spaces where kids can reinforce instruction. And it’s the interplay of those four strategies that will allow it to be successful.

So can we describe these four areas as a staircase, with each step representing a facet of the campaign?

I don’t think of them as chronological, but more as four legs of a table. Without any one leg, the table isn’t stable.

How does the campaign decide what area it pushes for when? For example, do you say “we will focus on improving attendance today, and in two weeks we will tap into parent engagement”? How is it all organized?

Everything has to be pushed simultaneously. There’s urgency to this mission and this vision that requires that we both build the plane and fly the plane at the same time. To some degree, people out there know what should be done. There are best practices and research-proven strategies. We now have to adopt them, implement them, and find resources to scale them.

We must also make sure that none of our neighborhoods are left behind and that all of our children can be touched. But because I feel like these four legs of the table are all important, they have to be happening together.

So how do you plan to make these things happen simultaneously? And how do you hold READ! by 4th partners accountable?

We are an initiative, an effort. We are driven by a coalition of partners. So it’s the ability of the campaign to articulate a set of standards that we believe to be essential. That would be going below each of those four pillars, determining some of the key activities we want to see, and articulating what those are so that people and organizations know what we are prioritizing. Then, to some degree, we have to hope that the resources flow to let people implement them with as much fidelity as a possible. We need to encourage philanthropy to invest in those priority strategies. We have to keep all of those balls in the air at once.

Data from 2012 show that in Philadelphia, 70 percent of White kids and 57 percent of Asian kids met proficiency, compared to less than 40 percent of Blacks and Latinos. Proficiency levels were also lower for special education students and those learning English. Has the campaign tailored strategy towards this achievement gap and reaching out to certain communities over others?

That decision hasn’t been made yet. That’s a discussion we need to have at the advisory council level. I personally believe that tailored strategies make some sense. We must still make the decision whether to identify tailored strategies and not do anything else, or just have, among our set of strategies, some that are tailored to certain groups.

Skeptics of the campaign claim that it does not and will not reach enough kids, but one way to address this would be to make sure each child has access to a library. Does the campaign advocate for school libraries with full-time certified librarians?

The campaign has not identified an advocacy agenda. If we as a city are committed to this vision, then we have to have a conversation about what resources are necessary. What are the conditions for success that will allow all of these strategies to survive?

When skeptics say "What’s our likelihood of touching all kids?" it really depends on to what degree Philadelphia decides to makes this a priority. So that’s part of making this a campaign and not a program. We have to talk about the statistics, develop an advocacy agenda, and get people invested financially and with their own time and energy in what we are doing.

What makes READ! by 4th different from anything the city has seen before?

It is this collective impact approach. It is an ever-growing group of partners that has come together around a shared vision. We are working to identify shared metrics and are committed to shared accountability and working together to ensure that the strategies they prioritize get implemented.

Do you feel that the campaign has everything it needs to meet its goal? If not, what kind of support does the campaign lack?

We do not have everything we need. We need fully funded schools with a fair funding formula, which many groups have been working toward for a long time. We need more high-quality Pre-K slots, and we need to make sure kids and families know how to access them and are taking advantage of them. We need families to be aware of the small, yet important things they can do to set their kids up for success. It can be something as simple as singing to their kids each day. We need this known by every family in every corner of our city. We need a belief and sense of urgency this campaign can and should be done and should permeate the city. It needs to become everybody’s priority.

Can you speak on the role of certain partners? Is there something that each partner is assigned to work on?

The request is that the partners continue to do, and perhaps increase, what they would normally do around this initiative. Funders are asked to continue to fund or increase their funding. Literacy specialists inform people about how to teach kids, for example. So everyone has their role to play. We’re not asking people to go outside of their role. Partners who get to sit around a table together to create a shared vision start to imagine new and different things they could be doing but haven’t thought about. So one could imagine over time that companies who might be funders can find programmatic ways they might be involved as well.

Who would you like to call to the table? Is there a certain industry absent or any major groups around the city you’d like to call to action?

There’s a role for every sector. There are sectors we’ve talked to less deeply, like all of the major cultural institutions, many of whom have said they are ready and willing to help. We just haven’t had a deep conversation about their roles.

More companies can be at the table in new ways. We can start to think about how their HR departments can be vehicles to educate parents who are their employees. So that goes beyond how to use them just as funders. The health sector should be involved. We can tap into the role pediatricians play informing parents on what they should be doing with their children.

The faith-based community should also be involved. Anywhere that families are where there are trusted voices – we need to think about how to tap those. If just the usual suspects are in the room, we aren’t going to be successful. Of course we need every youth-serving organization in town to be listening to this and figuring out what their role is, but then it has to go beyond that.

What about the campaign excites you the most?

I know our children want to read and can read if they’re given the right supports. I want every child, every future adult citizen of the city to be able to have access to the skills that will set them on the path to be what they want to be. I want us to invest in our children, and I want to see them succeed.

Who is Jenny, and what charges you to lead this campaign?

I’ve been working since the mid-1990s in education, mostly nonprofit work related to children. I’ve become intimately aware of the state of our public schools and the challenges families and children face. And now, years later, I’m the mother of two children who themselves are trying to learn to read, and I see how hard it is to guide our kids through that process. It’s not easy for anybody, and I wish there was more clarity and more of a road map for me to help my kids get there.

What can we look forward to from the campaign in the next months?

We are beginning to delve into a communications agenda, determining what the outreach to the communities should look like and the kinds of activities we will be launching at the community neighborhood level. It’s time for READ! by 4th to get more specific on what programmatic strategies we want to see implemented as priorities in the coming years – and what our plans are for getting those off the ground.

Resources for families: A Philadelphia literacy guide

2015-10-27T11:55:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Dyslexia and learning disabilities

Understood

This site hosts articles by experts and parents about how to identify learning problems, help a child at home, and talk to teachers. Expert articles explain special education, IEPs, 504 plans, response to intervention, and special education support staff. Its diagnostic tool helps find articles relevant to your child’s age and learning issues.

Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity

This is a hub for dyslexia research initiatives, and a source of information and advocacy. It periodically conducts studies and invites participants, then provides results free as pdf downloads. A parents section provides guides for picking a school, meeting with a teacher, talking with your child, and assessing test results. It also includes stories written by parents.

Vision care

Give Kids Sight Day – Free Vision Screening

On Oct. 24, from 8:30 a.m.-2 p.m., Wills Eye Hospital will host its annual Give Kids Sight Day, offering free vision screenings to minors. Staff are available to talk with families and will send two free pairs of glasses to any child identified as needing them. Children must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. Free SEPTA token for each child screened. Register at Jefferson Alumni Hall, 10th and Locust Streets.

Public Citizens for Children and Youth

PCCY offers a database of vision-care providers in Philadelphia. It includes contact information and whether the provider accepts Medicaid or CHIP, has evening and weekend hours, speaks languages other than English, and serves special needs children.

Child care

Cap4Kids

Cap4Kids compiles information about resources for families in Philadelphia. The child-care section has three additional categories: respite care, special needs child care, and therapeutic nurseries. Other topics include literacy, afterschool programs, counseling, early intervention, and parenting.

Keystone Stars

Users can search for nearby child-care facilities that have been evaluated for quality by the state. Providers get ratings from 1 to 4 stars based on teacher qualifications, training and experience, family involvement, facility conditions, and other criteria. Even a Star-1 rating guarantees that the facility complies with state child-care regulations. The website offers a detailed description of the standards required to qualify for each star level.

Child Care Information Services

CCIS of Philadelphia runs a hotline (1-888-461-KIDS) that helps parents search for child-care facilities and community resources.

CCIS also helps low-income parents obtain subsidized child care that only requires a small weekly co-pay.

United Way 2-1-1

Dial “211” to get answers to your human services questions, find information on child care as well as homework help, remedial reading help, and general literacy issues.

Literacy tips and advice

Wondering what your child’s reading level is or how you can make your home literacy-friendly? Use these resources to support your child’s literacy development.

Reading Rockets

Reading Rockets offers reading tips in 11 languages for parents with children of all ages. Target the Problem! highlights common reading problems, explains how they can be interrelated, and offers help for diagnosis and ways parents can help. The site includes FAQs on topics such as early literacy, parent engagement, comprehension, dyslexia, phonics, and decoding.

Reading is Fundamental

This trove of free literacy resources includes calendars that list activities for each day of the year for you and your child up until age 15. Alphabet learning activities, PDF picture books, game ideas, and vocabulary-building strategies are offered. A page is dedicated to multicultural literacy and resources for parents in Spanish.

Learning Ally

The service, which costs $119 per year, offers the world’s largest collection of human-narrated audio textbooks and literature, containing 80,000 books. Parents can pose questions to a support team of five experienced parents of children with dyslexia. The site has tools for parents to find certified local specialists to evaluate a child.

School District READ! by 4th campaign page

This page contains activities to help parents prepare children for kindergarten and a link to a mobile app with more resources. It connects to multiple websites that offer interactive games and downloadable audiobooks, including popular series like Clifford, in English and Spanish.

Children’s Literacy Initiative Family Resource Center

CLI’s list of downloadable content provides nontraditional advice on how to create and maintain literacy- rich routines at home. Parents can also get tips for strengthening their child’s literacy delivered to their phones. Text READINGTIPS to 292929.

Scholastic printables

Print out these free materials that are packed with activities to bolster your child’s literacy, including crossword puzzles, word search puzzles, mini writing books, and worksheets to help children set reading resolutions. For children in grades pre-K to 8.

Book recommendations

Looking for a list of classics or the next popular author or book series in children’s literature? Use these online resources to get ideas.

Free Library of Philadelphia – Early Literacy

The Library’s early literacy page has several lists of recommended reading for babies, toddlers, preschool, and kindergarten, from classics like Dr. Seuss to newer releases like Please Puppy Please, about two high-energy toddlers who meet their match in an even more boisterous puppy.

Scholastic book lists, recommendations

Find books by themes, topics, genres, accolades, and by your child’s age, grade, and reading level.

Books online and in town

These resources will provide you with texts that you and your child can download on an electronic device or access on old-fashioned paper.

Free Library: local branches, e-books for kids

The library offers free downloadable e-books and audiobooks for young readers from Overdrive, which includes a variety of books, from War Horse and Sky Raiders to Cat in the Hat and A Wrinkle in Time. Choose books based on filters such as ratings, librarian recommendations, reading levels, language, or grade level. These books are available for your tablet, computer, and phone. In addition, the main library and neighborhood branches all contain children’s sections.

TumbleBooks

This is an online collection of animated, talking picture books that teach kids the joy of reading in an engaging format. TumbleBooks are streaming media, not downloadable e-books. You need a library card and PIN number, and you can access these books on a computer with a Flash-compatible web browser.

Tree House Books

This bookstore at 1430 W. Susquehanna Ave. near Broad Street in North Philadelphia charges a “pay what you want donation” for books. Their “Words on Wheels” program delivers one free book each week to registered families in the 19121 or 19132 zip codes. They also offer weekly afterschool reading and writing programs for a $40 annual fee, which can be reduced to $20 for qualifying low-income families.

Literacy is fun

Want your children to treat reading and learning like an adventure? These resources will help build their reading and writing skills through interactive games and videos.

Book Adventure

Motivate your child to read by sending them on a reading journey. Children read suggested books offline and take interactive quizzes about the book online. The more they read and participate, the more points they get toward prizes. Check your child’s progress with this site’s “reports” feature.

Seussville

A Dr. Seuss-themed world of games and activities, such as “Grow the Grinch’s Heart” and “Horton and the Kwuggerbug.” This site contains pages of parent resources.

PBS Kids

Here you can find educational and fun videos to engage your child, as well as a page of parent resources.

Kids National Geographic

Your child can spend hours on this site exploring fun facts and images and taking quizzes to strengthen their knowledge of the natural world.

Literacy in action

Want to connect with others on the literacy front? Here are organizations you can contact and events you can attend to boost your child’s literacy.

Springboard Collaborative

This nonprofit offers a five-week summer literacy program for pre-K through 3rd grade, emphasizing parent-teacher collaboration, which begins with a home visit. Teachers spend half the day teaching students grouped by reading level instead of grade level. It also features family workshops, where teachers show parents how to pick a book at their child’s reading level, and how to interact before, during, and after reading.

Philadelphia READS

This organization supports children’s literacy development through four core out-of-school-time programs: a book bank for educators, tutoring called Power Partners, a Reading Olympics contest, and Summer READS for students to help children set online summer reading goals. The website is being redesigned and will be back up in October; call 215-279-7450 for more information. The Reading Is Love program gives “on-the-go” parents short stories to read on their phones with their children in five minutes. Text “readtome” to 313131. Download the link, and choose a story to read with your child.

LEAP

The Free Library’s Literacy Enrichment Afterschool Program (LEAP) offers free homework, literacy, daily enrichment activities for elementary school students, and computer assistance for K-12 students. LEAP is available at every neighborhood library Tuesdays-Fridays from September to June. The website also offers online homework help, powered by Brainfuse, which connects students to tutors in English and Spanish.

African American Children’s Book Fair

This project promotes and preserves multicultural children’s books. Founded in 1992, it hosts one of the oldest and largest single-day events for African American children’s books in the country. The 24th annual fair will be 1-3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 6 at Community College of Philadelphia. For information, call 215-878-BOOK.

For quality pre-K, look for more than the ABCs

2015-10-19T09:51:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Take a tour of Children’s Village, a highly regarded child-care center in Philadelphia’s Chinatown neighborhood, and some of the elements that make it a high-quality program are immediately evident.

In Room 303, a group of 3- and 4-year-olds is absorbed in a variety of activities, playing with toys, listening to recorded music and stories, or engaged in drawing, making and building things.

The spacious room where they spend their day is divided into well-equipped stations filled with intriguing educational material. Each one – block-building, dance and gross motor skills, art, dramatic play, and science – has accompanying materials that encourage specific kinds of learning.

With the help of teachers Noelle Woytko and Kevin McClellan, the children had earlier created “play plans,” writing their names and drawing pictures of what they would do next. The plans encourage children to think ahead and to verbalize their ideas.

There is also a library, where the children can borrow books to take home. Even though most of the children have not yet learned to read, chairs are labeled with the children’s names, and many other objects are labeled as well.

But the strengths of the center go far beyond what impresses a visitor at first sight.

Foundations for quality care

“A place may seem to be clean and have lots of bright plastic toys, but that is not always an indication of quality,” cautioned Shawn Towey, the child-care policy coordinator for Public Citizens for Children and Youth (PCCY), a Philadelphia-based child advocacy organization.

Research on pre-K programs that achieve long-term literacy gains has found several important factors: a well-structured, high-level curriculum, well-educated teachers who have taken early childhood education courses, small class sizes, and solid teacher-parent relationships.

Children’s Village has a Keystone Stars 4A rating, meeting the highest Pennsylvania child-care standard; the A stands for “accredited” with a national pre-K association.

The Keystone Stars ratings – ranging from one to four stars – provide a uniform set of standards that a child-care facility must meet in its educational environment, management, and community relations. The ratings make it easier for families to compare programs: The more stars, the higher the standards. A number of studies show a high correlation between these standards and the development of literacy skills in later years.

The Stars standards set a bar for everything from the teachers’ qualifications, to how effective the staff is in communicating with parents, whether teachers have continuing education and planning time, and what benefits employees receive to help reduce staff turnover.

In the highest-rated programs, at least half of the lead teachers have a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education, and all have at least an associate’s degree. (Publicly funded pre-K programs in Pennsylvania like the Children’s Village require that all lead teachers have bachelor’s degrees.)

All Keystone Star-3 and Star-4 pre-K programs are required to base their curriculum on a comprehensive 100-page set of state “Learning Standards for Early Childhood.” These standards include language arts, mathematical thinking, art and music, scientific thinking, and learning through play.

This document takes a broad view of educational growth: “Young children learn best when they are able to construct knowledge through meaningful play, active exploration of the environment, and thoughtfully planned activities,” it says. But it also emphasizes the need to support language and literacy development throughout the program.

A focus on communication

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The Children’s Village uses several curricula, including “Blueprint for Early Literacy,” according to executive director Mary Graham. The staff has had extensive and recent training in teaching literacy, she said.

Children drawing pictures and verbalizing what they want to do next may not seem to be a literacy activity, Graham said, but it is.

Many people think of literacy as “just being letters,” she said. “But it’s also language – children talking with each other and with the teachers, developing cognitive concepts. … It begins with verbal communication.”

Parent participation is also a big element at Children’s Village, said Ellen Saint Clair, a development director at the school. At the start of the school year, mothers and fathers can spend the first two hours of the day at the center with their children, to prepare them for being there alone. Parents are invited to breakfast with their children any time they choose.

At all Keystone Star-4 facilities, there must be daily updates to parents on how a child is faring, sit-down conferences at least twice a year, and a discussion of the transition to kindergarten as that date approaches.

Teacher and child

Towey, of PCCY, said she believes that the key to high-quality pre-K is the character of the interaction between the teacher and the child, which is often influenced, she noted, by the teacher’s level of education and how long he or she has been teaching. Several studies of literacy readiness back up that contention.

According to the Stand for Children Leadership Center, an education advocacy organization, some of the features of effective teacher-child interaction include the use of varied teaching strategies; a responsive, back-and-forth interaction style between teachers and children; an emphasis on both oral language and print awareness; and attention to developing self-regulatory skills.

All those features are part of the design of the Children’s Village, said Tonja Whitehead, the center’s education director. “The teachers are very involved in paying attention to the individual needs of the children and getting to know what will help them develop.”

Pre-K programs that meet all the standards for a Star-3 or Star-4 program do well in preparing children for literacy in elementary school, early education advocates say. A recent report by the Pennsylvania Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL) found that in 2012-13, the percentage of 4-year-olds who had age-appropriate language, math, and social skills more than doubled after they took part in a high-quality pre-K program.

And the benefits of high-quality pre-K care go well beyond those preschool years, advocates say.

“We know that there is a good return on investment in putting money into high-quality pre-K,” said Michael Race, a spokesman for Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children, a child advocacy group. “It will reduce education costs later on. … Children will be at less risk of repeating grades and have an increased chance of graduating high school.”

How to judge the quality of pre-K programs

2015-10-19T09:50:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) has a well-regarded 10-point standard for high-quality programs. Publicly funded Keystone Star-3 and Star-4 pre-K programs meet at least seven of them, including having a comprehensive early learning curriculum, all lead teachers with at least a bachelor’s degree, continuing professional education, maximum class size of 20 and teacher-child ratio of at least 1 to 10, and on-site inspections at least every five years. (Pennsylvania programs are not required to meet NIEER standards of conducting comprehensive health screenings, giving all children meals, and requiring assistant teachers to have at least an associate’s degree in child development.)

Pennsylvania’s Promise for Children, an early childhood advocacy campaign, takes a different approach, encouraging parents themselves to gauge program quality by asking question like: “Does staff communicate daily with parents about their child’s progress? Does staffing allow for each child to receive individual attention? Does staff sit and read to the children?”

Other questions: “Do the children have a consistent routine that they can understand and follow? Do the children seem occupied and engaged? Are the children involved in activities that promote learning? Is there a policy on discipline? Do the children seem happy?”

The cost of high quality

2015-10-19T09:48:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The benefits of high-quality pre-K can be great, but relatively few Pennsylvania children receive it. In 2013-14, less than half of 3- and 4-year-olds statewide attended licensed programs. Only about 31 percent were in high-quality pre-K.

One big reason: expense. The average annual cost to provide a Star-3 or Star-4 program in Southeastern Pennsylvania is $12,789 per child, more than $2,000 more than for a Star-1 or Star-2 program, the Nonprofit Finance Fund reported. Higher teacher salaries and higher facility and classroom materials costs were mainly responsible. Without public funding, the report concluded, “high-quality care is … especially unattainable for families living in poverty.”

Gov. Wolf’s administration wants to more than double 2015-16 state funding for Pre-K Counts, a high-quality program for low- to moderate-income families, and to increase state Head Start funding by 50 percent. The state legislature passed a June budget with much smaller increases; Wolf vetoed it. That standoff continues.

Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children is calling for the legislature to substantially increase pre-K funding for the next several years, said spokesman Michael Race. “Quality comes with a price, and high-quality pre-K is no exception. … It will save money in the long run.”

Improved instruction is at the heart of literacy push

2015-10-14T09:39:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The kindergartners are sitting cross-legged on a carpet doing their best to draw the letter F, the letter of the day at KIPP Philadelphia Elementary Academy (KPEA), a charter school in Strawberry Mansion. Each day, the children practice saying and writing a different letter.

“Okay, friends, hold your fa-fa-fabulous Fs up to me,” says their teacher, Lauren Holifield. “Oh, my goodness, fa-fa-fa-fantastic. … Now make your best lowercase f. Have fu-fu-fun with it.”

Across the hall, other youngsters are seated four to a table, working independently, doing what the teachers call “rainbow writing” – using a different color for each letter as they learn to write their names. Then they switch from markers to brightly colored sticky dough, shaping it into letter forms.

In a third classroom, teacher Samantha Freeman is conducting a lesson in how to read a book. She holds up The Family Book by Todd Parr.

“Remember,” she says, running her finger across the title, “we read from left to right, and the big words at the top of the cover are the title.” Then, detail by detail, she introduces each element of the book to her class. The students repeat all this back to her several times.

“Title,” she says. “Say title.”

“Title,” they say in unison.

“That’s what you do in kindergarten,” school leader Ben Speicher said later. “How do you know the title of the book? How do you know to read left to right? You don’t know unless you’ve been taught. We have kids who know these things, but we can’t assume everybody does.”

This is basic, one-step-at-a-time literacy instruction. Time spent teaching reading adds up to 3½ to 4½ hours in a school day that runs from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Progress and challenges

KIPP boasts that 90 percent of KPEA students leave kindergarten reading on grade level, though just 5 percent exhibited age-appropriate skills the previous August. As they entered school, most knew only half their letters and few letter sounds.

On last spring’s more rigorous PSSAs, the KPEA 3rd and 4th graders had proficiency rates above the District average, with 50 percent of 3rd graders and 44 percent of 4th graders scoring proficient or advanced.

The Wilson Fundations reading and spelling program that the school has used since it opened helps students through 2nd grade to master the building blocks of reading, Speicher said. To promote deeper understanding beyond that, the school’s reading curriculum emphasizes science and history as well as vocabulary development.

“What we find gets harder for kids is having the vocabulary, content knowledge, and depth of reading comprehension to stay on grade level as they get older,” he said.

Meeting that challenge across the city is the goal of READ! by 4th, a multi-organizational campaign to have almost all Philadelphia 4th graders reading on grade level by 2020. Only about half, historically, have reached that benchmark.

As part of this effort, 700 kindergarten-through-3rd-grade District teachers from 40 schools spent a July week in special training on literacy instruction, learning a strategy much like KIPP’s that focuses on teaching letter and combination sounds – known as phonemic awareness – as well as effective use of reading aloud and independent reading. Their classrooms received classroom libraries with books sorted by reading level.

“The most important resource you need to improve literacy instruction is a highly skilled, well-resourced teacher,” said Diane Castelbuono, the District’s deputy chief for early childhood education.

This is true even when a school can’t afford to have extra bodies in the classroom, she said. The system is designed to help teachers manage larger classes in an extended literacy block that features whole-group, small-group, and independent reading, in which students can easily find books at their level.

A structured approach

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Its formula amounts to a lot of time on various reading, writing, and listening tasks, frequent screenings and assessments, and a research-based, highly structured approach. Students having trouble receive small-group instruction or even one-on-one time with a teacher.

The school employs two teachers per classroom in kindergarten and 1st grade, and a special education teacher along with the regular teacher in inclusion classrooms in grades 2, 3 and 4. Most of the year, the school also has four graduate students from the Urban Teacher Fellows program at St. Joseph’s University.

The fellows have been trained in Wilson Fundations, an approach that proponents tout as proven effective in building reading and spelling skills and as an intervention for struggling students.

Fundations is also being used by Ziegler and Andrew Jackson Elementary Schools in the District and the AIM Academy in Conshohocken, a private school for students with learning differences.

On a morning in September, teaching fellow Vanessa Serrano was assisting four 4th-grade students while the teacher worked with the rest of the class.

“The more adults we have, the more individualized instruction we can do,” the principal said.

Students are assessed early and often. Teachers visit each child’s home in May – long before the start of classes – to assess the child’s skills.

“I liked the fact there was a visit,” said Tanya Brown, whose daughter Taytiannah, 5, is in kindergarten. “I like the teacher knowing what my daughter can and cannot do.”

Observations and testing are ongoing, and teachers assign children to smaller guided-reading groups accordingly. With four lead teachers, special education teachers, and teaching fellows, there might be eight groups of 2nd graders tackling a lesson, for instance.

Teachers and the fellows trained in the Wilson approach develop expertise in identifying reading problems, said Cathleen Spinelli, professor of special education at St. Joseph’s and program adviser.

They can “identify the child’s reading problem and how to modify instruction … to help that child,” she said.

First thing on a bright September morning, 4th graders embarking on “word study” started with a rousing song, standing and pumping their arms in the air. “Good morning. Wah wah. G-O-O-D M-O-R-N-I-N-G. GOOD morning. Wah wah. Pump that KIPPster spirit up.”

“Thank you, Aziz. Excellent job, Eriyonna. Good morning, readers,” said teacher Mariel Ziegler.

It was time to study the word of the day: setting.

“I’ll say the word, you’ll say the word, then we’ll clap it out together,” Ziegler said. This would be the routine for every word they would study through the school year, she reminded them.

“Set … ting.” Clap. Clap.

This was an easy one. How many syllables? she asked. Hands went up all around.

“Do we know this word?” she asked.

For a half-hour, the class discussed possible definitions, first as a whole group, then with a partner, then again with the entire class. They spoke up to agree or disagree. Each wrote down a definition. Then they illustrated what a setting might look like. It wasn’t the most exciting of words, but necessary for future discussions of books.

From one classroom to the next, teachers orchestrated movements of students from whole group, to small group, to independent reading, to one-on-one time with a specialist. But even students with reading issues are assigned grade-level material.

“All groups are reading the same thing,” Speicher noted. Struggling students get extra support.

The pace was quick: 30 seconds to write down their definitions.

“Pacing is important,” said Speicher. “The kids have time to share or do their work but not so long that they get off-task. We try to walk that fine line.”

Amanda Keyes, with sons Oscar, 9, a 4th grader, and Frederick, 7, in 2nd grade, endorsed the emphasis on literacy.

“I like how they do word study – they divide them into small groups and they work on their own set of words, and they do small groups for reading, too,” said Keyes. “The school sends packets home encouraging you to read with your child and have them read to you.”

For her sons, the effort at school and at home has paid off.

“Neither child could read when they started kindergarten. They liked being read to, but they had no idea about reading,” Keyes recalled.

“By the end of kindergarten, they were reading to me. I was impressed. They have a love of reading – and that comes from the family and also from the school.”

Literacy campaign stresses importance of teacher training at schools of ed

2015-10-09T15:19:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Education scholars continue to churn out best practices for literacy instruction, but these practices slowly, if ever, make their way to the hands of educators in the classroom.

This grim circumstance is connected to the 56 percent of Philadelphia 4th graders who scored below basic in reading on the 2013 National Assessment for Educational Progress. Sixty percent of these students were African American.

The School District and philanthropic organizations have made a pledge to more aggressively address this gap. As part of the citywide READ by 4th! campaign, over the next three years, almost every K-3 teacher will receive regular professional development, on-the-job coaching and libraries for their classrooms with books coded by reading level.

A big part of the campaign is to improve the effectiveness of training programs for early-grade teachers by ensuring that they are steeped in research-proven curricula and social justice. Although research has long been clear that students who don’t read on grade level by 4th grade find it doubly hard to catch up and succeed in school, elementary school teachers often are never explicitly trained in reading instruction.

“We need our schools of education to adopt programs of study and standards that make sure that every student who graduates with a degree in elementary education knows and understands the science of teaching children how to read,” said Superintendent William Hite at a workshop held at Drexel University.

