Poorly Rated Reading Program Dropped

An experimental remedial reading program for seventh-graders at four San Diego city schools will not be continued beyond this spring, but similar courses for such at-risk students will probably be necessary across the district again next year, school district trustees decided Tuesday.

The board reconsidered the pilot program at its regular meeting Tuesday after a Times story earlier this month described how educators at all four schools disputed a negative evaluation on which the board relied last month when it voted to kill the program.

Trustees strongly criticized Supt. Tom Payzant and his staff for their failure to send the critical evaluation to the schools for comment ahead of board consideration and asked for a policy change so that teachers and principals involved in other programs will have a chance to see evaluations ahead of board discussions and speak on them if desired.

But the board spent little time questioning Payzant and others Tuesday on whether the contents of the reading evaluation were accurate, in part because only the vice principal from one of the four schools involved showed up to discuss the report.

Instead, members stressed that they still have a commitment to reading remediation for those students reading one or more grade levels below the average for their age, and that they are still willing to consider new programs, especially because low reading achievement continues to plague many students, among them blacks and Latinos in numbers disproportionate to their total enrollment.

Kermeen Fristrom, head of the district’s basic education services who strongly backed the pilot, told the board that special reading remediation will be required at many schools next year, even as the district begins using a new language-arts curriculum that stresses literature for kindergarten-through-eighth grades.

Fristrom said the pilot has many strong features, including its reading materials, teacher training and small class size--half that of regular classes--which many middle schools and junior highs will try to copy in their classes next year. However, Fristrom said, the schools probably will not have the money, as was available under the pilot, to have small class sizes, even though the evaluation showed that students in small groups, with individual attention from teachers, both learned to read better and developed positive attitudes toward reading.