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County shifts 20 teachers in move to step up reading education

By KATE CERVE kcerve@beaufortgazette.com 843-986-5517

Published Saturday, April 18, 2009 in The Island Packet | 426 Words | news

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More than 20 Beaufort County teachers will move into literacy teaching and coaching jobs this fall as part of a districtwide plan to step up reading education.
Beaufort County School District already has 37 reading teachers and coaches, but a high percentage of students still aren't meeting state reading standards.
Nearly half of county second-graders scored in the lowest quartile on the reading portion of the Measures of Academic Progress test last year.
"Our children were just not reading ... as close to their grade level as they needed to be," said Terry Hitch, principal of Beaufort Elementary School. "It disturbed us greatly."
Teaching literacy is difficult because when students start school they are reading at varying levels, said Mary Seamon, district instructional services officer.
"There are some children who will come to school ready to learn to read, and some who come already reading," Seamon said. "Some come and they're really not ready until second grade."
Until now, most schools used a national program called Reading Recovery, a short-term intervention using one-on-one tutoring for low-achieving first-graders.
Across the state, Reading Recovery's success rate is about 57 percent.
In Beaufort County, however, the program's success rate was 39 percent last year, Seamon said.
Under the new model, schools will begin reading intervention earlier and provide better follow-up and tutoring for students who still need extra help after first grade.
Several schools will move away from costly one-on-one instruction -- except in cases where students must have individual help to succeed -- and instead work with struggling readers in small groups.
Elementary schools will be staffed with at least one literacy teacher per 300 students. Middle schools will have one per 500 students.
A literacy coach at each school will work with classroom teachers to use the best strategies for teaching reading across the curriculum.
Principals say moving away from the traditional Reading Recovery model will give them flexibility to serve more students and expand reading interventions from first grade to all grades.
Jay Parks, principal at Michael C. Riley Elementary School in Bluffton, predicts the school's three literacy teachers will be able to reach between 75 and 100 students per year. The current Reading Recovery teacher now works with about 10 students per year.
"I think this is an initiative that just makes so much sense," he said. "If we can get all the boys and girls reading in the primary grades, we have a much better chance of making sure these students are successful in school later on."