To ensure high-quality instruction across all schools in the city, the campaign is encouraging schools of education to promote, via their curricula, evidence-based ways to teach reading. One such way is through the implementation of the International Dyslexia Association’s (IDA) Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading.

“It’s hard to tell whether a program is providing rich literacy evidence-based training,” said Nancy Scharff, a READ! by 4th instructional strategies consultant. This new campaign push counters this difficulty: If a school is accredited under the IDA’s standards, this signals that its graduates are prepared to tackle literacy challenges as soon as they are hired.

“You cannot teach what you don’t know, and there are a ton of students graduating from these schools who can’t name the five skills of successful readers,” said Judith Birsh, senior fellow of special education at Relay Graduate School of Education in New York.

“Teachers with prime preparation make a difference. They can identify at-risk students in a nanosecond.”

But what makes these standards different from what’s already being taught in teacher-training programs? First, they are comprehensive. And second, they carefully specify what all teachers and specialists need to know and do to instruct students to read proficiently.

The standards address a wide array of technical knowledge, from phonology (the study of speech sounds), orthography (conventions of writing such as spelling), morphology (the study of word structure), and semantics (the study of meaning behind words and expressions), to oral and written language, assessment, dyslexia, and other learning disabilities. They also contain appendices that address motivation in children, for example.

The standards also pay special attention to the structure of language and the complexity of skilled reading, which is important for teaching English language learners, students with learning differences, and those living in poverty.

Representatives of 10 schools of education — Drexel, Penn, Temple, St. Joseph’s, Shippensburg, Relay, LaSalle, Chestnut Hill, Clarion, and Lehigh — were present at the workshop. These schools educate a vast majority of the region’s teachers.

But St. Joseph’s Urban Teaching Residency Program (UTR) is the only one accredited by the Center for Effective Reading Instruction (CERI), a subset of the IDA. There are just 17 accredited institutions across the country.

This is the first year of the accredited program at St. Joseph’s, which has six urban teacher residents. In the residency, students will take courses aligned with the Knowledge and Practice Standards and apply what they learn in a yearlong clinical experience at a high-needs host school in Philadelphia. The two current host schools are KIPP Philadelphia Elementary Academy (K-4) and KIPP Philadelphia Charter School.

Students take on more responsibility than they would in a typical undergraduate student teaching scenario. They have modified schedules to complete specialized coursework that ultimately amount to about 1,000 hours.

Another major component of the program is the series of social justice seminars that students must take. The courses are sponsored by SJU’s Faith-Justice Institute and led by Keith Magee, a leading social justice proponent and faith and politics expert.

“Quality education is the civil rights issue of our time," said Magee, who had a hand in developing the social justice component of the program. "We need to create a vast movement about literacy for our children. Literacy is the way up and out."

The social justice emphasis is crucial to the teacher preparation, said Cathy Spinelli, a professor of special education at St. Joseph’s and coordinator of the fellows program.

Putting reading and literacy in that context for the teachers-in-training makes them "the ideal diagnostic remedial specialists to go out into the field and be able to work with a needy population of students that is deserving of the best that’s out there,” she said.

There was some doubt among workshop attendees, however, about whether adopting these standards is enough to change outcomes for students. Several pointed out that the successful education systems of Japan and Finland, for example, have much more extensive teacher training and preparation requirements. Other initiatives along these lines have continually failed Philadelphia students, people said.

But, said Birsh, “To have a deep, robust training is a good beginning. They never stop learning, and if they can get the basics, they can ground their experience and further their knowledge.”

To make this work, READ! by 4th is going to need the continued support of those in higher education and philanthropic organizations said Jenny Bogoni, the campaign’s executive director.

And teachers from these programs can count on actually putting their expertise to use.

“The District is committed to hiring elementary-grade teachers who are familiar with evidence-based reading instruction and prepared to teach using these strategies on the first day they enter the classroom," said Hite. "Our children deserve no less.”

A daunting journey, but profoundly rewarding

2015-10-08T10:10:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Parents of struggling readers come from all walks of life, but they all have one thing in common.

That moment when they realized that something wasn’t quite right.

“He just wasn’t getting it – and I couldn’t figure out why,” said Erica Fields, a mental health caseworker from West Philadelphia.

“He’d say, ‘It’s all a bunch of letters, and they’re not coming together,’” said Tine Hansen-Turton, a nonprofit executive from Gwynedd Valley in Montgomery County.

“It wasn’t until we had our second son that we realized, ‘Oh,’” said Jo-Ann Rogan, a musician in Wissahickon.

The moment may arrive in kindergarten or 1st grade, when a child starts acting out or falling behind. Or a few years later, when coping mechanisms like memorization finally fail.

But whenever it comes, that moment is confusing and stressful, and it marks the beginning of what can be a grueling journey for the entire family.

At first, “it was almost a sadness,” said Deborah Lynam, a former graphic artist from South Jersey. “I was watching my neighbors, my friends. Their kids were reading. They liked going to school. And it was very clear that my son wasn’t making benchmarks.”

Lynam’s moment arrived when her eldest son was in 2nd grade in Haddon Heights, Camden County. He’d had issues for over a year, but she still hoped the school’s various interventions would eventually work.

But then one day, the boy’s teacher finally said, “I’m not sure if anybody’s really telling you, but … he’s not just ‘behind.’ He’s not reading.”

It was a blow. After Lynam’s sorrow came anger – mainly directed at her school district. But that ended when she started to work with other parents. The problem is everywhere, she discovered, and schools of every description struggle to address it.

“Is it an emotional toll? It’s terrible. Terrible,” said Lynam, who went on to help found a national advocacy network called Decoding Dyslexia.

“But it’s hard to stay in that angry place when all of a sudden there are 12 other parents dealing with the same problem, or worse.”

Never take no for an answer

With the right diagnosis and intervention, these families have found, children once swamped in confusion can make tremendous strides.

But getting there requires their parents to become informed, relentless advocates.

The stakes couldn’t be higher, Lynam said. Dyslexia – a term covering a wide range of reading disorders – affects as many as one in five students nationwide. It’s no accident that levels of dyslexia among prison inmates are much higher. One study in Texas found that almost half of its inmates are dyslexic.

“We have to start talking about this,” she said.

Any number of other disabilities and environmental factors can have the same effect. A parent who has discovered a learning deficit must respond quickly – and get results.

“You have to do your homework – and you have to be willing not to take no for an answer,” said Fields of West Philadelphia, whose son Mikal struggled in his neighborhood school before finding success in a specialized charter.

The landscape that families face is daunting: expensive tests and tutoring, vexing bureaucracies, uneven resources. Underfunded districts can be overwhelmed. Even prosperous districts and pricey private schools can be unprepared. Students find themselves changing schools. Siblings feel ignored. Parents may quit their jobs.

“I had to give up my career and go back to bartending,” said Rogan.

Was it worth it? Absolutely, she said. Her son Ryan, now in the 6th grade, is “doing well, and he’s happy.” Gifted with a high IQ, but diagnosed with a handful of learning and motor-skills disabilities, Ryan is now at Education Plus, a charter for students with “learning differences.” In two years, he went from being 3½ years behind grade level to just half a grade behind.

“To me, that’s incredible,” Rogan said. “He’s being treated with respect and loved and listened to.”

That’s a major turnaround from Ryan’s early years. A promising start at his neighborhood school, Cook-Wissahickon, turned sour by 2nd grade. A key special education aide left, a strict new teacher arrived, and Ryan was soon foundering in the classroom.

“They sat him in the back under the pencil sharpener,” Rogan said.

Feeling singled out and berated, unable to do his work, he began acting out, and the family was soon embroiled in draining battles over harsh discipline and the details of Ryan’s Individualized Education Program (IEP). At one point, the family was spending entire weekends on homework. Rogan was exhausted, and the boy was traumatized.

“It was horrific,” Rogan said, her voice cracking. “And he was in 2nd grade! He was little!”

Erica Fields’ son Mikal doesn’t have Ryan’s specific disabilities, but he too struggled; slow to pick up the basics, he suffered academically and socially.

“The other kids didn’t want to play with him,” Fields said. “He was the outcast.”

Mikal left his neighborhood school, Daroff, and he, too, landed at Ed Plus, where extra attention and a phonics-based curriculum helped him get over the comprehension hump.

“Now he’s getting it,” Fields said. “At home, you’ll say a word, and he’ll try to spell it out. He likes books with a little sense of humor.”

Ed Plus’ future is uncertain, due to a dispute with the state over its hybrid cyber/brick-and-mortar model. But for now, Fields said, Mikal is happier, more confident, and “has learned how to make friends.”

An elusive, unfamiliar problem

Success for families means finding the right resources. Every school and district is different.

But the first and perhaps hardest step, parents say, is to fully commit to grappling with an elusive, unfamiliar problem.

“You’ve got to give up control – or the illusion of control – and realize that your child is going to do their thing,” said Hannah Rhodes, an engineer living in Point Breeze, whose daughter Abi is dyslexic. “Who she is is very different from who I am.”

Rhodes’ son, two years older than Abi, started reading on his own. His sister eagerly tried to imitate him, but by 2nd grade, it was clear that she was wired differently.

“She had the interest, but also the roadblocks,” Rhodes said. “She did a lot of guessing.”

Faced with the prospect of holding her daughter back a year at Independence Charter School, Rhodes instead pushed for a better diagnosis. The school psychologist uncovered an ocular condition (strabismus) and got Abi an IEP with a simple program of instruction and eye exercises.

A summer program at the Springboard Collaborative gave her an extra boost. Abi, now in 3rd grade, is cheerfully “cruising along,” Rhodes said – closing in on grade level literacy.

Rhodes feels grateful to have found quality support close at hand. “Everybody’s like, ‘We can fix this!’” she said. “She doesn’t have to have an IEP forever.”

But she also knows not everyone is so lucky. “I was treated as an asset and not as a liability, which is huge. But I had to trust these people.”

Be ready to collaborate – and fight

Accepting the problem isn’t easy.

“You fight it,” said Tine Hansen-Turton, whose dyslexic son struggled in both a suburban public school and a private school before settling in happily at the private AIM Academy in Conshohocken. “You’re somewhat in denial, until you recognize, ‘Oh my God, I’m actually harming the kid unless I do something different.’”

But once a family commits, parents say, the keys to success in any situation are diligence, collaboration, and perseverance.

“You have to be your own case manager,” said Lynam. “And you need to work collaboratively with the school.”

And if that doesn’t work, “be prepared to fight,” said Rogan, who doesn’t know what she’ll do if Ed Plus shuts down – she only knows she won’t send Ryan back to his neighborhood school. “Get a lawyer. This is your kid. You don’t get a second chance.”

It’s a marathon, not a sprint, they caution.

“You’re not ‘cured,’” said Hansen-Turton, whose son is now college-bound, while she sits on the Ed Plus board. “He’ll always have issues.”

But the rewards of success are profound. It lightens parents’ hearts to see their children thrive, relieved of the lead weight of feeling “dumb.” And they’re delighted to turn their attention to more normal family activities – like taking the kids on tour with mom’s punk rock band.

“I was able to take him across the country and back – and he did amazing,” Rogan said. “He reads himself to sleep every night.”

All in – to support young readers

2015-10-08T10:08:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Philadelphia has embarked on an ambitious campaign, called READ! by 4th, to ensure that all city students are able to read by the time they enter 4th grade, which numerous studies have shown is a make-or-break point for future success.

Students who reach this benchmark are more likely to do well in school and graduate. Students who don’t are more likely to tune out and drop out.

In this edition, we look at teaching reading in schools and at home and highlight where families can find resources.

Although there are many places parents can turn for help, dealing with struggling readers is not easy. It can become a full-time job – not something all parents can do. Families who have found positive solutions say that even well-resourced schools may be ill-equipped and resistant to meet the needs of students with dyslexia and other reading challenges. They advise parents to be relentless advocates and demand diagnoses. Their stories highlight how critical it is for schools to have the resources and personnel to help their students.

Schools here are revamping reading curricula. Many of the District’s lowest-performing schools now have retrained teachers and classroom libraries that are tailored to student reading levels.

The medical community is raising awareness of children’s health issues – how vision problems or asthma can affect learning. It is also emphasizing the importance of mentally stimulating activities for children from the earliest ages. We offer tips on what parents can do with their children during everyday activities to help them become better readers.

Kindergarten begins with focus on reading and registration

2015-09-18T16:45:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Noah Himmelein wailed while he stood in line in the yard of Henry C. Lea Elementary School in University City waiting to go into his kindergarten classroom. His father, Mathew Himmelein, stood close to him.

“This is a nerve-wracking process,” Noah’s father said, “but we prepared for this.”

With Noah leading the line, the students made their way into the two classrooms as their parents followed in tandem.

But before too long, Noah, with a book bag nearly his size, was sitting on the rug in the back of Ellie Zatuchni’s classroom with his new classmates. He kept his eyes on her as she began to welcome everyone to class.

Thursday was the first day of kindergarten in Philadelphia, and it marked the beginning of formal schooling for about 11,000 children in the District. Noah was one of 60 who filled two classrooms at Lea.

These children are entering the school system at a time when the District, along with dozens of organizations and agencies, is mobilizing to make sure that they do not fall off track.

The challenge for schools like Lea is stark: In Philadelphia, which has the highest poverty rate of any big city in the United States, just 40 percent of 3rd graders read at a proficient level or better. Determined to improve that statistic, the city is calling its campaign READ! by 4th. Research shows that children who don’t reach this benchmark are many times more likely to fall behind and drop out of school.

The first morning at Lea, learning was already apparent as teachers acquainted students with the classroom space and procedures. Students gazed around in awe at the bright anchor charts and activity stations organized around the two classrooms.

“We are trying to raise critical-thinking citizens. We want our children to be able to read and write and calculate, and they need to do this in the context of the world they live in,” said principal Jennifer Duffy.

Full-day kindergarten still not universal

The state of Pennsylvania does not require its school districts to provide kindergarten. But Philadelphia, despite its perennial budget woes, made a commitment two decades ago under former Superintendent David Hornbeck.

“We were among the first school districts in the country to offer universal full-day kindergarten,” said Diane Castelbuono, the District’s deputy chief for early childhood education, who also worked in the Hornbeck administration.

“Our research is clear that students in the District who attend full-day kindergarten are more than twice as likely to remain on grade level through 3rd grade, and they have significantly higher achievement scores, better report card grades, and better attendance,” she said.

Literacy specialist Penny Silva of the Children’s Literacy Initiative, who’s been in the classroom for 35 years, was also present for the kids’ first day at Lea.

“I’m ready to set up a literacy environment and culture that facilitates caring, community, and books, books, books,” she said. Silva provides instructional support and professional development for teachers in grades K-3.

“Scaffolding needs to be intentional,” said Silva, using educators’ term for making sure that lessons build on each other. “If it’s not, that’s where our kids get lost. We need intentional teaching so that we create a common language and culture throughout all grades in the school.”

According to Duffy, the reading specialists and consultants are important because they focus on students who may already be below level. “This brings our students up to speed and builds our own capacity as teachers,” she said.

Measuring who’s ready to read

Castelbuono said it’s difficult to measure kindergarten readiness, however. “It encompasses a wide variety of skills and behaviors, from academic performance to social and emotional development,” she said.

In most years, about 60 to 70 percent of kindergartners scored “on-target” on their first Dynamic Indicators of Basic English Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessment, a test for early literacy.

“This is only one measure of a small component of kindergarten readiness,” said Castelbuono.

As part of READ! by 4th, the District has been doing more targeted research on reading and why so many children are falling behind.

“Our data from the spring shows that our students struggle with phonics and phonemic awareness,” said Castelbuono. “These need to be taught explicitly, and teachers need to be skilled. We need our best teachers in kindergarten.”

Play and learning need to go hand in hand, she explained. Teachers will be using additional diagnostic tools called AIMSweb and the DRA2 to assess student growth this year.

But while some students made it to their first day, there may be hundreds more at home. The District faces the challenge of not knowing how many children are even eligible for kindergarten. Census data and birth rates can be unreliable, and the city’s highly mobile population may skew the numbers.

The District also can’t rely on figures from pre-K, because many kids may not attend programs affiliated with the District, if they go at all.

“I’m confident that we are serving most of our kids,” said Castelbuono. The District is able to know this because, year after year, kindergarten has served around 11,000 kids, generally about 700 fewer than the number of 1st graders districtwide.

“But because we are a very large district, even if we serve 95 percent of kids who are eligible, that can still leave hundreds of kids unserved. And that’s too many,” said Castelbuono.

Late registration

The District’s challenge in getting more kids in kindergarten is less about awareness of kindergarten in the community and more about late registration and space in schools, Castelbuono explained.

Forty percent of families preregistered by May this year, which is about 1,000 more families than usual. Almost 7,000 families didn’t enroll their children until September, and many families register their children on the first day.

There were several new families in Lea’s office this week looking to enroll their children – enough so that the school is considering adding a third classroom.

“We had three families register yesterday,” said Christian Edge, Lea’s engagement coordinator

Castelbuono said the District is stepping up efforts to have families register early “because it allows the kindergartens to be ready for the kids and ensure that we’ll have a class that is staffed and with enough materials. It gives teachers a chance to meet with parents before the start of the school year. It’s better for kids and for school planning, and it’s cost-effective.”

The ramifications of late registration were evident in Zatuchni’s classroom at Lea on the first day, when she noticed she didn’t have enough spots for name tags on the classroom chart.

Funding for a 3rd kindergarten class at Lea would come from the District’s operating budget. In the event that a school doesn’t have room, that child would in the meantime be placed on a waitlist and directed to the nearest school with an open seat.

Officials hope that registration troubles will be alleviated through the District’s new student information system, set to launch in January 2017, which will allow parents to register online, avoiding the current paper-based, in-person protocol.

Still, Castelbuono explained the need for a cultural shift to help parents realize the importance of early registration.

“The fewer transitions a child has to make in these early years,” the better, she said.

“I hope that he begins to build up a core of knowledge this year,” said Noah’s father as he made his way out of the classroom. "And that includes learning about math, science, technology, sports, and, hopefully, art.”

In teaching literacy, assessments are in real time

2015-02-09T12:48:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Mentioning the term “assessment” at this time of year conjures thoughts of the PSSA, the annual state test – controversial for the amount of time that is eaten up in preparation and the pall that poor showings can cast over a school.

But when literacy experts use the term “assessment,” they’re more likely to be referring to the real-time assessment tools that are now viewed as vital in efforts to ensure that children stay on track learning to read.

In the early grades, these assessments are frequent but seldom involve pencil and paper, except for showing the student’s emerging abilities in writing his name or her grasp of the alphabet.

Often, the assessments are one-on-one, with the teacher or reading specialist sitting with the child in an exchange that takes just a few minutes.

What the teacher is looking for are signs that the child is becoming fluent in naming letters, is learning the sounds of letters and words and is responsive to the instruction under way.

A hallmark of these assessments is that results are immediately at hand–same day for individual students and within a few days or weeks for classes or grade levels as a whole, speeding up teacher intervention.

Unlike the PSSA, whose results come months later, they are not used to judge a school or a teacher.

“These are tools that help teachers identify where children are having difficulties and to adapt instruction,” said Diane Castelbuono, the District’s deputy chief for early childhood education. “Is the child having difficulty with certain words? Does he understand what the story is about? … These are not high-stakes tests; they are aids to instruction.”

Early warning signs

Using a mix of formal and informal assessments, teachers can identify difficulties and respond to students who show signs of being at risk for failing to learn to read. If an assessment shows numerous children missing a skill, the teacher can adjust instruction to reinforce learning.

“If we find something a whole group is missing, we’ll find [a response] we can slot into the day to address that need. If it’s a small number of kids, we can do a pullout program,” noted Claire Cohen, chief education officer at Belmont Charter School in West Philadelphia.

Better to intervene in a timely fashion in kindergarten than in 3rd or 4th grade. By 3rd grade, according to literacy experts, students should be reading to learn, not learning to read.

“Early intervention is critical. By the time a student reaches 3rd or 4th grade, they’ve lost so much ground. I call it miles on the page,” said Nancy Hennessy, director of academic and professional practices at AIM Academy in Conshohocken, a private school for students with language-based learning issues.

The student who falls behind has “missed out on practice with words, development of vocabulary, acquiring background knowledge, and work with complex syntax,” said Hennessy. Remediation takes longer and requires more intense intervention.

At Belmont Charter, a grade 1-8 school in West Philadelphia, and its sister school, Belmont Academy, which offers kindergarten as well as preschool to 3- and 4-year-olds, assessments come early and often.

Each child participates in an informal assessment during a visit to meet his or her teacher in the summer.By the start of school, the teacher has a good idea of the strengths and needs of her classroom as a whole. The more common practice elsewhere is to handle this kind of diagnostic work in the opening weeks of school.

“We’re off and running the first day of school to meet the needs of students,” said Jennifer VanZandt, academic director of Belmont Academy.

Findings may influence where a child is placed. “If a child comes into 1st grade scoring far below grade level, we make sure that child is placed in a classroom that has an additional person in the room for more individualized attention,” Cohen said.

Many varieties

Assessments can be used to:

• screen students’ reading abilities at the start of school;

• diagnose issues that impede learning how to read;

• track progress of both individual students and classrooms as a whole (so-called benchmark assessments); and

• evaluate student progress from year to year and also program effectiveness.

The purpose of the PSSAs, administered in April in grades 3-8, is to evaluate grade-level performance, including comparison with all other public schools across the state. Results become available to the schools after the school year ends – too late to affect instruction at grade level for the students being tested.

The PSSAs “give you the big picture – how are we doing as a system in developing reading skills? It’s more of a global measure,” said Hennessy.

And here’s a drawback: If students taking the 3rd-grade test don’t do well, test results offer few clues as to why. Do the students not reaching proficiency lack the skills to even read the text – word recognition – or are they struggling with meaning?

“That’s why it’s very important early on to be looking at all these facets of reading efficiency,” said Hennessy, an expert in dyslexia and other reading issues.

Cohen said she finds some value to the PSSAs. “We can see how our kids are doing compared with students across Philadelphia and across the state,” she said. “But we don’t get the results for a long time, and my students have moved on to a different grade by then.”

Belmont teachers use two commercially developed standardized tests, the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) and AIMSweb, an assessment that helps teacher determine how fluent a young child is in naming letters and recognizing the sounds of oral English. AIM Academy also uses AIMSweb.

District teachers rely on the DRA, which is given three times a year, and DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), developed by the University of Oregon. DRA results are incorporated into each school’s annual progress report, published by the District.

Some District schools use AIMSweb now; the plan, according to Castelbuono, is to roll out AIMSweb districtwide in the early grades next year. “It is meant to be a tool to help teachers, and they will need some training in how to use it and how to adapt instruction,” she said. Teachers need to be efficient, and this assessment takes little time, is less disruptive to instruction, and can be used with more frequency.

Belmont’s Cohen and VanZandt both credited the Children’s Literacy Initiative, a Philadelphia-based group, with helping their teachers gain expertise in literacy instruction and assessment. That group is working with dozens of District, charter, and parochial schools in Philadelphia.

The bottom line, said Castelbuono, is that “a good teacher assesses a child all the time. That’s how you adapt your instruction to get the child to the next level. If you told me my child had to sit down, with a pencil-and-paper test, then yes, I’d be concerned, but these are not those kinds of tests.”

Bulking up on phonics

2015-02-09T12:47:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

At Belmont Academy Charter School, kindergartners are learning their letters and their sounds. (Photo: Connie Langland) At Belmont Academy Charter School, the ongoing use of assessments has resulted in parents getting early warning if their child is straying off track, weeks prior to issuance of report cards.

And when review of data showed numerous 2nd- and 3rd-grade students stumbling in phonics, the solution was to bulk up programming in kindergarten and 1st-grade classrooms.

Now for about 20 minutes a day, children practice letter and word recognition and also, in unison, say aloud the discrete sounds of oral English in a program called Fundations. School leader Jennifer VanZandt described it as “scripted, repetitive, focusing on one letter at a time.”

One recent afternoon, reading specialist Robynn Albeck had the attention of 16 kindergartners and got them started by using a pointer to jump at random from one letter to another.

In unison, the children responded: “A, apple. K, kite. O, octopus. W, wolf.”

“OK, your brains are warmed up,” said Albeck. “So here we go.”

For the next several minutes, they put together small words, one segment at a time. She started with “it” then put a P in front of it. “Pih, pih, pih …. PIT,” most children responded.

She asked for a definition, and Malaysia got it right.

“Like a fruit has a pit, and we have an armpit,” she said.

There were more words to put together: W plus IG spells WIG.Replace the W with a P, and now it’s PIG.

The teacher called on one child, then another to offer definitions. Again and again, the children sounded out each word. “Excellent job,” Albeck declared. “You guys know that when we know our sounds, it helps us read our words and write our words.”

But she added, “If our handwriting is really sloppy, are people going to be able to read our words?”

“Nooooo,” the children responded, then settled down for the final lesson of the day, how to write a capital G and a capital H. Soon they were practicing lowercase and uppercase Gs and Hs in their workbooks, and Albeck, the reading specialist, and Kim Proto, their teacher, went from small table to small table, assessing how they were doing.

The state of literacy in Philly schools, by the numbers

2015-02-03T12:26:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Only 40 percent of District 3rd graders score proficient or better in reading

In 2014, only two in five District 3rd graders met state standards for reading proficiency, based on the PSSA. Statewide, 70 percent of students score proficient.

Citywide data for charter schools were not available. See here for proficiency rates for individual charter schools.

Reading tests show large racial gaps…

In 2014, Black and Latino students showed a 29-point gap in reading proficiency rates compared to White and Asian students. Citywide data for charter schools were not available.

… and other gaps among subgroups

There is a 10-point gap in reading proficiency between boys and girls. Fewer than one in 10 special education 3rd graders were proficient in reading.

Philadelphia ranks low among big cities in reading proficiency

Philadelphia beats out just four other big cities in its score on the most recent national NAEP test.

Most schools have a red flag for chronic absenteeism

According to the organization Attendance Works, schools with average daily attendance below 93 percent usually have a problem with chronic absenteeism.

Just one-third of the city’s preschool-age children are in high-quality pre-K

High-quality pre-K includes Head Start, PA Pre-K Counts, public school programs, Keystone Stars 3- and 4-star programs, and certain other other licensed and accredited providers.

District students with formal pre-K show better scores on kindergarten literacy assessment

Students who attended formal programs or centers for pre-K show better literacy skills overall than those who had informal child care (such as home-based care) or no extra care. The DIBELS are a set of literacy assessments used by the District.

State of the art in literacy instruction

2015-02-02T11:49:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

On a January morning at the Ziegler Elementary School in the Lower Northeast, art teacher Regina Feighan-Drach was dressed like a Native American shaman. For an hour and a half, two classes of 30 kindergarten students were magically transported to another era and culture.

How can this be?

It has to do with teaching kids to read.

And with local restaurateur Rob Wasserman.

Wasserman, who is interested in literacy and technology, raised money for a $930,000, four-year grant to the District. It is allowing Ziegler and Andrew Jackson Elementary School in South Philadelphia to adopt the curriculum and methods of AIM Academy in Conshohocken, a private school founded for learning-disabled students and acclaimed for its success in literacy development.

What is AIM?

AIM was founded by two mothers whose daughters had learning disabilities. In eight years, it has grown to 280 students, from grades 1 to 12, and carefully honed its program.

“It is a very intentional model in building foundational skills,” said Fran Newberg, District deputy chief for educational technology and a friend of one of AIM’s founders and Wasserman. “They integrate interventions for all students,” not just for those with learning disabilities like dyslexia.

So when Wasserman said he wanted to “do something bigger” than simply help schools buy iPads and other digital tools, Newberg suggested a partnership with AIM. The grant will pay for hardware, but also for extra teacher time and supplies. The money is being donated by the Burger Brawl and the Olitsky Foundation.

Jackson and Ziegler were chosen from among 20 District schools that submitted applications. The first year concentrates on kindergarten and 1st grade; 2nd and 3rd will be added one at a time, with year four meant for refining and maintaining the entire sequence.

