UNITED STATES NEWS

‘Too much to learn’: Schools race to catch up kids’ reading

Apr 20, 2023, 10:46 AM

ATLANTA (AP) — Michael Crowder stands nervously at the front of his third grade classroom, his mustard-yellow polo shirt buttoned to the top.

“Give us some vowels,” says his teacher, La’Neeka Gilbert-Jackson. His eyes search a chart, but he doesn’t land on an answer. “Let’s help him out,” Gilbert-Jackson says.

“A-E-I-O-U,” the class says in unison.

Michael missed most of first grade, the foundational year for learning to read. It was the first fall of the pandemic, and for months Atlanta only offered school online. Michael’s mom had just had a baby, and there was no quiet place in their small apartment. He missed part of second grade, too. So, like most of his classmates at his Atlanta school, he isn’t reading at the level expected for a third grader.

That poses an urgent problem.

Third grade is the last chance for Michael’s class to master reading with help from teachers before they face more rigorous expectations. If Michael and his classmates don’t read fluently by the time this school year ends, research shows they’re less likely to complete high school. Pandemic-fueled school interruptions have raised the stakes. Nationally, third graders lost more ground in reading than kids in older grades.

To address learning loss, Atlanta has been one of the only cities in the country to add class time — 30 minutes a day for three years.

Gilbert-Jackson hopes it will be enough. The school year has been a race to prepare her students for future classes, where reading well is a gateway to everything else.

“Yes, I work you hard,” she says about her students. “Because we have too much to learn.”

Right before December vacation, Gilbert-Jackson’s class is subdued and visibly tired. But Gilbert-Jackson moves on with her lessons.

She reviews suffixes, how to spell words ending in -ch, -tch, and how to make words plural. Some students have spellings memorized; for those who don’t, Gilbert-Jackson explains the rules. It’s a phonics-based program the district now mandates for all third graders, in line with science-backed curricula gaining momentum across the country.

It can be dry and tedious stuff, replete with obscure jargon like “digraph” and “trigraph.” The strong readers nod and respond, but the students still learning the basics look lost.

To inject fun into the lesson, Gilbert-Jackson turns it into a quiz game.

“Teach,” Gilbert-Jackson calls out. “How do you spell teach?”

Students choose between “teach” and “teatch.”

“Yes!” some of the children shout.

Only half got it right.

As the first semester draws to a close, 14 of Gilbert-Jackson’s 19 students aren’t meeting expectations for reading. That includes Michael.

Gilbert-Jackson has an important advantage: She taught Michael and most of his classmates in first grade and second grade, and followed them to third. She knows how much school many of them missed — and why. The strategy was adopted by Boyd Elementary to give students consistency through the crisis.

The long-term connection — or perhaps just the continuity of attending school daily — has helped Michael start reading. At the end of first grade he knew two of the so-called “sight words” —“a” and “the.” By that point, first graders were expected to have memorized 200 of these high-frequency words that aren’t easily decodable by new readers.

Now, midway through third grade, he is reading like a mid-year first grader. It’s progress, Gilbert-Jackson says.

“I see a change in him,” says Michael’s stepfather, Rico Morton. “I feel like he has the potential to be someone.”

Michael isn’t the only student who’s still far behind.

In a couple cases, Gilbert-Jackson believes students’ parents were doing work for them when school was online. “Let’s say she does go to fourth grade: Nobody is going to read anything to her,” she says of one such student. “I don’t want to set them up for failure.”

On paper, Atlanta’ policy is to promote elementary school students who “master” reading, math and other subjects. But how often the district actually holds students back is unclear. Atlanta’s school system did not respond to requests for data.

Atlanta students can attend four weeks of summer school, but that likely won’t be enough to catch them up.

Before leaving for Christmas vacation, Gilbert-Jackson started reaching out to students’ parents to talk about how their children were progressing. The parents of some struggling readers don’t return her calls.

One day in late February, Gilbert-Jackson asks her students to revise a narrative they’d each been writing about a glowing rock.

One new student, a boy with a 100-watt smile, had transferred from another school. Instead of taking out his narrative, he chooses a book from the class library and starts writing. A few minutes later, he presents his notebook to Keione Vance, the teacher’s assistant.

