The governor proposes help for schools and individual students not performing up to snuff on the FCAT.
By DONNA WINCHESTER
Published January 18, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - Most Pinellas middle schools may be forced to add remedial reading programs in the fall unless their students show significant improvement on this year's Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
New legislation introduced Monday by Gov. Jeb Bush would require Florida middle schools to develop a rigorous reading program as part of their school improvement plan when fewer than three-quarters of the students are at grade level, which is defined as achieving a Level 3 on the reading portion of the FCAT.
The scores that would be taken into consideration would be those achieved this spring.
Based on sixth-grade scores in 2003, the initiative would affect all seven schools in south Pinellas: Azalea, Bay Point, Meadowlawn, Riviera, John Hopkins, Southside Fundamental and Tyrone. (Thurgood Marshall Fundamental became south Pinellas' eighth middle school in August.)
A more sweeping component of the Middle Grades Reform Act would require every sixth-grader who scores below a Level 3 to have a personalized plan to improve reading skills. The individualized plans would be developed after discussion with students, parents and teachers.
Kim McDougal, deputy chancellor for public schools, said the proposed legislation came from talks with district superintendents and former teachers of the year.
"We vetted this for three or four months and realized there really is a problem with middle schools," she said. "Everyone pretty much agreed that we couldn't wait to address it."
A comprehensive study to assess specific needs of middle school students will begin this summer when Education Commissioner Jim Horne and chancellor of K-12 education Jim Warford begin traveling the state to talk to "stakeholders," McDougal said.
Although the state will not dictate specific remedial plans, Bush plans to ask the Legislature during its spring session to spend an additional $21.4-million on Just Read, Florida!, an arm of the governor's office that assists teachers with reading and language arts programs. Part of the funding would let reading coaches be placed in 240 of the state's lowest-performing middle schools.
The reading coaches would provide on-site training for teachers, demonstrating research-based methods for raising student achievement, said Just Read, Florida! executive director Mary Laura Openshaw. Of all the remedial methods available, Openshaw thinks reading coaches are the most effective.
"Most people assume the language arts or English teachers can teach reading, but that's not necessarily the case," she said. "It's not the teachers' fault. They're trained to teach a course in literature, not the nuts and bolts of teaching a child to read."
When districts are offered the opportunity to place reading coaches in their schools, most opt to place them at the elementary level, Openshaw said. The assumption generally is that students learn to read through third grade, and read to learn from that point. Unfortunately, test scores of middle and high school students prove otherwise.
"The phrase we like to use is "A language meltdown can occur at any time,"' she said. "You cannot assume that a child who is at grade level will stay there."
While the first priority of the new legislation will be to improve proficiency of lowest-performing students, the plan does not stop there, Openshaw said.
"It's not just about getting a student from Level 1 to Level 2. It's about moving kids from Level 1 to Level 3, and moving those who are reading on grade level higher," she said.
Ironically, the three south Pinellas schools with the most sixth-graders reading below grade level last year - Azalea, Meadowlawn and Tyrone, with 53 percent, 60 percent and 61 percent, respectively - already have reading coaches. They are among five middle schools in the district that are in the second year of a remedial reading program that uses "teaching literacy coaches."
At Tyrone Middle School, former Largo Middle School reading teacher Sheila Devlin models techniques for teachers and then watches them as they work with their students. She critiques the teachers' methods and offers additional tips for making their approach more effective.
Periodic tests called Scholastic Reading Inventories indicate that the students' reading skills are improving, principal Stephanie Adkinson said, but she suspects that the improvement stems from an all-out effort than solely from the reading coaches.
The school uses Target on Reading, which combines small group work with a teacher and independent work on a computer and in a reading center.
Students participate in a "drop everything and read" initiative, which builds 20 minutes of reading into their day. Each classroom has its own small library, and students are encouraged to present talks on the books they read to their classmates.
Still, Adkinson said her school, which has one of the district's largest populations of special-needs students, would welcome any additional help.
"I think we're doing a good job, but when you have so many students who are needy, the more resources you have, the better off you'll be," she said.
Shelby Harvey, Pinellas' supervisor of middle school education, said she has not studied the details of the governor's proposal but agrees with Openshaw that middle school students sometimes fall between the cracks.
"Our philosophy in Pinellas County is that students need reading instruction all the way through high school," she said. "If this legislation will allow us to expand the coaching program in middle schools, I will be a very happy person."
