TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Fewer Students Read Between Lines

ADVERTISEMENT

By MARILYN BROWN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 1, 2008

TAMPA - Despite a decade of education reform, tens of thousands of Florida's high school students don't read well enough to survive in the work force.

•This year's Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test results revealed just 38 percent of 10th graders are proficient in reading.

•About one fourth of Hillsborough County high school students - 12,088 - were placed in remedial reading classes in 2007-08.

•Nearly 35 percent of students who entered Florida's community colleges in 2006 were required to take remedial reading.

•College entrance exam reading scores are not improving. SAT scores remain basically flat in Florida and ACT reading scores in Florida dropped four points in 2007, nine points below the national average.

Now, after years of focusing on young readers, educators are turning their attention to high school students who need help. In addition to the reading class Hillsborough County requires for all ninth-graders and the remedial classes for the district's weakest readers, middle and high school students will have new curriculum in August emphasizing higher level thinking skills.

"The No. 1 problem in secondary education in our state and in our country is a decline in literacy in high school," said Don Gaetz, a former superintendent and chairman of Florida's Senate K-12 education committee.
State Education Commissioner Eric Smith notes recent statewide progress - the percentage of 10th-graders scoring in the lowest level has dropped from 32 percent in 2001 to 20 percent this year - but says "it's not even close to being adequate."

Gaetz, superintendent in Okaloosa County from 2000 to 2006, figures there are two reasons, echoed by national experts:

"We quit teaching reading in fifth grade," and, "In general, no one is responsible for the literacy of a high school student."

Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington-based education research and advocacy group, thinks the nation fell behind when educators failed to realize reading instruction needs to continue in middle and high schools and when non-English speaking students poured into classes.

That is quickly changing. A national high school reform movement calls for reading lessons to have more rigor and a relevance to new technology, saying employees must be able to comprehend and use complex written information for almost any job.

Florida was a leader in recognizing the need to expect more of its students, Wise said: "At least you know the depth of the problem."

Challenges To Improvement

Local reading teachers agree with national experts that students have a hard time making the transition from mastering the mechanics of reading to applying the higher-level comprehension and analytical skills now expected.

"If I ask them to read to me, they can read the words. They just don't understand what they're reading," said Taryn Anello, a reading teacher at Freedom High School.

Not only must students understand on a literal level, they also are expected to draw inferences, project outcomes and produce creative thought, educators say.

Elizabeth Brown, Hillsborough's supervisor of secondary language arts, gives an example from Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," read by ninth-graders:

During one of the classic courtroom scenes, the young girl, Scout, sits in the back of the room as her father, Atticus Finch, presents his case. A literal reader follows the plot, taking in the gist of what is going on as a simple story.

Students using higher-level analytic skills will view Atticus through Scout's eyes, realizing he is her hero, while also seeing him from the perspective of a rural, Southern community.

"The reader will be able to recognize Scout is going through a big change from being a naive little girl to seeing society for what it was," Brown said. "It is definitely a time of change. It shows us in 2008 people have the same changes over time, growing up."

But the ease of finding information online, a preference for electronics over paper and shorter attention spans threaten reading skills, teachers say.

Students agree.

"I don't like to read in my spare time," said Jon Williams, a 15-year-old Alonso High School student. "I look up stuff online. Books don't have the exact stuff you're looking for. You find something and have to go to another book. Online, you just type it in - it takes you right to it."

Williams is one of about 285 Hillsborough County students attending READ 180, a summer reading program lasting four hours a day for a month.

Only a small percentage of eligible students attend the summer program, which offers small classes, the latest technology and personal help.

"I would say definitely fewer than 10 percent who are eligible came," said David Steele, Hillsborough's general director for secondary education. Teachers cite lack of transportation or motivation and obligations to spend the summer with another parent as reasons students don't enroll.

Those who do might be at a particular point where they see the value, said Janelle MacLean, who teaches the summer class at Alonso. "We have to teach them when the window is open."

The students are often among the hundreds who have spent two class periods a day in the same remedial high school program during the school year in addition to their regular English class.

Finding Material A Challenge

Just finding something students enjoy reading is a key, teachers said.

Teens want to read stories about people their age in situations they can relate to, both teachers and students said. Williams likes books about World War II. Anabella Fernandez, 13, a summer school classmate, said she wants to read more novels like "Romiette and Julio," a romance based on Shakespeare's characters.

Some students need pictures to engage them, one reason for the popularity of graphic novels, which resemble comic books, but tell stories that help students make inferences and draw conclusions through plot lines and characters.

"The characters are phenomenal," said Michael Mastandrea, 15, who will be a sophomore at Alonso in August. "I like seeing pictures and how it works together." He attended private school until he started ninth grade at Alonso last year. "I wasn't into books until I got here," he said.

His mother, Diana Mastandrea, said her son's grades did not reflect his weak reading skills. Reading classes this past year and this summer are making a difference.

"He's coming home and talking about things he has read now," she said.

The district also offers a voluntary summer FCAT prep course for 11th- and 12th-graders who must still pass FCAT for graduation.

The reading FCAT requires analysis and a high level of comprehension, a key reason state officials say only 38 percent of Florida's 10th graders scored "proficient" on this year's test.

The state's "proficient" standard is higher than what is needed to meet Florida's graduation requirement.

Florida law requires all high school students who score in the bottom level on FCAT reading or haven't passed the 10th grade FCAT reading test to take an intensive reading class. About a quarter of high school students take that class, Steele said.

Hillsborough's required reading class for all ninth-graders includes everything from the intensive reading to difficult novels and a high level of analysis for top readers. Struggling readers can also receive tutoring.

Hillsborough has jumped on state and national efforts to push more courses requiring higher level reading skills.

In August, the district will be the first in the nation to institute a reading and math program districtwide in middle and high schools designed specifically for higher order thinking and analysis.

The program's creator, The College Board, says it prepares students for Advanced Placement classes and college work. Students read fewer novels in depth, for example, spending more time debating ideas and analyzing the work.

It wasn't long ago that students who read at very basic levels graduated from Florida schools with high school diplomas. The nation - and the state - focused on basic reading skills, assuming that once students learned those in elementary school, their skills would improve as they read more complex subject matter.

Not so anymore, national experts say.

"The definition of literacy is shifting - it's always shifting," said Kylene Beers, president of the National Council of Teachers of English and author of texts on teaching reading. "At one point in time, someone able to make an X was a measure of literacy."

Now, she said, "It's about conceiving ideas, synthesizing, explaining complex ideas well and easily. It's what you are going to need to do to keep a job in this country."

Reporter Marilyn Brown can be reached at (813) 259-8069 or mbrown@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT