Teens Get a Second Chance at Literacy

The Los Angeles Unified School District is embarking this month on a remedial reading program for 35,000 middle school and high school students who lack skills they should have learned by second or third grade.

Educators across the country say the initiative is unusual for its focus on teenagers instead of elementary students, and for the sheer number of youngsters involved. Its success or failure, they add, could set the agenda for other big city school systems.

At all 123 secondary campuses in the Los Angeles district, the worst readers in sixth through ninth grades are forgoing electives such as music and art to attend mandatory classes as much as two hours a day that stress the phonics usually taught to 6-year-olds.

English teachers--some reluctantly, others enthusiastically--are shelving classics such as “Romeo and Juliet” for rudimentary storybooks with big pictures, large print and sentences as simple as “Dad had a sad lad.” As the students master such materials in what is called the “Language!” program, their lessons grow more difficult.

Los Angeles Unified leaders say the back-to-basics intervention--which will cost $16 million this year--is necessary because tens of thousands of students drop out or graduate without the skills to succeed in college or get good jobs.

Many students, at least during its early phases, say they dislike the program and are embarrassed to be in the classes, which they think of as special education.

“People think you’re dumb. It’s little kids’ stuff,” Delfina Terrazas, a ninth-grader at Jefferson High School, said after she practiced the alphabet on flash cards.

When 13-year-old Damian Polk was asked to sound out “cat, hat and bat” during the first week of classes at John Muir Middle School, the eighth-grader blurted out: “Are we retarded?”

“Of course you’re not retarded,” the teacher, Susan Glazebrook assured Damian and his classmates. But she told them that they needed help: They had landed in the class because of their low reading scores on the Stanford 9 exam.

The nation’s secondary schools are filled with struggling readers like those in Glazebrook’s class. These students’ academic problems often have been overlooked as attention and money focused in recent years on reforms at the elementary level, experts say.

Teenage illiteracy is now attracting broader attention. The Bush administration will convene a meeting of researchers and teachers this fall to examine the best ways of improving reading beyond the fourth grade. The gathering, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, is expected to examine the Los Angeles program.

“We’re going to look at this closely,” Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education Susan B. Neuman said. “I am very enthusiastic about any kind of intervention that squarely takes on this huge problem.”

Gerald N. Tirozzi, executive director of the National Assn. of Secondary School Principals, agreed. “What Los Angeles is doing is light years ahead of what most districts are doing,” he said. “I give them huge kudos.”

The magnitude of adolescent illiteracy in Los Angeles was demonstrated earlier this year when the district tried to establish qualifications for enrollment in the new classes. District officials targeted the 67,000 students entering sixth through ninth grades who scored in or below the 20th percentile in reading on the Stanford 9--those in the bottom fifth.

About half that number were taken off the list, either because they had passed a separate third-grade reading test or because they were still learning English and qualified for another intervention program. That left the 35,000 who will spend the next two years learning how to read all over again.

The phonetic exercises that start this month with the most basic lessons linking sounds and letters will gradually take on more complex and challenging material as students tackle grammar, learn to write essays and study methods to improve their comprehension.

Los Angeles Unified is using state and federal money for teachers, their training and new books. Those funds could have gone to other programs, but the remedial classes are a priority for district Supt. Roy Romer.

“We have to force something to happen for these low-performing youngsters,” he said. “I’m sick at heart that we have kids in secondary schools who carry around books they can’t read.”

The intervention comes at an urgent moment for many students.

Starting with this year’s 11th-graders, high school students in California must pass a rigorous “exit exam” to earn diplomas. Los Angeles Unified students performed dismally on a trial run last year: Just 44% of ninth-graders who voluntarily took the test passed the language arts section. Statewide, 64% of ninth-graders passed.

District officials say they expect slow but steady progress in the remedial classes, which have as few as 20 students, compared with 35 or more in other English classes. The lessons also are twice as long as those for other classes.

But even with intensive help, students may never fully make up their missed vocabulary or learn all the history, science and math they missed because of poor reading skills, teachers say.

