I’ve said it before, I love the English language. I love reading, I love writing, I can easily spend hours in a Library or Barnes and Noble just wandering around. I think that’s why something in an article in the Providence Journal caught my eye. The article started out by basically saying that instead of creating special schools (like Achievement First or the Global Communications Academy) to combat the educational inequalities we see in urban education, we need to find things that we can implement in all urban schools that will help them improve.
Rhode Island educators have been debating how to rescue the urban school districts for decades, so what makes this report different? Warren Simmons, executive director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University and the task force chairman, said that in the past, similar groups focused on the strengths of individual schools and programs, which have led to “isolated lighthouses of success.”
This report, he said, proposes broad-based partnerships and programs that are designed to lift urban schools as a whole out of the low-performance doldrums.
One of the biggest things the article says is important to make sure students in urban schools are getting a good education seems to be a pretty simple solution: make sure they can read. Yes, you heard it, the solution to the problem of urban education is literacy! Okay, maybe it’s not THE solution, but it certainly is a great place to start.
According to current research, only one in three students in urban schools can read at their grade level. One third. I think one of the first steps we need to take in getting urban students caught up with their peers is to teach the other two thirds how to read. When you think about it, reading is kind of the basic building block you need to learn anything else. It’s like when you make a pyramid. If someone on the bottom level decides to step out, everyone else is going to fall. It’s the same with reading and education. If a child can’t read, how can they learn history? Science? Even math would be difficult.
Boosting childhood literacy is critical to continued academic success, the task force said. By age four, the average child in a family receiving welfare tends to have a considerably lower vocabulary than the average child of a working class family, according to a recent study.
The report recommends that urban elementary schools offer 20 minutes of daily phonics instruction, set aside time every day for children to read individually and in small groups, and test students frequently to catch those who are struggling. Schools should teach vocabulary early and often. And when a child falls behind, that student should be pulled out of class for additional small group reading instruction.
As the Urban Education Task Force (how intense of a name is that?) seems to notice, too many of our students who struggle with reading are slipping past educators under the radar without ever getting help. It’s good to know that the reforms they are looking to put into action plan on addressing that issue.
So students, get out there and read read read! Read with your families, read with your friends. Curl up in a cozy corner of your local library and dive into a world of fantasy, science fiction, or history! Because a little thing like reading could make a big difference in the lives of everyone, especially students in urban schools.