“I know you just copied it,” she says.

She asks him to read to her. He happily starts on the book, aimed at a first grade reading level. He struggles with words: nice, true, voice, sure, might, outside, and because.

When he arrived in November, it appeared he needed “to learn everything from first, second and third grade,” says Gilbert-Jackson.

Gilbert-Jackson worries she isn’t serving her new students as well as she’d like. “This train has been running for three years,” she says. “I can’t start over.”

As the other students keep working, some ask Gilbert-Jackson to read their stories. Some are written in complete sentences. Others lack punctuation and have misspellings throughout.

“Mrs. Gilbert-Jackson cannot be the person who says when your final draft is ready,” she tells the class. “I’m not going to be there when you are in fourth grade.”

Gilbert-Jackson and the other third grade teachers are so concerned about their students’ reading and math skills, they decided after Christmas break to cut back on social studies and science.

The extra time may have helped. Now only seven of the 19 students are below grade level in reading. Of the students who are still behind, Gilbert-Jackson is the least worried about one: Michael Crowder. She’s confident he’ll find a way to navigate the new world ahead of him — even if there is too much to learn.

“He wants it,” she says. “He’ll catch up.”

____

The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

United States News

President Joe Biden landed at Sky Harbor International Airport where he will honor late Senator Joh...

Brandon Gray

President Joe Biden arrives in Arizona, will honor John McCain in Tempe, road closures expected

President Joe Biden arrived Wednesday night in the Valley where he will honor the late Senator John McCain Thursday in Tempe. 

50 minutes ago

Associated Press

Gang violence in Haiti is escalating and spreading with a significant increase in killings, UN says

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Gang violence in Haiti is escalating and spreading from the capital Port-au-Prince through the center of the country to its two other major cities, Gonaives and Cap-Hatien, with a significant increase in killings, kidnappings and rapes in the past few months, the U.N. chief said in a report circulated Wednesday. Secretary-General […]

2 hours ago

FILE-Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, speaks with Strider Technologies, an AI-powered strategic intelligen...

Associated Press

Race to replace Mitt Romney heats up as Republican Utah House speaker readies to enter

Republican Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson is poised to formally announce at a Wednesday night rally that he is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Mitt Romney.

2 hours ago

Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey arrives to the federal courthouse in New York, Wedn...

Associated Press

US Sen. Bob Menendez pleads not guilty to pocketing bribes in a wide-ranging corruption case

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to pocketing bribes of cash and gold bars in exchange for wielding his political influence to secretly advance Egyptian interests and do favors for local businessmen.

3 hours ago

Associated Press

ExxonMobil loses bid to truck millions of gallons of crude oil through central California

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) — ExxonMobil lost a court bid Wednesday to truck millions of gallons of crude oil through central California — a crucial part of its efforts to restart offshore oil wells that were shut in 2015 after a pipeline leak caused the worst coastal spill in 25 years. A federal judge refused […]

3 hours ago

Associated Press

Man who accosted former Rep. Lee Zeldin at campaign stop pleads guilty in federal case

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — A man who climbed the platform at a campaign event in western New York last year and grappled with Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin pleaded guilty Wednesday to a misdemeanor charge of assaulting a federal officer. David Jakubonis, 44, faces up to a year in prison and a hefty fine at […]

4 hours ago

Sponsored Articles

...

DAY & NIGHT AIR CONDITIONING, HEATING AND PLUMBING

Importance of AC maintenance after Arizona’s excruciating heat wave

An air conditioning unit in Phoenix is vital to living a comfortable life inside, away from triple-digit heat.

Home moving relocation in Arizona 2023...

BMS Moving

Tips for making your move in Arizona easier

If you're moving to a new home in Arizona, use this to-do list to alleviate some stress and ensure a smoother transition to your new home.

Sanderson Ford...

Sanderson Ford

Sanderson Ford congratulates D-backs’ on drive to great first half of 2023

The Arizona Diamondbacks just completed a red-hot first half of the major league season, and Sanderson Ford wants to send its congratulations to the ballclub.

‘Too much to learn’: Schools race to catch up kids’ reading