Remedial Reading Efforts in California Not on Same Page

You can’t say Chuck Swoope’s school isn’t trying.

In two years, the San Juan Capistrano boy has been in three remedial reading programs and is about to start a fourth. This one involves a computer meant to sharpen his auditory skills by pitching high and low sounds at him.

Despite all the school’s efforts to help Chuck, his mother is a little skeptical of what she calls new “gimmicks.” Her 11-year-old son, who has dyslexia and other learning disorders, is in the fifth grade but still reads at second-grade level.

“They do too little for a lot of kids,” Marybeth Swoope complains.

As hard as California educators try to boost the bottom rung of literacy, remedial reading programs in the state’s public schools remain in large part an arsenal of scattershot techniques.

“I realize our schools have overwhelming problems, but they have to sit down and plan a very serious program for their struggling readers,” said Norma Inabinette, a Cal State Fullerton professor of education who also runs a clinic for very slow readers.

Though studies show that early intervention is the key to reversing poor literacy skills, many nonreaders aren’t noticed until they have fallen seriously behind.

Meanwhile, many reading specialists are so overwhelmed with trying to give fifth-graders remedial help before the challenges of middle school hit that they have no time to work with first-graders. But that is the least efficient use of their time; a study showed that it takes 30 minutes a day to bring a struggling kindergartner up to par in reading, whereas a third-grader would need an hour and a half.

Smaller districts, and some in low-income areas, often cannot afford early intervention programs, which can cost up to $4,000 per student. Other districts may offer a menu of remedial assistance and still fail to address the specific needs of particular children. And in some cases, schools adopt strategies that have not been shown effective.

Multiple Sources of Problems Noted

Educators defend the system by pointing out that reading problems can have many sources: developmental delays, psychological disorders, learning disabilities and more.

“It’s not an exact science,” said Carol Arneson, special education administrator for the Orange County Department of Education. “There isn’t always a clear-cut reason. . . . Everything has to be approached from a variety of avenues.”

Whatever the causes, the children languish.

Nationally, two in five children cannot read well enough to keep up in school. In California, only 36% of third-graders who took the Stanford 9 test scored at or above the 50th percentile, which is considered grade level.

The stakes are huge for these children who are struggling to make sense of the letters on the page. If their problems are not addressed at the earliest grades, 75% of them will enter high school still not reading fluently, according to research backed by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Washington, D.C. Their chances for college and later success are dim.

All this is particularly frustrating when studies show that most of the poorest readers can be helped without major investments of money--if the diagnosis is made correctly and help starts early. Studies by the institute of child health found that 90% of reading problems in children below the third grade can be efficiently corrected with one-on-one tutoring tailored to their particular problems. The figures are slimmer in later years.

“Children just don’t outgrow reading problems,” said Yale University professor of pediatrics Sally Shaywitz, who examined learning disabilities in Connecticut schools. “It’s very urgent that we identify and correct reading problems at an early age.”

Swayed by burgeoning research, California has poured about $126 million into training teachers to spot the initial signs of reading problems and fix them. Also, starting this month, all new teachers must take courses in reading instruction in order to earn their credentials.

Beyond those initiatives, though, finding remedial help for poor readers is a crapshoot for parents. Some school districts shell out enormous resources on remedial reading, others far less.

The Long Beach schools, for example, spend $5 million on remedial reading programs, compared with $2 million spent in Los Angeles--a district with eight times as many students.

Still, with two out of three third-graders reading below grade level, Los Angeles Unified administrators say they are committed to early intervention.

The district this year launched a summer reading program of group and individual tutoring for third-graders.

The district also is in its third year of Reading Recovery, a program of one-on-one tutoring from specially trained teachers, for 800 of its worst first-grade readers. The program, widely used across this country and in Europe, has gained strong support. Some studies proved that within 16 weeks, Reading Recovery raises young students’ skills to grade level and reduces rates of grade retention and special education referrals.

Program Costs $4,000 per Student

Los Angeles Unified officials are evaluating the quality and cost-effectiveness of these two programs over the next several years by tracking students’ performance on the Stanford 9 and in the classrooms.

One caveat: Reading Recovery runs about $4,000 per student.

Lack of resources for remedial reading plagues tiny suburban districts as well as giant urban ones like Los Angeles Unified. Often the numbers of students who need help aren’t high enough to justify a large-scale investment in programs to help them.

Fourth-grader Jared Genara struggles with serious speech and literacy problems that have kept his reading at first-grade level. When the 9-year-old Anaheim boy opens a book and reads aloud, almost every word must be sounded out, even common ones such as “what” or “my.”

