Rick Patrick: Greene Publishing, Inc.
This is the fourth in a series of weekly articles about the challenges facing our school district, and the measures proposed to meet those challenges.
Reading has long been considered a fundamental part of any educational foundation. In fact, without the ability to read, any other educational goals merely fall by the wayside. According to Madison County Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Karen Pickles, roughly 50 percent of Florida third graders are reading on grade level or above. This means that statewide, nearly half of all third graders are falling behind in terms of reading. In Madison County, the numbers are worse.
According to the website www.niche.com, 34 percent of Madison County students are proficient in reading. This means that 34 percent of the students scored at or above proficiency levels on the state reading/language arts assessment tests. According to the 2014 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) scores, Madison County reading scores showed that 35 percent of 10th grade students performed at a satisfactory level or above. That same year, 48 percent of eighth grade students scored at a satisfactory level.
There are several things that are being done to help improve these numbers. At Pinetta Elementary School, Principal Beth Moore, along with teachers at the school recently held school-wide activities in conjunction with National Literacy Week in order to encourage excitement about reading among the students of the school. Other similar activities have taken place at Lee Elementary School. Supt. Pickles recently stressed the importance for local teachers to be teaching material corresponding to the specific standards set forth from the Florida Department of Education. This does not mean “teaching to the test,” but making sure the students are meeting the standards and learning the material they need to learn.
There are other things that can be done to help students improve reading skills. Parents or grandparents can spend time on a daily basis reading to young children. When parents read to their children, “it gives them a time when they pretty much have the undivided attention of their parents or caregivers,” said Dr. Pamela High of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in an interview published in the Huffington Post. “It's a real one-on-one opportunity for children to communicate with their parents and for parents to communicate with their children... the more words that are in a child's language world, the more words they will learn, and the stronger their language skills are when they reach kindergarten, the more prepared they are to be able to read, and the better they read, the more likely they are to graduate from high school. So, children with very poor reading proficiency by the time they enter the fourth grade are the ones at greatest risk to not graduate from high school and then not be able to be successful – successful in their own life course, economically, for example,” added High.
Local service organizations such as the Madison Kiwanis Club have begun programs where members volunteer to read to school children. The United Way of the Big Bend has a program called “ReadingPals” that arranges volunteers to read to elementary school children. According to the United Way of the Big Bend, ReadingPals volunteers read for 3,600 hours to over 200 students and gifted over 3,000 books. As a result, more than 70 percent of the ReadingPals students achieve at least one years' worth of reading growth from Fall 2015 to Spring 2016. Greenville Elementary School participates in the ReadingPals program. The ReadingPals program matches volunteers with students in kindergarten, first, or second grade. This is the time crucial to future reading success, before a child enters into the third grade.
Improving the reading ability of our Madison County students is becoming a paramount issue for the schools of Madison County, but it is an issue in which anyone can become a part of the cure. Anyone wanting to volunteer or wanting more information about ReadingPals can contact the United Way website at www.uwbb.org/readingpals.