The Chambersburg (PA) Area School District has a six-week "Summer Reading Academy" program planned for some of its youngsters who are moving from elementary school to middle school, or middle school to high school. Sounds commendable, but the article raised a few questions in my mind...
Going from elementary school to middle school is both an academic leap and a cultural rite of passage, one that about three dozen students in the Chambersburg Area School District are spending six weeks preparing for this summer.
Only about 36 students are participating? How were they chosen? Best performers? Worst performers? Lottery winners? The article mentions that some of the students have "special needs" but some just needed "extra help." I'd like a bit more information about how the school chose this group, because I think that information is necessary to judge if the program is effective or well-run.
Students circulate between groups at Chambersburg Area Middle School, working on transition skills, comprehension and writing and the reading academy, [program coordinator Anne] Corwell said. "We're giving them some tips on how to do well at their new school," Corwell said of the transition sessions. A big part of that, especially for those entering the middle school, is getting used to going from one class to another through the day, along with study skills and organizing assignments, she said.
Oh, so by transition skills they don't mean learning to use transitional phrases. They mean learning to get up from one class and go to another. A useful skill, that, but hardly one that should be taught in a "reading academy."
In the reading academy, Corwell said some students are "re-taught phonics strategies," getting down to the basics of what sounds vowels, consonants and combinations of letters produce.
Wait, I thought that the youngest kids in this academy are on the verge of being promoted into middle school. Why are they having to be taught "the basics" of the sounds produced by vowels and consonants? How did they ever get through elementary school? If they were taught phonically before, why do they need to be re-taught it? Shouldn't the school officials be asking themselves why there are 36 kids preparing to enter fifth/sixth grade who don't already know these basics?
"You've got to keep the rhythm to it. You have to get faster to pass it," said Kayla Rotz, 13, as she went through a computer exercise on word recognition. A short while later, having maintained the same rate on the test three times, the computer allowed Rotz to print out a certificate attesting she was ready to move on to the next level.
Was Kayla ever tested on her comprehension of what she was reading? Was she ever given a real book to work with? Recognizing words is one thing; being able to use them is another. And what level words are we talking about? Is the school using computer technology to teach 13-year-olds to read words like "cat" more quickly? If so, then I'm not really impressed. I think a kid who can pick up a book and understand it, digest it, at a moderate-to-slow rate of speed is better off than a kid who has instant recognition of a word but may not be able to define it or use it in a sentence.
I don't mean to be too hard on writer Don Aines; this is obviously a puff piece on an all-volunteer summer academy, and I agree that the volunteer teachers should be commended for offering their time and services. It's just that there are deeper questions that can be asked about a program about this, not least of which are (1) why the program is necessary, and (2) whether or not it's effective.
Contrast that article with this one, which describes a summer school program in Stamford, CT. In this case, we're told how kids were selected, how they'll be taught, and how the program will be assessed for its effectiveness:
Summer school, in its fourth and final week, is heavily focused on literacy. Many participants are chosen because of their performance on standardized tests...Mara Siladi, the Board of Education's director for intervention and community outreach programs, called the three-hour daily sessions a "short-term remediation" that many students need...
"The aim is to provide students not with four more weeks of what didn't work well during the school year, but to give them something different," [Board of Education member Martin Levine] said...
Many of last year's summer school students performed better on standardized tests, according to a Stamford Public Schools analysis. Kindergartners improved their skills on all sections of a language readiness test after summer instruction. Nearly 55 percent of first- and second-graders scored better on the Developmental Reading Assessment test, which measures the level at which a student can read with accuracy and comprehension.
Nearly 55 percent of students in grades 2 through 5 and more than half of sixth- and seventh-graders improved on the Reading Comprehensions Test.
With this information, parents are better able to assess whether the summer instruction works, and can tell what the instruction is being focused on. Even though the PA summer "academy" mentioned above seems to be more informal than the CT summer school, I still think that the questions of method and assessment are still relevant in both cases.
Posted by kswygert at July 29, 2003 03:55 PM