Jackson principal Lisa Ciaranca-Kaplan said that AIM program is among the best she has seen.

“I’ve been around for a long time. I think that it hits on all the styles of learning, and it really teaches the brain what to do,” she said.

The AIM approach focuses on systematically building skills around reading like phonics, decoding, and comprehension. Its core program for young students is Fundations from Wilson Language Training, originally designed for students with learning disabilities. It is recognized for its precision in diagnosing student roadblocks and giving teachers strategies for overcoming them.

“It’s about routine, and it’s about structure,” said Kate O’Reilly, AIM’s 1st-grade teacher. She adapted her curriculum for Philadelphia kindergarten teachers.

She is aware that Philadelphia has many more students per class than AIM, where the average is eight to 10.

Still, “it’s absolutely possible” to do it,” said O’Reilly. “It’s a great structure; it helps students dive into texts and understanding. With 10 kids or 30 kids, they can get so much meaning out of it. Do I think it will take time? Yes.”

While focusing on skills, the curriculum also emphasizes rigor. When the teacher reads Little Red Riding Hood aloud, she writes three words for students to look out for and define: “scoundrel,” “gratitude,” and “cottage.” The kindergarteners have to figure out their meanings in context. They get clues from the teacher, who constantly asks about everything from the meaning of illustrations to the moral of the story.

Nancy Hennessy, AIM’s Director of Academic and Professional Practices, said that the vocabulary words are continually reinforced.

“Words like ‘scoundrel’ won’t be used once, but multiple times this year,” she said. It’s not a good idea to just give a vocabulary test and then forget” the words, which is what happens in many schools.

Wilson and programs like it, such as Orton-Gillingham, have established that there is a scientific approach to teaching the complexities and irregularities of the English language. While developed for students with specific learning disabilities, the approach helps all students learn to read, Hennessy said.

AIM teacher Nichole Pugliese visits each Philadelphia school once a week to coach Ziegler and Jackson instructors in the curriculum. She focuses on helping them recognize why children are making mistakes.

For instance, a child might have a phonological problem – unable to distinguish the similar sounds of “p” and “b,” for example. That requires one kind of intervention.

But it could also be that the child has not yet been taught a rule of the English language, for instance, that a "ph" combination can represent the same sound as "f.”

For teachers, having a detailed diagnostic model is crucial. That way, they know what students need to reach a goal "before going on to the next one,” Pugliese said.

Stephanie Conaghan, a Ziegler kindergarten teacher, described the program as “amazing.”

“This is the best that’s out there,” she said. “Students are using material that is meaningful and developmentally appropriate, and their success is evident in the assessments. It differentiates instruction, so they use all parts of their bodies to understand the letters inside, outside, and upside down.”

Reading comes alive

Ziegler is serving a rapidly changing community that has seen an influx of immigrants and increasing transience. And like other District schools, it has seen its budget shrink as it tried to cope with more challenging conditions.

Paul Spina, principal of Ziegler, said that he applied for the grant as a way to get extra resources and expert help to meet his school’s challenges. His staff, he said, has fully embraced the model.

“It will only work if everybody is on board,” he said.

Which brings us back to the shaman.

Besides the finely tuned curriculum around skill-building for literacy, AIM’s program is also multidisciplinary and arts focused. It creates conditions where students use all their senses, practice creativity, and understand interdisciplinary connections.

To do this, AIM uses “clubs” to teach history, geography, and literature.

Each “club” transports students and teacher in time and space. Feighan-Drach took the initiative at Ziegler to adapt this “interactive history” portion of the AIM model, creating four time periods: the Stone Age, Native Americans, sailing to the New World, and colonial Philadelphia.

After the 30 kindergarten students were settled into Feighan-Drach’s room, she started the lesson.

“I want you to stand behind your chair, close your eyes and rub your medallion. Turn around once. Turn around twice. Click your heels together three times (‘I got that from the Wizard of Oz,’ she confided), and jump in the air,” she said. The children dutifully obeyed.

Repeat after me, she said “Back in time we travel, to see what history unravels.” You are now, she announced to the children, thousands of years in the past in North America.

And so they were. The sound of drumming emanated from her new MacBook. The room was dark. The children were into it.

They put on their own “animal skins” – actually, cloth tunics that the children decorated themselves.

Now they were ready to enter the candlelit teepee that Feighan-Drach had created in the back of the room. “Take your shoes off,” she said. “We treat the customs with reverence.”

There, she showed them a headdress she had made, full of feathers – a war bonnet. “Who would wear this?” she asked. One little boy knew. “Someone who did a lot of brave things,” he said.

After the lesson, they used their art supplies to decorate their headbands, copying Native American symbols from paper.

Feighan-Drach, a 23-year District veteran, is not new to role-play in her classroom. She did it when she taught literature to middle schoolers, dressing up like Edgar Allan Poe and others.

“But I didn’t do it like this, “she said. “This is using art and literature to teach history. It’s a great combination.”

The children, she said, are totally immersed. "Club is a special part of the day, they can use their imaginations. They’re totally entertained and they don’t know that they’re learning. They are definitely more engaged.”

Spina, who watched the lesson, agreed.

“They’ll remember this far more than if they just read it in a book,” he said. “I wish I was one of these kids.”

A shorter version of this story ran in the February-March print edition focused on "Learning to read."

Hite, District make literacy crusade a priority

2015-01-30T12:35:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Important changes are starting to ripple throughout the District as a result of Superintendent William Hite’s focus on making all students proficient readers by the time they are 8 years old.

The literacy crusade is one of four key “anchor goals” of Hite’s action plan to overhaul schools and improve educational outcomes.

In embracing the READ! by 4th initiative – and its parent effort, the national Campaign for Grade-Level Reading – the District has brought new curriculum materials and assessment approaches to classrooms.

Nearly 40 of the lowest-achieving schools now have literacy specialists to coach and support teachers.

“The fact that the superintendent has identified as a key priority having every kid read by 8 sends a message to the whole system,” said Donna Cooper, executive director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth, which has helped spearhead the citywide campaign that nearly 50 outside organizations have signed on to.

The focus is bringing “clarity” to a lot of internal issues, according to Cooper and others. It is compelling the District to look more closely at whether teachers can always accurately diagnose children’s reading issues, whether time is used well during the school day, whether teachers are getting the right kind of professional development, and whether the prevailing instructional methods are most effective.

Now, more than half the system’s 4th graders cannot read on grade level. This means they have missed the critical window for learning the literacy skills they need to succeed in school. As they fall further and further behind, they become at greater risk for learning and behavioral issues, and more problems later on.

For charter schools, which now educate nearly 70,000 students, the percentage of students who read at grade level by 4th grade has in recent years been about 10 points higher, although the aggregate results for charter students citywide for 2013 and 2014 are not readily available.

Cooper said that several charter providers, including Mastery, have been involved in planning the campaign citywide.

Along with the District, charters have been “engaged in thinking through these issues,” she said.

The citywide campaign has four goals: increasing parent engagement around early literacy, implementing evidence-based strategies to teach reading from pre-K on, tracking and boosting student attendance at school, and making sure children have year-round supports for reading so that they do not backslide over the summer.

In a detailed memorandum of understanding, the District has laid out the steps it is taking. In addition to bringing uniformity to how students are evaluated for reading readiness and making sure teachers use the best strategies, they include plans to help parents home in on early literacy and to deal more directly with student health and attendance.

“The campaign is drawing everyone’s attention,” Hite said. “And it’s drawing attention not to something obscure but to evidence-based strategies that will produce outcomes.”

He is determined to maintain the focus despite the District’s critical shortage of resources. Officials have been able to set aside more than $3 million for the literacy specialists and extra training, but class sizes are still large and schools are still scrambling for essentials.

Lisa Ciaranca Kaplan is principal of Andrew Jackson School in South Philadelphia, one of two sharing a $930,000, four-year grant to partner with AIM Academy. AIM, in Conshohocken, is a private school for students with learning disabilities that has a carefully developed and successful literacy program (see sidebar).

“If I didn’t have the grant, I’m not sure I’d be feeling as optimistic about READ! by 4th as I am,” Ciaranca Kaplan said. “I would have probably cried, because resources are bare in a school like mine.”

Still she added, “This is Dr. Hite’s mantra now. … There is a huge focus at all the principals’ meetings on the importance of early literacy.”

Hite hired Diane Castelbuono, a former deputy state education secretary, to head the Office of Early Childhood. She has been able to upgrade pre-K curriculum with a $60,000 grant from the Philadelphia School Partnership. She hopes to create a more consistent approach to literacy instruction and assessment for all students from pre-K through grade 3.

There are nearly 9,000 students in District pre-kindergarten programs. Many are located in schools. Principals are now responsible for evaluating pre-K teachers and are being retrained to recognize effective practices, she said.

She is also working with private pre-K providers to upgrade instructional methods.

Now, only about a third of city students attend high quality preschools.

“We support universal pre-K; that’s critically important,” said Castelbuono. “The second thing is to make sure kindergarten teachers are highly trained and have the support they need to know what kids’ skills are the moment they walk in the door.”

Once children get to school, absenteeism is also a problem. Kindergartners and 1st graders miss, on average, three weeks of school per year.

Pennsylvania has not historically mandated school attendance until age 8, although the law was recently amended to age 6 for Philadelphia. Partly due to this history, Hite said, “Parents are often unaware that their child’s absence is even a concern.”

The District is working with the Department of Human Services to address attendance and is now collecting data with the goal of being able to pinpoint individual students who are chronically absent, meaning that they miss at least 10 percent of school days. Health is also an issue: an estimated 35,000 city students have asthma.

Castelbuono would like to create what she calls a “karate belt” system, color-coded symbols that signify a child’s reading level. No matter where a child goes – school, library, summer program, recreation center – the available books will have a color marking making it easier to identify books of interest that are neither too easy nor too difficult.

“The worst thing to do is give kids books that they cannot read,” she said.

In addition, “kids need to be self-directed,” Castelbuono said. And a system like that would provide an incentive to move from one level to the next.

Castelbuono wants to involve other entities in the campaign. One approach she would like to spread is to place signs in supermarkets – “A is for apple,” as an example – that encourage parents to take every opportunity to reinforce skills with their young children.

“Some parents who themselves have low literacy levels or didn’t have a good experience in school don’t do that,” she said. Children who are not talked to or read to enough enter school far behind, and the lack of stimulation can affect their brain development.

Whether a multifaceted and difficult campaign like this can be done effectively in the current fiscal climate is still up in the air. “They don’t have any money, but are beginning to say, ‘We need to prioritize,’” said Cooper. “They are going through a process. And that’s a good sign.”

We need this campaign

2015-01-30T11:09:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

No skill is more fundamental to learning throughout life than reading. Students who don’t develop a love for and proficiency in reading by 3rd grade are likely to struggle in their future lives.

In Philadelphia, that’s a large group. Last year, 60 percent of District 3rd graders failed to meet proficiency standards on the state reading test. Among Blacks and Latinos, only one in three was proficient.

By 4th grade these students’ learning challenges are likely to extend across the curriculum. Ultimately, they are four times more likely than proficient readers to drop out of high school. As they fall further behind, the effects spill over to their classmates.

While this is a national problem, Philadelphia ranks near the bottom among big cities on the national reading test given to 4th graders.

And so it is heartening that a citywide campaign has come together to tackle the city’s early literacy crisis, with the ambitious goal of doubling the percentage of 3rd graders reading on grade level by 2020. Nearly 50 organizations have made formal commitments to this READ! by 4th campaign; dozens of other groups are involved. The Free Library of Philadelphia is anchoring the effort. The School District is at the table. There is foundation and corporate support, and growing understanding of the impact of illiteracy on the city. More nonprofits, charter schools, and businesses should join in.

Philadelphia has seen what a coherent, cross-sector collaborative can accomplish. Project U-Turn, a campaign involving the District, the city, and the nonprofit sector, has been able to drive up the city’s graduation rate slowly but surely. Illiteracy is a similarly multifaceted problem, with room for improvement on many fronts. Recognizing that, the campaign proposes to work simultaneously on engaging parents as teachers, improving classroom instruction, boosting attendance, and preventing summer learning loss.

Some words of advice at the outset:

Keep kids and their interests at the center. Offer children books at the right level that they are interested in – and comfortable, engaging spaces for reading – and they will take to it. Children bring energy and curiosity into the classroom; a good reading program taps that. Some students need extra help, but the solution is not boring test-prep drills.

Give teachers support. Teaching reading is complex. Good instruction is critical. An effective reading teacher must have classroom management skills, a deep understanding of literacy development, and the flexibility to diagnose and respond to each student’s individual needs. Teachers need professional communities where they can hone these skills.

Start early, the earlier the better. More quality pre-K slots are desperately needed, so children come into kindergarten ready to read. Early diagnosis and support for students with learning issues is also vital. Outside of school, a citywide campaign can foster a book-rich, literacy-rich environment – and support and engage parents, who, more than anyone, can help children develop oral language and literacy skills.

Secure more resources. We cannot gloss over the challenge of launching this campaign at a time when resources are bare-bones; for instance, few schools have functioning libraries or librarians. Politicians sometimes question whether school funding gets to the children who need it. But there is no excuse to withhold support for substantial new investments in ensuring that children learn to read. We can pay now – or pay later.

Muchos no pueden leer y es por muchas razones

2015-01-29T12:10:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Durante su esfuerzo para entender por qué algunos de sus estudiantes de escuela elemental batallan con la lectura, Daun Kauffman a veces ha aprendido mucho tanto en las visitas a los hogares como en su propio salón de clases.

Kauffman ahora enseña 2do grado en la Escuela elemental Juniata Park, pero por más de una década fue maestro en su propia comunidad en Hunting Park, donde las familias luchan para balancear muchos problemas cotidianos.

“Los retos de los estudiantes en Hunting Park se me hicieron rápidamente claros en persona”, dice él.

“Usualmente hay solo un adulto a cargo, y a menudo esa persona está preocupada con primero asegurar que los niños tengan comida y ropa. Es común que haya un mínimo de muebles y a menudo no tienen auto. No es sorprendente que con frecuencia haya pocos o nada de libros de referencia en el hogar.

“Leer y escribir es importante, pero no más que tener comida. Es difícil ser testigo de eso, pero más difícil es vivirlo”.

Los maestros, sicólogos de educación y proveedores de educación para leer y escribir citan una larga lista de motivos por los que tantos niños en escuela elemental en Filadelfia están atrasados en lectura:

• Trauma y ambientes de estrés en el hogar, que incluyen padres que posiblemente tienen problemas también para leer.

• Falta de guarderías de calidad y oportunidades para ir a un preescolar

• Enseñanza de lectura deficiente en los grados K-3

• Falta de recursos en el salón de clases, como por ejemplo libros apropiados para la edad

• Tamaños de clase que hacen difícil ofrecer ayuda especial cuando se necesita

• Problemas de salud y aprendizaje, desde mala nutrición hasta asma y dislexia.

Los funcionarios del Distrito Escolar dicen que el asma es de particular preocupación porque es más la probabilidad de resultar en ausentismo excesivo Y además, la baja incidencia de alfabetismo entre los padres también se ha asociado con un peor cuidado del asma en los niños.

“Es un factor sobre otro”, dice Jeanne Lehrer, vicepresidente de salud conductual de niños en los NorthEast Treatment Centers, que prestan sus servicios en Filadelfia y Delaware.

“No dormir bien, la nutrición, es más, hasta trauma.

“El sistema escolar en Filadelfia es sumamente estresado. Hay niños que se portan mal porque no pueden leer, y entonces se convierte en un problema de conducta. A veces están despiertos toda la noche y no vienen a la escuela preparados para aprender. Este reto es como pelar una cebolla.

“Van a seguir luchando con la lectura a menos que sus necesidades básicas sean cumplidas.”

Un estudio frecuentemente citado del 1995, realizado por los sicólogos de niños de la Universidad de Kansas Betty Hart y Todd R. Risley, muestra los diferentes mundos lingüísticos en los que los niños pasan sus primeros años.

Hart y Risley descubrieron que en las familias profesionales, los niños escuchan un promedio de 2,153 palabras por hora. En las familias de clase trabajadora, escuchan un promedio de 1,251 palabras por hora, y en las familias de bajos recursos, ese promedio es de 616.

Al llegar a los 4 años, un niño de una familia que recibe bienestar social podría haber escuchado 32 millones de palabras menos que un compañero proveniente de una familia profesional.

Dado que las edades de 0-3 años generalmente se consideran como los años clave para el desarrollo lingüístico de un niño, la pregunta entonces es: ¿Se puede mejorar esta brecha para los niños que están creciendo en pobreza?

“A decir verdad, no lo sabemos”, dice Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, profesora de sicología de Temple University y experta nacionalmente reconocida en el aprendizaje en la niñez, cuya investigación examina la calidad de las conversaciones con niños.

Judith Renyi, directora ejecutiva de la Comisión del Alcalde para el Alfabetismo, dice, “No se pueden mejorar las escuelas públicas hasta que se tome en cuenta de dónde vienen esos niños. Yo no puedo derrotar la pobreza enfocándome en los niños”.

Renyi agrega que enseñarle a un adulto a leer lo suficientemente bien como para competir en el mercado de empleos también significa enseñarles cómo “responder ante la tarea de un niño”.

Aprovechar cuando están listos

Uno de los optimistas en cuanto a lo que las escuelas pueden lograr es Joel Zarrow, director ejecutivo de la Children’s Literacy Initiative de Filadelfia, la cual está capacitando y entrenando a maestros y proporcionando libros en 35 escuelas del Distrito y 12 escuelas chárter.

A diferencia de otras personas de ese campo, Zarrow cree que “los niños vienen listos para leer” a pesar de cosas como trauma, lo cual dice él que “está recibiendo la atención que merece”.

Pero dice que en muchos salones de clase de las escuelas elementales no se aprovecha que los niños están listos.

“Los maestros a menudo no tienen la capacitación ni las destrezas básicas para enseñar lectura y escritura en la niñez temprana. Los programas de certificación de maestros están bien llenos de otros tipos de requisitos”, dice.

“La atención que le prestan a la lectura y escritura temprana es demasiado limitada”. Él nota una falta de tiempo de preparación y tiempo de colaboración para los maestros como “un problema crónico de los distritos urbanos”.

Zarrow también dice que muchas escuelas del Distrito carecen no solo de libros, sino de “libros apropiados para la edad y la cultura”.

En el caso de los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés, él pregunta, “¿Hay libros en español disponibles para que ellos lean en Kinder y primer grado?

“Si uno apoya el desarrollo de la lectura y escritura en el idioma nativo de los estudiantes, estarán mejor equipados para cruzar el puente al idioma nuevo. Entender la formación de palabras y la fonética puede ocurrir no importa si uno está leyendo en español o en inglés. El desarrollo cerebral es el mismo”.

Kauffman (quien escribe el blog sobre la educación pública lucidwitness.com) también menciona la necesidad de tener los libros correctos. Él señala que hay investigaciones sobre la importancia de que los estudiantes puedan leer libros que hayan seleccionado ellos mismos de entre una colección apropiada para su nivel en vez de leer libros de un nivel superior al actual.

Para Daniel DiMartino, maestro de Kinder de Juniata Park, los problemas para preparar a un niño para la lectura son tanto viejos como nuevos.

“Poner a 30 niños en un salón de 3er grado quizás esté bien, ¿pero 30 en Kinder?” dice él. “Cuando uno tiene 30 niños en el salón [de Kinder], no les puede dar ayuda adicional”.

En años recientes, dice, ha visto que más y más niños vienen a la escuela sin haber asistido a una guardería o preescolar de calidad. Cuando habló de eso con la madre de un niño que estaba teniendo problemas para ajustarse a su clase, y ella le contó que en el centro de Head Start al que iba, “siempre que yo iba los niños estaban simplemente corriendo”.

Romper el ciclo

La fuerte pobreza en Filadelfia es ciertamente una de las causas de los problemas de analfabetismo en la ciudad. Walter Licht y otros historiadores de la Universidad de Pensilvania han trazado la fuerte pobreza de Filadelfia hasta la erosión gradual de los trabajos de manufactura que empezó hace más de un siglo.

Trabajar con adultos y niños para romper el ciclo de pobreza que persiste a través de múltiples generaciones ‘tiene su truco’, dice Michael Westover, director ejecutivo del Center for Literacy (CFL). Pero es necesario para mejorar la tasa de alfabetismo.

Renyi dice que los padres tienen que participar en el proceso. Esto incluye, dice ella, que los padres puedan usar computadoras para ayudar a sus hijos en la lectura.

“Tú quieres padres que se involucren con la tecnología, no que le tengan miedo”, dice Renyi.

El Programa de Alfabetismo para la Familia del CFL no solo les enseña a los padres a leer, sino a cómo leerles a sus hijos.

“Si estamos leyendo un libro como ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’, también les enseñamos a recortar figuras de papel para reforzar la lectura”, dice Westover.

“Cuando los padres e hijos están [ambos] entusiasmados con aprender, estás incentivando a la familia”.

En muchos casos, sin embargo, cuando la madre logra encontrar un trabajo eso significa que tendrá menos tiempo para dedicarles a los hijos.

“Este círculo vicioso nunca acaba”, dice Westover. “Ellos van a clase, les va bien y luego se van”, posiblemente a un trabajo de turnos cuyo itinerario las aleja del hogar a la hora de hacer las tareas.

Por la madre estar trabajando, es posible que el padre, otros familiares o los vecinos se ocupen de los niños, dice Westover, y es posible que algunos de ellos todavía no sepan leer. Lo mejor es que la misma persona los cuide siempre, dice él.

Y entonces está el inmenso volumen de necesidad.

“Hay 225,000 [adultos] en Filadelfia que necesitan nuestros servicios, pero solamente podemos atender a 1,600 [anualmente]. Eso es una locura”, dice Westover.

De todos modos, hay quien se muestra optimista.

Kauffman dice que siempre ve familias preocupadas a las que sí les importa mucho que sus hijos aprendan a leer, y a leer bien.

“Esas familias nos agradecen nuestra labor”.

Y aunque las escuelas no pueden eliminar totalmente los efectos de la pobreza, dice Zarrow, pueden combatirla con mayor eficacia.

“Nosotros tenemos control sobre lo que los maestros aprenden, lo que los maestros enseñan, y sobre cómo se les apoya”, dice.

“Si a un principal de escuela le entusiasma que sus estudiantes lean, eso es fantástico”.

From reading to community

2015-01-29T11:37:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

It’s family storytime at the Lucien E. Blackwell public library on 52nd Street, and the bushy-haired toddler named Rio isn’t just here to learn to read.

He’s here to join the world.

“Look at this – red!” says Jennifer Walker, the librarian, as she holds open a picture book about colors. “Just like this scarf!”

She plucks a bright red scarf from a box full of them. Rio grabs it, gazes from the scarf to the page, and then looks back to Walker. “That’s right – red!” she says. Rio ponders this for a moment, drops the scarf and toddles over to his mother, who rewards him with a smile, a cheer, and a hug.

Jamilla Manigault wants the best for Rio. “I want him ahead of the game – to have that intelligence, that love of knowledge,” she said.

She’s been reading to him since he was in the womb. At 17 months, he can write his name (“It’s not hard – just R-I-O,” she laughs). Today’s library visit is one more little step toward what she hopes is a bright future.

“On my block, a lot of the children – and a lot of the adults, for that matter – never go off the block or out of West Philadelphia,” she said. “I want him to get off the island.”

Research shows that early literacy is a key predictor of adult success, and the cost of falling behind is clearer than ever, particularly for low-income students and students of color. It’s an urban myth that state governments use 3rd-grade literacy levels to predict prison populations, but the correlation between poor reading, dropping out, poverty, and incarceration remains troublingly strong.

A student at Ziegler Elementary works on an assignment in an interactive history kindergarten class. Literacy experts say that in grades K-3, children must learn to read so that they can transition toward “reading to learn.” (Photo: Charles Mostoller)

Among the daunting statistics:

• Over half of Philadelphia’s 3rd graders could not read on grade level – in District schools, the figure was 60 percent in 2014.

• Low-income, struggling readers are six times more likely to drop out than their proficient peers.

• Struggling Black and Latino readers are twice as likely to drop out as White students with the same reading levels.

• One in 10 high school dropouts can expect to land in jail, compared to one out of 35 high school graduates.

Ralph Smith, head of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, calls 3rd grade a “make-or-break year” that “essentially predicted what would happen to far too many students.”

And as troubling as those links may be, experts and front-line practitioners agree: More is at stake than student success.

Also at stake is the success of classrooms, schools, and entire school districts. None can function effectively when students don’t act as responsible citizens – an incentive that fades quickly for struggling readers, Smith said.

“The kids who don’t read begin to band together,” he said. “When you get a critical mass of those kids, that makes it enormously difficult to teach. Before you know it, you’ve got a highly dysfunctional environment for everybody.”

A doorway to citizenship

Teachers say the struggling young reader is easy to spot.

“They don’t raise their hands,” said Tricia Onesti.

“Eyes down, looking away,” said Kimberly Tong.

“They try to copy off their neighbor,” said Heather Warchold.

The successful reader is another story entirely: “Eyes up.” “Hands up.” “Glowing face.” “Ready to help others.”

And teachers know it helps the whole class when the glowing faces outnumber the downcast eyes.

“They all need to feel special, and they all need to feel smart,” said Warchold, of Finletter Elementary in Olney. “That helps every bit of our jobs.”

Tong, Onesti and Warchold are all part of the Children’s Literacy Initiative (CLI), which provides literacy services in 47 Philadelphia elementary schools (in collaboration with the Annie E. Casey campaign). They gathered with colleagues recently at CLI headquarters to brush up on classroom technique.

They say the CLI approach – focused on guided instruction that moves students through skill-appropriate reading levels, giving them plenty of room to choose materials they like – helps students of every demographic profile, including low-income students and struggling readers.

Trainings like this one by the Children’s Literacy Initiative advise teachers on how to build a “community of learners” in their classrooms. (Photo: Harvey Finkle)

“I changed my whole room,” said Kelly Strusiak, of Greenfield Elementary in Center City. “I got rid of my clutter. They provided us with a whole new library, leveled readers, book bins. It really made the kids light up: ‘Ooo, brand new books!’”

These teachers know that their students, mostly 2nd graders, stand at a critical cognitive threshold, moving beyond “learning to read” to “reading to learn.”

They can understand character, plot and content, discuss what they read with teachers and classmates, and chart their own progress through reading levels. And perhaps most important, the teachers say, they’re old enough to get a thrill from reading and learning.

“The exposure excites them,” said Allen Garner, from the Russell Byers Charter School. “They think, ‘I can go rock climbing! I can go parachuting!’ It encourages them to want to be part of that book – to immerse themselves.”

But they’re also old enough to feel isolation and embarrassment when they struggle.

“All children love reading when they’re very young,” said Walker, the librarian. “[But when] you see them start to slip behind … you see a loss in confidence, a loss in the pleasure of learning. They want to read to learn, but they’re struggling with the mechanics. … They’re already embarrassed.”

“As adults we forget how serious childhood is,” Walker said. “They have all the same feelings we do.”

The CLI approach includes a lot of group work. Students read together, agree on class rules, and help each other make progress.

“I don’t have them at their desks. They’re around the room, they’re talking about books, getting excited,” Strusiak said.

And as a result, the teachers say, the entire classroom runs more smoothly as students learn to communicate, collaborate, solve problems and enjoy success – skills that will serve them well in school and life.

“It carries over from literacy into math,” said Onesti, of the St. Thomas Aquinas Mission School. “It’s the way your classroom is run. It’s a community.”

Smith calls CLI a “shining star” in the push for grade-level reading. In Philadelphia, that effort is now backed by an ambitious, new “READ! by 4th” campaign, a local collaboration of over 50 organizations, including the School District and the Free Library of Philadelphia, that launched last summer with the goal of helping all 4th graders reach proficiency by 2020. (READ stands for “Ready, Engaged, Able and Determined.)

