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Meeting the reading challenge in low-income schools

By Dennis Sparks
RESULTS - October1998

The most pressing staff development challenge facing schools that serve this nation's poorest and neediest students is teaching these children to be successful readers in their first few years in school. Later success in all subjects depends on literacy skills, so falling behind in reading is a prescription for failure. Poor literacy skills not only take a heavy toll on young people, who are seldom able to overcome deficiencies once they fall behind, but they also burden the educational system, which must pay for special education placements, grade-level retention, and discipline referrals.

Schools that serve large numbers of low-income, transient, and language minority students face particular challenges in teaching all students to high standards. Fortunately, numerous examples exist of low income schools that have overcome these impediments. These schools are implementing powerful professional development programs focused on literacy, which are helping produce impressive learning gains for their students.

Take Montview Elementary School in Aurora, Colorado, one of the U.S. Department of Education's 1998 Model Professional Development Award recipients. Montview is typical of many low-income schools: 85 percent of its students qualify for a free or reduced lunch, 46 percent of its students are Hispanic, 27 percent African-American, 21 percent Caucasian, six percent Asian, and one percent Native American. Its transience rate during the 1996-97 school year was 126 percent.

While its challenges may be typical of such schools, Montview's professional development efforts in literacy are anything but business as usual. Montview's teachers are an integral part of all decision making and planning, including development of a "no excuses" philosophy that declares that all students will become readers and writers regardless of the challenges of poverty, limited English proficiency, and high transience. Through its partnership over the last six years with The Learning Network, teachers attend a four-day summer institute, receive weekly coaching and feedback from a teacher leader, and participate in frequent dialogue and reflection groups to develop literacy understandings which result in improved classroom practice.

Montview eliminated remedial reading teachers as part of its schoolwide Title I program, directing its resources instead to professional learning. Title I resources are supplemented by Goals 2000 funds and other modest grants.
Montview's results are noteworthy. In 1997, fourth grade scores on the Riverside Integrated Language Arts Performance Assessment, a standardized norm-referenced assessment, were at the 92nd percentile with no significant differences between ethnic and gender groups. As a result of the school's hard work, its language arts scores exceeded those in the district's more prosperous, stable schools.

Lessons from Montview
What lessons can we draw regarding success in reading from Montview and other such successful schools? High, uncompromising expectations for all students, sustained job-embedded professional learning, teacher leadership and collaboration, skillful administrators who maintain a focus on student learning, and partnerships are key elements of success.

"It's hard work," says principal Deborah Backus. "But, to meet these kids needs, we must develop teachers whose solid knowledge of the reading and writing processes guides their practice. We live by Margaret Mead's words: 'Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.' "

To read more about Montview and other winners of the U.S. Model Professional Development Awards, see the fall issue of the Journal of Staff Development.