NORTHWEST
EDUCATION
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SUNNYSIDE, Washington—Located in the heart of the fertile Yakima Valley, Sunnyside, Washington, is a town in transition. Packed schools, housing shortages, and other strains on the social fabric are testament to more than a decade of rapid growth and changing demographics. Between 1990 and 2000 this formerly depressed farm town grew by 25 percent—a rate that has not dropped off in the current decade.
That growth is even more evident in the Hispanic population. Sunnyside has been home to a large and politically active Hispanic community since at least the 1960s—including housing one of the few United Farmworkers of America offices outside California. But, the native Spanish-speaking population has exploded from 46 percent in 1990 to almost 76 percent of the total population today.
The Sunnyside School District shows all the signs of these seismic shifts. At Pioneer Elementary—one of four elementary schools in the district—87 percent of the students are Hispanic and an equal number qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. A pre-K–4 school, built in 1996, Pioneer is already nearing its capacity, serving an average of 945 students per year. A large English language learner population, combined with high poverty and high mobility rates, has contributed to test scores that are just below the state average in most subject areas.
Despite these challenges, both Pioneer Elementary and the district as a whole have made significant progress during the past three years. Pioneer has continually met its adequate yearly progress goals. It’s raised the number of fourth-graders who meet state reading benchmarks by nearly 20 points, from percentages in the mid-40s to the mid-60s.
Several factors have contributed to the school’s progress, but three stand out: the implementation of a dual language program in 2002–2003; a three-year Reading First grant that began in 2003–2004; and the hiring of an on-site literacy coach as part of that grant. Together, these elements have helped create what was previously missing at the school: a well-coordinated, schoolwide reading program that meets the needs of all students, including English language learners.
“You don’t get on the list of potential Reading First schools because they like you,” says Pioneer Elementary Principal Kristine Diddens, when asked about the state of her school’s reading program prior to the Reading First grant. “You get there because your scores are less than stellar.”
The statement is typical of Diddens, a veteran administrator not given to glossing the truth, complaining, or making excuses. “We were doing some things well [before the grant],” she says, “but they were being done in isolation. There was definitely room for improvement, and we saw Reading First as an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.”
The timing could not have been better. The district had reached the end of its seven-year curriculum cycle and was already looking at adopting a new reading program. Teachers were also ready for a change, says Diddens. “We had a great deal of buy-in from the staff, partly because it was at a time in the cycle when they were expecting a change in the curriculum anyway. The curriculum we were using wasn’t on the state-approved list, so we knew we’d have to choose something else if we applied for the grant.”
Two major factors influenced their choice of a core reading program. First, as a district with significant school-to-school mobility, administrators wanted to create districtwide consistency.
Second, Diddens and the other administrators felt strongly that the reading program should serve the entire K–3 grade span covered by the grant. Many programs, they found, were designed for either K–1 or 2–3 only. “We brought all of the schools together to discuss what we wanted to do,” says Diddens, “and we all agreed that we wanted the whole package—we wanted to be able to maintain continuity across the grade levels, as well as throughout the district.”
With these criteria in mind, the district chose the Open Court reading program and received its Reading First grant in 2003. Professional development began almost immediately.
The Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction held a summer reading institute for all Reading First schools, which included breakout training sessions provided by each school’s reading program of choice. This was followed by a three-day Open Court training session at the school, and another three-day program especially for literacy coaches.
The hiring of a literacy coach—a requirement of the grant—was the key to the entire program, says Diddens. “Hiring the right person as the literacy coach is the first big decision you have to make [as an administrator],” she says. “It’s even more important than choosing the curriculum. You’ve got to have somebody that can keep people moving in the right direction and encourage them to continually stretch their skills and try new things.”
Kelly Wavrin, Didden’s choice as coach, is in many ways the prototype of a successful literacy coach. She’s an experienced classroom teacher with a master’s degree in reading and literacy, professional development experience, and the respect of her fellow teachers. At the time, Wavrin was at Outlook Elementary, another school in the district, but she had previously taught at Pioneer and was well acquainted with most of its staff. She had also been part of a literacy team that attended the state’s initial Reading First meetings, and so was familiar with the requirements from the very beginning.
Four years into the Reading First program, most educators have some familiarity with its general guidelines, whether their own school or district has a grant or not. At Pioneer, the essential components of Reading First are all firmly in place:
Less visible is how a school can shape those requirements to meet the specific needs of its student population. As Wavrin sees it, “You do have that flexibility to look at it in light of your own student body, and some of that is in the choices you can make from the list of supplemental materials and interventions. It’s not one size fits all. We try to be very intentional about how we apply those—to make sure that the student is getting the right intervention, not just an intervention.”