Told about the CLI teachers’ experience watching their students learn to work together, Smith said that shows what’s truly at stake: not just literacy, but community. The student who can read can engage with teachers and peers, experience success, and take command of their own education, he said.

“They become an advocate for themselves, a co-author of their academic destiny,” Smith said. “Literacy is a doorway to membership and citizenship.”

The cavalry isn’t coming

But for the students left on the far side of the literacy gap, Smith said, the experience can be profoundly isolating – especially for those in typical Philadelphia schools, where classroom resources and adult attention are infamously scarce.

“The kid who looks around and realizes that other kids are reading to learn, and that he or she cannot read, [realizes] two things,” Smith said. “One, they can figure out that they’re in trouble. And two, they figure out that there’s no cavalry coming. The adults aren’t mobilizing to help them.”

Such students don’t have a lot of incentive to become good citizens, he said.

“It’s not surprising that you can pick up all these behavior problems beginning in 4th grade,” Smith said. “Playing by the rules, buying in to the system and respecting adults – that calculus changes.

“It’s sometimes said that while kids leave school in 9th grade, they actually ‘drop out’ in 4th. Because by 4th grade, this kid knows something no adult will admit: It’s game over.”

Smith has been working on this issue since he was a Philadelphia School District official in the 1980s, and since then he’s concluded that this is “a nationwide problem, not merely a Philadelphia problem.”

It’s also solvable, he thinks. Districts can better assess young students’ literacy challenges. The necessary interventions aren’t always impossibly expensive or complex. For many, skill-appropriate books, well-trained staff, and focused instruction go a long way.

But much of the literacy gap springs from factors outside the classroom. Many students – particularly low-income students – don’t get much preschool reading experience. Chronic absenteeism and “summer learning loss” also hold students back.

Reversing those trends requires effective partnerships between families, schools, and community groups, Smith said – the kind of collaboration that Philadelphia’s broad READ! by 4th campaign hopes to model for the nation. “This is really about parents and caregivers,” Smith said.

Back in West Philadelphia, librarian Walker says it’s easy to tell which kids come from reading-rich environments – even when they’re toddlers like Rio.

“Even children this young, I can tell if their parents read to them,” she said. “They know what to expect. They know I’m going to turn the page. They’re looking at the book.

“When I meet kids who don’t have as much reading time, the concentration level is different. It’s much more difficult to read an entire book.”

Jamilla Manigault knows which side of the literacy gap she wants Rio on.

“It’s really disheartening to see the kids on the other side,” she said. “You can see there’s a ‘want’ to learn, but they don’t know how.”

And when Rio’s ready for school, she knows she wants him around other kids who love reading too, so that he can learn even more.

“I have older boys, and they’re ahead of their level,” she said. “A lot of times the teacher ends up having them help out the other kids. A little of that is OK, but they need to be challenged.

“Just because you can read, because you’re above level, doesn’t mean they should say, ‘Oh, he’s OK.’ He needs that engagement to get higher.”

Disclosure: The Notebook is a partner in the READ! By 4th campaign; it has committed to provide independent news coverage of the effort.

A child language expert talks about the literacy gap and the ‘6 Cs’ of learning

2015-01-28T12:01:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek is a psychology professor at Temple University, where she is also the Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Faculty Fellow and director of Temple’s Infant & Child Laboratory.

Hirsh-Pasek said research showing that children in poverty usually hear far fewer words than their better-off counterparts is important. But she said this issue has been viewed too simplistically. Quality counts just as much as quantity, she said.

The Notebook interviewed Hirsh-Pasek about early literacy and the challenges facing children who are learning to read.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

You’ve talked about high-quality conversations as compared to low-quality conversations. Could you give an example?

I’ll cite this example from the Foundation for Child Development, called “Three mothers and an eggplant.”

They go into the supermarket and the child sees an eggplant. And she goes, "What’s that?" And the first mom sees what the child is looking at and says, "You won’t like it," and moves on.

Mom No. 2 says, "That’s an eggplant. You won’t like it," and moves on. But at least she labeled it.

The third mother says, "That’s an eggplant. Isn’t that pretty? It’s purple. It’s a kind of vegetable. It might be fun to make something with eggplants."

The point is that when we notice what they’re noticing, when we comment on it from the child’s point of view, we’re engaged with what’s of interest to the child.

When we’re building on what they’re saying, that adds a quality to their speech and continues their speech. And it builds vocabulary.

It’s a conversational duet, like serve and return in tennis.

It doesn’t all have to be about words. It can be gestures. It can be the two of us looking at the same thing at the same time.

Let’s say the kid hasn’t had this, for whatever reason. How much is lost? How much can we recover? Can they catch up in school?

Truth be known, we don’t know.

Studies that have been done show that the gap gets wider and wider. [They also show] that the gap has been traced back to 7, 8, 9 months of age, when you start to see these huge differences in language and vocabulary.

Redressing that gap [earlier] is not just easier, it’s doable. Many of us believe that we’re not doing a good job, and the reason is that we’re not starting early enough.

You’ve talked about the importance of play. Can we discuss that?

Play is where you learn a lot of language, use a lot of language. Did you ever notice how much kids concentrate when they’re at play? If we capture their attention and keep them on task longer, they’ll learn more.

So teaching to the test doesn’t help this?

Of course not. It helps the child memorize, parrot back.

Take vocabulary as an example. Many of us have studied for the SATs. I’d challenge any of us to take that vocab test today. We didn’t learn those words. We memorized them for the test. Transferring what you know to a whole new problem is a different ball game.

I don’t say memorization is a bad thing. You need it for things like the multiplication tables. You need to get some basic information. But that’s not what learning is about.

We know children can’t solve new problems as well if all they’ve done is memorize.

The United States is way behind in the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) tests. We’re the memorizers. We’re not the ones who know how to analyze a problem and apply it.

I’d always heard the Chinese are the memorizers.

Actually, the Chinese have moved on. They hired the Drucker Foundation and many others to do a complete revamp of their education system. We’re going where the Chinese were. It’s not the way it should be.

Education in 2015 isn’t just about memorizing factoids. I talk about “The Six Cs” in my forthcoming book, The Learning Illusion.

What are they?

Collaboration: If you don’t know how to work in teams, then you’re going to be in trouble.

Communication: The quality of communication builds on listening … something we’re really not good at.

Content: You can’t master the content if you don’t know how to read and write and listen.

Critical thinking: You can’t have critical thinking if you don’t have content, but if you only have content, it’s like buying out Acme.

Creative innovation: Putting things together in new ways.

The Confidence to take on intellectual risks: A lot of the high-stakes testing we have done has beaten out of us the sense that we should stick to a problem and have grit. And it’s beaten out of us that failure is a good thing. Failure is a great thing. No one ever became great without failing at least once.

And in high-stakes testing, failure is the non-reward. We’re teaching people to cheat.

What about kids who have those high-quality conversations and develop strong language skills but have difficulty reading?

Any reading method I pull out of a hat will be great for 80 percent of the kids. Unfortunately, it’s not the same 80 percent. We’re always going to have some children who are going to fall through the cracks and need some remediation.

It’s very much like medicine. You want to earmark where the problem is and go in and intervene.

And poverty makes it less likely that a child will be diagnosed or treated?

Yes. And you’ll have dual risks. More than one risk. If you look at the discussions about food, it’s the same issue. We can talk about the value of having Whole Foods in a neighborhood. Do you know what Whole Foods costs?

Let’s look at the realities people are living in. I’m not saying that if you have the quality conversations, everything will be great. I’m just saying it’s a necessary ingredient.

Paul Jablow is a regular freelance contributor to the Notebook.

No shortage of reasons why so many can’t read

2015-01-27T11:17:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

To figure out why some of his elementary school students struggle with reading, Daun Kauffman sometimes has learned as much in home visits as in his classroom.

Kauffman now teaches 2nd grade at Juniata Park Academy, but for more than a decade he taught in his own neighborhood in Hunting Park, where families struggle to balance so many life issues.

“Students’ challenges in Hunting Park quickly become more clear in person,” he says.

“There’s usually only one adult caregiver, and they’re often preoccupied with being sure the children have food and clothes first. There are commonly minimal furnishings and often no car. It’s not surprising that there are often little-to-no print resources available in the home.

“Literacy is important, but not ahead of food resources. It’s hard to witness, but even harder to live.”

Teachers, educational psychologists, and literacy education providers cite a long list of reasons why so many elementary school children in Philadelphia are behind the curve in reading:

Trauma and stressed home environments, including parents who have difficulties in reading themselves.
Lack of quality child care and pre-K opportunities.
Weak K-3 reading instruction.
Lack of classroom resources such as age-appropriate books.
Class sizes that make it difficult to give special help when needed.
Health and learning issues, from poor nutrition to asthma to dyslexia.

School District officials say asthma is particularly troublesome because it is likely to lead to excessive absenteeism. And low parental literacy rates have also been associated with worse asthma care measures in children.

“It’s layer on top of layer," says Jeanne Lehrer, vice president for youth behavioral health at NorthEast Treatment Centers, which serve Philadelphia and Delaware.

“Sleep, nutrition, maybe trauma on top of that.

“You have a very stressed school system in Philadelphia. You have kids who act out because they can’t read and then it becomes a behavioral issue. Sometimes they’re up all night and they come to school unprepared to learn. It’s the challenge of peeling the onion.

“They’re going to struggle with reading unless their basic needs are met.”

A frequently cited 1995 study by University of Kansas child psychologists Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley shows the different linguistic worlds in which children spend their earliest years.

Hart and Risley found that in professional families, children heard an average of 2,153 words per hour. In working class families, they heard an average of 1,251 words per hour and in public-assistance families, the average was 616.

By age 4, a child from a public-assistance family could have heard 32 million fewer words than a classmate from a professional family.

Given that ages 0-3 are generally considered such key years for child linguistic development, the question becomes: Can the gap be closed for children growing up in poverty?

Judith Renyi leads the Mayor’s Commission on Literacy. “Truth be told, we don’t know,” says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a Temple University psychology professor and nationally recognized expert on early childhood learning, whose research examines the quality of conversations with children.

Judith Renyi, executive director of the Mayor’s Commission on Literacy, says, “You can’t improve the public schools until you deal with where these kids come from. I can’t crush poverty by focusing on the kids.”

Renyi adds that teaching an adult to read well enough to compete in the job market also means teaching them how to “respond to a kid’s homework.”

Building on readiness

One of the optimists on what schools can accomplish is Joel Zarrow, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Children’s Literacy Initiative, which is training and coaching teachers and providing books in 35 District schools and 12 charter schools.

Unlike some in the field, Zarrow believes that “kids do come in ready to read” despite issues like trauma, which he says “is getting deserved attention.”

But he says that many elementary classrooms do not build on that readiness.

“Teachers often don’t have the training and basic block skills to teach early literacy. Teacher certification programs are so crammed with other kinds of requirements,” he says.

“The attention they pay to early literacy is too limited.” He sees lack of teacher prep time and collaborative time as “a chronic problem with urban districts.”

Zarrow also says that many District schools don’t lack just books but “books that are age-appropriate and culturally appropriate.”

In the case of English language learners, he asks, “Are there Spanish books available for them to read in kindergarten and 1st grade?

“If you support a student’s native language and literary development, they are better equipped to make that bridge. Decoding and phonics can happen whether you’re reading a Spanish text or an English text. The brain development is the same.”

Kauffman, the Juniata Park teacher – who blogs on public education – also mentions needing to have the right books. He points to research on the importance of students being able to read books they have chosen that are appropriate to their level rather than using books beyond their current level.

For Juniata Park kindergarten teacher Daniel DiMartino, problems in preparing a child for reading are both old and new.

“It may be OK to put 30 kids in 3rd grade, but 30 kids in kindergarten?” he says. “When you’ve got 30 kids in a [kindergarten] class, you can’t give them extra help.”

In recent years, he says, he has seen more and more children come in without having had quality pre-K or child care. In one case, he spoke about that to the mother of a child who was having trouble adjusting to his class, and she told him that at the child’s Head Start center, “Any time I went there, the kids were just running around.”

Breaking the cycle

Philadelphia’s deep poverty is certainly a cause of the city’s literacy problems. The University of Pennsylvania’s Walter Licht and other historians trace Philadelphia’s deep poverty to the gradual erosion of manufacturing jobs dating back almost a century.

Working with both adults and children to break the cycle of multigenerational poverty is a tricky business, says Michael Westover, executive director of the Center for Literacy (CFL). But it is necessary to improving literacy rates.

Renyi says that parents must be engaged in the process. That includes, she says, parents being able to use computers to help with their child’s reading.

“You want parents engaged with technology, not afraid of it,” Renyi says.

CFL’s Family Literacy Program teaches parents not just to read, but how to read to their children.

“If we’re reading ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar,’ we’re teaching them to make cutouts that reinforce the reading,” Westover says.

“When the parents and children are [both] excited about education, you’re incentivizing the family.”

In many cases, though, a mother’s success in finding a job means taking time away from her kids.

“The Catch-22 goes on forever,” Westover says. “They go to class, they do well and then they’re out,” perhaps to a shift work job with a schedule that has them away at homework time.

With the mother working, the children may be looked after by the father, other relatives or neighbors, Westover says, and some of them may be unable to read themselves. Having one consistent caretaker works best, he says.

And then there is the sheer volume of need.

“There are 225,000 [adults] in Philadelphia who need our service and we can serve 1,600 [a year]. That’s crazy,” Westover says.

Still, there are voices of optimism.

Kauffman says he consistently sees concerned families who do care deeply that their children learn to read, and to read well.

“They are grateful for [our] reaching out.”

And while schools can’t wipe away the effects of poverty, says Zarrow, they can more effectively combat it.

“We do have control over what teachers learn, what teachers teach, and how they’re supported,” he says.

“If a principal is on fire to get his or her kids to read, that’s awesome.”

How can parents help their kids learn to read?

2014-11-04T17:06:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Monday night’s School Reform Commission meeting on strategy, policy, and priorities brought together teachers, partner organizations, and District officials working on a new citywide campaign. They were all looking for answers to the same question: How do we get kids to read?

The common answer that night: Parents need to be involved, preferably from their children’s early stages of development. Parents at the meeting, however, represented a small minority of attendees.

The campaign, called READ! by 4th, stands for Ready, Engaged, Able, and Determined, and aims for reading proficiency for all Philadelphia 4th graders by 2020. The program launched in August.

Superintendent William Hite talked at the meeting about the importance of early literacy in children for future success.

“One thing we know [is] that all of the factors around literacy point to the fact that if we can address early literacy by the time children are in 3rd or 4th grade, it’s a resolution to everything we will face later,” he said in his opening remarks.

Monday’s SRC meeting included panel presentations, table discussions with a moderator, and a summary of every table’s thoughts and ideas to the larger group. About 100 attendees discussed questions about early literacy and involvement from READ! by 4th partners on strategies and best ways to support families and children.

When roundtable discussions were shared with the group, the common theme expressed was that parent involvement in reading with their children at an early age is imperative. However, attendees agreed that bringing that information to parents directly, in their own community, needed to be the first step.

“We wanted to make sure that parents really have a true understanding of what’s at stake. That’s the real bottom line,” one table facilitator said to the room. “Do the parents really understand what the impact of READ! by 4th really is? And so we have to really figure out the most effective way to convey that to parents.”

One table called the alignment between parents and organizations “puzzle pieces,” questioning what needs to be done so they can fit together. Another called for stronger connections where organizations learn the needs of families, the District aids partner organizations with community updates and initiatives, and school principals and teachers work together to get what they need.

Amy Pace, a Temple University post-doctoral fellow, spoke about a study in which she placed large signs within the fruit and vegetable sections of grocery stores that encouraged parents to talk to their children and ask open-ended questions to facilitate a healthy conversation.

She explained that her other studies have found that good communication with parents and their children at an early age is a good predictor of the child’s language skills later in life. Over time, the quality of early interactions, like what the grocery stores signs are meant to encourage, were important for communication growth.

“If we can help parents engage in what we’re calling ‘conversational duets,’ we can improve language and literacy outcomes,” Pace said. “It does not matter what language they’re speaking or learning a language or two or more, it cannot be a solo performance. It has to go back and forth to continue the conversation.”

During the short Q&A section of the meeting, one woman asked Pace how much the materials for the supermarket campaign had cost. The reply: “About 60 bucks.” The audience laughed and nodded in approval. One person said, “We can do that.”

Conversations for the final roundtable discussions centered on strategies that could be used to improve literacy. Many tables responded positively to the idea of “going back to the basics” and trying to get messaging out to parents at home and in their communities.

“If children start behind, they are likely to stay behind,” said Diane Castelbuono, deputy chief of the District’s Office of Early Childhood Education. She also emphasized that teaching a child to read is a very individualized process and that teachers need to be given materials that are easy to use and reflect the child’s identity.

A core component to READ! by 4th includes increasing access to high-quality pre-K, and she said she expects access around the city to improve with the addition of over 200 seats by the end of the school year.

It was also announced at the meeting that the Free Library of Philadelphia was selected as the anchor organization for the READ! by 4th campaign.

“One thing that went unsaid tonight is the scale of the crisis that we’re confronting as a city and a country,” said Deputy Superintendent Paul Kihn in his closing remarks. “It will really take all of us working together in a coordinated and collected way … in order to make progress in this regard.”

Shannon Nolan is an intern at the Notebook.

A citywide push on literacy — READ by 4th — has its official launch

2014-08-13T14:37:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Amarii Simpson, 9, was sitting up front, a copy of My First Dictionary on the table before him in a room at the McVeigh Recreation Center at D and Ontario Street in Kensington.

Why was he reading a dictionary?

He gave a "duh" look in response to the question.

"So I can learn more words!"

Amarii is on the ball in other ways, too. A 4th grader at Elkin Elementary School, just a few blocks from McVeigh, he is quick to announce that he gets all As and Bs and scored proficient on the PSSA — not just in reading, but in math, too. And the veteran Recreation Department camper also knows that the reading breaks and other activities, like the trips to the library that punctuated this summer at McVeigh, are something new.

"Last year," he announced confidently, as dignitaries bustled around him, their speeches done, "we didn’t have the city of Philadelphia doing this."

"This" is READ by 4th, an ambitious campaign to have almost all Philadelphia students reading on grade level by the 4th grade. Now, just about half do — a troubling statistic because data indicate that students who don’t reach that benchmark are many times more likely to fall behind and drop out of school.

READ stands for Ready, Engaged, Able, and Determined. The goal is for all 4th graders here to be proficient in reading in six years — by 2020.

City leaders including Superintendent William Hite came to McVeigh on Tuesday for the official launch of READ by 4th, which is Philadelphia’s piece of the Campaign for Grade Level Reading, launched by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and underway in some 150 cities and towns and 39 states.

Based on leveraging resources and bringing together important civic actors around this goal, READ by 4th has 50 local sponsoring public and private businesses and organizations. (Disclosure: The Notebook is among them, having committed to cover the campaign and the issue of summer learning loss.)

The "founding corporate sponsor" is Wells Fargo Bank. Greg Redden, regional president, called the campaign "one of the most important public/private efforts we can support. It’s important to have a well-educated workforce." Companies know, he said, "the consequences of having an unskilled applicant pool."

As founding corporate sponsor, Wells Fargo will make a six-year financial commitment that, among other things, will underwrite "ultimate block parties" that get reading materials and other resources into the hands of parents. They will also support bringing technical assistance to early-grade teachers so they can create literacy-rich classrooms and use the best teaching strategies.

The "founding media partner" is Clear Channel Media. Loraine Ballard Morrill, its director of news and community affairs, said that Clear Channel’s six radio stations will spread the message, especially to parents of young children.

"We will make this our priority," she said.

The major areas of focus are:

Improving early learning and child care.
Giving parents training and tools to help their children develop reading skills.
Making sure students read over the summer to counteract the so-called "summer slide" in skills.
Attacking absenteeism by addressing health issues.
Improving reading instruction in schools to provide more individual attention to students.

"It’s obvious that all of us need to do a better job" in getting children to be proficient readers, said Debra Kahn, executive director of Philanthropy Network Greater Philadelphia. She said that while the public and private sectors have long recognized the problem, "what’s missing is collective strategy." This campaign is providing that, she said, adding, "We have our work cut out for us."

In its planning stages, the campaign has been led by Public Citizens for Children and Youth and the Urban Affairs Coalition. Sharmain Matlock-Turner, CEO of UAC, said that the groups are seeking another organization "to step forward and carry the ball for the next six years."

The campaign is also continuing to seek more partners and funders. Among those already involved are the Free Library, the Boys and Girls Clubs, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Please Touch Museum, the Maternity Care Coalition, the YMCA, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, the Philadephia School Partnership, the Philadelphia Archdiocese, Drexel University, Parent Power, and United Way.

"If we can provide for a child to learn to read, we’ve gone a long way to solving the problems we are faced with as a city and a country," said Hite.

As part of the initiative, the Recreation Department added a literacy component this summer to 20 of its camps, including McVeigh’s. Deputy Mayor Michael DiBerardinis said that the goal is to expand it to the entire system.

Diane Halin was point person for the program at McVeigh. Every Friday, the children went to the library branch at McPherson Square and picked out books.

At first, she said, they were resistant, but "the more we did it, the more they liked it." Halin also bought books for them to have at the recreation center and read to them regularly.

Maribel de Jesus was there with her two grandchildren, Briseyda and Anthony McKissick.

She was proud that Anthony, 8, who is about to enter 3rd grade, could read "big books" on his own. And Briseyda, 9, loves to read to her brother, she said.

Anthony was right there with de Jesus, but she looked around to find Briseyda.

"There she is," she said, pointing to a little girl sitting quietly by herself on the other side of the room. "See, she is reading a book."

Poems that teachers love

2014-06-02T17:05:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

April is National Poetry Month, but after reading the contributions of 90 teachers and educational thought leaders in the anthology Teaching with Heart: Poetry that Speaks to the Courage to Teach, I think every month should be National Poetry Month.

This collection, edited by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner, celebrates the “magic and messiness” of teaching. A sequel to Teaching with Fire, published over 10 years ago, Teaching with Heart provides stories, reflections, and poems that, at their core, marry the muse from treasured poets like Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Maya Angelou with the voices of novice and seasoned educators. The words that flow on the pages will inspire and sustain teachers and lovers of language and stories.

Parker J. Palmer, the founder and senior partner of the Center for Courage and Renewal, notes in the foreword that "Teaching with Heart is full of good news about our schools.” This good news comes from educators that you may follow on Twitter, like Kevin Hodgson, April Niemela, Stephen Lazar, and Jose Vilson. You may also be please to read about local rockstar teachers in Philadelphia: Kathleen Melville of Teachers Lead Philly and Mary Beth Hertz of Edcamp, who also contribute their reflections.

Hodgson, an amazing 6th-grade teacher and tech liaison with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, muses on the work of spoken word artist and former teacher Taylor Mali’s poem, "What a Teacher Makes." Mali also provides an introduction to the collection.

Hodgson was asked once during a card game what it’s like to be a public school teacher, with an emphasis on “public.” Luckily, he did not snap, like Mali does in his poem. Because he had read and internalized Mali’s poem, he was able to clearly articulate the impact teachers have on young people. Hodgson, like countless teachers, rolls up his sleeves to positively change the lives of students every single day.

In the age when education has become so much about “big data,” Teaching with Heart presents its own data points. The book is organized around such themes as the tenacity and hard work required to teach, along with the beauty of ordinary moments in the classroom. The editors mined through voluminous submissions of teachers’ favorite poems, accompanied by brief personal stories. These 90 powerful companion pieces represent the narratives and courage of the three million teachers who make all the difference in the world.

The contributors of Teaching with Heart use poems to speak their own truths — about what attracts teachers to the profession and what sustains them.

Vilson, an educator, activist, blogger, and author of the new book This Is Not a Test, shares his truth through the poem "A Rose That Grew from Concrete," by Tupac Shakur, which I often use in my classroom.

Hertz uses Maya Angelou’s seminal poem "Still I Rise," which embodies the struggles and triumphs of working at a "persistently failing " elementary school in West Philadelphia.

Teachers also found truth in tragedies. Kaitlin Roig, an elementary teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary, had her world turned upside down. She returned to her favorite childhood poem, "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, to give her the power to guide and motivate her students to find paths that offer promise in the midst of disaster.

Melville finds her truth in the poem "Wild Geese," by Mary Oliver. Through this poem, Melville learns to let go of the guilt of trying to be a perfect teacher and inspires her students to connect beyond the walls of the classroom.

When I asked Melville about her contribution to the collection and her choice of "Wild Geese," she said, "Writing this short piece helped me affirm why teaching matters, why I do it even when tough days seem to outnumber the good ones. The poem helps remind me that teaching is very human work, even though schools can sometimes be dehumanizing places."

Teaching with Heart will be provided as a door prize at second Philadelphia Teacher Convenings on June 7 at School of the Future.

Samuel Reed III, a teacher consultant with the Philadelphia Writing Project, is an active member of the Teacher Action Group (TAG Philly) and has been teaching middle school literacy for 15 years.

WHYY to pilot video production labs at two high schools

2014-02-24T14:09:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

by Dan Hampton

Philadelphia High School for Girls and Kensington High School for International Business, Finance & Entrepreneurship have been chosen to pilot a Flash Media Lab program launched by WHYY.

Students in the program, which provides on-site, hands-on training, will learn video production skills, as well as research, storytelling, and interviewing techniques. Teachers at each of the participating schools will also receive training on the equipment.

“They will be producing original videos,” said Craig Santoro, director of media instruction at WHYY. “That includes all aspects of the production process from planning to editing.”

To choose which high schools would host the pilot project, the School District of Philadelphia made five recommendations to WHYY – Bodine, Swenson, Parkway Northwest, Girls High, and Kensington. Santoro said that the recommendations were based, in part, on the schools’ proximity to WHYY’s own afterschool program located on Independence Mall.

“Some students live too far from WHYY’s afterschool program, and the purpose of these labs is to serve them,” Santoro said.

Santoro met with the principals and teachers from each of the suggested schools to see whether the schools had adequate space for the equipment and to survey the ease of installation and how well the program would work at each site. Girls’ High and Kensington were chosen first. A middle school will also be selected for the program sometime next year.

Earlier this month, Girls’ High received new cameras and computers for its lab. Santoro said that WHYY hopes the new editing stations, video cameras, microphones, and tripods will help teach kids valuable life skills such as communication, team building, research, organization, and media literacy, as well as telling stories through sounds and images.

The Flash Media Lab pilot program is an extension of the media literacy courses offered at WHYY’s Dorrance H. Hamilton Public Media Commons. The project is funded by an $82,500 donation from the William Penn Foundation and a $5,000 donation from the Hamilton Family Foundation.

Although current funding is enough to support labs at four schools, Santoro said that WHYY has applied for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s American Graduate grant to add three more schools to the program. He said that news of whether the grant has been funded should come next month.

The pilot program will run through December 2015.

Dan Hampton is an intern at the Notebook.

Study: U.S. students not reading at grade level; Pa. shows improvement

2014-02-12T14:01:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

by Dan Hampton

Most students in the United States lack the essential reading skills needed to succeed in an increasingly competitive society, according to a report released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The report is an update to the data reported in two earlier Casey Foundation studies – Early Warning: Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters and Early Warning Confirmed. Data in those documents indicated that children who read at grade level by the end of 3rd grade are more likely to graduate high school and succeed as adults. The end of 3rd grade is about the time when children move from learning how to read to using reading to learn other subjects.

But according to the foundation’s most recent report – which gathered data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) – almost 80 percent of low-income students in the United States and 66 percent of all U.S. students do not read at grade level by 4th grade.

“We must do more to improve reading proficiency among all kids,” said Ralph Smith, senior vice president of the foundation and managing director of the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading.

“All states need to do whatever it takes to get all kids – especially in populations that are struggling – on track with this milestone,” he said.

Pennsylvania students rank 11th in the nation in reading proficiency, but more than half of the state’s 4th graders are still not reading at grade level.

There has been some progress in Pennsylvania. Test scores improved 10 percent from 2003 to 2013. In that time, the national average increased by 6 percent.

