From: Cayata Dixon -------------------- City schools to put reading before all -------------------- 2 hours devoted to subject daily By Ray Quintanilla, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter Stephanie Banchero contributed to this report August 17, 2001 Chicago public elementary school pupils will spend two hours every day reading and each school will have a dedicated "reading specialist" under a new plan to elevate stagnant reading scores. In his first major academic initiative since taking the helm of the Chicago Public Schools, Arne Duncan unveiled the program Thursday to address what is considered the most fundamental problem in the system: Only one-third of the children read at grade level. Mayor Richard Daley changed the leadership of the schools this summer and brought Duncan aboard largely because he was dissatisfied with the rate of improvements in reading scores. Without the ability to read, pupils fall behind in every other subject, experts agree. The new plan seeks to sharpen the focus on reading and establish a common framework for how it will be taught in all the city's public schools. "This has never been done before," Duncan said. "What you have had in the past are a lot of unfocused programs. We have never had a coherent literacy plan." The $20 million plan, in the works since Daley appointed Duncan to the post in June, is to be funded by a mix of public and private dollars from foundations across the city. The plan requires every elementary school to spend two hours a day teaching reading. High school students who lag in reading scores--fewer than one-third of freshmen and sophomores read at grade level--will also have two hours of reading classes every day. The central office also will provide up to $7 million in seed money for every elementary school to buy age-appropriate books to create their own libraries in the classrooms. Recruitment of about 125 reading specialists is under way, Duncan said. These staffers--many of whom would have master's degrees or special credentials in the field of reading--are expected to work directly with children and teachers, he said. "The people we are going to send to the schools are not going to be the principal's best friend or some Joe Blow, either," Duncan said. "This is going to be an elite corps of people focused on one subject." Under the new plan, the system's reading efforts would be refocused around a few basic principles, including comprehension and writing. Duncan said he also has allocated $3 million for teacher training. Some local and national reading experts offered cautious praise for the plan. "It looks like a nice balanced plan that has all the components of a good reading program," said Barbara Bowman, president of the Erikson Institute for Advanced Study on Child Development. "However, it's still light on details and its success will depend, to a large extent, on how it is put into practice." Bowman, who served on the U.S. Department of Education's Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children, said she is pleased the plan calls for integrating reading comprehension with vocabulary and writing. "For young children to learn to read, they need all of these components," Bowman said. Catherine Snow, a professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, said teacher training is the key. Hiring reading specialists and retraining teachers is a good start, she said. But pupils' reading skills will not improve without a well-thought-out professional development program. "Teachers are the only mechanism we have for ensuring kids learn," said Snow, who chaired the prevention of reading difficulties panel. "Schools have 5-, 6- and 7-year-olds who do not know how to read, and the only way to improve the outcomes is to start by having teachers who know how to teach reading." A year ago this week, Paul Vallas, Duncan's predecessor as CEO of public schools, unveiled a program with similar elements, though it targeted only the worst performing schools. The Vallas initiative called for every student in a low-performing school to get 90 minutes of reading. It also called for reducing class sizes by hiring nearly 1,000 new teachers, about 700 of them former educators pulled out of retirement. Officials were unclear Thursday about how much of that program was implemented. Deborah Walsh, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, said she applauded Duncan's hard-line approach to teaching reading. But few teachers were consulted before Duncan's plan was unveiled, and she wasn't aware of any teachers who played a key role in shaping it. In some cases, she said, the ideas Duncan calls new are already in place and showing results. "The [components] he is pushing to teach reading are being used," said Walsh, a former 8th-grade teacher at Marquette Elementary School. "Knowledge, fluency and comprehension are just the basics of reading." Copyright (c) 2001, Chicago Tribune -------------------- Subscribe to the Chicago Tribune Today! Good Eating, Your Place, and TV Week -- just a few reasons to get the Chicago Tribune at home every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Subscribe by calling 1-800-TRIBUNE (1-800-874-2863) or online at chicagotribune.com/subscribe -- This is the CPS Science Teacher List. To unsubscribe, send a message to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For more information: <http://home.sprintmail.com/~mikelach/subscribe.html>. To search the archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/science%40lists.csi.cps.k12.il.us/>
