And scores were comparable in the lower grades, with a near 90 percent of third graders in 2000 reading right on target. This school, with 360 pre-K through second graders, was one of two pilot sites. Somerset's reading crisis, he concluded, was more a problem of a poorly designed system than poor instruction. The schools had a weak program for teaching basic phonemic awareness. Teachers were getting mixed messages about right reading methods, and they tended to teach in large groups.
Kids read texts assigned by grade instead of reading ability because of publisher recommendations.
And, says Dewitz, the schools had no assessment system for tracking results. The research-based intervention plan that resulted is a hybrid of reading recovery and phonics. Change took place at every level. How staff was apportioned was addressed early on. Before that, we didn't even have one for the entire county.