The study also found large disparities in reading proficiency levels among economic and racial groups.

Nationwide, students from wealthier families improved 17 percent in the last 10 years, while low-income students improved just 6 percent.

Seventy-seven percent of low-income students from Pennsylvania were not reading at grade level last year, compared to 45 percent of high-income students.

Additionally, only about one in five Black, Latino, and American Indian 4th graders were reading at grade level in 2013, significantly less than White and Asian/Pacific Islander children.

To improve academics among these groups, the study recommended regular school attendance, community support, expanded summer learning, and better early care and education.

Smith said that the increasing gap between economic groups is unacceptable.

“We must do more to improve reading proficiency among all kids while focusing attention on children in lower-income families who face additional hurdles of attending schools that have high concentrations of kids living in poverty.”

Dan Hampton is an intern at the Notebook.

Local campaign launched to have all students reading proficiently by 3rd grade

2013-12-20T17:48:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

A newly formed coalition in Philadelphia is joining the national Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, an effort to make sure that as of the year 2020, all city students read on grade level by the end of 3rd grade.

"Reading proficiency by 3rd grade is the most important predictor of middle school and high school success," said Mayor Nutter at a Friday morning press conference that included Superintendent William Hite and Ralph Smith, the national campaign’s managing director. Nutter said that low literacy rates contribute to "poverty, crime and loss of life opportunities." He noted that city agencies such as the recreation department and community-based organizations must be part of the effort.

"There has to be more support for summer reading, universal pre-K, Head Start," the mayor said.

Hite added that "we have to start thinking about this work when a child is born."

Smith, a vice president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation and a former School District chief of staff, said that getting all children to read by 3rd grade is a "corrosive challenge." Students that don’t reach that benchmark "are not likely to graduate from high school, especially those from low-income families. We can and must do better. … A country that will not teach its kids to read is undeserving of leadership in the world."

Philadelphia’s coalition to devise and implement a strategy for the initiative appears to have attracted nearly every player in early education and child welfare in the city. A group of 75 people met in a planning session before the press conference. The Barra Foundation has donated $87,000 to plan the six-year campaign. The planning will take six months.

"We have to align our work, revise our practices, and create new ways of working together," said Leslie Winder, the chair of the board of Public Citizens for Children and Youth (PCCY).

Donna Cooper, PCCY’s executive director, and Sharmain Matlock-Turner, president and CEO of the Urban Affairs Coalition, are spearheading the effort.

Cooper described five major challenges that must be addressed: high absenteeism; students entering school with poor vocabularies and little or no pre-K exposure; summer reading loss, especially among students who live in poverty; parents lacking the tools they need to help their children with reading and vocabulary development; and failure of schools to use effective instructional techniques for students who have many different needs and learning styles.

Among the attendees was Deborah Grill, a retired school librarian, who noted that just 16 certified librarians remain in District-run schools, the victims of budget cuts as most schools shut their libraries. Children need to be able to choose books that they can read for pleasure, and a shuttered library sends exactly the wrong message, she noted.

She also lamented the loss of the Reading Recovery program, which had some success with 1st through 3rd graders. It was discontinued due to expense; it required virtually one-on-one tutoring and specialized intervention.

"That’s what it will take," Grill said. "You can’t do this on the cheap."

The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading is already in some 140 communities in 39 states or U.S. territories, Smith said.

"Conditions of poverty, incarceration, health care, all of those are inextricably linked to illiteracy," said Hite. "If we can direct all our attention to ensure every single 8-year-old is on grade level reading, we’ve gone a long way to correct some of the ills facing this city and all other cities in the country."

Report: Preschool literacy gains fade by 3rd grade

2013-12-11T16:08:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Children who enter District schools after having a District-affiliated preschool experience have better literacy skills when they start school and through 2nd grade, but much of that advantage "fades" by 3rd grade, according to the latest report from the Accountability Review Council (ARC).

The ARC, a watchdog group created during the state’s takeover of the city schools, did a statistical analysis of students in 2011-12 who had attended one of four different preschool programs in 2007-08.

Preschool "seemed to have narrowed the reading gap for their students when compared with their peers [who didn’t attend] in the year or two immediately following the pre-K services," the report concludes. "By the time students took the PSSA in third grade, the benefits of [preschool] in reading proficiency tended to fade."

Based on data from reading assessments through 3rd grade, ARC found that students with disabilities and Latino, male, and low-income students who had attended preschool performed better for the first few years in school than similar students who had not. The group observed "a fading out of reading readiness as [preschool] students move from kindergarten to elementary grades."

It recommends a close look at the preparation and support for K-2 teachers in literacy and the development of strategies for helping struggling readers "so that students who enter kindergarten and first grade with strong reading skills do not lose ground. … K-2 teachers need to be fully engaged in student assessment of reading readiness."

ARC describes this as "an urgent need," because "the attainment of reading proficiency by the end of the third grade is one of the most important indicators of future academic success for all children."

Other highlights from the report:

ARC, which is composed of researchers and educators from around the country, "is deeply concerned about the ability of the District to sustain basic education quality for all students given the current fiscal crisis."
ARC said that it often has trouble getting data from charter schools, which impedes its work. "The lack of data transparency among charter schools is especially troubling from an accountability standpoint. … Charters were created and publicly funded in large part because of the role they were intended to play in education reform. Parents and students were to have more choice and charters were given the flexibility to innovate and share successful teaching and learning practices with other public schools. Without complete access to data from charter schools, parents are not able to make fully-informed choices about where their children might benefit most."

Technology fair to help families improve digital literacy

2013-04-26T12:32:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Interested in improving your computer skills? As part of Comcast Cares Day and Philly Tech Week, the School District of Philadelphia, Comcast, and KEYSPOT are co-sponsoring a free Digital Resource Fair tomorrow, April 27, for students and families.

Fairgoers can get one-on-one computer assistance and attend 30-minute workshops to help with job searches, finances, and understanding computer basics. Sponsors said they hope that improving computer skills will increase academic performance and financial literacy among students and families. Computers will be available for everyone to use, and organizers will raffle off a netbook computer.

The fair, which is open to the public, will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the atrium of the School District’s headquarters, 440 N. Broad St.

Join the conversation: Books that boys can’t resist

2013-02-17T15:40:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Girls will read books about boys. Boys will not read books about girls. Yes, that is a generalization, but any astute educator will agree with me. We need to understand that boys can be fickle readers, and one of the best ways to attract a boy to a book is to put a corpse on the cover or ‘diarrhea’ in the title. – Danny Brassell, “Ten Ways to Get Boys Reading"

Join me for an #engchat conversation at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 18, on the theme of getting reluctant adolescents to read.

What’s #engchat? It’s a way for English teachers to collaborate with each other on Twitter by sharing ideas and resources. It attracts teachers from all over the country in rich discussion every Monday from 7 to 8 p.m. Eastern time.

The chat will focus on how to engage disengaged young men in literacy and writing. Although much of my teacher research has focused on young males, the discussion will be relevant for educators who support all reluctant readers.

To participate in Monday night’s conversation, log in here using your Twitter account or follow the conversation via the hashtag #engchat. If you have questions on getting started, feel free to reach out to Meenoo Rami or myself. We’re happy to help in any way we can.

Come share resources and learn tips and strategies that invite students to actively engage in reading, writing, and critical thinking. We’ll explore how the culture of reading in classrooms influences students’ own literacy agency.

Read my previous post "Books boys can’t resist" to find out more on the origin of this conversation.

District chief to present turnaround plan for schools on Monday

2013-01-04T12:11:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Four months after William Hite took the helm of one of the most troubled big-city school districts in the nation, the new Philadelphia superintendent is set to release his blueprint for turning the system around on Monday.

Hite is facing a grim reality. He is already committed to closing 37 schools — nearly one in six — and needs to stave off what will turn into a $1 billion annual shortfall by 2018 if austerity measures aren’t taken now.

Already, many District schools lack amenities that are taken for granted elsewhere, including full-time nurses, librarians, and art and music instruction.

Hite’s plan is likely to call for more efficient spending of the money now available to expand such proven strategies as high-quality early-childhood education, classroom-based teacher professional development, and the recruitment of top talent.

In an interview, Hite said that he agrees that the District needs more funds to help its students compete in the global economy — not to mention with students in surrounding districts that have double the amount to spend per capita.

Hite also said that he wants very much for the District to offer all students a “holistic” education that includes the promotion of good nutrition, availability of social services, and an array of extra-curricular activities beyond sports.

But he said he worked to make his plan “revenue-neutral,” because there is no scenario on the horizon that would lead to a windfall of additional funds. Hite has fully endorsed a five-year financial plan to close the projected gap through severe labor concessions, school closings, and other efficiencies.

“We have to live within our fiscal means,” Hite said.

“We’re utilizing resources in a different way.”

He also has strategies to make the District more accountable for results, more responsive to parents, more able to intervene early when students fall off track, and more willing and able to replicate successful ideas and programs.

“It’s really important for us to do what works and do it well,” Hite said.

He said the accountability extends to both District-run and charter schools.

“We want higher student outcomes for the schools we manage and the charters we authorize,” he said.

Competing plans are out there. One of them, developed by a coalition that includes the teachers’ union and education advocacy groups, primarily calls for Hite and the School Reform Commission to halt school closings and fight harder for more funds.

Hite and the SRC have said that the closings are necessary because millions of dollars are being spent to maintain vacant seats in half-empty buildings. But many critics say that the amount of projected savings — $28 million before transition costs are factored in — does not warrant the upheaval to families and neighborhoods that the massive closings will cause.

“We hope there is recognition [in Hite’s plan] that the District needs more resources in schools,” said Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan.

“We need to do everything we can to make sure all children are successful readers by third grade. When we know that kids are poor attenders and having trouble with numeracy or literacy in 6th grade and on track to drop out, we need to be able to intervene.”

But most important, Jordan said, all schools need the basics, such as a nurse, librarian, art, music, more than one foreign language, and access to extra-curricular activities like school newspapers and drama.

Jordan said that if the PFT contract didn’t require a counselor in every school, he is sure that most of them would have been cut.

“We have become so accustomed to the annual cuts that we’ve got to start looking at what do the children need and what’s fair,” Jordan said.

Hite said that his focus on fiscal sustainability includes advocacy for additional funds. But he is adamant that the District must be “right-sized,” because the money spent on heating and otherwise maintaining mostly vacant buildings can then be “repurposed” for academic programs.

“We have to ensure that all the remaining seats that are available are effective seats that represent what some students may not have access to now, including music, art, language, more science, technology, media specialists, and resources in schools,” he said.

Hite also said he plans to revamp high school courses to get rid of watered-down classes and listen more closely to the needs of teachers.

“It means making sure that teacher voice is a part of how we make decisions, ensuring that teachers have opportunity to learn and grow from each other,” he said.

“The progress we’ve made is because of them and not in spite of them.”

Child-literacy group honored for bringing libraries back to schools

2012-12-17T14:42:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

by Kofi Biney

The mere idea of having access to a school library is a slim hope for many Philadelphia students. But one organization has been changing all that.

The West Philadelphia Alliance for Children, a child-literacy advocacy group, was honored by City Council last week for its work reopening shuttered public school libraries in the city.

The group, often referred to as WePAC, first caught the attention of City Council via Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, who, according to WePAC executive director David Florig, fell in love with the organization’s work in bringing school libraries back from the dead.

“She introduced a resolution to City Council to honor our work on behalf of children and working to increase their literacy skills,” said Florig.

Since WePAC started its school library initiative three years ago, the group has managed to reopen 16 closed school libraries in the city’s public schools. They now operate 12 of them, serving 5,100 students, said Florig.

The group relies heavily on volunteers, and Florig sees City Council’s proclamation as a positive step.

“Having City Council members hear about our work, and to help us in recruiting volunteers who can work in the schools, is a great thing. Hopefully our volunteer pool increases, and we’re able to open more and more libraries throughout the city.”

Kofi Biney is an intern at the Notebook.

Events: November is Family Literacy Month

2012-11-05T17:08:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Literacy events and programs provide opportunities to improve the educational outcomes and quality of life in our city and beyond. Throughout November, schools, libraries, and other literacy organizations will be participating through read-a-thons, book drives, celebrity appearances, and more.

Here are several events worth checking out in Philadalphia.

Life with Books Fundraiser

Tree House Books needs your help to continue to provide reading and literacy programs for the children and families of North Central Philadelphia. All proceeds from this third annual event will go toward the mission of growing and sustaining a community of readers, writers, and thinkers. Tree House Books believes literacy is a public health issue that needs to be addressed one family at a time, every day.

Nov. 8 (6-8:30 p.m.)
WHYY
Independence Mall West
150 N. Sixth St.
Philadelphia 19106

Literacy Night

Mastery Charter School Shoemaker Parent Teacher Association is hosting its first Literacy Night. The event includes a book fair, interactive writing workshops, poetry, and prizes. There’s no registration fee. Refreshments will be served.

Nov. 8 (4:30-7:30 p.m.)
5301 Media St.
Philadelphia 19131

Celebration of Writing and Literacy

Philadelphia Writing Project’s annual event brings teachers together to share their work with students throughout the city. This year’s theme is “Leveraging the Resources We Have.” Special presentations will be made by PhilaSOUP and TAG Philly, with a keynote address by Stacy Holland, co-founder of the Philadelphia Youth Network.

Nov. 10 (8:30 a.m.-3 p.m.)
Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania
3700 Walnut St.
Philadelphia 19104

First Person Arts Festival

The 11th annual First Person Arts Festival showcases themes of legacy, heritage, family, and identity. The only festival of its kind in the world, presented by Penn’s Master of Liberal Arts Program, First Person is dedicated to the power of personal stories told through all genres of art: stand-up storytelling, theater, memoir-writing, dance, and more. This year’s festival features comedian Janeane Garofalo; celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson; Philadelphia’s poet laureate, Sonia Sanchez; Philly food writer Rick Nichols, new works by First Person Arts RAW artists, the inaugural PNC Arts Alive Story Day, and everyday Philadelphians in countless programs.

Nov. 7-Nov. 17
Various Locations

Mighty Writers

Mighty Writers presents ongoing programs through its Mighty Academy and Teen Writing programs. They offer this tip for families: "The most important thing parents can do to increase their children’s reading levels and school performance is to read to them. Read story books, newspapers and magazines. Read novels or articles that you think might be a little too hard. Keep reading together as a family every night, and watch your child succeed."

Throughout November
1501 Christian St.
Philadelphia 19146

Spells Writing Lab

Spells Writing Lab presents ongoing programs, including tutoring, workshops, partnership with schools, and professional development opportunities for teachers. Spells develops the creative and expository writing abilities of school-age children through free, fun, and imaginative writing programs.

Throughout November
2526 N. Alder St.
Philadelphia19133

Pop-up and Party

At the Village of Arts and Humanities’ annual fall fundraising celebration, enjoy food, drink and casual conversation with the board and staff at The Village. Live performances by CRED’s poets and musicians.

Nov. 29 (5:30-8:30 p.m.)
CRED Onsite, a pop-up gallery
325 South St.
Philadelphia 19147

PIC Family Book Fest this Saturday!

Celebrate the joy of reading with your child at the Parent-Infant Center’s Family Book Fest this Saturday, Nov. 10, at the Rotunda, 4014 Walnut Street. With stories and crafts for ages 7-under, this event is free and open to the public from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm. WXPN’s Kathy O’Connell, host of Kids’ Corner, will join in with read-aloud stories, followed by a concert with Two of a Kind. Enjoy family fun activities, and bring a slightly used children’s book for the swap table and take home some new stories to share with your family.

Know of any other literacy events in the area? Leave a note in the comments.

Morton McMichael School library re-opens after two decades

2012-10-12T10:53:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

By Kofi Biney

For 25 years, Morton McMichael School has operated without a library, not unlike many schools throughout Philadelphia. But today students at the West Philadelphia school celebrated the library’s re-opening.

Getting the school library up and running again was made possible by the West Philadelphia Alliance for Children (WePAC), a nonprofit that helps to renovate and set up school libraries, and the Hamilton Family Foundation, which provided WePAC a substantial grant to do the work.

McMichael is the 16th public elementary school library in the city to be opened by WePAC since 2009, and the 12th one it will be running this year.

“It is absolutely critical at this stage, given what’s happening with the School District, that private funders are able to support public schools,” said WePAC executive director David S. Florig.

“We provide our library services to the schools at no cost to the schools and the School District.”

Volunteers and staff worked throughout the summer to clean and outfit the library. Though the library does not have a dedicated librarian, WePAC volunteers will staff the library two days a week, reading stories to students and conducting various activities with classes.

Nancy Brent, executive director of the Hamilton Family Foundation, said the re-opening of the library fits with the organization’s overall mission to provide financial support to help improve the educational lives of students in under-resourced schools.

“We feel that the access to school libraries, especially to kids at a young age, improves their educational achievement and their long-term academic success," Brent said. "So we were anxious to have a good library in place for them.”

A writing gem in North Philadelphia encourages students to be creative

2012-06-11T13:19:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Not far from a bustling street and directly across from a heavily populated neighborhood sits a community beautifully decorated with sculptures and murals by The Village of Arts and Humanities.

Deep within their North Philadelphia community, students of the Spells Writing Lab prepare for a daily routine of writing, reading, and other engaging activities.

“I like doing my homework here,” 4th-grader Haaziq Morrow said. “I like the snacks and Frankie, my old tutor.”

Haaziq attends John F. Hartranft School in North Philadelphia. In addition to doing his homework with the help of Spells’ volunteers, Haaziq also enjoys computer time and being able to work on his own creative stories.

The mission of Spells Writing Lab is to get students excited about writing, but not by drilling them with constant worksheet exercises. Spells has a broad range of topics for their students to incorporate to keep them engaged in the art of writing.

During the summer, Spells hosts a free six-week writing camp for ages 7-14. The program runs weekdays from July 9 to Aug. 17. Students can sign up for one week at a time or for the entire six-week session. Each week focuses on a different writing theme, such as graphic novels, songwriting, spy mysteries, cookbook writing, comedy writing, adventure stories, or screenwriting

“I don’t think our kids are coming because they want to hone their writing skills. They come because it’s a fun place to be and they enjoy the topics,” said Christina Dubb, executive director of Spells Writing Lab.

“They come because they’re excited about a topic. We’re really creative because it’s not just ‘come and sit down and write.’”

Spells’ free writing workshops are usually offered on weekends and include a mix of topics "designed to attract reluctant wordsmiths." Spells Writing Lab is open for drop-in tutoring from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. During these hours, volunteer tutors are available to help students with their homework.

“They teach me a lot of stuff here,” said Dreana Williams, also a 4th-grader from Hartranft. “They help me when we have to read nonfiction.”

Spells Writing Lab was inspired by the nonprofit organization 826, which was founded by award-winning author Dave Eggers in San Francisco in 2002 and operates centers across the country.

The nonprofit offers a variety of programs that provide under-resourced students with opportunities to explore their creativity and improve their writing skills. After Dubb learned more about 826, she reached out to the organization to see whether there was any interest in starting a Philadelphia branch.

Dubb was given the OK, and she began development right away.

“[And then] things started moving fast for them because they were opening so many other locations,” Dubb said.

“They said that they were not accepting any new applications but that I could start my own program, and then eventually perhaps turn it into an 826.”

Dubb continued developing what would eventually become Spells Writing Labs, working and networking with other like-minded individuals who had a similar goal in following 826’s model of getting kids excited about writing.

“We were kind of a traveling writing center,” Dubb said. “We would go to libraries, community centers, and bookstores and just use their space and do workshops with kids there.”

In 2009, Dubb was able to connect with The Village of the Arts and Humanities, which was looking for a literacy component to be housed at one of their sites. Spells Writing Labs opened its doors in January 2010.

Many of Spells’ programs are free, and incorporate other artistic elements such as music, film, or the visual arts to inspire the young writers.

“We have guest speakers and filmmakers and chefs to really share experiences,” Dubb said. “And that’s something we find really fundamental to the program — that we have role models for these kids. It’s not just about sitting down and writing. They get to meet real authors, they get to meet screenwriters and ask them questions, so they can get a sense of different career options for themselves."

Lorene Cary: A reading life

2012-03-30T16:35:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The morning newspaper. A collection of African-American short stories. A book about teachers’ unions. Yesterday’s mail.

The stacks on Lorene Cary’s dining room table hint at how thoroughly reading is woven into her everyday life.

"Reading nourishes me," says the celebrated writer, educator. and member of the School Reform Commission.

"I need it to be alive and growing."

For a week in March, Cary shared details and reflections on her reading life with the Notebook/NewsWorks. Not surprisingly, she reads a lot, mostly nonfiction. She also reads actively, constantly looking for meaning and connections.

That’s exactly what experts say high school students need to learn in order to succeed in college and careers.

Before sunrise each morning, Cary’s husband, the Rev. Robert Smith, assembles a pile of reading material for his busy wife. On this day, his suggestions include articles by education researchers Diane Ravitch and Linda Darling-Hammond, a New York Times book review, and a Philadelphia Inquirer story about the previous night’s SRC meeting.

Cary skips the Inquirer story: "I was there." But as she putters in the kitchen, the meeting is on her mind.

Earlier in the week, Cary slogged through over a hundred pages of SRC-related memos, testimony, and PowerPoint slides – documentation of the pain caused by deep budget cuts.

Now, she’s reminded of a recent email about Sunday school, then of the biblical story of Jesus feeding thousands with five loaves of bread and two fish.

While making her daughter breakfast, a connection snaps into place.

"The crazy miracle was getting all these people to share," says Cary.

She breathes.

The Bible story, says Cary, reminds her to keep pressing for ways to run the District better instead of settling for more cuts: "It keeps me thinking: Don’t give up."

On the SRC, Cary explains, reading helps her integrate different ways of knowing the world – intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, even financially – to make hard decisions.

But the self-described "introvert" also misses the luxury of reading solely to nourish her inner self.

In her 30s, says Cary, she might rise at 5 a.m., write until 11, then read for the rest of the day.

As a teen, she might park herself in the Yeadon Public Library and get lost in a James Baldwin novel.

"Right there in that little public library, I was in the bigger world," she recalls, smiling.

Reading that way now, however, makes Cary late to meetings. In fact, that’s a very real threat on this morning. Her daughter is off to school, and Cary is due shortly at District headquarters.

Just as she begins to hurry, she finds a fortune cookie left by her husband.

Cary cracks it open and, of course, reads: "You must be tired. You’ve been running through someone’s mind all week." She and her husband laugh at the play on words.

"If you get the joy in reading, then you have this thing that can affect your mind, your heart, your spirit, your gut," says Cary.

"It’s what I want every kid in Philadelphia to have."

Giving teachers more say

2012-03-30T16:34:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Something in Brenda Wolbransky’s classroom doesn’t feel right.

The 32-year District veteran is pacing the rows of her honors English class at George Washington High, coaxing her students into a conversation about Lord of the Flies, the classic tale of British schoolboys who get trapped on an island and descend into anarchy.

Most of the students are attentive. But the discussion feels rushed. A young man excitedly connects the characters in the book to his own friends. Wolbransky perks up, hesitates, then reluctantly steers the conversation back onto its planned course.

That’s life with the District’s highly structured curriculum, she laments.

"It has stifled creativity," says Wolbransky.

For years, even teachers at relatively successful District schools like Washington have been told what to teach, when to teach it, and sometimes even how it should be taught. At struggling schools, teachers must read to their students from widely hated scripts. Proponents maintain that standardization is necessary in a district with high student mobility and wide disparities in teacher quality and experience.

But now, that’s changing.

With the District awash in red ink, "decentralization" and "autonomy" are the new buzzwords. New Chief Academic Officer Penny Nixon is overseeing a reorganization to give schools more flexibility.

Pennsylvania has also signed onto the new Common Core State Standards. A week with one of Wolbransky’s students, senior Zach Morales, sheds light on this national effort to change the amount and quality of what students read.

Many hope that the creative, engaging instruction now occurring on the margins will be able to flourish.

Wolbransky just wants to make her classroom feel right again.

Years ago, she taught Lord of the Flies in a multidisciplinary unit. Students in small groups formed their own "islands" and used the book as a launching pad for everything from mapmaking to essays on power dynamics in their own lives. At the end, they pulled everything together in posters.

Wolbransky still keeps her favorites on top of an old filing cabinet in the back of her room.

Pulling one down, she smiles at the reminder of what’s possible.

"I save them," she says, "in case I can ever do this again."

Tougher standards, better readers?

2012-03-30T16:34:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

What will you read this week? As part of our April print edition on engaging curriculum, the Notebook and NewsWorks took a multimedia peek inside the reading lives of local high school student Zach Morales and School Reform Commissioner Lorene Cary.

Zach Morales learned early that high school would go more smoothly if he kept certain things to himself.

But privately, the unassuming teen is proud of his passion for reading. So he hesitates for only a moment before opening the door to his small bedroom.

"I have a vast collection of books," says Morales, sweeping an arm towards shelves packed with horror novels, Harry Potter books, and biographies of professional wrestlers.

"Every book in this bookcase, I’ve actually read," he proclaims.

Listen to more of Zach’s story in reporter Benjamin Herold’s radio feature.

Morales is a senior honors student at one of Philadelphia’s higher-performing neighborhood schools, George Washington High in the Far Northeast. Among Washington’s 2,000 or so students, reading isn’t exactly a hot topic of conversation.

But policymakers and academics are very interested in what students like Morales read. They argue that high schools across the country aren’t pushing even their motivated students to read enough nonfiction, digest difficult texts, or do more than regurgitate information.

"In high school, there’s not very much reading at all," says Elizabeth Moje, an expert on adolescent literacy at the University of Michigan. Worse, students "basically can’t make meaning of what they have read."

Morales’s teachers cite standardized testing and a losing battle with video games, iPods, and social media as barriers to student reading.

Experts cite another culprit: the dumbing-down of the high school curriculum.

That’s why many are pushing the new Common Core State Standards, which aim to get students to read more diverse and challenging materials.

Pennsylvania is one of 45 states, plus the District of Columbia, that have signed on.

But a week inside George Washington High with Zach Morales shows just how challenging implementation will be – even in "good" schools.

The 70 percent goal

The hallways at G-Dub, as students call it, teem with urban diversity and adolescent hormones.

To survive, Zach Morales mastered the art of blending in.

He credits Stephen King.

"All of his books are like a godsend to me," says Morales.

The horror author’s dark take on human nature has helped Morales to make sense of high school life. When he needs a break, Morales escapes with King’s stories, which feed his imagination and help him accept his place in Washington’s social hierarchy.

"I’m not anyone that stands out," says Morales. "And I’m not unhappy to say that."

Policymakers acknowledge the important role that novels and other literature play in the lives of young people.

But they stress that in order to succeed in college and careers, students need to read more nonfiction.

"By the time they graduate, [students] should be reading about 70 percent informational texts," says Carrie Heath Phillips, program director for the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

Even good students in relatively high-performing schools are a long way from that target, however. Despite being enrolled in honors and Advanced Placement classes, Morales is assigned relatively little reading from textbooks, research journals, news stories, and technical manuals.

His second period marketing class highlights the challenge of reaching the Common Core’s lofty goal for nonfiction reading.

Teacher Albert Brown passes out a thin packet of worksheets. Students are expected to analyze basic data, then read and respond to questions. Many appear either indifferent or lost.

After quickly finishing each section, Morales waits, bored.

No reading homework is assigned.

Brown says it’s hard to get most students to read anything, let alone bar graphs.

"They want everything spoon-fed to them," he says.

It’s a vicious cycle: Kids aren’t exposed to nonfiction, so they’re bad at reading it, so teachers are reluctant to assign it.

But CCSSO’s Phillips is emphatic: "We’re not helping kids by keeping expectations low and then lamenting when they can’t meet them."

College material?

Broadcasting an obsession with computer hacking isn’t the best way to fly under the social radar of the modern high school.

So for almost a year, Morales read in private about hacker groups like Anonymous.

"I would just think about it all the time," he says.

