Janice Bowdre received her master’s degree in education from Western Connecticut State University. She completed her doctorate degree in educational leadership at Nova Southeastern University in Florida. She established the Frederick Douglass Christian School in Chester, Pennsylvania. She was also a consultant and an assistant to the principal at West Oak Lane Christian Academy, where she conducted her doctoral research. Janice works with member schools of the Philadelphia Association of Christian Schools to support those schools that are implementing Foundations & Frameworks reading curriculum.
One of the greatest problems this country has faced is the achievement gap in reading and math between suburban white students and urban black students. It is certainly the greatest one faced by the education system as federal and state policy makers have determined that schools are in crisis (Petersen and Young 2004). If the education system continues in failing to provide this basic, fundamental right for children to learn to read, then democracy will have no infrastructure on which to sustain itself, and it, too, will fail (Brown, Hughes, and Vance 1999).
Even more challenging for urban educators is the fact that students’ reading achievement is declining instead of improving (U.S. Department of Education 2003). When children do not learn to read, they are learning to fail in school and in their lives. The important question then becomes, Can the wealthiest nation in the world continue its leadership position while denying 12–20 percent of its citizens the right to learn to read? Kline (2002) says that since reading is the platform on which education is built, unless students are taught to read critically, thoughtfully, and joyfully, using all that they have previously learned, then there is little hope that they will be ready for the twenty-first century.
At West Oak Lane Christian Academy (WOLCA) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the demographics are similar to those of the urban school statistics in the National Reading Conference (NRC). Our school is 99 percent African American, and it is set in one of the city’s older sections, whose glory days were in the 1950s.
WOLCA embarked on a continuous improvement plan for student learning. This plan was based on the latest research and test data from classroom assessments and standardized tests and other considerations. We began in those areas in which student achievement was lowest, and then we systematically moved to improve student achievement throughout the core curriculum. In addition, we added a substantial staff development program to improve teacher pedagogy and efficacy.
When we examined our standardized test scores in reading over the previous five years, they showed a steady decline. In fact, test scores were highest at around the 75th percentile in kindergarten and declined to around the 50th percentile by the time students reached fifth grade. While well above the national averages, the scores could be much better on the basis of the level of performance of our kindergarten students. An analysis of the root cause for this decline revealed a number of factors, including lack of teacher training, outdated curriculum, and lack of student engagement (Preuss 2003). We were particularly concerned about the areas of reading comprehension, problem solving, and critical-thinking skills.
Last year when the time came to evaluate our reading program, we were challenged to assess a new reading program called Foundations & Frameworks (F&F) and to consider adopting it for our students. My first thought was to question the program’s effectiveness for urban students, and so, our administrative team and teacher representatives went to visit an urban school that had implemented the program. We observed urban children productively and eagerly engaged in discussing the cause and effect; comparing characters, plot, and setting; and drawing conclusions from their books. They also were able to give appropriate reasons for preferring a particular character or for telling why a decision was not a good choice. As we went throughout the school visiting reading classes, we took special note of the fact that the students were all urban children from Hispanic, Asian, and African American families, with a few Caucasian students making up a single-digit percentage of the total.
We returned to our school excited about the possibilities of what F&F might offer for our students. We believed that it may provide our students with the critical-thinking skills necessary to reverse the declining achievement in reading. Three of our staff went through the training, and they taught F&F reading in third, fourth, and fifth grades from October through June. Other adjustments were made to provide a full range of support for both teacher and students. The grade-level meetings were turned into professional learning communities for collaboration, shared leadership, and mentoring to prevent teacher isolation. Class schedules were rearranged to provide additional time for directed silent reading in the classroom, and students needing extra support in reading were identified and assigned to the reading specialist.
The books used in the F&F program are carefully selected trade books; many have won awards for excellence in children’s literature (Washburn and Blackmon 2003). We noticed almost immediately that students, some of whom had not read a chapter book independently before, were very excited about discussing the stories in their books, and usually they could not wait to get their books for the next unit. When they would meet me in the hall, students would ask about their books, or they would use a new vocabulary word from their books when we spoke outside the classroom. They learned to ask questions about the effect a character’s action had on the outcome of a story and to compare their own actions to those of a character. In all of my educational experiences, I have not seen such enthusiasm for reading, nor have I seen the level of discussion generated by the students during their small groups in reading. As we went through the school year, however, we wondered if the standardized test scores at the end of the year would reflect the change in attitude that we saw in the classroom each day.
Because our school is a research-based school, our goal was to use test data to determine whether we could begin to reverse the year-to-year decline in test scores and begin a positive trend. An examination of our SAT/10 scores indicated an improvement. The median scores of reading comprehension achievement across the board were improved in each of the three grades, ranging from 7 months to 2 grades and 7 (2.7) months in the one year. In the fourth and fifth grades, in which declines in reading comprehension had been our greatest concern in the past, median and mean scores all improved over the previous year. Median scores for reading comprehension for fourth- and fifth-grade students improved by 2.6 and 2.7 grade levels, respectively, during the period covered. Several third-grade students demonstrated high-school-level reading comprehension skills, while 35 percent of fifth-grade students demonstrated reading comprehension achievement at the high school and post–high school levels. The median grade levels for reading were above grade levels for each of the grades in the study, and all reading comprehension median scale scores were also above grade level. Teachers’ practices improved, and students’ performances followed.
The student performances were certainly encouraging, confirming for us that high expectations for students in a nurturing environment who are influenced by strong teacher efficacy as required in the F&F program can make the difference in student learning. It is important to note that the F&F training addressed most of our root-cause concerns.
This degree of success confirms what we knew: given the right environment, our students can be as successful as other children. This success encourages us to expand the F&F program to all grade levels next year. With continued focus, the mean student achievement for first through fifth graders in the years to come could reach the level of attainment to where kindergarten students are now, in the 75th percentile, and beyond. It has taken years to create this deficit, and its remedy will not come easily or quickly, but we believe that we have found the track on which to run. Embarking on this journey of change is worthy of our students and teachers because it has the potential of reversing the NRC statistics on reading for all urban students, not just those in Christian schools. This confidence is based on the strengths of the F&F teacher training and the high level of student engagement that is central to the program.
For more information on the Foundations & Frameworks program, see the article “Readers: A Review of Foundations & Frameworks,” which was published in The Meantime, vol. 4, issue 3.
References
Brown, J. W., G. B. Hughes, and P. L. Vance. 1999. The new face of teaching in the 21st century: Are we ready for the challenge? Journal of Negro Education 68: 241–43.
Kline, P. 2002. Why America’s children can’t think: Creating independent minds for the century. Makawao, HI: Inner Ocean Publishing.
Petersen, G. J., and M. D. Young. 2004. The No Child Left Behind Act and its influence on current and future district leaders. Journal of Law and Education 33, no. 3 (July). The NSU Libraries Catalog
Preuss, P. G. 2003. School leader’s guide to root cause analysis: Using data to dissolve problems. Larchmont, NY: Eye On Education.
U.S. Department of Education. 2003. National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The nation’s report card: Trial urban district assessment reading highlights. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Washburn, K. D., and C. M. Blackmon. 2003. Foundations & Frameworks basic training. Wauconda, IL: About Learning, Inc., Briarwood Christian.
The Meantime Volume 5 Number 1