Sources to Improve Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary

1

SOURCES TO IMPROVE READING

Sources to Improve Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary

Denise Hall

PEDU 625: School Finance

Longwood University

May 6, 2017

Sources to Improve Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary

One of the biggest educational concerns regarding the students in Mecklenburg County is the independent reading level of the students. All four of the elementary schools in the county are on the schoolwide model for Title I funding, so many supports to improve reading are in place from the very beginning of each student’s education. However, as they progress through school, the supports for reading diminish, and the gap begins to widen. If the student is identified as having a disability, then a 504 plan or Individualized Education Plan (IEP) can provide accommodations and modifications for the student. Generally speaking, students receive very little reading instruction once they exit elementary school but are relied on by their teachers to read for understanding on a regular basis. These gaps are causing problems with student motivation and behavior. Examining the current resources the county uses and then determining if there are additional resources the county needs to purchase is an important step to narrowing the gap between current student reading performance and where the students should be reading.

The sources of funding available to address these needs greatly depends on when the need is being addressed. Title II and Title VI funds are to be used for professional development, not materials or textbooks. For intervention time at the elementary schools, Title I money is available. Title I funding, federal money that comes with many rules, can only be used at the elementary level in Mecklenburg County. The budget for FY 2017 was 1.5 million and is projected to be 1.8 million for FY 2018. The majority of that money goes to pay the salaries of the Director of Elementary Instruction, the Title I teachers, and pre-K teachers. A stipulation of obtaining the money is that 1% of the budget must be set aside to spend on parental involvement (T. Rogers, personal communication, 27 Apr. 2017). Title I funds must also be offered to private school students based on the family income being in the poverty level (Virginia Department of Education). There are currently no private school students receiving Title I money, but if they were to have qualifying students, they are not held to spending the money on those qualifying students. Once the money goes to the private school, they may use it for anyone (T. Rogers, personal communication, 27 Apr. 2017). Since poverty level is the qualifying factor, all four of our elementary schools use the school wide model rather than the targeted assistance model. Based on total enrollment, when the funds are divided among the four schools, Clarksville Elementary ends up receiving the least money, so the director supplements their funds with Title VI money (T. Rogers, personal communication, 27 Apr. 2017). Programs are per student, based on diagnostic results, and instruction based. Data is used to drive decisions.

Since the elementary schools receive Title I funding, there are extra supports in place for the struggling students. The core reading program used by the elementary schools for the past two years is Journeys. Core programs must be paid for through Textbook funding rather than Title I, which can only purchase supplementary materials (T. Rogers, personal communication, 27 Apr. 2017). Since some of the teachers within the schools, typically the special education teachers, use Corrective Reading as their core program, it was also purchased through Textbooks.Each school was able to choose a research-based intervention program to be purchased through Title I. Three of the schools chose Sidewalks and one of the school chose LLI (Leveled Literacy Intervention) (T. Rogers, personal communication, 27 Apr. 2017).

Student progress is measured a variety of ways. PALs and PALs testing, which is typically done on grades K – 2, is state funded. Another diagnostic test that is used county wide through the elementary and middle school levels on every student is iReady, which is a web based program that has the diagnostic piece and the instruction piece. It costs $5.70 per student for the diagnostic and $22.80 per student. The principals are in charge of determining how many instruction licenses they need for their schools based on who they will require to use it. This serves as an example of horizontal equity since the per-pupil expenditure is the same for every student within the county (Owings & Kaplan, 2012). Once the numbers are collected from the principals, the numbers are given to the company and the county is billed in one lump sum rather than a per-school basis (T. Rogers, personal communication, 27 Apr. 2017).

By monitoring student progress, informed decisions can be made about where the students are making gains and where they are facing challenges. This data drives the decisions made by the Director of Elementary Education along with the principals to determine which supplemental materials would be appropriate for the students. A goal for next year involves having the teachers get observed by an instructional coach to receive targeted feedback as to where the lessons can be improved. They will then model what they would like to see the teachers doing with the students, and then after a period of time to implement it, they would do a follow-up observation. This idea was born from the fact that teachers are surrounded by instructional materials but do not always know the best way to utilize what they already have. While the director is thankful for more money in the upcoming year budget for Title I, she sees that not all of the problems we experience in our schools are due to lack of funding (T. Rogers, personal communication, 27 Apr. 2017).

