There's a real Clash of the Titans going on right now, and no, I don't mean the battle for the NFC title. I mean the battle for the title of "Reading Capital of the World."
In one corner, we have the heavyweight champion, Tifton, Georgia. In the other corner, the up-and-coming contender, Akron, Ohio.
If Akron wants to proclaim itself the "Reading Capital of the World,'' we've got a tough little opponent. That title belongs to Tifton, Ga., population 15,060...
Akron intends to plant a flag of its own beginning Wednesday, when residents will pause from 11 to 11:30 a.m. to read. The event will launch a wide-ranging campaign to improve literacy at every level, to make reading a bedrock of our civic culture.
There are some who believe that 30 minutes alone will be enough for us Yankees to snatch the slogan. There are some who do not.
When news of Akron's challenge reached Terri Nalls, a school librarian known around Tifton as the "Reading Angel,'' she paused, and the sweetness in her voice took a decided edge.
"How big are y'all?'' she asked.
Part of Tifton's reputation hangs on a November 2000 event at the town's football stadium, when 7,500 people read together for one minute. Akron should be able to handle that number easily. But let's talk percentages. The number of readers in that stadium represented half the city's population. For Akron to make a similar claim, we'd need more than 108,000. And even that won't be enough to convince the Reading Angel.
Tifton's reading effort began in 1996. The Tift County Foundation for Educational Excellence, an organization of relatively modest means (the current budget is $95,000), made a grant to the primary school where Nalls worked as a library media specialist.
The money was used to buy tests for a program called Accelerated Reader, in which schoolchildren read books, then take computer reading-comprehension tests. For each test they pass, they're awarded points. The simplest books start at half a point; War and Peace is worth 130 points.
Nalls hoped the students in her school might pass 1,000 tests in the first year.
"They passed 1,000 tests the first month,'' she said.
There was something about the immediate feedback of the test and the sense of self-challenge that took hold. Children began coming to school early to read. They took extra books home. A first-grader who'd had behavior problems got hooked on Accelerated Reader. After his sixth test in one day, he turned to Nalls, smiled and said, "I thought I couldn't read.''
Rock on (oh yes, the emphasis on the pro-testing statement above is mine). I consider this a great rebuttal to all those "educators" and agitators who believe that kids wilt like souffles under any sort of challenge or standard, or who believe that testing is mutually exclusive from a solid education in reading skills.
Tifton's response? Higher standards, and more tests. Heh.
After the early success of Accelerated Reader, the foundation began granting money to expand the program to Tift County's 11 public schools and one private school.
But even that wasn't enough. The popularity of the tests spread beyond the school walls. Adults joined in, and Tifton residents began talking about the rising collective point total, and the number of books being read to achieve it...
Brumby decided to set a bar for success...Tifton would try to score 1 million Accelerated Reader points. Two other specific goals were set: to increase library circulation by 50 percent and to increase Iowa Basic reading test scores by 25 percent. The deadline was the end of 2000....
And the goals were met.
Library circulation is up 130%. The one longitudinal test score comparison that was possible showed an increase of 14.3% in reading scores across all grade levels. On November 15th, 2000, 7500 people filled a stadium in order to participate in a synchronized reading (of The Cat in The Hat, in case you were wondering). Supporters of the program claim that it is now the "in-thing" for parents to read to their kids at home.
Akron, I hope you're ready. The citizens of Tifton obviously relish the idea of a challenge.
Posted by kswygert at January 12, 2004 11:24 AM