For Pioneer, shaping Reading First to meet the needs of its student body means blending it with a Spanish/English dual-language program. The school started the program with two dual-language kindergarten classrooms, one year before getting the Reading First grant. That initial group of students has carried the program to each successive grade level, so that the program now stretches from kindergarten to third grade, and will eventually be schoolwide. Each grade level will then have two dual-language classrooms.
The dual-language model blends easily with the Reading First program. In kindergarten and first grade, these students spend the 90-minute “walk to read” block working exclusively in their native language—Spanish or English. In second grade, this changes: All students in the program receive 90 minutes of English instruction, followed by 60 minutes of Spanish. This “90/60 for all” model continues in all subsequent grade levels.
A large body of research has shown a clear link between first-language literacy and the acquisition of a second language. For Wavrin, believing in that research was a leap of faith. “We didn’t really have any data until the third year,” she says, “so you kind of hold your breath. But the data that came in this year are really exciting. Those students are good readers in Spanish, and all the evidence is that those skills are transferring to English. They still have a lot of irregular and high-frequency words to learn, but they’re reading in English, and that’s awesome. It’s really gratifying to build that foundation and then to watch the data soar.”
According to Wavrin, watching the data is the biggest change Reading First has brought to the school. “It involves a very intentional, very explicit use of data to inform our teaching, in a way that we really weren’t doing before,” she says.
DIBELS, the formal assessment tool, is the driving force behind that change. “DIBELS has not only changed the way we assess kids,” says Diddens, “it’s changed the way the entire staff thinks about reading, and it’s changed the way we teach.”
A DIBELS benchmark assessment is given three times a year, but Pioneer uses the program to monitor student progress much more frequently. “It’s the key to our intervention program,” says Wavrin. “We don’t just wait until January for the first formal assessment. We do baseline testing in September to see each student’s skill level. And then we test them again a month later to see what kind of progress they’re making. That’s when we can really start to target any skill deficits they have and get them the help they need.”
At Pioneer, that help can range from the subtle to the intensive. Student who are just missing the benchmark, for instance, are “hot listed”—an approach that involves supplementing instruction within the classroom in very simple ways. First-graders struggling with the transition between short and long vowels, for instance, will often sing the long vowel sounds with the teacher as they transition between activities. “We’re just identifying those students who need a little extra practice,” explains Wavrin. “It’s an acknowledgment that even students who don’t necessarily need a reading intervention can benefit from quick, targeted activities. We don’t have any minutes to waste.”
At the other end of the spectrum is an intensive, phonics-heavy intervention such as the Lindamood-Bell program (www.lindamoodbell.com). Designed for small groups of students—usually five or fewer—with very similar and very specific skill deficits, the program is administered by a reading specialist who has received a full year of training. Students are in the intervention for an additional 90 minutes beyond the normal 90-minute reading block.
While this might seem like a lot of time and money to spend on such a small group of students, Wavrin defends the program. “Our job as teachers is to teach every student who walks through the door, regardless of their background or skill level,” she says. “And I think we’re doing a really good job in this building of coming up with those individual solutions. Sometimes—as with the Lindamood-Bell program—they’re very intensive, very individualized solutions.”
Other interventions fall somewhere in the middle, such as a more traditional “pull-out” approach that provides the neediest students, including ELL students, with an extra half hour (or “double dose”) of reading instruction beyond the 90-minute block.
Offering such individualized instruction is only possible with the inclusion of all certified staff, including two special education teachers, two full-time ELL teachers, a reading specialist, and the Lindamood-Bell reading specialist.
If all of this sounds like a scheduling nightmare—not to mention data overload—that’s where the literacy coach comes in, says Wavrin: “That’s part of the job—to put all the pieces together. Some of it is about scheduling and some of it is about getting into the classroom and modeling and some of it is just being supportive. What can I do? How can I help? And then maybe the biggest part is looking at the data, looking at specific students and going over that information with the grade-level teams to identify what needs to be done.”
The greatest testament to Wavrin’s success as a coach is also in the data. “We’re seeing more successful readers than we’ve ever seen before—at every level and in every subgroup,” she says. “And for us, that’s the bottom line: It always comes back to student achievement. If we’re not seeing growth and progress in their reading, then we obviously need to revisit what we’re doing. And if it is working, we need to keep doing it and reflecting on how to do it even better.” 
Original URL: http://www.nwrel.org/nwedu/12-01/ell/
This online version is based upon the print version of the magazine. The information contained in it was current at the time of printing/posting.
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Copyright © 2006, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory.
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