First Chapter in Reading Reform : Report That Makes the Subject a Top Priority Already Making an Impact

Debbie Adams’ son, Jesse, was a bright, happy child with a winning smile when he entered fourth grade at a Ventura school. There was just one problem, said Adams: He couldn’t read.

Neither could Gwen Gotlieb’s 10-year-old daughter, Michelle. While classmates in her Ventura classroom were devouring books such as “James and the Giant Peach,” Michelle could barely get through a simple picture book, her mother said.

The embarrassment of stumbling with simple sentences became so painful that Michelle trembled at the thought of being called before her fourth-grade class to read, Gotlieb said.

Although specialists have identified both children as having a minor learning disorder, their mothers believe their problems stem in part from a school system that does not pay enough attention to reading.

“How could Jesse keep getting promoted if he couldn’t read?” Adams asks. “He was on a slow boat to nowhere.”

Now the concerns of Adams, Gotlieb and a growing chorus of Ventura County parents and educators are backed by a new state report that is already having an impact on the way California teaches reading.

The report, released by state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin last week, says reading is so important to academic success that it should be the top instructional priority for students in kindergarten through third grade.

Although Ventura County students consistently outperform their state peers on tests measuring reading achievement, some parents, teachers and administrators feel that the public schools here could be doing a better job.

It is rare to find a district, for instance, that provides a teacher specially trained in reading to help struggling students at each elementary school.

And the small-group settings found in special education are normally reserved for students with the most severe learning disorders because the cost is so high.

That means that other students who are having a hard time learning to read--for whatever reason--sometimes fall behind, said Carol Becker, a reading specialist at Campus Canyon School in Moorpark.

Moorpark Unified School District has made reading a priority and provides a full-time reading expert at each of its three kindergarten-to-third-grade schools, Becker said.

“If you can afford the band and the football team, you can afford the reading teacher,” she said.

Becker is one of many Ventura County teachers who applaud the recommendations made by the 27-member state task force made up of university professors, teachers, administrators, parents and business leaders.

Eastin formed the task force after California’s students ranked behind Louisiana as the lowest-scoring of all the states participating in the 1994 National Assessment of Education Progress.

Among the sweeping reforms the task force calls for is a renewed emphasis on teaching such basic skills as phonics and spelling. It also suggests that instructors need more than one course in how to teach reading before getting their state credential.

Reading is so important, the report stresses, that the recognition of letters and their sounds should be taught beginning in preschool. Language and reading should take up as much as a third of the day in kindergarten and as much as half of the day through third grade, even if it takes time away from other subjects, the panel urges.

And students falling behind should be identified and steered into remedial instruction no later than mid-first grade, the report stresses.

The goal is to have all students reading independently by the third grade, the report states. Otherwise, struggling readers risk slipping through “the cracks of reading difficulty into reading failure,” the task force concluded.

If those recommendations are adopted by school districts in Ventura County and elsewhere, children like Jesse and Michelle will have a much better chance at getting the help they need at an earlier age, said Dolores (Val) Rains, a Camarillo school board member who sat on the task force that created the state report.

“Those early years are crucial in giving children the foundation they need to be a tremendous reader,” Rains said. “If you cannot read, you cannot understand other subject matter.”

Jesse’s mother eventually became so frustrated by her son’s lack of progress that she took him to a private reading clinic for help. After several weeks of intensive tutoring at the Lindamood-Bell Center in San Luis Obispo, Jesse began reading much better, she said.

Gotlieb also enrolled her daughter in several summer sessions. Tutoring at the commercial reading clinic costs $54 an hour, an official said.

Now in the fifth grade, Jesse is reading at the appropriate level, Adams said. Michelle has made progress but is still far behind her peers, Gotlieb said.

Both women are pushing the Ventura Unified School District to train a corps of teachers in alternative reading methods so that children with different learning styles can be helped.

“We found out that Jesse learned by . . . a way that is not traditionally taught,” Adams said. “I hate that the school district is not offering this kind of help to others like Jesse.”

Teachers and school officials say the commercial reading programs, such as Hooked on Phonics, are not teaching anything different than what is already available in public schools.

The difference is that children in private clinics get intensive, one-on-one tutoring. Public schools cannot afford to provide such individualized instruction, said Ric Nargie, director of special education for the Ventura Unified School District.

“They have the luxury of time and that luxury costs money,” Nargie said.

Barbara Ryan, director of elementary education for the Conejo Valley Unified School District, said she agrees with the task force’s recommendation that kindergarten through third-grade classes should have no more than 20 pupils.

But in reality, that is virtually impossible in a state where enrollment is burgeoning at the same time budgets are being trimmed.

“I’m sitting here laughing,” Ryan said. “I don’t see that happening unless there is an incredible infusion of money from the state.”

However, there are several steps that school districts can take right now, with little expense, to improve reading instruction, educators said.

Schools can recruit parents and high school students as volunteer tutors. And schools can increase the time that students spend reading, even if it means paring instruction in other subjects, said Ernie Morrison, principal of Emilie Ritchen School in Oxnard.

“About a third of the day is spent on reading instruction, but it could be even more,” Morrison said.

Schools also need to renew attention to phonics and spelling, educators say. This was the top recommendation made by the task force.

Although many Ventura County schools never abandoned phonics as a learning tool, some teachers may have relied too heavily on the “whole-language” approach, officials say.

Whole-language purists believe that children automatically will learn to recognize whole words as long as they are given rich, exciting literature to read. That approach was stressed by the state in its 1987 rewrite of curriculum guidelines for the teaching of reading.

Now the pendulum is swinging back in the other direction, Morrison said.

“I don’t want to see us go back to the old drill and kill,” he said. “And I realize that there are basic skills that children need. But we need a balance.”

First-grade teacher Mary Rider agrees. She has been teaching children to read for 26 years. Some need more time learning skills, while others thrive in a literature-rich classroom, she said.

“I see children excited about books today,” Rider said. “I didn’t see that when it was a basal reader that said, ‘Run, Jane, Run.’ ”

Rains said she hopes the state Legislature and the Department of Education move quickly to implement changes in the frameworks for reading instruction. Eastin called for the changes when she released the report last Wednesday.

“Now is the time,” Rains said. “What’s past is past. Let’s go forward and help every child to read.”