Tuesday, July 18, 2000
Improving kids' reading
Focus on elementary grades
By Sue Kiesewetter
Enquirer Contributor
LEBANON — Elementary school children here won't have to go very far to read this month.
Besides the summer reading program at the Lebanon Public Library, Holbrook, Dunlavy and Louisa Wright elementary schools are open one morning and one afternoon a week through Aug. 2. At their neighborhood school children can check out books, participate in crafts and story time, use computers or watch videos.
An 18-month, $734,000 Reading Excellence Act Grant is making the program possible. It also will allow the district to hire a literacy coordinator, offer four all-day kindergarten sections to select children, run a summer school program next year, buy materials, add reading teachers, part-time speech/language instruction and provide literacy training to teachers.
“This is the largest grant we've ever been awarded in Lebanon,” Superintendent James W. Sears said. “Its primary focus is going to be the literacy of young children.”
The district received the competitive grant in part because not enough Lebanon children are passing the reading section of the fourth grade proficiency test, said Peggy McClusky, the district's director of curriculum and instruction. Over the past three years an average of 47 percent of fourth-graders passed; the state average is 75 percent.
Beginning in 2002, those who don't pass the reading section may have to repeat the fourth grade.
The district will replicate the staff development, tutoring programs and teaching methods developed at Holbrook Elementary through a venture capital grant at Louisa Wright and Dunlavy schools. At Holbrook, 98 percent of the first-graders passed the off-year proficiency test, Ms. McClusky said.
Lebanon Schools also is partnering with the county's Head Start program and the Adult Basic Literacy Education to help children with reading skills.
This fall when kindergarten children are screened, the district's literacy committee will review the results and offer slots in four extended-day kindergarten classes to children most in need of help.
Next summer, those who have completed kindergarten but who still need help in reading or writing will be offered free summer school, including transportation.
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