Trustees to Rethink Demise of Reading Program

The future of an experimental remedial reading program for seventh-graders in San Diego city schools will be discussed once again by the district board of trustees after it learned Tuesday that many educators disagree with a negative evaluation on which the board relied to kill the project.

A Times article Tuesday detailed the objections raised by teachers and principals at the four schools that piloted the special one-semester program to a report issued by the district’s evaluation department.

The educators believe the 3-year-old program both improved skills and boosted the desire to read among low-achieving seventh-graders.

Although the schools did not receive copies of the report until Tuesday--after the newspaper article noted that its contents had not been given to principals or teachers--they strongly criticized it after learning of the contents from a reporter--for its methodology and several statements of fact concerning the training of teachers and the nature of books and materials used, as well as for its conclusions.

Trustee Jim Roache, supported by colleagues Kay Davis and Ann Armstrong, asked Supt. Tom Payzant to bring the program back before the board in two weeks so issues raised by the piloting schools can be fully discussed. Armstrong asked also to have the teachers from the schools participate in the discussion.

Roache said that, although he would not vote to continue the program based on teachers saying that “they believe” it works, he wants to take a second look at it because several points raised about the evaluation involve whether all aspects of the pilot were fully explored.

Several teachers raised questions about whether the evaluation fairly measured changes in attitudes among low-achieving seventh-graders, whether it fairly compared students who took the course to those who did not in terms of reading performance, and whether any shortcomings are attributable more to the limited nature of the remedial class rather than to flaws in teaching or materials.