Reading Takes Off Like a Rocket at This School

First thing every morning at Washington Elementary School in Santa Ana, about 300 parents come to school and sit down with their children and a book. At Washington, from the first bell at 7:55 a.m. to night workshops that end way past dark, everyone reads.

About 1,000 parents participate in some aspect of the school’s massive reading effort, one of the state’s most successful literacy programs. There are seven-week family literacy courses in which parents can sample art and poetry classes, musical theater, college preparatory workshops and preschool reading time to tantalize tots who one day will attend the school. There are English classes for parents and a vigorous guest reader’s program in which Supt. Al Mijares, Santa Ana bookstore owner Rueben Martinez and others have read to the children.

In recognition of the school’s achievements, the California School Boards Assn. awarded Washington its prestigious Golden Bell award Saturday. The school is one of 60 is the state to receive the award, and Mijares will present the bell to teachers, parents and students today at the school.

Because of its literacy program, the school, with students who rarely attend preschools before landing in kindergarten and with parents who struggle to make ends meet, has become a national model for parental involvement in schools.

“The perception out there, oftentimes, is inner-city schools don’t have a lot of parent involvement,” said Cathey Kasanjy, family literacy coordinator for the school. “Well, we have parent involvement, we have grandma and grandpa involvement. We include aunties and uncles. It’s a literacy open house every day.”

The program began four years ago when parent Veronica Mayen asked her daughter’s teacher if she could stay and read a book with her child. Then Mayen told another parent, Soledad DeLeo, who asked to stay and read to her son Amil, who was then in first grade.

Now in fifth grade, Amil, 10, is deep into Harry Potter books and reads every night with his father before going to bed.

“In the beginning it was kind of hard; the parents didn’t have time or had to go to work,” DeLeo said. “But when I was telling them how Amil was getting better and better and how good he feels when I stay with him and read, soon we had a roomful of parents.”

Even parents who themselves do not know how to read try their best to help out, said Principal Robert Anguiano.

“Parents who are literate, of course, have more tools to help the child, but believe me, the parents who are not literate have every aspiration to become so. They still motivate their children and make sure they study every night.”

As a result of the program, the school’s Stanford 9 test scores, which are still low, have jumped at least 15 percentage points in grades one and two.

With such progress, by the time they leave elementary school, many students will be reading at or above the national average, and school officials across the country are taking heed.

Educators from as far as Oklahoma, Houston and Chicago have toured the school to learn its secret to family literacy. Closer to home, officials from Orange, Buena Park and Anaheim also have visited the school.

Officials from the school were recently invited to New Zealand, where they will present their program to the International Reading Assn. World Congress in July.

What schools around the world are seeking to learn, Kasanjy said, is how to increase parent involvement beyond baking cupcakes for recess and helping teachers grade papers. Washington’s program is a step toward community literacy, she said.

Standard educational research has found that about 1,000 hours of literate activity--reading, writing, sounding out words with children--is necessary to prepare them to be successful readers.

“What we do is open the door so the kids and their parents can have those thousand hours,” Kasanjy said. “In our school, it’s all about the books.”