‘Too much to learn’: Schools race to catch up kids’ reading

BIANCA VÁZQUEZ TONESS Associated Press

ATLANTA — Michael Crowder stood nervously at the front of his third grade classroom, his yellow polo shirt buttoned to the top.

“Give us some vowels,” said his teacher, La’Neeka Gilbert-Jackson. His eyes searched a chart, but he didn’t land on an answer. “Let’s help him out,” Gilbert-Jackson said.

“A-E-I-O-U,” the class said in unison.

Michael missed most of first grade, the foundational year for learning to read. It was the first fall of the COVID-19 pandemic, and for months Atlanta only offered school online. Michael’s mom had just had a baby, and there was no quiet place in their small apartment. He missed part of second grade, too. So, like most of his classmates at his Atlanta school, he isn’t reading at the level expected for a third grader.

That poses an urgent problem.

Third grade is the last chance for Michael and his classmates to master reading before they face more rigorous expectations. If the students don’t read fluently by the time this school year ends, research shows they’re less likely to complete high school. Pandemic-fueled school interruptions raised the stakes: Nationally, third graders lost more ground in reading than kids in older grades.

<p>Students answer questions Dec. 15, 2022, as they read a book with third grade teacher La'Neeka Gilbert-Jackson, back right, at Boyd Elementary School in Atlanta.</p>

Sharon Johnson, Associated Press

Students answer questions Dec. 15, 2022, as they read a book with third grade teacher La'Neeka Gilbert-Jackson, back right, at Boyd Elementary School in Atlanta.

To address learning loss, Atlanta has been one of the only cities in the country to add class time: 30 minutes a day for three years.

Gilbert-Jackson hopes it will be enough. She has raced to prepare her students for future classes, where reading well is a gateway to everything else.

“Yes, I work you hard,” she says about her students. “Because we have too much to learn.”

Before December vacation, the class was subdued and visibly tired but Gilbert-Jackson moved on with her lessons.

She reviewed suffixes, how to spell words ending in -ch, -tch, and how to make words plural. Some students had spellings memorized; for those who don’t, Gilbert-Jackson explained the rules. It’s a phonics-based program the district now mandates for all third graders, in line with science-backed curricula gaining momentum across the country.

It can be dry and tedious, replete with obscure jargon like “digraph” and “trigraph.” The strong readers nodded and responded, but the students still learning the basics looked lost.

To inject fun into the lesson, Gilbert-Jackson turned it into a quiz game.

“Teach,” Gilbert-Jackson called out. “How do you spell teach?”

Students chose between “teach” and “teatch.” Only half got it right.

<p>Michael Crowder, 11, right, reads to Tim McNeeley, left, during an after-school literacy program April 6 in Atlanta. McNeeley, director of the Atlanta-based Pure Hope Project, hosts the daily program for children in kindergarten through fifth grade.</p>

Alex Slitz, Associated Press

Michael Crowder, 11, right, reads to Tim McNeeley, left, during an after-school literacy program April 6 in Atlanta. McNeeley, director of the Atlanta-based Pure Hope Project, hosts the daily program for children in kindergarten through fifth grade.

As the first semester drew to a close, 14 of Gilbert-Jackson’s 19 students weren’t meeting expectations for reading. That included Michael.

Gilbert-Jackson has an important advantage: She taught most of her students in first grade and second grade, and followed them to third. She knows how much school many of them missed — and why. The strategy was adopted by Boyd Elementary to give students consistency through the crisis.

The long-term connection — or perhaps just the continuity of attending school daily — helped Michael start reading. At the end of first grade he knew two of the so-called “sight words” —”a” and “the.” By that point, first graders were expected to have memorized 200 of these high-frequency words.

Now, midway through third grade, he is reading like a mid-year first grader. It’s progress, Gilbert-Jackson says.

“I see a change in him,” says Michael’s stepfather, Rico Morton. “I feel like he has the potential to be someone.”

Gilbert-Jackson believes some parents were doing work for their children when school was online.

<p>Third-grade teaching assistant Keione Vance leads a reading session Dec. 15, 2022, with a small group of students at Boyd Elementary School in Atlanta.</p>

Sharon Johnson, Associated Press

Third-grade teaching assistant Keione Vance leads a reading session Dec. 15, 2022, with a small group of students at Boyd Elementary School in Atlanta.

On paper, Atlanta’ policy is to promote elementary school students who “master” reading, math and other subjects. How often the district, which did not respond to requests for data, holds students back is unclear.

Atlanta students can attend four weeks of summer school, but that likely won’t be enough to catch them up.

Gilbert-Jackson started reaching out to students’ parents to talk about how their children were progressing. The parents of some struggling readers don’t return her calls.

One day in late February, Gilbert-Jackson asked her students to revise a narrative they’d each been writing about a glowing rock.

One new student, a boy with a 100-watt smile, had transferred from another school. Instead of taking out his narrative, he chose a book from the class library and started writing. He presented his notebook to Keione Vance, the teacher’s assistant.

“I know you just copied it,” she said.

She asked him to read to her. He started on the book aimed at a first grade reading level, but struggled with words: nice, true, voice, sure, might, outside and because.

When he arrived in November, it appeared he needed “to learn everything from first, second and third grade,” Gilbert-Jackson said.

<p>Michael Crowder, 11, reads during an after-school literacy program April 6 in Atlanta.</p>

Alex Slitz, Associated Press

Michael Crowder, 11, reads during an after-school literacy program April 6 in Atlanta.

She worries she isn’t serving her new students as well as she’d like. “This train has been running for three years,” she said. “I can’t start over.”

She and the other third grade teachers were so concerned about their students’ reading and math skills, they decided after Christmas break to cut back on social studies and science.

Now only seven of the 19 students are below grade level in reading. Of those still behind, Gilbert-Jackson is the least worried about one: Michael Crowder. She’s confident he’ll find a way to navigate the new world ahead of him.

“He wants it,” she says. “He’ll catch up.”

Categories: Trending