Wednesday, August 18, 1999
'New grade' proposed to help poor readers
BY DANA DiFILIPPO
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cincinnati Public Schools Superintendent Steven Adamow-ski hopes to create a “new grade” next fall that would require third-graders to be able to read before being promoted to fourth grade.
Under the proposal, students who can't read to grade level by the end of third grade would be held back and spend the next year working solely on reading.
Such a “Third-Grade Guarantee” would ensure that more CPS students would meet the state's “Fourth-Grade Guarantee,” a new law forbidding schools, starting in 2001, from promoting fourth-graders who cannot pass the state's reading proficiency test.
The 47,200-student district already has “Three-Plus” and “Eight-Plus” programs in which struggling students in third and eighth grades are held back a year to study subjects they failed. Most schools also offer extra reading time and tutors to students struggling with reading.
Still, two thirds of CPS students who took the Ohio Fourth-Grade Proficiency Test in March flunked the reading portion.
Some worry the proposal will simply create a new class of students who are overage for their grade, and overage students are more likely to drop out.
While annual dropout rates in CPS are falling — 9.3 percent last year — nearly two thirds of CPS ninth-graders who started in CPS in 1994-95 did
not graduate from district schools last year. They either dropped out, transferred to other districts or were placed in alternative programs.
But many say any effort to improve reading proficiency is crucial for students' long-term academic success.
“Why would you send a child on (to the next grade) if he can't read?” said Marie Opoku of Oakley, who credits her 11-year-old daughter's voracious reading for her good grades. “To go through school and not be able to read does not make sense.”
Georgina Opoku will be a sixth-grader at Anderson Place Elementary School this fall. The school's reading focus is what attracted Mrs. Opoku to Anderson Place.
Parents of kindergartners and first-graders are asked to sign contracts with the school promising that they will read to their youngsters regularly.
Older students are encouraged to read at home as well.
“Anything we can do in the early grades to foster a love of reading, we should do,” said Patti Danner, a third-grade teacher Anderson Place. “Reading is key to all the proficiency areas. You can be a great computational expert, but you won't pass the math proficiency test if you can't read the problems.”
Mr. Adamowski agreed: “You simply cannot achieve the other content standards without learning to read.”
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