The biggest non-financial issue that all schools face, regardless of level, is time. Some students, especially those with a reading disability like dyslexia, need more time and more opportunities to practice their skills so they do not lose the progress they have made. Another issue with time comes from mismanagement of it. The fact that students have been conditioned to think that once they take their SOL that they are done learning for the year wastes almost three weeks of instruction time for some of the students. For a kid who naturally learns, it presents no issue. For a student that constantly struggles and needs all of the class time to be learning time, it can have a negative impact on what little progress may have been made throughout the year. Another real factor about time is that even though the student schedule states that Reading class is 90 minutes long, quite often the teacher only spends 20 minutes doing guided reading with small groups. Not all of that 20 minutes is dedicated to reading, since there are pre-reading activities, such as activating prior knowledge and other questioning that happens throughout the reading. Increasing the actual time spent on independent reading is one of the goals for next year (T. Rogers, personal communication, 27 Apr. 2017).

Most of the resources to help struggling readers in the county are funded either through Textbooks, Title I, or the individual school fund, but sometimes materials can be purchased with Special Education funds. This would be an instance where vertical equity would apply since the funding would be provided based on the student needs rather than making it fair for each school (Owings& Kaplan, 2012). If teachers identified students who required a multi-sensory phonics based reading program to address dyslexia, funding for those materials could be purchased through the Special Education department. In addition to the materials, the staff using it would need to be trained. One of our elementary schools has a Reading Specialist who will use Orton-Gillingham with a target group of students next year since she went through the training offered by the state. That same school will do a pilot program of Lexia with 13 – 14 students for Kindergarten and 1st graders in the bottom 50% (T. Rogers, personal communication, 27 Apr. 2017).

The middle schools have a remediation block that gives students time built into the day to receive remediation. There are some students who use the time for math remediation on, but there are other students who have continued with the Corrective Reading program and others who are given time to work on iReady. The biggest concern about the time given to the students to work on iReady is the fact that some teachers are stricter about enforcing it than others. What is designed to be remediation time in the master schedule sometimes looks more like “free time” in the actual classroom if the students are not closely monitored and held accountable to make progress.

The high schools are also trying to address the needs of the students coming to them reading at an elementary school level. One of the high schools gives reading remediation time by having the students go to the library to work on iReady. They are given a set schedule, and their progress is monitored by the librarian (C. Scichilone, personal communication, 1 May 2017). The other high school reinstated the Developmental Reading class. The main criteria for being put in the class was a failing score on the Grade 8 SOL. Three sections of the class, each with over 20 students enrolled, were offered in the fall semester. The teachers used the Pearson Reading Level Indicator at the beginning and end of the semester to find that some students improved by three grade levels and others had made no progress at all (C. Scichilone, personal communication, 1 May 2017).

Ms. Scichilone reported that she felt she had the materials needed to make her class successful. She made arrangements with administration to order high interest, low level books to give her students a chance to participate in group reading activities without having to stumble over every other word. She also utilized Interactive Vocabulary by Amy E Olsen which is a series that only presents ten vocabulary words at a time and always within the context of a topic and in reading passages.Newsela, a web-based news site for students, was another resource she loved using in class because she could manipulate the reading level of the passage to meet the individual need of each student. This increased independent reading time on pertinent topics, and the students were even able to do a research assignment using Newsela (C. Scichilone, personal communication, 1 May 2017). She stated that while she would like to learn more about the barriers that some of her students are experiencing because of dyslexia, attention issues, behavior issues, or some other factors, she felt that it would be most useful for her to know about the resources that might already be available to schools to minimum or no cost (C. Scichilone, personal communication, 1 May 2017). She believes that decreasing class size to fewer than ten students would have the biggest impact on the students because they all require such individualized instruction.

