Teaching Reading

Well, tomorrow is the first day of a long awaited six week vacation. Thursday ended my third year as the teacher of the high school summer Reading Academy. This program serves special education students who need assistance in improving their reading skills. They have taught me so much for which I am so thankful.

As a novice “reading teacher” I got to wondering about reading programs sanctioned by the state. Giving credit where credit is due (and this is difficult for me) then-Governor Bush’s administration mandated the Texas Reading Initiative (http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/reading/) in 1996 to combat the state’s 25% failure rate on state reading tests. A full frontal attack on illiteracy resulted in several programs that are notable and sustainable. The announcement of initial organizations agreement to approaching the battle was published in 1997 as Good Practices: Implications for Reading Instruction (http://www.eric.ed.gov/for the original). This contains a good overview of what the strategy for fighting illiteracy would look like.

This initial effort gave birth to several programs from Reading Academies to Reading Summits to Reading Spotlight Schools, to name a few. TEA teamed up with focused organizations that continue to play off one another for synergistically step changes in good practices. One only has to visit the website of Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts (http://www.texasreading.org/utcrla/) for proof.

Texas’ report card, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ ) shows 41% of fourth grade students in 2003 as below basics in reading. By 2007, those same students as eighth graders posted 27% below basics in reading. Seems like progress to me, but I’m not an educational researcher. I’m just a teacher with the desire to help one student at a time enjoy reading.

(Note: Bookbird clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com (http://discoveryeducation.com/).