School Pushes Reading,
Writing, Reform
Sciences Shelved in Effort to Boost Students
to 'No Child' Standards By LINDA PERLSTEIN, Washington Post Staff Writer
Here is 9-year-old Zulma Berrios's take on the school
day: "In the morning we read. Then we go to Mrs. Witthaus and read. Then after
lunch we read. Then we read some more."
Zulma has left out math, recess and the daily hour of
such offerings as art and PE. But otherwise, her summary is accurate.
In Katherine Segal's third-grade class at Highland Elementary
School in Wheaton, much of the science and social studies curricula has
been glossed over, or skipped entirely, because Zulma and other students
must be taught -- soon -- to read better.
Those kinds of tradeoffs are being made across the nation,
primarily at public schools such as Highland that have low test scores and
large numbers of poor children. In recent years -- particularly since the
No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001 -- many schools have shifted to
a fervent focus on reading, writing and math, bringing in program after
program in search of what might help struggling students.
A look inside one school shows how life has changed in
the new era of educational accountability. Highland students encounter a constant
series of assessments. The school might lose a popular bilingual program
because it does not meet the terms of a federal grant. And if test scores
fail to rise, Highland faces strict sanctions, including the possibility
of a state takeover in 2006.
The daily hour once devoted to science and social studies
has been replaced by writing for second- and third-graders. Reading has
been expanded to 90 minutes a day for all the school's 770 students. Students
who began the year behind their grade level in reading might get three hours
a day.
"Once they learn the fundamentals of reading, writing
and math, they can pick up science and social studies on the double-quick,"
said Jerry D. Weast, superintendent of Montgomery County schools. "You're
not going to be a scientist if you can't read."
Yet teachers worry that two strata of schools are being
created, one in which students gain broad knowledge and the groundwork for
becoming scientists, and another in which children will, in some ways, be
left behind. Scott Steffan, the Highland staff member in charge of teachers'
professional growth, has young children who will soon be educated seven miles
away, in a less impoverished part of the county. "When my kids go to school,"
he said, "they're going to get a totally different education."
President Bush has pressed hard for education reform because,
he has said, far too many children leave school unequipped to succeed and
"there must be consequences for schools that won't teach and won't change."
Highland teaches, and Highland changes. And regardless
of what turns up on state exam results this summer, the school is awash in
consequences.
The Mandate for Reading
Class with Ms. Segal, a fifth-year teacher, begins each morning with a county-mandated
90 minutes of reading.
For 50 minutes, Tracey Witthaus pulls out a small group
of third-graders -- including Zulma -- for Soar to Success, an intensive
reading-comprehension program used at many county schools. Instead of studying
school desegregation and the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education,
Zulma's group finishes a book about a grasshopper storm and practices reading
strategies: Predict, summarize, question, clarify.
"Clarify," said Zulma, who began the year reading at the
late first-grade level. "When I come to a word I don't know, I look for chunks
I do. Reminded. Re-mine-ded."
"Clarify," said Zulma's classmate Erick Diaz, 9, who began
the year reading at a second-grade level. "When I come to a word I don't
know, I look for chunks I do. Hailstones. Hail-stone-s."
Erick's mother, Ana, is pleased with his progress. But
she said she had no idea the class did so little science, in which she thinks
Erick would excel. And she had no idea that the reading interventions would
take him out of class so much.
The Prince George's County elementary school that Zulma
left two years ago gave no indication that her reading was subpar, her mother
said. To Zinia Berrios, it's more important that Zulma is reading well than
learning science or social studies -- there's time for that later.
The school year is nearly over, and none of Segal's third-graders
has compared the climates of Mexico and Washington. They've picked up facts
on countries' geographic characteristics and natural resources through books
they read, but they studied neither concept in depth. They haven't studied
sound dynamics, nor Asia's past, nor many other elements of the county's
third-grade curricula for science and social studies.
Segal did lead her 27 students on a cursory swing through
plant development; they grew plants. They spent one day taking fingerprints
-- their only other science experiment -- but never explored the rest of
the crime lab unit, which is designed to teach over several weeks the concepts
of patterns, evidence and inference.
In 2008, the No Child Left Behind Act adds science to
the reading and math tests that states must give. School system administrators
have said science can be woven into reading lessons or taught to groups
of students who already read well.
Highland teachers have said that it's unfeasible given
the pressures the staff faces and that it's not the message they're hearing.
"The word is out that they have to focus on reading only. And math," said
Leslie Zimmerman, Highland's coordinator of the gifted and talented program.
Segal weaves in what she can; her students, the ones not
out of the room in reading intervention, spent a good deal of May researching
Asia. It's not that the climate at Highland is entirely rigid. Students
perform, color, collaborate.
Zulma clearly enjoys the small reading groups, and she
enjoys improving. When she isn't chosen to read, she loses her usually imperial
air and sinks her head into her arms. Zinia Barrios said she now sees her
daughter pick up a book to read, just for fun.
After lunch, recess and math, most of Segal's students
work on writing while others, including Erick and Zulma, read lists of words
in unison with Mrs. Witthaus in a program called Horizons. Rosie Ramirez,
Highland's longtime principal, said she hates seeing teachers pulled from
other duties and using a Horizons script that tells them even when to say,
"Good job."
But for students behind in reading, Ramirez said, "what's
happening at that time will probably be more effective than what's happening
in the classroom."