Because so many of the struggling readers at the high school level are also identified with a disability, understanding the impact of the disability and what can be used to help these students are definite areas of need.Many of our general education teachers are the ones teaching these students and have a difficult time modifying grade level texts to the level of the students’ independent reading levels. “The report of the National Research Council pointed out that these concerns about literacy derive not from declining levels of literacy in our schools but rather from recognition that the demands for high levels of literacy are rapidly accelerating in our society (Torgensen, 2004). Since that report in 2004, the levels of accessibility have also increased, making it easier for the students who learn how to use accommodations for their reading struggles to carry those over into adult life. There are many online resources and apps that can be helpful for students with dyslexia and learning disabilities. The University of Michigan has a websitethat offers a collection of resources and articles that support these needs (The Regents, 2017). Yale School of Medicine has a remarkable pool of resources on their website The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity. The very title reinforces that dyslexia does not have to be a disabling condition. There are misconceptions about dyslexia that this website systematically addresses. It also offers support to a variety of stakeholders: people with dyslexia, parents, and educators (Yale, 2017). Even the state of Virginia has recently acknowledged how important dyslexia is by passing a law to require adding the completion of a training module on dyslexia awareness as a requirement for licensure (Roach, 2017). Having a deeper knowledge base and access to supportive resources, especially for English teachers, could make the difference between the student feeling frustrated and feeling supported.

Mecklenburg County has many wonderful resources available to support the students with their reading struggles. The most important first step is to use what is already available. If additional resources are needed to supplement, there is money in the Title I and Textbook fund to provide those resources. Another area of need is consistency. If the teachers are instructed to have the students work on iReady for 30 minutes each day, they should be held accountable to show that the students are doing so. Providing professional development opportunities directed at working with struggling readers is one of the other things funded through Title money. Typically, teachers who show interest and are available are allowed to attend conferences on these topics. While there is already money set aside for parent involvement, the teachers need continue to encourage reinforcement of skills at home. It may be beneficial to hold parent workshops to teach the parents how to work with their children to reinforce learning at home.

Finally, the schools do need to address specific reading needs in the smallest group size possible, even for the ones in high school. Unfortunately, the more funding the county loses because of a steady decrease in Average Daily Membership, the less money the county has to spend on teachers. Specific reading programs to address dyslexia, like Orton-Gillingham and the Wilson reading system, come with the related cost of training the personnel to use them.A real concern with providing this training is the need to get teachers who are committed to staying with the county long enough for it to be beneficial to train them. While these would be beneficial programs for our students with dyslexia, there would more issues finding the time and the teachers rather than the funding. Many of the solutions that can help our struggling readers will face the barrier of finding the time in the school day for the teachers to consistently address the issues our students face.

Reflection

The most interesting part of this project was gathering the different perspectives from people in different positions throughout the county as to why our children cannot read. The most notable aspect of this project is that the general opinion is not a lack of resources or money to purchase them but a lack of personnel, which could actually be considered the most expensive resource. Since the elementary schools in our county receive Title I money based on the school-wide model, the students have a variety of supports available to them and have time built in to their school day to receive additional reading instruction based on their needs. While there is still some intervention time at the middle school, it is not to the same degree as elementary. Finally, at the high school level, unless a student gets identified as needing a remedial class and the class is offered, there is no reading remediation available to the general student population. Any deficits the students have in reading when they enter high school are likely to still be with the student to some degree when he or she graduates.

The challenge presented to me through this project was the effort to connect it to finance. Title I money is utilized at the elementary school level, and all materials purchased with that money must stay at the school. Even the leveled readers that could actually get utilized if they were able to get sent up to the middle school level must stay in the elementary schools because they were purchased with Title I funds. While I understand that the money comes to us with rules that must be followed, it is a shame that the books are sitting unused rather than getting redistributed. That is just one example of how we are not fully utilizing the resources that are already available within our county. After interviewing a teacher who felt that her classroom needs were met when she made textbook requests, I was reassured that when presented with concrete reasons, some administrators will spend money to support their teachers and students. Overall, the biggest factor at play here, even though money is important, is time. There just does not seem to be enough hours in the day, even with after school remediation, to meet some of the student needs. So we must continue to try to use what we have in the most efficient way possible and JUST KEEP READING!