A few weeks ago, though, Morales got to take his interest public during a presentation to his philosophy class about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Exuding confidence, Morales briefly mentioned SOPA, then enthusiastically filled his classmates in on the details of a recent confrontation between Anonymous and Dana White, the president of mixed martial arts company Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

"White called [Anonymous] ‘internet nerds’ and told them to bring it on. So they hacked the UFC website and shut it down," Morales delightedly recounted.

Afterwards, he beamed:

"It was so great to get up there and finally inform everybody about what’s really going on."

That level of classroom engagement is a rarity for many high school students.

But a closer look through the lens of the Common Core standards reveals another challenge to ramping up the quality of high school reading.

Phillips says high schools should be pushing students to read long, challenging, college-level texts.

But for their class presentation, Morales and his partner visited a Wikipedia page and a couple of websites. The bulk of the information came from Morales’s recollection of prior reading.

Christopher Meile, the philosophy teacher, is a dedicated and engaging 10-year veteran, but he’s skeptical about using more rigorous texts.

Even if he assigned readings from Plato, says Meile, students "don’t really follow it unless you break it down into a lot of little pieces and say this is exactly what [the author] is talking about."

That’s precisely what Phillips doesn’t want to hear.

"I think it’s fair to say that the materials that [high school] students have to read have been dumbed down," says Phillips.

In college, "no one’s sitting there helping you decipher words or understand a text," she adds. "You’re expected to do it on your own."

Weaving it all together

Ultimately, says Moje, the University of Michigan professor, what matters is what students are able to do with what they read.

On that front, too, there’s little disagreement that most U.S. high schools have a problem.

"Being able to make meaning, interpret, [understand] how one text relates to other texts and ideas – that is what our students are not able to do very well," Moje says.

She appreciates the Common Core’s intentions but is concerned that teachers won’t be given enough supports to effectively implement the new standards.

"We cannot simply say that kids need to read more," she says. "We can’t just dump high-level texts, things [students] are reading in graduate school, into high schools."

CCSSO’s Phillips acknowledges that the new standards will be a "big change" and that educators will need significant training. She stresses that "there are a lot of people working hard" on implementation, and she cites the acceptance of the Common Core by so many states as reason for optimism.

But in Philadelphia, like many school districts, details on implementation are hard to come by.

"The Common Core is more of the ‘what,’" said District Chief Academic Officer Penny Nixon. "It doesn’t tell you how to do it."

She says Philadelphia’s approach will be to get state help to train teacher leaders who will then train other teachers.

By then, Zach Morales plans to be in college, studying computer science.

The quiet tenacity Morales has shown in privately pursuing his passions might be the best reason for hope.

While no one was looking, Morales spent the past four years stitching together in his mind all the independent reading he’s done – fantasy stories, horror novels, research on hacker groups – to create a vision for his future.

"It gets me excited," he says, "to think that maybe I could be the next big video game designer."

West Philadelphia nonprofit opens 12th public school library

2012-03-07T14:22:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

by Samantha Coggin

Last summer Heston Elementary School Principal Icilyn Wilson-Greene received a phone call from the West Philadelphia Alliance for Children (WePac) about an opportunity to restore the school’s library.

It was a welcome call because a large and growing number of Philadelphia public elementary school students don’t have access to a school library or a certified school librarian, and Heston was struggling to keep its own library doors open.

Eight months later, on Leap Day, the new Heston library opened and classes of students streamed in and out of their new literary digs where hundreds of books and colorful paintings now fill the walls.

Wilson-Green said she thanks WePac, not just for the new addition to his school, but to the community at large.

“This is the only library available in this area,” Wilson-Green said. “I have watched, year after year, library after library close.”

Heston is the 12th school that the eight-year-old nonprofit has opened in West Philadelphia in the past three years. WePac has also donated over 33,000 books to local school libraries.

Wilson-Greene said she always appreciated the beautiful space of the school library, which dominates at the very center of the school building with windows facing every classroom on the first and second floors. But, the school could not afford the upkeep of reading material or the cost of staffing a librarian.

WePac fills those needs through its use of over 100 volunteers citywide who visit a variety of schools weekly. The organization trains them to become educated librarians, and then deploys them to schools to act as school librarians and to read to students. WePac also provides a program called “Literacy in the Classroom” where it offers teacher assistance in Language Arts classes.

WePac is privately funded and receives several donations to furnish the libraries it sets up. It offers its services at no cost to the schools or the District.

Lewis C. Cassidy Elementary, a neighboring school to Heston that recently received a WePac library, decided to hold a book drive and donate the proceeds to Heston’s new library. Cassidy ended up donating over 1,500 books to Heston.

David S. Florig, executive director at WePac, said that “the majority of West and Southwest Philadelphia schools do not have the staff to run their library so instead, it just sits there closed.

“Our organization’s main focus will be on [providing] literacy in the elementary schools and providing literacy-based programs.”

Reading area restored in Lea classroom

2012-02-24T17:10:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The reading area ordered removed from a 3rd grade classroom at the Lea Elementary School has been restored after the teacher’s husband complained to the School Reform Commission and wrote a widely circulated post about it for the Notebook.

School District spokesperson Fernando Gallard confirmed that the furniture had been moved back into the classroom from storage after Chief Academic Officer Penny Nixon personally visited the class.

"After meeting with the teacher, she said she didn’t see any reason the furniture shouldn’t be put back," Gallard said.

Andrew Ganim spoke at the SRC meeting on January 19 about school officials’ sudden removal of a comfortable reading corner from a classroom in the West Philadelphia school. He said a District team had deemed the area "clutter" during a walkthrough.

His post about it ran in the Notebook on February 9. It was picked up by national outlets, including the education blog The Answer Sheet at the Washington Post and got more than 11,000 reads and nearly 200 comments on the Notebook website.

Ganim, whose article contended that the walkthrough team was more concerned about furniture arrangement than about nurturing a love of reading in children, said he was pleased.

“Hopefully there will be other positive changes, beyond this one incident resolved, as a result,” said Ganim.

Nixon was joined by Assistant Superintendent Lissa Johnson and Lea Principal Lisa Bell-Chiles in her visit to the classroom. Gallard said that Nixon then had a one-on-one conversation with the teacher.

The furniture had been removed over the Martin Luther King Day weekend without the teacher’s knowledge. The reading area had been donated by members of the community through DonorsChoose.org

Gallard said that Nixon went to Lea to meet with the teacher "to communicate that her office is there to support teachers."

He added that “student safety” had been a factor in the District’s original concern about "clutter" in the room, but that the room was now organized in such a way that it did not impede students moving around or exiting.

Afterschool program helps students climb to new heights

2012-02-07T17:16:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

An immense collection of books fills the shelves of Tree House Books. From Best American Essays by Annie Dillard to Sula by Toni Morrison to a shelf dedicated to children’s author Lemony Snicket.

Tree House Books, a nonprofit organization in North Philadelphia, works to “grow and sustain a community of readers, writers, and thinkers” through afterschool and enrichment programs. Neighborhood children participate in the literacy program called Life With Books.

"I like moving up a reading level," said 5th grader Dominique Cooper. "I like reading and being able to do my homework."

Dominique, along with fellow student and friend, Ajalee Green, attends Tanner G. Duckrey Elementary. Dominique originally learned about Tree House from a friend at Duckrey.

The friends participate in the literacy program, and when a student reads 10 books or five chapter books, their name is placed on the “Limo wall.” As a treat, Tree House rents a limo for the students whose names are on the wall, whisking them away to an unnamed destination, only revealed to them upon arrival.

Students work with tutors from nearby Temple University.

”My involvement with Tree House started when I was a graduate student at Temple University in their creative writing program studying poetry writing,” said Tree House Executive Director Darcy Luetzow.

In 2006, Luetzow heard that her peers in Temple’s program were doing some afterschool writing with kids in North Philadelphia. She jumped at the chance to join, not fully knowing what she was getting into.

“At that time Tree House was just piloting the first afterschool writing workshop,” Luetzow said. “This was because Temple professor Eli Goldblatt was able to get some of the graduate students in the creative writing program connected with teacher assitantships at Tree House. They were experimenting with what does it take to do a writing workshop after school with kids.”

Tree House was in fact a community bookstore at first, trying out different workshops with kids from the Philadelphia community. Some kids within the community would come, read a book, and then leave.

In September of 2006, Luetzow was brought in as executive director hired at only 20 hours a week. There was no staff beyond her, no financial record keeping, and no mission statement.

That set the point where she and retired community resident Sharon Turner began exploring what Tree House could do.

“So we talked,” Luetzow said. “We had no money, few volunteers, but kids get homework. So we thought why not have tutoring time? We have this room full of books and a table. I literally put a sign on the table that read ‘Tutoring Time: Do your homework in a room full of books from 3 until 5.’”

That idea was a success. The children from the neighborhood started to come and stay slightly longer than before. Luetzow reached out to Temple students involved with Hyphen Literary Magazine.

Some of the students from Temple who volunteered their time at Tree House decided to stay even after their time at the organization ended.

“That was what we needed at that time,” Luetzow continued. “Over time people just seemed like they talked to others about us; students would talk to their roommates and classmates. “

Luetzow and the rest of the Tree House staff and volunteers offer something more to the neighboring children of the community than just homework help and tutoring. It is clear that the students view them as mentors who are urging them to reach for their dreams and set goals.

“I think we get the privilege of working with the most remarkable people in the world, and a lot of people would not necessarily think that of the residents of this neighborhood,” said Luetzow.

Duckrey Elementary student Dominique has been able to participate in some of the other Tree House activities, such as helping to feed the homeless in conjunction with The Chosen 300 Ministries.

"I feel good about helping other people," Dominique said.

The feeling is mutual for her friend Ajalee, who stumbled upon Tree House one day when walking through the neighborhood with her grandmother and asked if she could start attending.

"My favorite thing is the limo trips," Ajalee said. "I like reading and doing my homework too."

“Tree House is a lot of things,” Volunteer Coordinator Lauren Macaluso said. “We help kids with their reading, writing, and thinking, and we’re empowering college students to think of the children in the neighborhood as readers, writers, and thinkers. [We are] creating a space where relationship between college students and kids can happen."

The ‘write’ stuff

2011-08-19T13:51:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

“I like all of the classes,” said eight-year-old Jada Lowery of the offerings at Mighty Writers. “I just can’t decide.”

When first entering Mighty Writers at 1501 Christian in South Philadelphia you are greeted by a large red and white "MW"sign with surrounding comic book phrases:

"thwack,"
"ooof,"
"bam,"
"ka-pow."

This is the main studio where teens are assisted in SAT preparation by tutors. The studio is neatly lined with tables for the students and their tutors to work. Frames of comic book covers decorate the walls. Shelf upon shelf of books occupy the center of the studio.

Mighty Writers is a nonprofit organization where Philadelphia youth are able to participate in free writing workshops to perfect their reading and writing skills. Each year teachers, journalists, and others volunteer to teach and mentor more than 500 local students. Jada recently started attending. She’s originally from Georgia, and found out about the program from her soccer coach at Chester A. Arthur School.

Mixed-media

“I like it here. It’s like school; it’s educational. The teachers here are fun to play with, too,” Jada explained. She was also eager to show me the illustrations of her masterpiece entitled "JK." The main character is a secret agent.

Recently, Mighty Writers began their comic book club. I was lucky enough to observe this activity where students learn the basics of what it takes to develop their own characters and stories. The class, led by Program Director Rachel Loeper, began by reviewing material from last class where the focus was story boarding and thought and speech bubbles.

Jada is involved in this class, and two others: the Garden Reader Program and poetry class. In the Garden Reader Program, students are given the chance to learn about fruits and vegetables. It takes place across from Mighty Writers in a plot given to them for free by Universal Companies.

In poetry class, students learn about the different aspects of poetry, from similes to metaphors. Students write poems about a specific topic, such as a fruit or vegetable.

Engaging high school students

“Writing is an important role in life and school,” said 12th grader Brehe Teweldebrhan. Brehe, like Jada, recently started attending Mighty Writers. He is involved in their SAT prep sessions. Brehe said that a teacher told him about MW. "My favorite activity to do here is called Teen Lounge. You’re able to express yourself there,” said Brehe, a Southwest Philadelphia native who enjoys writing poetry.

Nafeesah Cannady, a junior at Central High school, agreed that the Teen Lounge helps her “express my free spirit.” She started attending after her sister, Kiarah Cannady. Like Jada, Nafeesah finds interest in drawing and painting. Especially painting.

“I’m an outdoors person,” Nafeesah said. “I can literally go outside, set up my easel, and start painting buildings or produce. Mainly buildings.”

Both students see college as an option in their future. Nafeesah has aspirations of attending Howard University, Brown University, New York University, or St. John’s University. Brehe sees himself either attending Carnegie Mellon University or Temple University.

New location

Mighty Writers has also opened up a space located at 641 South Street where free workshops will begin this month and again in September. The workshops will introduce more students to the creative world of comic books and graphic novels.

The retail space, provided to Mighty Writers in partnership with Arts On South, is a haven for youth and adults alike who are interested not only in the written aspect of comics, but also its art. Art by local Philadelphia artists and students from Mighty Writers aligns the walls.

Guests are welcome to purchase the art with all of the proceeds going back towards supporting Mighty Writers programs. And, every Friday new art is displayed for viewing.

“About a year and a half into the program, we had found that the kids, especially the boys, were into comic books,” said Executive Director Tim Whitaker. “They were taking graphic novels home faster than we could get them. That’s why we created the comic book club.”

Maggie Leyman, development director of Mighty Writers, is responsible for finding funding for this new addition to the organization. In fact at the time of my visit, a grant from Citizen’s Bank had just arrived.

“250 kids are our goal,” said Leyman. “We’re hoping that word about us will spread and that once workshops begin, people will start to come.”

South Street was in the news last year and last month for "flash mobs," and just this past weekend when 50 young people were arrested for violating a new curfew set up in response to the incidents. Both Leyman and Whitaker hope that they can help youth on South Street create a safe, welcoming, educational alternative space.

Are kids getting really stupid? A plan of action

2011-01-04T15:24:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia Magazine cover story, “Is It Just Us, Or Are Kids Getting Really Stupid?” by Sandy Hingston piqued my interest at the supermarket check-out aisle.

Many educators, parents, and students are polarized about the impact digital and media technologies have on society. Some say technology and social media tools are making kids stupid, e.g. "ask a kid to tell you the time from an analog clock."

Others say, “information is power,” and promote spreading technology and media products throughout all socioeconomic levels. Dr. Renee Hobbs, a respected media literacy scholar and the founder of the Temple Media Education Lab, may just have a plan to make media and digital technologies essential for teaching and learning in the classroom and beyond.

Hobbs’ white paper Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action addresses important competencies that may demonstrate that kids are not getting really stupid. Furthermore, the plan provides some concrete recommendations that can be enacted at home, in schools, and in the community at large.

Hingston’s feature was both provocative and alarming. The article questions if digital and media literacy tools that saturate young peoples’ brains are dumbing them down. However, as educators and parents we should be careful not to demonize social media and technology. The challenge for us is to find the balance between traditional and 21st century literacy skills to engage students.

Educational settings should adapt to the shifts that digital and media technologies are creating for teaching young people. Parents, educators, and scholars must therefore be willing to embrace the challenges and opportunities of preparing the next generation for the exponential growth and complex demands of a multi-mediated world. Instead of blaming cell phones, video games, and Facebook for corrupting youth, we need to find effective ways to harness these multi-modal and dynamic platforms to revolutionize teaching and learning.

Hobbs’ plan of action, presented at a roundtable hosted by The Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, focuses on implementing the Knight Commission’s 15 recommendations for creating healthy informed communities. The plan notes that pushing students in one direction over the other would not prepare them for the critical thinking skills required in democratically-globally networked society.

The plan takes into consideration that young people are “constantly plugged in," and "500 + TV channels, broadband Internet, mobile phones, a totally wired generation." The plan further recognizes that in order for young people to fully participate in contemporary society that they should not only consume media, but create and share their own media productions.

The plan notes that there is no “one size fits all” program or approach to addressing the digital and media literacy capacity of over 300 million citizens. However, it does provide suggested spaces in both formal and informal settings that can support these competencies. This includes programs at homes, K-12 schools, libraries, museums, summer and after school programs, local cable access centers, colleges, universities, and nonprofit centers. These spaces should be available to under-served and under-resourced communities.

To address if kids are getting really stupid requires us to broaden our thinking of what is literacy.

The plan broadens the concept of literacy by including a definition of digital and media literacy “that is a constellation of life skills that are necessary for full participation in our media saturated and information rich society.”

The plan focuses on helping all citizens not simply use digital tools, but use them well, through five major competencies:

Helping young people make responsible choices and access information by locating, sharing, and comprehending complex ideas and concepts.
Critically analyzing a variety of forms of “text” to determine the author’s purpose, point of view, and evaluations of the quality and credibility of content information.
Create varied content using multiple forms, languages, images, sounds, and digital tools.
Reflect on one’s own conduct and communication under the risk and rewards of digital and media citizenship.
Participate in social action individually and collaboratively, and share that knowledge to help solve problems at home, in the workplace, and community at large.

I contend that kids are not getting really stupid and that digital and media literacy offers a bridge to engage students to show us how smart they really are.

Hobbs encourages teachers and parents to help young people discover the pleasures and complications of using digital and media literacy. She mentors many media educators and provided me guidance when I developed a curriculum unit “My Space in Democracy."

What’s your take? Are kids getting really stupid? How do you bring digital and media literacy into your classroom or home?

Want to learn more about media literacy? The National Association for Media Literacy Education is holding their annual conference in Philly this summer. The deadline for proposals is this Friday. We’ve submitted a proposal for a "Finding your blogger voice" session.

Obama’s blueprint: A magical pitch

2010-12-06T16:57:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

During the National Writing Project Annual Meeting and National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Conference held in Orlando Florida (Nov. 18- 21), I received a barrage of corporate pitches from Mickey Mouse and his gang. At the closing of the conference I participated in a panel with the Department of Education’s chief pitchman, Peter Cunningham.

On a panel with several educators we discussed President Obama’s blueprint for changes to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization.

NCTE selected a diverse group of middle and elementary school teachers to participate on the panel, from as far as San Diego, CA to Rutland, MA; from urban, rural, and suburban sites, as well as private and public schools. Cunningham shared background on the blueprint to reform and the flaws of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

Literacy educators, including a Teacher Ambassador Fellow selected by the Department of Education, were eager to pitch our ideas and share our struggles and strategies for addressing 21st century challenges in education.

Cunningham framed the conversation by conceding that the over reliance on testing is not the solution for true reform. He further revealed that countries like China and South Korea, which rely heavily on high stakes testing, are pursuing educational reforms that foster greater collaboration, creativity, and innovation. Cunningham exposed the irony that our national education reform efforts actually shift us away from our global competitive advantage, which other nations want to emulate. Our pioneering spirit in education and industry is at a crossroad.

While opening our dialogue, a teacher from a non-unionized state expressed concerns regarding what teacher feedback and evaluation would look like under the administration’s blueprint. Would unionized states have more influence on the outcome of teacher evaluations?

Others teachers emphasized the needs to balance the ways tests are used to evaluate teacher effectiveness. Teachers from more affluent areas noted that wealthy districts with more actively involved parents will continue to have higher test scores thus widening the achievement gap. There is no one-size-fits-all method of assessing students and evaluating teacher’s effectiveness.

I pitched the idea of using portfolios as a holistic form of assessment.

If we truly want to create a competitive 21st century workforce, students need to be able to collaborate, create, and problem solve. These skills are not covered in bubble-in standardized tests. If we are not careful our test scores will rise, but our global competitiveness will decline.

Cunningham, asked me to clarify what I meant by portfolios and how portfolios could be assessed.

I explained that through portfolios, students show what they know through processing, collaborating, and completing end products that demonstrates their learning. Other teachers further pitched the idea of portfolio systems. One teacher noted that with writing portfolios we could look at examples of writing and monitor how it changed based on feedback from students and teachers. She noted that when students are engaged in this authentic feedback loop it helps both students and teachers know where learning gaps exist.

Another teacher noted that a shift is required in the way educators and policy makers are looking at assessments. One teacher pointed out that “fine arts people are doing portfolio evaluations already.” Cunningham did not object to our many suggestions of revamping the assessment and evaluation systems for both students and teachers, but he intimated that any approach that does not use standardized tests will be labor intensive.

The concession that NCLB has narrowed the curriculum was echoed in a previous interview with education researcher Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute, on a radio program with Cunningham. Rothstein criticized the Obama administration’s Race to the Top (RttT) education policies – criticism that Cunningham acknowledged was valid.

The RttT “carrot and the stick” approach of reforming student assessment and teacher evaluation will continue to undermine important subjects like sciences, history, social studies, music, arts, and physical education. District adminstrators and school leaders will continue gaming the system by having teachers teach to the test in an effort to raise math and reading scores. Rothstein explained, that "Race to the Top does the most harm to disadvantaged students."

Obama’s blueprint does have some noteworthy goals which include preparing students to be college or work-ready to compete in a global economy and providing more comprehensive supports for students and families to remove barriers to academic achievement. But does Obama have enough political capital to produce any authentic reform?

I guess it was appropriate that Cunningham, the blueprint’s pitchman, and a diverse group of educators had such generative talks at a Disney hotel resort. Now we may need some of Disney’s magic to finally get educational reform that meets the needs for all the young people we teach.

Children’s Literacy Initiative gets $21 million federal innovation grant

2010-08-05T15:44:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Philadelphia-based Children’s Literacy Initiative is one of 49 winners of so-called i3 grants from the U.S. Department of Education, awarded to school districts and non-profit organizations to promote educational innovation.

CLI, as it is known, has worked for more than 20 years to train teachers, caregivers and child care workers to in how to create literature-rich environments and promote reading skills in the youngest children. Even before getting a foothold in the School District, it worked with the Philadelphia Housing Authority and individual child care providers, often grandmothers or informal neighborhood centers, to run workshops and training sessions.

It now works in 50 classrooms in 33 Philadelphia schools, as well as in 65 Head Start classrooms around the city. It also has programs in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

The $650 million Investing in Innovation program, a companion to the better-known Race to the Top initiative, awarded grants in three categories: to scale-up already proven programs, validate promising programs, and develop new initiatives. The scaling up grants were the largest, up to $50 million.

CLI’s proposal received the highest score among the "validation" grantees. It will receive nearly $22 million over five years to expand its work in four districts — Philadelphia, Camden, Newark, and Chicago — and evaluate the results by comparing its schools to similar schools in a "control" group. CLI will be evaluated by the American Institutes for Research.

"We’re over the moon," said Linda Katz, CLI’s executive director. "Not only is it a validation of our work and all the people who have believed in us and supported us, it’s also a chance to show that the way to improve schools is by making a human capital investment in teachers. It’s not about punishing them, or giving them individual big bonuses, but about making sure they can do their job well."

Katz said that CLI will be putting model classrooms in kindergarten through third grades in 10 schools, while 10 other schools will be designated as the control group for the purposes of the research. "We’ll be working with the School District to identify the schools," Katz said. Those in the control group by definition will not receive the model classroom to preserve the integrity of the study, but Katz said, "as soon as we can, we’ll raise money" for the comparison schools.

Three other organizations with a sizable presence in Philadelphia were also awarded grants, which will be formally announced Friday by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

They are:

Diplomas Now, based at Johns Hopkins University, which got $30 million over five years to work in 60 schools in 14 districts, including Philadelphia, to validate its model of whole school reform and providing extra supports to middle and high school students.The goal is to raise dismal graduation rates in high-poverty, low-achieving schools where often fewer than half the students graduate to at least 80 percent.
KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program), which started with two middle schools in Philadelphia and is expanding its presence here to include elementary and high school grades, received $50 million scale up grant. KIPP has schools in about 40 districts.
Teach for America also got a $50 million scale-up grant. Philadelphia is one of its sites.

U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah said no other city has a piece of so many grants.

"Philadelphia is the only city in the country in which you have four of the successful awards," Fattah said. "That’s another indication that we really are at the cutting edge in terms of education reform. These are four different programs that crisscross the city in a number of different ways, and the one thing in common is that they see Philadelphia as a rich opportunity to bring to scale programs that work."

Fattah has been involved with CLI since he was in the state legislature, and helped it get state grants to work with the city housing authority. "We worked in day care centers and early childhood sites to include literacy training for the employees," he said.

He is also a fan of Diplomas Now, which pioneered its model of working with middle school students in three Philadelphia schools: Feltonville Arts and Science, Jay Cooke, and Thurgood Marshall.

The program also was certified by the District as a partner in Superintendent Arlene Ackerman’s Renaissance Schools turnaround initiative and initially slated to work with West Philadelphia High School. That possibility was postponed for at least a year. Fattah said he hoped that the program would become West’s partner when the school’s new building opens in the 2011 school year.

Regardless of its future at West, the role of the program in Philadelphia should expand, Fattah said. "It’s been wildly successful where it has been in place," he said. "I want Philadelphia to take full advantage of the opportunity."

The District applied for but didn’t receive a smaller $5 development grant to reform its data management system. In addition, two development proposals from LaSalle and Drexel that would have trained science and math teachers also didn’t make the cut.

The i3 grants come with matching requirements of 20 percent. For CLI, that means it must raise $4.3 million by September 8. Katz said that $3.3 has already been raised from longtime supporters, including philanthropist Carole Haas Gravagno. "We still have to raise another million," she said.

"We have a model to prove, and this will be the best way to do it, " Katz added. "The model is investing in teachers, and I think it’s important to show how powerful that can be."

Liberty Bell Project – life… and the pursuit of happiness

2010-06-10T14:47:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Believe it or not schools can be the most undemocratic and uncreative spaces.

The Philadelphia Arts and Education Partnership (PAEP) and the National Liberty Museum have developed an exciting program entitled “Let Art Freedom Ring” that infuses democracy, character education, and art making.

“Let Art Freedom Ring” seeks to reinvigorate students’ civic mindedness and artistic muses through 12 sessions. During the sessions students explore themes related to liberty, study Philadelphia’s role in shaping our democracy, and collaborate with resident artists to create a 6′, 3-d interpretation of the Liberty Bell.

Sixth grade students at Beeber Middle School along with students from four other schools are participating in this initiative. The additional schools include: Sharswood Elementary, Kenderton Elementary, Hunter Elementary, and Lingelbach Elementary. The completed bells will be displayed at the National Constitution Center starting July 2 for the summer of 2010, then traveling to New York for display at an art gallery in SoHo during the fall.

Collaboration is at the heart of democratic practices. Crafting our liberty bell has required cooperation by students; the visiting Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA) rostered artist, Debbie Williams; Beeber’s art teacher, Sonya Smith; and me, a 6th grade literacy and social studies teacher. Because we started the project toward the end of the school year, we had to address rostering issues to allow Ms. Williams to have requisite visits. We also had to deal with the end of year syndrome that makes it hard to keeps students engaged.

Getting students to be responsible and reflective citizens versus maintaining safe and productive academic settings is a vexing undertaking. Through this project I am learning what my 6th graders understand about their “unalienable Rights." During the project kick-off with the National Liberty Museum staff and the initial studio session with Ms Williams, I observed that most of my 32 students were excited about the project, but many were too chatty or distracted when adults were providing instructions or sharing information. I decided to hold a class meeting to address students’ behavior and elicit more cooperation. This class meeting ended up being a powerful civics lesson for both my students and me.

While explaining to my class the magnitude of this Liberty Bell project and importance of not wasting time Miranda raised her hand and made a comment that respectfully challenged me. She said, “I am not trying to diss you Mr. Reed, you do some interesting projects with us, but we might not listen to you because every time you bring in something that we students like, you take it away."

She won over the mob with her remarks and her classmates started clapping with a loud applause. I was stunned.

She continued, “You might not know it but, at lunch about half of the students came over to the table either to play or watch people play chess, and when you took it away everyone noticed that you’re not devoted to what you start. Also this liberty project that we‘re doing talks about the pursuit of happiness, well my fellow classmates aren’t happy because you took away our extra activities like chess and hip hop."

Miranda may one day run for public office. The mob was swayed even more.

