Thursday, February 24, 2000
CPS: Non-readers must go to summer school
BY DANA DiFILIPPO
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cincinnati Public Schools second- and third-graders who can't read to grade level will be required to go to summer school — or be forced to go to court — under a plan district officials unveiled Wednesday.
The plan is part of the district's new Third Grade Reading Guarantee, intended to boost literacy and proficiency test scores and help the district meet the state's planned Fourth-Grade Guaran tee. That guarantee will forbid schools, starting in 2001, from promoting fourth-graders who cannot pass the state's reading proficiency test.
Students who don't show up for summer school would be considered truants, just as they would during the regular year. Parents and students could be cited to court.
“Reading is the gateway to academic achievement in every subject area, so it's crucial that students are reading at grade level by the time they leave primary grades,” Associate Superintendent Kathleen Ware said. “Summer school and special in-school literacy intervention programs will
provide the extra time and instruction that some students need.”
In March, all CPS students in second and third grades will be tested for reading proficiency. Students not reading to grade level must attend summer remediation classes June 12 through July 14. Transportation will be provided for students who live more than a mile from their neighborhood school.
At the end of the five-week summer session, third-graders will be retested. Those who don't meet minimum scores on off-grade proficiency tests will be held back and spend all day in intensive literacy classes.
They'll be re-tested each October and March and will advance to fourth grade only after they pass the test and meet other promotion requirements.
The 45,600-student district al ready 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 last 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, 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.
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