For all the interventions and extra resources that Highland
receives -- from the federal government and the county -- because of its
poverty rate, the school's scores on standardized reading tests have been
consistently below average. Students have scored between the 40th and 50th
national percentile in reading, below many county schools with similar demographics
that have improved their scores in recent years.
Most Highland students are poor and Hispanic; about 30
percent of them scored proficient last year on Maryland's reading test. Three
in 10 have limited English skills; of those students, 9 percent scored proficient.
Bush has said every student should read at grade level
by the end of third grade.
"Anyone who came to this school and sat down for a while
would say that's a very high expectation," Segal said.
Testing for Skills
"This afternoon," Segal tells her fidgety students, "we're going to be reading
a story from the Images magazine and doing some multiple-choice questions
and short answers."
The new wave of intensive reading instruction relies on
keeping tabs on students' skills. Three times a year, Highland's third-graders
take the Images reading test, one of the many measures of their abilities.
Erick and Zulma's reading also is assessed three times in Horizons. About
14 times, it's assessed in Soar for Success. Three times, the whole class
gets another, thorough in-house reading evaluation.
And over two days in the spring, every third-grader takes
the annual Maryland School Assessment in reading -- the exam by which the
school's progress is judged under No Child Left Behind.
When the Images test starts, Erick is preoccupied with
having just been called "bighead" by a classmate. He turns around and reads
the bulletin board. He yawns.
Nearby, Zulma is stumped. The story packs a lot of information
into 12 paragraphs: the origins of baseball, the evolution of the mitt,
the coeducation of Little League. Zulma knows soccer and basketball, but
not baseball.
Most towns have some kind of organized leagues
like Little League. In which sentence does the word organized mean the same
thing as in the sentence above?
A. The desks were organized in rows.
B. The teacher has her files organized in her
desk drawer.
C. The musicians played in organized bands for
the concert.
D. He organized his collection of baseball cards.
This doesn't make sense to Zulma. She knows "organized,"
but can't distinguish any difference in its meaning among the sentences.
Segal has tried to prepare her students for those types
of questions and uses the testing language throughout the year. She has taught
them multiple-choice skills and how to write inside tiny answer boxes. But
she wonders why a test question can't just say, "What did you learn?" instead
of, "Explain how your knowledge of baseball has remained the same or changed."
When she grades her students' answers, Segal is not surprised
that they range from incomprehensible to irrelevant to, rarely, acceptable.
"If it was one question, it would be okay," Segal said. "But they're overwhelmed
with what they have to do at one time."
County teachers frequently receive printouts showing in
what areas the class is lacking. For some assessments, teachers listen to
each student read for 30 minutes, creating hours that the class gets no instruction.
The scrutiny is designed to make sure nobody's deficiencies
go unnoticed. One of the most revolutionary aspects of No Child Left Behind
is the requirement that states not only give students yearly exams, but
also that they break down results by student population, such as Hispanic,
or special education. If any group misses the target, the whole school does.
Each year that a school falls short, it experiences a
new set of services and sanctions. Already, Highland and 44 other schools
in the Washington area must pay for any child whose family requests a transfer
to a better-scoring school and for any low-income student to be tutored.
If Highland finds out next month that its scores on the
Maryland School Assessments have fallen short again -- short of a target
that gets higher every year, as the federal law demands -- the school could
be subject to a new curriculum, an extended school year or less autonomy.
And in 2006, Highland could be taken over by the state, and the staff could
be replaced.
Meanwhile, staff members said they aren't sure what they
might be doing wrong.
The U.S. Department of Education Web site states, "Annual
testing provides teachers with a great deal of information." But when the
2003 Maryland scores arrived at Highland in August, the only information
was the percentage, in each group, of students who were proficient. Not enough
poor, Hispanic and limited-English students made it. The data weren't broken
down into "vocabulary" or "comprehension" -- just "reading."
"What does this tell me about what we could do better?"
Highland reading specialist Gloria Gonzalez asked. "You're shooting in the
dark."
A few weeks ago, Highland received a letter from Weast
saying that the same set of test results merited the school a $4,000 reward
for progress.
A Community Mobilized
On May 12, President Bush appeared in Bethesda to promote the $5 billion
Reading First federal grant program as a way to provide curricula that the
administration has deemed scientifically proven to work. Five miles away,
the Highland school community scrambled to deflect Reading First.
After receiving a Reading First grant, Maryland chose
nine counties for the program, and Montgomery County chose four of its poorest,
lowest-scoring schools. Next year, each must devote its 90-minute reading
block and hour of intervention solely to a curriculum called Nation's Choice.
Every school must deliver the instruction the same way,
in English only. So Highland has been told that it can't use, among other
initiatives, the dual-language program that many parents and staff consider
the school's jewel. Highland's dual-language teachers feel so strongly they
have said they'll leave if it is cut. They said the dual-language kids score
better in math than the rest of the school and finish second grade at a higher
reading level.
"If that's true," said county Deputy Superintendent Gregory
Thornton, "it certainly hasn't helped the aggregate [test scores] of the
school."
Teachers try to discern where the decision is originating
so they can press their case. Parents begin meeting, too. Principal Ramirez
has never seen anything mobilize the community like this.
In the school library one evening, 40 parents, most of
them Spanish-speaking, devise a plan. They'll circulate petitions. They'll
talk with TeleFutura, a Spanish-language cable network. They'll show up at
the Board of Education. They'll fill out transfer forms as a statement --
not that they want to move their children out of Highland -- and they'll write
a letter.
One mother raises her hand. "Who should the letter be
addressed to?"