I didn’t want to get into a debate. So I allowed other students to voice their concerns; many echoed Miranda’s remarks. “Mr. Reed, you don’t listen to us.” One student countered, and said “Mr. Reed is right we do waste a lot of time, and maybe that’s why we don’t get to finish some of the projects we start.” After I dismissed class, I spoke with Miranda, one on one, and explained to her that chess club stopped because the competitive chess season ended. I used to play chess with students during my lunch time.

She explained how some students were not pleased with the dance residency I arranged because it didn’t incorporate hip hop. I explained to Miranda that the plans I made did not turn out exactly as I wanted, but I made the best effort. I praised her for respectfully disagreeing with my intentions. And she calmly said, “Next time things don’t work as we planned, just tell us right away."

That was easy!

Through engaging my students in an authentic democratic exercise, it has forced me to reflect upon my actions as teacher and role model. I came up with a plan to try to address the lack of focus and waste of time during the Clay Studio and bell making visits. In consultation with Ms. Smith, we split the class in half. Half of the students, with a mix of abilities, were selected to work in the studio space. The other half of the class would work on the media literacy components of the project. During the regular scheduled art class Ms. Smith and I would come together with the whole class to advance the completion of this mixed-media project.

Although this decision to split the class up was not fully democratic, students welcomed it. The subsequent visits with the PCA artist Ms. Williams are going more smoothly–less time wasted, students more focused–and the media literacy group has been able to contribute images, symbols, visual poems, and began to create podcasts that we plan to accompany our interpretive sculpture of the Liberty Bell.

My students and I are learning that classroom democracies evolve over time. Our burgeoning classroom democracy may be a bit messy, but I think the founding fathers would say the same of America’s fledgling democracy.

While crafting our liberty bell, we are concurrently drafting a “Student Bill of Rights” that students will present to the principal to let their voices be heard. I plan to share a follow up post describing the lessons and outcome of our "Student Bill of Rights" activity.

The completion of our liberty bell project is still a work-in-progress. However, I believe my students are inspired, motivated, and more focused to learn how the symbol of liberty helped build our nation and it is now helping to improve our own classroom democracy.

Miranda captured the essence of our learning, in the poem she composed entitled “Liberty." Her first stanza reads "Liberty / to be me/ to be free."

Save the date:

July 1 at the National Constitution Center 5-7 PM, Unveiling of Let Art Freedom Ring, Liberty Bell Projects.

Teaching from the inside out

2010-05-27T13:06:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Teaching For Joy and Justice: Re-imagining the Language Arts Classroom – the title makes it sound so easy to do! In her most recent book Linda Christensen offers a combination of practical solutions, theoretical frameworks, and inspirational anecdotes for teachers who attempt each and every day to make their classrooms sites of just and joyful learning.

As a lifelong and award-winning public school teacher, Christensen speaks from a place of wisdom and expertise. She also speaks to the “skill and artistry” needed for teachers to create authentic learning spaces for children. She advocates for both students and teachers. She is the veteran teacher you pray to have working down the hall from you.

With Teaching for Joy and Justice, Christensen offers a powerful antidote to the typical top-down, corporate-branded curriculum and professional development usually touted in urban districts across the country. This is presumably no accident as she addresses the impact of a deficit-oriented model of instruction in her introduction:

“When we begin from the premise that students need to be ‘fixed,’ invariably we design curriculum that erases students’ home language and culture; we fail to find strength and beauty in the experience and heritage that students bring with them to school. When our curriculum attempts to ‘correct’ their supposed faults, ultimately, students will resist” (2).

Alternatively, Christensen advocates and practices the use of students’ lives as “critical texts” and the exploration of moral and ethical issues as thematic units of study to create a curriculum that resonates with and inspires students. Her self-made curriculum is one that would be nearly impossible in the age of mandated test prep, but is perhaps more closely aligned with the post-modern theory of curriculum that includes the “new Rs:” richness, recursion, relations, and relevance.

Students’ lives and voices are not the source of supplementary activities or special occasion lessons for Christensen; they are the heart and soul of her teaching.

Throughout the book there is a theme of wholeness–she explains how practicing poetry through writing, for example, is much more effective than learning and memorizing literary terms in isolation. It is from the experience of writing, reading, and performing poetry, she argues, that students “know the terms from the inside out.”

Similarly, she uses the lives and voices of her students to engage them in their learning from the inside out. Instead of asking students to check their histories and cultures at the door in the morning, Christensen addresses the wholeness of students and invites their lives, and languages, inside the classroom. And the results are stunning.

Through vignettes and student samples of work, it is clear that Christensen’s students are thinking critically to wrestle not only with difficult issues in their own lives, but also to make sense of the world around them. Christensen provides tangible examples of teaching strategies that she has used successfully with students including dialogue journals, “literary tea parties,” character silhouettes, read-arounds, thesis walls, and writing feedback protocol.

As a teacher, you are often handed tools or ideas that are said to be “good” for your classroom without a clear explanation of the purpose behind them. Teaching for Joy and Justice is a powerful resource for teachers because its purpose is resoundingly clear: to find ways for students and teachers to make their way back in to the kind of curriculum that matters.

Una escuela que “prende la chispa del aprendizaje”

2010-04-06T17:05:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

El salón parece más una cómoda sala de hogar, ya que tiene una vela con fragancia, un sofá y mesitas.

Diez estudiantes están discutiendo los personajes y las escenas de su proyecto, una obra teatral de asuntos de adolescentes, con la orientadora Khara Schonfeld y un profesional de teatro visitante.

Una de las estudiantes, Mary Cruz González, está nerviosa. “¿Tengo que hacer esto frente a un público?”

Schonfeld la tranquiliza. “Mary, yo sé que tú puedes. Llegó tu momento”.

Moviendo los muebles un poco, el salón de clases se convierte en espacio de ensayos. Los varones improvisan una escena sobre la presión de grupo; las niñas les dan sugerencias en voz alta.

El Centro de Estudiantes, ubicado en el segundo piso de lo que antes era una escuela católica cerca de Norris Square en Kensington, abrió sus puertas en septiembre como una colaboración entre Big Picture Learning y el Congreso de Latinos Unidos. En Centro tiene aproximadamente 150 estudiantes y es una de seis nuevas escuelas aceleradas este año.

La organización sin fines de lucro Big Picture ha establecido su modelo de aprendizaje en base a proyectos en más de 60 escuelas de EE.UU. e internacionalmente, basándose en el lema “un estudiante a la vez”.

“Esta estrategia se basa en proyectos y en trabajar con los muchachos donde están”, dijo David Bromley, director ejecutivo de Big Picture Philadelphia. “Es determinar cuáles son sus pasiones e intereses, pero también sus fortalezas y áreas débiles”.

Los estudiantes, dijo Bromley, “han batallado mucho en su pasada experiencia educativa, y no fue su culpa”. Muchos vienen con niveles bajos de alfabetismo y matemáticas. Muchos de los varones tienen antecedentes en el tribunal de delincuencia juvenil, y muchas de las muchachas están embarazadas o tienen hijos.

En El Centro, ellos escriben obras de teatro y actúan en ellas, hacen documentales, mantienen crónicas de los cambios en el vecindario y trabajan en sus negocios y organizaciones.

María Guaranda, de 17 años, abandonó una escuela disciplinaria hace un año y medio. En El Centro ha encontrado una nueva dirección.

“Trabajamos a nuestro propio paso y escogemos nuestros propios proyectos”, dijo Guaranda. “Si quiero hacer un proyecto sobre mi mamá, puedo hacer un proyecto sobre ella. Sólo tengo que asegurarme de incluir matemáticas, lectura y estudios sociales”.

Los estudiantes en El Centro pasan tres días en la escuela y dos días en prácticas. “Me gusta trabajar con la juventud y por eso estoy haciendo la práctica en The Attic, un centro de jóvenes”, dijo Guaranda.

Otros estudiantes están en centros de cuidado de niños, hospitales, estudios de grabación, talleres de hojalatería, gimnasios y tiendas de ciclismo. “Lo que nos interesa es encontrar cualquier cosa que encienda la chispa del aprendizaje”, dijo Bromley.

Los orientadores (como se les llama a los maestros) fomentan la confianza de sus estudiantes. “Los maestros no son sólo un maestro en la escuela; son como un segundo padre o madre”, dijo Guaranda. Cada orientador está certificado en un área de contenido y permanece con el mismo grupo de 15 estudiantes hasta que se gradúen. Los orientadores se apoyan entre sí enseñando todas las materias.

La Principal Laura Davis trabajó por tres años en Capitol Hill antes de completar su grado en educación. Antes de unirse a Big Picture Philadelphia, trabajó como maestra de escuela intermedia y orientadora fundadora de una escuela de Big Picture en Nashville.

Durante el verano, ella y otro empleado se acercaron a grupos comunitarios, pusieron mesas en la entrada de tiendas, y tocaron puertas en Kensington para reclutar estudiantes. Sólo hay un requisito para ser admitido: asistir a una orientación u open house.

“Para que tengan éxito en este tipo de escuela, los estudiantes y sus padres tienen que creer en su filosofía”, dijo ella.

Agatha Kofa, de 17 años, abandonó la Escuela Superior Lincoln después de tener a su hija. Por no tener suficientes fondos para pagar una escuela católica, se matriculó en El Centro un mes después de inaugurado.

“Al principio fue difícil porque [mi maestro y yo] peleábamos mucho”, dijo Kofa. Pero el orientador le enseñó a Kofa cómo ser menos confrontacional y ahora está en camino a graduarse en más o menos un año.

Si todo sale bien, saldrá con un diploma y también con experiencia en el campo que le interesa, cine. Está trabajando en un video sobre las metas futuras de sus compañeros.

En el salón de Schonfeld, Ricky Rosario y Víctor Rivera (compañeros de Kofa) están dibujando en sus cuadernos y concentrados en la obra de teatro sobre la presión de grupo. Rivera, cuyo personaje es un vendedor de drogas, está tratando de convencer a Rosario de que “lo defienda” en la esquina.

Rosario titubea. Está entre la espada y la pared; quiere ayudar a su amigo pero no desea meterse en más problemas.

“No quiero ir a la cárcel”. Y se va caminando.

Durante la presentación final ante la escuela varias semanas después, los estudiantes aplaudieron encantados y querían más.

“A los otros estudiantes de la escuela les gustó mucho porque se trataba de asuntos que ellos enfrentan en la vida”, dijo Schonfeld. “Fue un triunfo para nosotros”.

Marci Resnick Teacher Fund: Paying it forward

2010-04-02T13:37:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

In life Marci Resnick was a dedicated educator who continuously gave of herself without expecting big fanfare.

Marci taught at Mitchell in Southwest Philadelphia and at Emlen in Northwest Philadelphia. She joined the Philadelphia Writing Project in 1990 and became the director in 1995. In 2001 she went to work as associate director of the National Writing Project.

I was personally inspired by Marci’s advocacy for making connections with families and schools. She mentored and encouraged many teachers to be reflective about in-school and out-of-school literacy practices.

Marci passed away in May, 2007, and as a tribute to her life work as an educator, the Marci Resnick Teacher Fund was established in collaboration with the National Writing Project (NWP) and Philadelphia Writing Project

Marci’s work with teachers in Philadelphia and around the country exemplified humor, warmth, spirit, and incredible passion. To honor those qualities, the fund raises and distributes resources to support the work teachers do in their classrooms. In particular, the Marci Resnick Teacher Fund established a library of children’s and adolescent literature from the many texts Marci collected, along with lesson plans she used.

I am personally thankful for the Marci Resnick Teacher Fund, because I was among six people to receive awards of $500 in 2009. I used funds from the award to attend the 2009 National Association for Media Literacy Conference to enhance my media literacy curriculum unit, MySpace in Democracy, which supports students to learn about their rights and responsibilities when using social media.

The fund did a great job of supporting a variety of projects that honors Marci’s interests in the arts, theater, and music, and the ways in which she incorporated literacy in her own classroom. Other 2009 awardees included:

Conni Henkel – developed a literacy project for second graders that incorporated journals and journal writing;
Mona Kolsky – used funds to travel to Turkey and created global education unit about Turkey for her students;
Abby Pelcyger – developed a environmental and literacy project to support a community and school partnership for building gardens;
Rita Sorrentino – developed a technology and art project incorporating photography and publishing in collaboration with other teachers in her elementary school;
Erin Swan – used funds to purchase materials for her classroom and other classrooms for a school based reading and writing workshop project.

The fund would like to increase the number of teachers its supports. In the two years since its founding, the Marci Resnick Teacher Fund has presented 10 awards to teachers in Philadelphia schools. It would be great if the fund could double the number of teachers (four) it supported in 2008.

The 2010 Marci Resnick Teacher Fund is now accepting applications for $500 awards to support creative classroom projects, professional development, and educational travel related to classroom practice and other areas. The application deadline is April 9, 2010. Teachers may contact the Philadelphia Writing Project at philwp@gse.upenn.edu. Awards will be presented on June 7, 2010.

Gifts and contributions to the fund will mean that Marci’s legacy continues, reaching into the classrooms and sustaining and honoring teachers. As a past award recipient, I intend to honor the spirit of paying it forward and contribute to the fund.

For additional information contact:

Marci Resnick Teacher Fund
c/o Philadelphia Writing Project
4201 Spruce Street, Building 1921
Philadelphia, PA 19104-7499
Phone: 215-898-1919

El Centro: Trying to ‘ignite learning’

2010-04-01T16:46:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

With a scented candle, a couch, and tables, the classroom has the ambiance of a cozy living room.

Ten students are discussing the characters and scenes for their advisory project, a play about teen issues, with their advisor Khara Schonfeld and a visiting theater professional.

One student, Mary Cruz Gonzalez, is nervous. “Do I have to do this in front of people?”

Schonfeld reassures her. “Mary, I believe you can do it. It is your time.”

With a few furniture moves, the classroom becomes a rehearsal stage. The boys improvise a scene on peer pressure; the girls shout out suggestions.

El Centro de Estudiantes, on the second floor of a former Catholic school near Norris Square in Kensington, opened in September as a partnership between Big Picture Learning and Congreso de Latinos Unidos. With approximately 150 students, El Centro is one of six new accelerated schools this year.

Big Picture, a nonprofit organization, has established its project-based learning model in more than 60 schools in the U.S. and internationally, with the motto “One student at a time.”

“The project-based approach is about meeting kids where they are,” said David Bromley, executive director of Big Picture Philadelphia. “It’s finding out what their passions and interests are, but also their strengths and need areas.”

The students, Bromley said, “through no fault of their own, have struggled severely in their past educational experience.” Most come with low literacy and math skills. Many of the boys have juvenile court records; many girls are pregnant or young mothers.

At El Centro, they write and act in plays, make documentaries, chronicle neighborhood change, and work at neighborhood businesses and organizations.

Maria Guaranda, 17, dropped out of a disciplinary school a year and a half ago. She’s found a direction at El Centro.

“We work at our own pace and we pick our own projects,” Guaranda said. “If I want to do a project about my mom, I can do a project about my mom. I just have to make sure that I include math, reading, and social studies.”

Students at El Centro spend three days a week in school and two days at internships. “I like working with youth so for my internship I’m … over at the Attic, which is a youth center,” Guaranda said.

Other students are at child care centers, hospitals, recording studios, auto body shops, gyms, and bike shops. “We’re about finding anything to ignite learning,” Bromley said.

Advisors, as the teachers are called, build trust with their students. “The teachers are not just your teachers in school; they are like your second parent,” Guaranda said. Each advisor is certified in one content area and stays with the same group of 15 students until graduation. The advisors support each other in teaching all subjects.

Principal Laura Davis worked for three years on Capitol Hill before getting a degree in education. Prior to joining Big Picture Philadelphia, she worked as a middle school teacher and founding advisor for a Big Picture school in Nashville.

Over the summer, she and her staff went to community groups, set up tables outside stores, and knocked on doors in Kensington to recruit students. There is one admissions requirement – attend an orientation or open house.

“In order for students to be successful in this type of school model, students and parents must believe in [its] philosophy,” she said.

Agatha Kofa, 17, dropped out of Lincoln High School after giving birth to her daughter. Unable to afford Catholic school, she enrolled in El Centro a month after it opened.

“At first it was hard ‘cause we [my teacher and I] argued a lot,” Kofa said. But her advisor taught Kofa how to be less confrontational, and she is on track to graduate in approximately a year.

If all goes well, she will leave with a diploma and experience in her field of interest, film. She is working on a video about her classmates’ future goals.

Back in Schonfeld’s room, Kofa’s classmates Ricky Rosario and Victor Rivera, drawing on their daily journals, are deep into their peer pressure scene. Rivera, playing a drug dealer, is trying to convince Rosario to “have his back” on the corner.

Rosario hesitates. He’s caught between his friend and his desire to stay out of trouble.

“I don’t want to go to jail.” He walks away.

At the final schoolwide performance several weeks later, students cheered and wanted more.

“The other kids in the school really liked it because it was issues from their lives,” Schonfeld said. “It was a triumph for us.”

New paths to a diploma

2010-03-31T17:44:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

A look at the raw dropout numbers is almost as chilling today as it was five years ago when a citywide campaign now called Project U-Turn took on the challenge of publicizing and addressing this epidemic in Philadelphia.

Citywide, only 56 percent of students who started high school in 2005 graduated on time in 2009.

The graduation rate for that class will grow by several points as additional students persist and earn their diplomas after five or six years. But still, nearly 40 percent of each class fails to graduate even after six years.

Following several years of upward movement in graduation rates, the most recent data show a leveling off – there is no steady, sustained progress yet. While public awareness of the dropout epidemic has grown, we still have miles to go in treating it.

What Philadelphia can point to, after a lot of hard work in the past year, is a coherent set of initiatives that are showing signs of re-engaging adolescent youth.

A broad array of alternative programs is now available for re-connecting young people who were not making it in traditional high schools. There’s been a major expansion in the number of slots for returning students in accelerated high schools, designed for those who stopped attending and have earned only a few credits. These small, alternative schools are run by outside providers under contract with the School District.

Students in accelerated programs are finding more personalized learning environments and stronger student supports than are available in most large neighborhood high schools. The result is improved attendance and a safer and more positive school climate.

Steering students to these second-chance schools is the nation’s first Re-engagement Center, an entry point for young people who want to find a path to a diploma but need some guidance. In less than two years, 4,000 individuals have gone to the center to try to reconnect with an academic program. Word of mouth is strong, and demand is still outstripping the supply of open school slots.

The jury is still out, however, on whether these new schools are producing graduates in significant numbers and teaching the skills young people need to succeed after high school. We should know soon; current contracts with accelerated school providers include detailed accountability provisions that can provide meaningful evaluation data.

Along with this growing network of alternative schools, it’s hopeful that an infusion of state and federal funds this year has allowed Superintendent Ackerman to ratchet up key supports to help students stay on track: smaller class sizes in early grades, a sorely needed expansion in counseling services, and a restoration of art and music to many schools, to name a few.

The new alternative schools are not a cure-all for the dropout crisis. There is no escaping the need for early intervention with struggling students before they start failing and lose interest in school. Teaching literacy skills early is key. Many of the students who show up at the Re-engagement Center or alternative programs are reading at a 3rd or 4th grade level.

These interventions urgently need to be coupled with significant reorganization of the comprehensive high schools that continue to hemorrhage students. It’s not clear that the “turnaround” models proposed for high schools, such as Ackerman’s Promise Academy blueprint, address the extent to which the student experience at these schools must be reshaped.

With an array of alternative approaches, let us seize the opportunity to evaluate them closely and decide which ideas are worthy of wider adoption.

Connecting the disconnected

2010-03-31T17:43:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Demetrius Newton is sitting up straight in a chair at the District’s Re-engagement Center. He’s making eye contact with Bill Simon, one of the center’s three caseworkers, and answering every question clearly and thoughtfully.

Newton is 20 years old, and for the last 18 months, “all day, every day” his friends and family have been bugging him to go back to school. So, now he’s making the effort.

“But it’s been a struggle,” he says, ticking off a list of obstacles that he thinks stand between him and a diploma.

He cites the age limit imposed by traditional public schools that makes him too old to enroll and the credit requirements of alternative schools, which Newton says for some out-of-school youth mean having to “find a school on your own and pay for it.”

Newton was dismissed from Shallcross, one of the District’s disciplinary schools, as a result of verbal confrontations with staff. A counselor there told him about the Re-engagement Center, located on the first floor of District headquarters.

In collaboration with city government and local nonprofits, the District opened the Re-engagement Center in May 2008, the first of its kind in the country. That year, according to state data, 6,000 students dropped out of Philadelphia’s public schools, and the center was hailed locally and nationally as a valuable tool in helping to get these youth reconnected to their education. It is a key component in Mayor Michael Nutter’s plan to boost Philadelphia’s graduation rate from 60 percent to 80 percent by 2014.

Since its opening, about 4,000 former students have visited the center and nearly 2,800 have been placed in a variety of schools and programs, including accelerated schools, EOPs (Educational Options Programs), the Gateway to College program at Community College of Philadelphia, GED programs, literacy programs, online learning centers, Job Corps, charter schools, and comprehensive high schools. (see chart).

Like Newton, many of those who come to the center are over-age and under-credited, so it’s no surprise that as of November 2009, only 21 had earned diplomas, one for every 200 students who passed through the center’s doors during its first 18 months.

Newton had only 4.5 of the necessary 23.5 credits when coming to the center. He took the required assessment tests, and learned that his reading and math skills qualified him for an accelerated program at a school in the Northeast or one in Germantown.

Newton chooses a program at a charter school in Germantown because it’s close to home, so Simon calls the school to schedule an interview.

“I think you’re going to do well,” the caseworker tells Newton. “But it’s a zero-tolerance situation [so] you can’t be missing class or acting out.”

Newton has two weeks to wait to see if he is accepted. While he can expect calls from his caseworker over the next few months to check in on his progress, Simon points out that it will be up to him to stick with the program.

A slow climb

The city’s Chief Education Officer Lori Shorr says the center shows progress where there was none before.

“We’re moving the needle,” she says, adding that while there is no indication how many students are on track to earning their diplomas, she expects the center’s graduation numbers to jump significantly in the months to come.

“If we’re looking at 40 [graduates] this time next year, then I think we’ll need to go back [and re-work the program],” she says. “At the end of the day, it’s all about the numbers.”

Meanwhile, the District is taking other steps to boost graduation rates. District officials say they’ve added 1,000 new slots in the popular accelerated high schools, cutting the wait list from 1,200 to about 500, and have opened a satellite center at 4224 North Front Street in the Hunting Park section of North Philadelphia, an area that has provided the original Re-engagement Center with over a third of its visitors.

The satellite center is open one day a week, but in May it will operate full time with two on-site caseworkers. District officials say they hope the newest location will boost the overall number of students served. Predominantly Latino neighborhoods nearby have some of the city’s highest dropout rates.

There are no plans to add caseworkers at the main center, but Shorr says the city is looking at ways to build networks of adult volunteers to coach youth through the re-engagement process.

Shorr says the center has now resolved most of the data-sharing and staffing issues that surfaced during its inaugural year.

Still, “I can’t imagine there’s not room for improvement,” she says.

An increasing number of students coming through the center can’t read well enough to earn a diploma. Center staff tell students that accelerated programs require at least a 4th grade reading level.

There are some literacy programs for such students. In fact, about 5 percent of the total number of the center’s visitors have been referred to so-called “skill-building” courses that focus on basic literacy, but Simon says there aren’t nearly enough of them.

What isn’t a problem is demand. The center depends on only word-of-mouth referrals from school counselors and students’ friends and families. On any given day, it may host 50 to 60 students.

Zamir Dukes of North Philadelphia walked into the center on the advice of a friend.

“My ‘old head’ told me that I need a diploma,” says Dukes of his 19-year-old friend Ish.

“He’s like my big brother, and he didn’t graduate.”

Dukes, 15, was kicked out of three schools for fighting, but finds that despite his disciplinary problems, he is still eligible for a computer-based learning program that could allow him to graduate on time.

Making a case to reconnect

Simon can relate to most of the students that come through the center’s doors. Although now a caseworker, 40 years ago he was a dropout.

“I was 17 years old, and I had a brand-new baby,” he recalls. “So I went to work on Erie Avenue at a knitting mill. But my mother and my father saw fit to ambush me one day. And when your mother cries, you don’t say no.”

Simon says that “90 percent of the youth come in ready to continue their education,” and on a busy day he’ll see over a dozen students.

He often shares his personal experiences with students to help make a case for reconnection, but then tells them to make good use of available resources, ask questions no matter how simple they may seem, and plan to work hard.

“They think it’s like the old days, where you can talk to one person and leave with books, a classroom seat, and a roster [of classes] that’s accurate to your needs,” he says.

“They actually believe that if they spent two years in [foster care] in Lackawanna County, their transcript will be sent here. They don’t understand how they’ve got zero credits in Philly.”

To get students back on track, Simon first unravels whatever red tape entangles them. Some students are on probation and have judicial orders to comply with. The vast majority, Simon says, have open files with the Department of Human Services (DHS), which may be trying to address anything from homelessness to drug addiction to child care.

Many students still have one of the District’s Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), legally binding documents that require the District to provide counseling or other assistance. But IEPs are sometimes years old and carry demands with which accelerated programs can’t comply.

It’s the caseworker’s job to help resolve any conflicting issues while connecting students with helpful resources. And that’s been made easier with the coordination of computer systems between the District and agencies that it relies on to help place students.

Still, a student’s initiative is what matters most.

Caseworkers say the assertive and persistent students stand the best chance of getting what they need and that there is little time to track down those who drift away.

Demetrius Newton says he has learned his lesson about drifting and now wants to take control of his life.

“If you take that time off, two things are gonna happen – either you’re not going to want to go back, or your brain is not going to be in shape,” he says.

“School prepares you for the outside world, [so] I want to graduate for myself.”

Corrective Reading raising questions

2010-02-28T18:15:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

I think if you asked them, most teachers would say that in addition to having their students excel in their studies, they would hope that they also feel empowered. In our daily interactions with students and in our lesson planning, we attempt to validate students’ experiences, affirm their identities and build trust in order to forge authentic relationships that allow us to teach them well.

Do we fall short some days? Absolutely. But the intent and the purpose of making real connections with students so that they can make real connections with their learning is there. Lately, I have been grappling with finding the intent and purpose behind the Corrective Reading initiative taking place in classrooms all across our city.

As I understand it, Corrective Reading is a direct instruction phonics program that promotes word and sound recognition, involves student repetition of words in a “call and response” format and requires the teacher to follow a scripted lesson plan and to use a snap, pencil tap or dog clicker to mark the rhythm of the lesson. I also understand that it was introduced in all the empowerment schools this fall and has been mandated for increasingly longer amounts of time since, now filling all literacy and math blocks and being reinforced in science and social studies classrooms (replacing science and social studies lessons).

Despite the very real issue of students reading below grade level and the necessity to be successful on the PSSAs, I have some questions about this particular intervention.

First, it concerns me that the program teaches reading fluency as separate from reading comprehension. As literacy teachers know, decoding instruction cannot be divorced from understanding material and strategies must be provided for both. I also have my doubts about how this program will actually lead to success on the PSSA, considering the test includes full reading passages that require students to understand context clues and make inferences – not just repeat and recognize word patterns. Finally, it concerns me that this program has been deemed best suited for students in schools which have been identified as requiring “empowerment” and “corrective action,” language which I find troubling in and of itself.

In addition to the questions this program raises for me in terms of student growth, I also worry about how teachers are being affected. My greatest concern is that schools will not be able to retain teachers who are required to ignore the humanity of their students and themselves in favor of a script and a dog clicker. Above all else, teaching requires the cultivation of a human relationship. To reduce the art of teaching and learning to discrete word lists must be demoralizing for both students and teachers.

Students reading behind grade level is a serious issue in our schools and one that cannot be ignored. However, there are other strategies available to promote literacy achievement. Literacy instruction has the potential to be empowering and critically engaging for all students.