“We have so many kids at such a low level that they may never catch up,” said Kristin Szilagyi, the English department chairwoman at Marshall High School in Los Feliz. “We have to do something for them. I hope this is the curriculum that will produce quick results.”

The remedial classes are placing new--and sometimes unwelcome--demands on English teachers, who must abandon much of the literature they once taught and be retrained to lead elementary school-style lessons. Some criticize the new phonetic materials, calling them “gibberish” and “garbage.”

But others say they are keeping an open mind. “At first, my ego got in the way. It said, ‘C’mon, what am I doing here?’ ” said Levi Stanton Frisk, an English teacher at Van Nuys High School who is teaching two remedial classes. “But at the same time I saw the need for this type of program. And I’m happy to fill it. I can see this is going to work. I believe in it.”

Standing at the front of his classroom at 7:30 a.m., Frisk launched into a lesson that focused on six consonants and one vowel--B, T, S, C, M, F and A.

“Say sat,” Frisk told his ninth-graders.

“Sat,” they responded.

“Say the sounds in sat,” he said.

“S-s-a-a-t-t,” they chanted.

A couple students yawned. One girl rolled her eyes. But most paid attention and played along as they used hand gestures suggested by the program to reinforce each letter. Then Frisk had the students create new words by changing the first letters--for example, turning “sat” into “fat.” The class finished with timed tests. The students took turns in pairs, reading as many words as possible in one minute from lists of 100 that included at, bat, sat and Sam.

Cynthia Marron correctly read 74 out of 79 words in one minute. But the exercise left her frustrated. “All the words look the same to me. They’re confusing,” the 14-year-old said. “They all have A in them.” On her second try, Cynthia got 97 out of 100 correct. Then she said: “It’s too easy. I don’t consider myself a fast reader, but I can read.”

Frisk has been pleased with the progress he has seen in just three weeks. “This has to work,” he said. “For many of them, it’s their last chance.”

Parents have the right to refuse their child’s enrollment in the classes. So far, none has objected, district officials say.

Donjae White is a somewhat reluctant student at John Muir Middle School, putting his head down during his remedial class. But his mother, Mary Willford, is pleased that he’s learning phonics over again. Willford said she already sees a difference at home--Donjae uses new words. “It’s a very good thing. I say it enhances the skills in his life,” she said. “I want him to do well in school and graduate from each grade and go to college. It’s very important to me.”

About 2,000 schools nationwide are using the “Language!” curriculum for their poor readers. But Los Angeles Unified’s is by far the largest and most ambitious effort, officials said. Experts wonder if the school district can succeed on such a large scale and with so many teachers of varying experience. Others question whether the “Language!” program is the solution.

“Phonics is misdirected and will bore the students,” said James McPartland, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “Almost every child of that age can sound out words. The real way to deal with this is real reading in real books, not exercises on handout sheets.”

The Sacramento City Unified School District began remedial reading programs in its secondary schools five years ago. Today, its eight middle schools and five high schools all have such classes, serving about 10% of 14,000 secondary students. “We are sending many fewer kids to high school with serious reading problems,” said Kathi Cooper, assistant superintendent of instruction. “We have seen enough growth to keep at it.”

A handful of Los Angeles schools, including Jefferson High, began the remedial “Language!” classes last year on their own.

Last year’s Jefferson ninth-graders resisted, as their peers elsewhere are doing this year. The Jefferson students were embarrassed. They were bored. But they stuck it out and say it helped. “Now I know my nouns, my verbs, my adjectives,” said Clara Cuezzy, who is a Jefferson 10th-grader. “My spelling is so much improved.”

Clara’s friend, Martin Calzada, used to ditch school because he couldn’t keep up in his classes. Now he opens his backpack and shows off a fiction book about fugitive slaves he is reading--at home. “I used to hate reading,” he said. “Now it’s like my favorite thing.”

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Video clips of classroom lessons and interviews are available at https://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-me-read21.