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Every Child Will Read — We Guarantee It Author: Wheaton, C., Kay, S. Publisher: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) Publication Date: 1999 Journal: Educational Leadership Journal Volume: 57(2) Pages: 52-56 Full text available online at: http://www.ascd.org/cms/objectlib/ascdframeset/index.cfm?publication=http://www.ascd.org/publications/ed_lead/199910/wheaton.html Abstract (written by WestEd): The 1,000 Days to Success School Network started in 1998 with four California schools determined to make 100 percent of their students literate by the end of third grade. The schools were Scott Lane in Silicon Valley, Bret Harte and John C. Fremont in Corcoran, and Center Street in Los Angeles, with this article highlighting Scott Lane School. With the exception of Center Street, all schools had high-poverty students and English learners. Many kindergarten students came to school never having been read to; some didn't even know how to hold a book. Accountability through action research was the road to success for these schools, which tracked student progress in short intervals and kept parents and the community informed. Administrators and teachers regularly looked at data and discussed effective instruction and intervention. Action research is the framework for hypothesizing about an effective strategy, implementing it, gathering and analyzing results, making adjustments, and gathering and analyzing data again. The primary source of data came from Marie Clay's letter identification, concepts about print, and running records assessments (Clay is the author of Language Observation Survey, associated with Reading Recovery and running records). These schools did not adopt a "comprehensive franchise reading program." Instead, they investigated and integrated best practices, which consisted of effective practices they already were doing, ideas from staff, and research-based strategies from experts and pertinent literature. Many strategies came from the California Early Literacy Learning training program, cross-age tutoring, and community volunteers through an adopt-a-kid program. Study team meetings with parents were held weekly. In short, these schools incrementally developed powerful, local knowledge bases of highly effective pedagogy about early literacy. All schools adopted an uninterrupted morning literacy block and had an onsite literacy coordinator who coached at teachers' requests. As a result, Scott Lane School moved from the bottom of the district to fourth in the district in the first year. At Center Street, 53 percent of kindergarten and first grade students were at or above the benchmark in the fall. After the winter assessment, 72 percent were reading at or above grade level. Doing whatever it takes became the mantra of every teacher, the promise to every student; it became the heart of the school culture. |
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