There’s been some discussion here of the problem already. In future posts, I plan to chronicle some alternative strategies for literacy instruction going on in real classrooms across the city. I encourage other teachers to post their suggestions and strategies as well.

Corrective Reading, Math stir teacher debate

2010-01-20T12:06:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

A controversial initiative by the Ackerman administration this school year has been the introduction of Corrective Reading and Math, two scripted remedial programs which are being employed in the so-called Empowerment Schools.

Many teachers, while recognizing remediation is clearly needed, question both the content of these programs and the manner in which they are being implemented.

A full treatment of this topic is goes well beyond what can be done in a single blog post, but my hope is that this can launch a conversation in which teachers, as well as parents and students, will contribute and offer a more complete picture.

More then ten years ago my school created a special remedial class that employed Corrective Reading. We selected regular education students who were more than three years behind in reading, and placed them in this class. At the end of the year, the results were truly remarkable. Students who had stumbled and hesitated over text now were fluent and confident “readers." There was only one problem. When you asked them questions about what they had read, they were completely baffled.

The relationship between decoding and understanding text (or in the case of math the relationship between computation and grasping mathematical concepts) has been the subject of long and intense debate. But there does seem to be something of a consensus that these elements cannot be taught in isolation from each other. Critics of Corrective Reading and Math argue that is precisely what these programs do. The first two levels of Corrective Reading are devoted to decoding. Students must test out of these to move to level C, where comprehension is taught.

One teacher, in talking about Corrective Math, pointed out that the program actually contradicts what students are supposed to be learning in the regular curriculum. For several years the District has used Everyday Math and Math in Context in the elementary schools. These programs emphasize multiple approaches to problem-solving, including using different algorithms to do math operations, while Corrective Math prohibits using any algorithm other than the one it teaches.

Math concepts are dumbed down, creating serious contradictions. The same teacher gave this example: "When describing a multiplication fact family, students learn that the number in the box is the ‘big number’ and the numbers outside the bracket are the ‘small numbers.’ Students learn that ‘when you multiply the two small numbers, you end up with the big number.’ This becomes completely problematic when fractions and decimals are introduced."

Another issue is the highly scripted nature of these programs. As one upper grade math teacher put it: “Teachers must use the script and are chastised for deviating from that script. There is no room for student questions. There is no room for student inquiry. Both students and teachers must assume a robotic position during CR/CM instruction”.

In speaking with teachers, I have heard mixed reports about the degree of student engagement in this process. Some teachers say that at least in Corrective Reading students are on task and apparently enjoy the activities while others report students are bored and restive. With Corrective Math, the disengagement seems much more pronounced.

One teacher observed that ELL students, some of whom have been exposed to the program earlier, seem relatively more engaged by Corrective Reading. The same teacher also related that a significant number of students were alienated by the program and cut the classes. One student complained that the call and response mode of instruction “treated us like dogs.” Pavlov would probably have agreed.

Perhaps this is related to how the program is being implemented. In the Empowerment Schools students who may have some deficits, but can function in the regular math and literacy program, are lumped together with those who are so far behind that they need some intervention. These students are not only compelled to participate in instruction that has little value for them, they also miss half of the regular instruction.

A teacher described it this way: “Empowerment School students are getting half of what other students are getting. Non-Empowerment School students receive 90 minutes of meaningful higher-level math and reading instruction per day … Empowerment School students receive half of that… Yet, Empowerment School students must take the same standardized tests as non-Empowerment School students – the same benchmark tests, the same predictive tests, the same PSSA – and are expected to perform at the same levels as non-Empowerment School students. Empowerment Schools have been designed to fail. Non-Empowerment Schools have been designed to succeed. Philadelphia now has a two-tiered education system."

Teachers and principals as well have cited concerns about special education students being out of compliance with their IEPs as a consequence of roster shifts required by implementing the programs. In elementary schools the instructional time lost in breaking the math and literacy periods in half and cycling students between classrooms is another issue. One teacher reported the instructional time he actually had for Math in Context was 25 minutes a day.

And, once again, we have a program that was selected and implemented without any engagement of classroom teachers. Remediation is clearly a need in a system in which so many students are so far behind, but doing it right is a difficult question that demands a broad discussion.

A public process and debate might have yielded a better approach. I don’t think it could have given us anything worse than this.

You bring out the Latin-Caribbean in me…

2009-12-08T14:22:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Why should I teach a predominately African American class about Latin-Caribbean culture?

My school, like many schools in Philadelphia is racially isolated. Consequently, tensions exist regarding meeting the School District’s expectation of promoting multicultural studies.

According to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group in the greater Philadelphia area, with over 129,000 in the city. Puerto Ricans are the largest Latino group with an estimated 91,527 residents. Of the School District’s more than 190,000 students, Latino students represent close to 17% of the total population, while African American, White, and Asian students make up 62%, 13%, and 6%, respectively. But many African American and Latino students seem generally isolated from each other in Philadelphia schools, despite the fact that they share lots of common historical and popular cultural connections.

The School District of Philadelphia’s curriculum encourages teaching about diverse cultures. In particular, the sixth grade social studies curriculum covers the Western Hemisphere, which includes the history, geography, and culture of people from Latin America and the Caribbean.

My students and I have been involved in an inquiry project that explores the connections between Latin-Caribbean and African American cultures. Through completing an I Search personal narrative research project about the connections between Latin-Caribbeans and African Americans, my students are discovering they are influenced by the same kinds of music, dances, games, fashion, and political and popular cultural patterns.

Some students discovered that similar housing, employment, and educational discrimination of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans gave rise to the popular urban, hip-hop- inspired reggaeton music.

I was pleased with the poetry my students composed that embeds some of the new things that they learned. Their poems were inspired by excerpts of Sandra Cisneros, "You Bring out the Mexican in Me." This lesson was adapted from my Yale National Initiative, Latino cultures curriculum unit, and from the selection "You Bring out the Latino in Me” from the anthology, City Of One : Young Writers Speak To The World written by youth between the ages 9-23.

Prior to composing their poems, my students worked in unison reading groups to do a close reading of Cisneros poem. This poem created a dynamic buzz in the classroom. I overheard one reading group questioning why Cisneros would “surrender my one-woman house. / Allow you red wine in bed, / even with my vintage lace linen.”

Makilah, a precocious 11-year-old, wondered out loud, “Is the speaker being nasty in this poem?" Harun, a charming yet bravado-filled boy, countered that “the poet is using metaphors." He remembered we learned about metaphors before.

After reading, debating, and playing around with the poem, I turned my students loose. I told them to use Cisneros’s poem as their muse; reflect on their inquiry and learning about Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban culture; and compose their own “You Bring out the Latin-Caribbean in Me" poem.

The maturity, passion, and insight from my students’ poetry was inspiring. Zahfir, an intense but playful boy, whose peers at times mistake for an elementary student, wrote a powerhouse: "You Bring out the Puerto Rican in Me" poem. He mused “The way you walk, and talk is so lovely. / No matter what we’ll stay together. / If we don’t we’ll be the opposite of better…”

Harun offered a possible reflection of imperialism in his "You Bring out the Puerto Rican in Me" poem: “… I can feel the pain from our countries. / They wanted to kill each other. / It does not matter that our nations almost killed us / But we should live in harmony together… I will always love you. Just like the spices we export and import / You are my beautiful Puerto Rican wild flower."

Khyre rendered a muse to the Latin beat, in his "You Bring out the Latin in Me" poem, “when you move to the groove of the rhythm, / and dance to the dance to the beat, / of that smooth music, / you bring out the Latin in me…”

Precious, an 8th grader, former student, and prolific member of Beeber’s Poetry Café Club, decided to compose a bilingual poem, “Te Quiero / I Love You” and recited the poem to my 6th grade students to encourage them as we culminated our inquiry and performance project.

Spanish is not offered at my school, or for enough public Philadelphia middle school students. The initiative showed by Precious, who is not Spanish-speaking, demonstrates that world languages should be taught at all school levels, not just high school.

We plan to showcase our poetry along with present a Latin/Caribbean-inspired dance demonstration at our upcoming holiday assembly program. It should be wonderful to bring the celebration of life En La Ciudad de Filadelfia.

A selection of students’ "You Bring Out the Latin Caribbean" poems are available here. Readers are encouraged to provide feedback and encouragement to my budding scholars and poets.

More, better care

2009-09-22T12:53:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The last six years have seen a transformation of child care and early education in Philadelphia.

With prodding and money from the state, quality has been significantly upgraded, access has been expanded, and thousands of child care practitioners have improved their own education and skills, which is better for children. A growing cadre of parents has become more aware of how to find, choose, and evaluate the services that exist.

“We know that the best long-term strategy in getting our kids where they need to be academically over the long term is the quality of the early childhood experience,” said Sharon Tucker, deputy education advisor to Mayor Nutter.

At the same time, huge hurdles remain to ensure that all the city’s children have the opportunity to enter kindergarten ready to learn and become literate by grade three – a key predictor of future success.

For example, despite the increase in program quality and access, early education options in the city remain a confusing hodgepodge. While spending for child care subsidies has gone up, less than half the eligible low-income families actually get them, and thousands are on waiting lists. Underutilization is a problem for the federally supported Early Intervention program, which targets children of all income levels who have significant developmental delays.

“That means that the School District and any other early education provider who’s picking up a child at [age] three or four will get that child already behind unnecessarily because the child has never received the federally funded early stimulation that’s available,” said Donald Schwarz, deputy mayor for health and opportunity. “The issue is assuring that families know about this, that people can identify developmental problems and then get children into the service.”

Administratively, the city and District still largely operate in parallel worlds, rarely working across agencies to direct services where they are most needed. For instance, the city provides a number of services for children up to three years old, including Early Intervention, while the District deals with older children.

With help from the Mayor’s Early Learning Advisory Committee, officials are trying to overcome that divide, but the effort is just getting off the ground and has been hampered by the budget uncertainty at both the city and state levels.

“We’re trying really hard to coordinate [services] with the School District because otherwise we have redundancy,” Schwarz said. “And the cost of redundancy means that fewer children are served.”

A call to action

Drawing on a compelling body of research from economists, child development experts, and scientists demonstrating the importance of early brain growth, reformers across the spectrum have made early childhood education a national rallying point.

The arguments are both practical and moral: business leaders cite economic research on long-term cost benefits of quality preschool, while neighborhood organizations and advocates for low-income families look at its role in increasing educational opportunity.

Gov. Rendell jumped on that bandwagon, and since 2003, Pennsylvania has moved from the bottom third of states investing in high quality preschool to one of the nation’s leaders in that area. It has significantly boosted child care subsidies for low-income parents, set higher standards for preschools and child care, and created programs to assist with quality improvement.

In this process, everyone from legislators to parents to child care workers has had to change how they think about early child development.

“The paradigm shift that has been taking place is [seeing] that early childhood education is very much a part of the whole education continuum in a child’s life,” said Sharon Easterling, director of the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children (DVAEYC), an advocacy group. “That’s what Pennsylvania has done.”

For Philadelphia, this shift has meant a significant increase in how many young children receive quality early childhood education. The numbers attending District-run programs, including Head Start and Pre-K Counts, have jumped from about 6,000 in 2002-03 to nearly 10,000 today.

Through Pre-K Counts, the District formed partnerships with more than 50 community-based centers and helped many of them make the leap from custodial care to providing education.

“When we first got involved with this work with the child care partners, the battle was convincing [some of] them that they were educators,” said Donna Piekarski, the District’s Director of Early Childhood. “It’s probably been some of the most rewarding work we’ve done, because when the light bulb goes on, the place takes off.”

Through Keystone STARS, these centers get help from the state to improve their management, finances, and educational quality. The centers are rated according to a STAR system on factors including staff credentials, professional development, financial management, and the educational environment. The state has also increased requirements for child care employees, requiring lead teachers to have at least a BA in early childhood and other workers a Child Development Associate degree.

One achievement of the Mayor’s Early Learning Advisory Committee was to get a $500,000 grant to help send child care providers to school to upgrade their skills.

Many options, not enough slots

Today, there are more than 113,000 children aged 0 to 5 in Philadelphia. Nearly three-quarters of them are poor enough to qualify for subsidized child care.

More than 30,000 children do receive subsidized care through the state’s Child Care Works program, up from 20,000 in 2005. And a higher proportion of those families are sending their children to centers – providers that are more likely to be licensed and regulated for quality – than to family child care homes.

But while the state has boosted the number of subsidies over the past several years, there are still not enough to serve all families who seek help. This year, 4,700 Philadelphia families are on the waiting list, meaning that they sought a subsidy after the money had run out.

“It’s a very difficult thing when you have to turn a parent away,” said Piekarski. “But it’s all fund-driven.”

But building political support for early childhood is still chancy; one of the biggest battlegrounds in the protracted state budget battle was over Gov. Rendell’s proposal to further increase child care subsidies, Pre-K Counts, and Keystone STARS (see early education funding story).

In Philadelphia, parents seeking services face such a tangle of options that it is hard to sort them out. District-run preschool comes in the guise of several different programs – Head Start, Pre-K Counts, Bright Futures, and Comprehensive Day Care – and parents who call the District seeking help get voice prompts asking them which one they want. Just finding the proper contact is daunting.

“We know we have some work to do in that area,” said Piekarski.

Many parents also don’t realize that a spot in preschool is not guaranteed, like it is in K-12.

“We have tremendous wait lists and disappointed parents and disappointed children,” Piekarski said. “I had one in my office yesterday. It was heartbreaking because all our slots are filled, and here’s the little boy. [His mother said,] ‘But I promised him he’s going to go to preschool this year.’”

Schwarz, Tucker, and Piekarski all said that they would like to see universal pre-K in the city within the next 10 years, meaning at the very least enough slots for all three- and four-year-olds to attend quality programs if they want to.

As part of her Imagine 2014 strategic plan for the District, Superintendent Arlene Ackerman has decided to open up child care centers in high schools, starting with one at Lincoln this year. She has also announced plans to set up early childhood resource centers around the city where parents can learn about available services. As yet, there is no timetable for opening the first of them nor is there a decision about where it will be, and the grim new budget reality complicates this plan.

Saving money in the long run

While the short-term funding picture is bleak, Schwarz pointed out that coordinating and enhancing services for young children has the potential to save taxpayer dollars in the long run. One of the best predictors of student graduation is whether a student is reading on grade level by 3rd grade.

Piekarski has data from testing of more than 10,000 kindergarteners on DIBELS, a major test of emergent literacy. Results show that those who went through formal child care are more likely to have sound and letter fluency than those who either went through informal care or none at all. In addition, pre-and post-testing of four year olds last year in District programs showed progress in areas of social and emotional development, language and literacy, mathematical and scientific thinking, and the arts.

At the same time, results on the District’s definitive test of literacy at the end of grade three are still troubling, having essentially remained flat for at least six years. According to the Developmental Reading Assessment, less than half – 48 percent – of 3rd graders were on grade level in 2009.

“We know that if children read at grade level in 3rd grade, all of the public sector investments that are required thereafter will be reduced, particularly the very expensive ones, including special education, imprisonment, complex behavioral health institution placement, and so forth,” said Schwarz. “And that’s probably most important to the future of the city.”

Virtual World, Meet the Classroom

2009-06-17T11:58:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

When I started college years ago, most people didn’t quite understand the World Wide Web: we logged on at the library, inadvertently sending mail from other people’s Hotmail accounts. Without the benefit of Google, our web surfing was limited to bidding on Ebay and the occasional foray onto music video Web sites. The web was still novelty—interesting, but not altogether very useful.

But now the Web has gotten bigger—or smaller. As the popularity of blogging, chat rooms, and internet forums expands, we are able to make connections across philosophical boundaries and continents. These days, some folks spend as much time in the virtual world as in the real world, and teachers are no exception. The virtual world has become more than just child’s play.

I got introduced to my first virtual classroom through a program called Tutor.com, an online tutoring service that serves students all over the US. Housed primarily in public libraries, Tutor.com offers help with assignments for elementary students through college-age.

The gist of it is this: students log on anonymously and are connected to a tutor within a few seconds. On their screen, they each can see a whiteboard and several buttons. There is also a chat window—much like those they’d see in Yahoo Chat or AIM—where students can describe how they’d like to be assisted for that session.

Tutors take several rigorous tests before being hired into a subject area or areas, and many tutors are former classroom teachers themselves.

It sounds sterile, but learning happens! That makes me wonder: what can technology add to teaching and learning?

Think about it: our public schools are largely segregated, overcrowded, and expensive. Could virtual classrooms be a way to level the playing field? Even without ditching traditional schooling altogether, can schools improve by merging students’ and teachers’ virtual worlds with their real lives?

Jim Brown is exploring just that. He and others use social networking sites like MySpace to complicate students’ thinking about book characters or think about issues such as artistic property and public/private academic lives.

Can you see the World Wide Web as a tool for teaching? Weigh in here. You can also email me at aleshaj@thenotebook.org.

Remembering Marci Resnick

2007-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Long-time Philadelphia elementary school teacher and teacher educator Marci Resnick, a key figure in the Philadelphia Writing Project and later the National Writing Project, died in May of lung cancer.

Building upon a successful career as a teacher at Mitchell and Emlen Elementary schools, her work grew to reach and influence many teachers in Philadelphia and across the country. She came to the Philadelphia Writing Project for a summer institute and joined it as a teacher consultant in 1990, while continuing to work on her own teaching and writing about her work. In 1995, she became director of the Philadelphia Writing Project.

“Marci was good at whatever she did,” said friend and colleague Dina Portnoy, a veteran teacher. “Everything that she did was about making our world better and asking hard questions about improving the lives of those who live with poverty and racism; helping children become thoughtful, literate, and engaged; making the public school system better and the work of teachers in Philadelphia and everywhere respected and fulfilling.”

A fund in her name will support the work of elementary school teachers in urban schools. Donations can be sent to the Marci Resnick Teacher Fund, c/o Philadelphia Writing Project, 4201 Spruce Street, Building 1921, Philadelphia, PA 19104. For more information, call 215-898-1919.

Born Learning

2006-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Many more ideas about how to encourage language, literacy, and math skills are offered through a website called “Born Learning,” (www.bornlearning.org), part of a national public awareness campaign of United Way of America and the Ad Council. Born Learning promotes the idea that “Every moment is a teaching moment in the life of a child.” To receive a Fun Activity Guide, in English or Spanish, from United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, call 866-677-4558.

Task force wants supports for Latino preschoolers

2006-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Recent research shows that in Philadelphia’s Latino community there are lower-than-average rates of participation in early childhood programs. A task force on early education issues has been meeting with the School District to identify gaps in services for young Latino children and to push for greater access to “culturally grounded” quality early childhood programs.

About 15 percent of Philadelphia’s public school students are Latino. The District’s Office of Early Childhood encouraged the formation of the Philadelphia Latino Task Force on Early Childhood Education & Head Start Equity in response to research showing Latino students have stronger literacy skills in kindergarten and better school attendance if they have preschool experience.

The Latino Task Force published an initial report with findings and recommendations last September. After a meeting in February with top District administrators including CEO Paul Vallas, Task Force co-chairs Johnny Irizarry of the Lighthouse and Pat DeCarlo of Norris Square Civic Association cited “significant progress” and said the Task Force would continue to work in partnership with the District.

A February 21 letter from the Task Force co-chairs to Vallas acknowledged several recent District commitments. These include targeting most new state funding for Head Start to the Latino community, creating a new career ladder program for bilingual District paraprofessionals, and developing dual language proficiency programs at several schools.

Irizarry said staff quality issues were a focus of the February meeting, such as the fact that the School District’s 6,000-student Head Start program had only one bilingual teacher citywide. The District has begun partnering with community-based organizations to create new Head Start programs with bilingual staff.

The Task Force urged the District to step up its recruitment and hiring of “fully bilingual, culturally informed, sensitive, well-trained personnel” across the District.

Another recommendation of the Task Force is greater community involvement in educational programming for Latino children. Its report proposed “Town Hall Meetings” that would address issues facing young children and discuss benefits of early care and education programs.

For information or to join the Task Force, contact Johnny Irizarry at 215-425-7800 or jirizarry@lighthse.net. Irizarry is executive director of the Lighthouse, which runs a nationally accredited bilingual child care center.

Teachers say NCLB’s impact reaches K and pre-K classrooms

2006-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Most of us have fond memories of kindergarten. There were toys to play with, snacks and naps, and everybody seemed pretty relaxed.

But with the pressures generated by the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB), the toys are increasingly being put away. Pressures to raise student achievement have made kindergarten – and even pre-K classrooms – more stressful places.

While school readiness remains the overarching goal, emphasis has shifted to more explicit literacy instruction. Much of what was traditionally taught in first grade is now realized in kindergarten. And high-stakes testing has reached down into pre-K, with all Head Start children now given a test, called the National Reporting System, on vocabulary, letter recognition, and early math skills.

Head Start – standards and testing

Theresa Willer-Grinkewicz, a Head Start teacher and academic coach with two decades of classroom experience in Philadelphia, sees the coming of clear standards for early childhood education as a necessary and positive development. “The curriculum gets teachers focused on what kids need to know,” she said.

But Willer-Grinkewicz also sees in its implementation many practices that she characterizes as developmentally inappropriate. She cites as examples eliminating dramatic play, children sitting in circles for more than 45 minutes, and teachers complaining that children “talk too much.”

Willer-Grinkewicz and many researchers believe that children learn through active engagement with their environment, a process that involves varied physical activity, problem solving, and negotiating with other children and adults.

Willer-Grinkewicz also echoes many critics who doubt that the National Reporting System renders an accurate assessment of preschool learning because of the great fluctuation in development at this age. The data from this test are used to evaluate the effectiveness of Head Start programs.

Speaking about her own experience in administering the test, Willer-Grinkewicz says children often don’t attend to the question but go off in directions that are of interest to them.

“You might show them a group of letters, for example, and ask them which one they recognize, and they will ask why some other letter is not there or explain that the letter C is the first letter in their name even if C is not on the list,” she explains.

Kindergarten teachers face new pressures

In an interview with Julia de Burgos School kindergarten teachers Hillary Oyer and Betsy Ortiz, joined by Liz Gomez, first grade and former kindergarten teacher, all three describe how even in kindergarten the bar is being raised for literacy instruction. Students are regularly assessed to gauge their reading levels and grouped accordingly.

“Last year we had to get the children to ‘Level C’ by the end of the year. Now we have to get them to ‘Level D,’” Ortiz observes.

This expectation for kindergartners, which teachers are hearing from administrators, goes well beyond the stated objectives in the School District’s Core Curriculum, which calls for kindergartners to be at Level B. According to the teachers, moving from Level C to D is a big jump. A typical text at Level C consists of a picture and one sentence with two or three sight words and one word where students need to use decoding strategies or the picture to figure it out. Level D involves independent decoding and more sight words, while introducing vowels, chunks, and blends.

The impetus for including more advanced material in kindergarten is the requirements of first grade. First graders must reach Level J by the end of the year, which involves reading texts with several paragraphs.

“There is no way they reach Level J without being at D by the end of kindergarten,” first grade teacher Gomez says. Given these objectives, the Core Curriculum for kindergarten is actually not rigorous enough, she maintains.

These teachers think the more ambitious literacy standards for kindergarten may be achievable for most of their students but only if other problems like absenteeism, large class sizes, and lack of pre-K experience are addressed. Gomez adds that 60 percent of her last kindergarten class was on grade level at the end of the year.

Those children who go to kindergarten certainly are entering first grade with greater literacy readiness than in the past (Gomez said about 10 percent of her first graders had no kindergarten). But in the process, kindergarten has become, for both teachers and students, more like the environment in the upper grades, with more stress and perhaps fewer “teachable moments.”

“Teachers are stressed out trying to stay on task, stay on schedule, and meet all the demands of the curriculum,” says Gomez, “so when children want to explore a topic a little bit more, you have to constantly halt that. There’s never a time to just relax and let them be kids and enjoy them.”

Ortiz added, “The kids get frustrated. Some fall asleep. There’s no more nap time.”

Better get used to it?

In the newspaper Education Week, education writer Alfie Kohn describes how many have resigned themselves to the test-driven changes: "Child development experts are nearly unanimous in denouncing the use of standardized testing with young children. One Iowa principal conceded that many teachers too consider it ‘insane’ to subject first graders to a four-and-a-half hour test. However, she adds, “They need to get used to it.”

But others defend the traditional play-based curriculum with its emphasis on problem-solving and teaching social skills as the best way to prepare children for more formal instruction and facilitate their intellectual and emotional development.

This is a debate that is bound to continue as NCLB plays out in our schools and classrooms.

Chalkbeat

Pennsylvania will require schools to use evidence-based reading curriculum

Pennsylvania will require schools to report on literacy progress

After a $25 million curriculum overhaul, Philly’s reading scores have fallen

New reading curriculum exposed weak points, officials say

Other districts struggle to boost student reading scores

This Philly school turned a dusty storage room into a new library

Pennsylvania lawmakers push for new science of reading laws

Pennsylvania reading advocates want state to move faster

Philadelphia tutoring program focused on student literacy cut by DOGE

Lawsuits say gutting AmeriCorps will have ‘irreparable’ impacts

Citing Pennsylvania students’ low reading scores, advocates form coalition to improve literacy

New English curriculum shows science of reading’s promise but can leave Philly teachers frazzled

New curriculum represents latest pendulum swing for teachers

Curriculum gets good reviews for older grades, student engagement

Alliance to bring back Philadelphia school libraries gets $150,000 federal grant

New Philadelphia curriculum goes all in on science of reading

‘More continuity for teachers and for kids’

Science of reading curriculum isn’t a cure-all

New campaign to improve Philly children’s reading skills relies on time-tested song

New initiative challenges Philly third graders to read 20 books in 20 weeks

Philadelphia officials optimistic about early literacy efforts despite disappointing test scores

Early literacy efforts focus on coaches and curriculum

Two Philly fathers aim to hook students on reading early

Just 32% of Philadelphia third graders read on grade level. Freedom Schools Literacy Academy could be a model to change that.

Educators and advocates fear pandemic will widen Philadelphia’s literacy gaps

How to address the COVID-19 slide in early literacy? Philadelphia teachers, experts talk effective reading strategies

Mighty Writers programs are more popular than ever

District expands program that gives books to young readers

Degrees are important, but so are skills

Aligning schools to employers’ needs

Need for remediation in college

New ‘Good to Great’ grants seek to boost early literacy

Marciene Mattleman, ‘a force of nature, an immovable object, an irresistible force,’ dies at 89

Why millions of kids can’t read, and what better teaching can do about it

Read the rest of this story at WHYY News

For Halloween, students at Sheridan Elementary hold a literacy parade

Making a chore educational: Grocery store experiment aims to inspire learning

Read the rest of this story at WHYY News

Read to Succeed program back for a sixth year

As Philly kids learn to read, ‘coaches’ help them along

Read the rest of this story at WHYY News

The bottom rung of U.S. education: Stories from an adult literacy class

Read the rest of this story at Keystone Crossroads

Eight schools get upgrades to early childhood classrooms

More than 800 teachers take part in third annual summer literacy institute

Company co-founded by Philly teacher targets books to kids

Game-changer

A support for teachers

New books arrive to help improve literacy in young students

Kids share their favorite summer reading titles with the mayor

K-3 teachers spend week learning literacy strategies

Are education grads ready to teach early literacy?

Lacking a librarian, a school tries to promote reading

A book fair with multicultural appeal

A challenging path to affordable, accessible pre-K in Philadelphia

Funding the expansion

The quality issue

Winter break is here, but the reading continues

Teachers put their literacy training to work at Taylor Elementary

What’s new: Classroom libraries and report cards

READ! by 4th director explains goals of campaign

Resources for families: A Philadelphia literacy guide

Dyslexia and learning disabilities

Vision care

Child care

Literacy tips and advice

Book recommendations

Books online and in town

Literacy is fun

Literacy in action

For quality pre-K, look for more than the ABCs

Foundations for quality care

A focus on communication

Teacher and child

How to judge the quality of pre-K programs

The cost of high quality

Improved instruction is at the heart of literacy push

Progress and challenges

A structured approach