District reading programs measure up District reading programs measure up (July 09, 2004)

Intervention for elementary students faring well
by Teresa C. Brown

School board trustees reviewed with approval the district's Reading Intervention Programs, giving a nod of support to reading specialists throughout the district at the last board meeting.

The programs reviewed included Guided Reading, Systematic Instruction in Phoneme Awareness, Reciprocal Teaching, Comprehension Strategies, Read Naturally, Word Work, Barton Reading Program and Home Reading Program.

The staff recommended keeping all of the reading programs, said Cengiz Gulek, the district's director of Assessment and Evaluation. "You can see across all intervention strategies, students showed improvement," he reported.

The goal of all the programs is to intervene early and to accelerate students' reading level quickly. Students are placed in a reading intervention program based on several gauges, including district-wide internal assessments, state-wide standardized testing and teacher recommendation.

Barton Reading program, which uses an interactive, one-on-one tutoring strategy, has a different placement method that includes screening and specialized testing.

A total of 570 students, grades 1-5, were in one or more of the reading programs last academic year. Depending on the students' need, they were placed in a program or a combination of programs.

The most commonly used program, Guided Reading, had 546 students enrolled in it. In grade 2, 159 students enrolled in that program showed a 12.4 point improvement in reading level, from an initial assessment of 13.5 at the beginning of the 2003-04 academic year and spiking to 25.9 in the spring.

Across the board in all of the programs, the students' reading levels improved, Gulek said. Students in grades 1-3 were assessed at three different times throughout the academic year.

Likewise other assessments, including word recognition, phonemic awareness, fluency and spelling, reflected significant improvement.

For example, second-grade students in the Barton program gained a 2.3 point increase in spelling assessments, beginning at 5.0 and ending at 7.3.

"What really struck me was the importance of early intervention," said Trustee Steve Pulido. "The numbers impressed me."

In response to Trustee Kris Weaver's question if the reading programs were "recycling the same kids," Christina Clark, who manages the Barton Reading Program, told trustees there are about 70 students participating in Barton district-wide. "There are some students who are completing the program in its third year," she said, adding that about 50 percent are new to the program.

"I'm a great supporter of early intervention," said Trustee Gloria Fredette.

She also asked if the district could follow up of students' progress once they are out of the programs. That information is not available, Gulek said, because once students finish, their progress is no longer tracked as part of the program.

He also reported that the entire evaluation is on the school district's Web site, www.pleasanton.k12.ca.us.

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