“I mostly don’t read the words,” Jared said while glancing through a Spiderman comic book. “I figure out what’s happening by looking at the pictures.”

The school placed Jared in speech therapy two years ago, when he was in second grade. But his reading problems weren’t addressed until last year, school documents show. At that time, a battery of tests revealed that he is learning disabled and needs special education. So the school placed him in a specialized reading group in March--three months before the end of the third grade.

Frustrated with the Savanna School District’s sluggish response, his mother, Lori Carriera, enrolled Jared in Inabinette’s reading clinic at Cal State Fullerton. There, at the cost of $150 a semester, Jared receives an hour of one-on-one tutoring from a trained teacher twice a week.

Four weeks into the program, he is more willing to try to read, his mother said.

“I had to get him help,” Carriera said. “I was afraid that the school would just keep scooting him through the grades and that by the time he reaches high school, he’ll be so burned out and frustrated that he might drop out.”

Savanna administrators declined to talk about Jared’s case, citing student confidentiality laws. They did, however, say that resources are limited in the small district of 2,400 students. Each of its four schools has one reading specialist.

But poor readers are not guaranteed effective help even at school districts that muster up the money for a slate of remedial reading services. For all the good intentions and substantial investments, some of the schools offer programs that carry no substantial evidence that they work.

The newest drive in the Capistrano Unified School District, where Chuck Swoope attends school, is a computer program that drills students on the sounds and use of letters, at a cost of $150 per student.

The district, which spends $500,000 a year on remedial reading, could not afford the most scientific software, designed by a respected neuroscientist and a linguist, so officials are resorting to a copycat version that costs $700 less per pupil.

Although one computer technique proved that it can help students improve by 1 1/2 years in reading after six weeks, research for most programs, including the one the district is now using, is thin. The greatest flaw in the use of these programs, a British researcher found, was that children are often left unattended and do not benefit from the program.

Lack of Supervision Thwarts the Purpose

“If not properly supervised, the programs become a lot of bewildering practices and games to a child,” said Greg Brooks, executive director of the National Foundation for Educational Research, who recently published a book reviewing remedial reading programs.

Chuck Swoope is going to begin the computer program in January.

His mother thinks the schools made their biggest mistake by failing to recognize Chuck’s problems from the start.

Teachers kept telling Marybeth Swoope to “wait and see.” Annually, she pleaded that he be examined for disabilities, she said.

Reading is like riding a mental roller coaster for the freckle-faced boy. Words and letters play funny tricks on him. The letter “d” sometimes whips around and looks like a “b.” Sentences don’t flow in a linear way. Stories often lack a beginning, middle and end.

In the third grade, Chuck was finally diagnosed as dyslexic, learning disabled and having attention deficit disorder. Reading help kicked in. But Chuck exhausted all the services; summer, after-school and group literacy programs resulted in minimal improvement. None addressed his auditory problem.

“I like humor books like Garfield,” said the articulate boy. “But I don’t like what they give me in school. It has no taste.”

Long Beach Unified offers students a smorgasbord of programs, from summer reading camp to mandatory after-school tutoring and literacy centers.

Some 3rd-Graders Are Held Back

Its most controversial approach is retaining third-graders whose literacy skills rank at the first grade. Although studies have found that holding students back increases dropout rates, administrators say pupils who repeat the third grade receive intensive help in reading. And if students still don’t pass basic requirements by the fifth grade, they are held back again.

Parents who can afford it are often led to seek outside help.

In some ways Elijah Lambert of the Santa Rosa Valley was luckier than most. His school identified his problem early and moved immediately to help.

The Ventura County boy was diagnosed in kindergarten with attention deficit disorder and an auditory processing problem. Officials at Las Colinas School in Camarillo placed him in various speech, language and reading programs. But by the third grade, he was more than two years behind.

His mother and the Las Colinas staff made several changes in the fourth grade. Elijah’s mother, Emi Askvik, said a doctor prescribed Ritalin, a controversial medication often used to combat attention deficit disorder. The boy was placed in full-time special education.

Askvik quit her job so she could volunteer in Elijah’s classroom and tutor him at home. She and her husband hired a private tutor who found that the school’s efforts, though earnest, were misdirected.

Edward Thalheimer, a former special education instructor for the Los Angeles Unified School District, put Elijah through a battery of tests. He noticed that, despite Elijah’s difficulties in computing verbal cues, he was fed a steady diet of phonics.

“What I did with Elijah is, I let him read visually--to take mental pictures of words. That’s when he started to flourish.”

After four years of private tutoring and special help at school, Elijah is doing much better. In sixth grade last year, he earned A’s and Bs in reading. Now he can spell words like “paleontologist.”

Staff writer Kate Folmar contributed to this report.