Educators Read Success Into Pathway Program

An innovative reading program for students with limited English skills is significantly boosting grades, reading skills and acceptance rates to universities, according to educators.

“We’re excited about it,” said Santa Ana Unified School District Supt. Al Mijares. “Any time our students can get the exposure to language arts, particularly reading, we’re behind the effort.”

In a district with one of the state’s highest limited-English student populations, Mijares said educators “can’t do enough” to push such programs as the novel UC Irvine Pathway program.

Begun last year, the program tracks 770 sixth- through 12th-grade students at Santa Ana schools, including McFadden Intermediate, Willard Intermediate, Lathrop Intermediate and Valley, Santa Ana and Century high schools.

Pathway created a 21-teacher network among the schools, gave each teacher a library budget and trained them to help develop a curriculum that improves students’ reading and writing ability, said project coordinator Carol Booth Olson.

There is strong emphasis on motivating students to read not only the required textbooks, but also selections from nationally prominent book lists, she said.

“Our emphasis is how to help students whose first language is not English; and obviously, most of the kids in Santa Ana are bilingual,” Olson said. “We need to find out how to get them at the academic skill level so they can compete at the university level.”

The project’s first year was funded by a $40,000 grant from the UC Office of the President. Funding through 1999 comes from a $120,000 U.S. Department of Education grant.

The key to the program’s success, educators contend, is the project’s focus not only on students, but teachers. Instructors get extra pay for after-hours meetings, technical support from UCI and a teaching assistant at the high school level, which helps in classrooms overcrowded with nearly 40 schoolchildren.

Pat Clark, an instructor at Century, said she has become a believer after hearing about the program and then seeing it in action.

“Olson brings in well-known speakers who are tops in the educational field,” Clark said. “They help you teach how to be a better reading teacher or how to teach new strategies in different areas, introducing you to things like literary circles and book clubs for a classroom.”

McFadden teacher Sharon Schiesl said she enjoyed learning about book clubs. At McFadden, she routinely buys five or six books, then forms a book club; each student reads the book, then they all meet and talk about the plot and characters.

“It teaches them analytical writing, among other things,” Olson said.

Parents also are included during an orientation night, where outstanding student readers receive $25 gifts to bookstores.

Esther Severy, McFadden’s assistant principal, said the program could be expanded districtwide to help other students in the predominantly Latino school district. The district has 37,000 limited English proficient students, third in the state in 1996-97 behind Los Angeles Unified and San Diego City Unified.

“When they come to us from sixth grade,” Severy said, “they are being groomed for college. We are putting our arms around them and guiding them.”

Of two graduating 12th-grade Pathway classes, 59% went to a community college and 36% to a university. Of the 36%, 12% were accepted at UC campuses, compared with the school district’s rate of 3% to 5%.

And of 12 Pathway students who took the English placement test at Santa Ana College, 25% placed in college-level English 101 compared with the district’s average placement of 4%.

The program has made a “huge difference, the kids are motivated,” Severy said.

“We did a pretest and a post test of Pathway students last year,” she said. “The difference between a control group and Pathway was astronomical. [Pathway] students not only feel better about themselves but had more than two years’ advantage on academic skills.”

It’s also striking that Pathway did not seek the blue chip, honor-roll student, Olson said. Program officials wanted “middle of the road” achievers with potential to go on to college after high school.

“Rather than hand-pick each student, they picked them randomly by computer and provided them with support,” Olson said.

Students are taught together as a group, and as they move from each grade, their attendance and grades are being tracked, Olson said.

Beside materials and teaching assistants, funds are also spent on special programs, such as Tuesday’s scheduled visit at the university by noted Chicano poet Gary Soto. The Fresno resident will describe his experiences and will read some of his works.

Soto will also appear at 4 p.m. today at Martinez Books & Art, 200 N. Main St., Santa Ana.