DavieLEADS strives to improve kindergarten readiness

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Note: This article, by EdNC staff, was originally published on Education NC (EdNC –DavieLEADS strives to improve kindergarten readiness) and is republished here with permission.

Cooleemee Elementary pre-K. All photos by Liz Bell/EducationNC

Davie County is in its second year of the DavieLEADS grant program. That is a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the Mebane Foundation to improve kindergarten readiness and third grade reading proficiency. Its specific goal is to get kindergarten readiness from 70 percent to 90 percent and third grade reading proficiency from 60 percent to 80 percent by 2022.

In the past few days, we’ve talked about DavieLEADS’ efforts around elementary schools in the county, but another crucial aspect of the initiative is intervening in pre-K classrooms.

NC Pre-K is the hallmark program of North Carolina early childhood education, bringing high-quality pre-K instruction to students around the state. In contrast to North Carolina’s traditional public school system, NC Pre-K is administered by a mix of public and private institutions.

In Davie County, the school district is using DavieLEADS to get private and public pre-K programs on the same page.

“In pre-K, our main goals were number one trying to make sure that all preschool classrooms, NC Pre-K in particular, but preschool across the county — whether they were public schools or private preschool and child care centers or half-day churches — that we’re getting the teachers some of the same information, some of the same curriculum materials, so that everybody has resources to do a high quality job,” said Stephanie Nelson, a preschool collaborative teacher for Davie County.

She talked with EducationNC reporters in the midst of a swirl of students inside a pre-K classroom at Cooleemee Elementary in Davie County. In a word, the classroom looked like chaos, with students moving to and fro, picking up and playing with a variety of items, and talking excitedly.

Nelson said that when it comes to pre-K, looks can be deceiving.

“In preschool, our main goal is for children to learn through play. So, it looks like we are just goofing off, but we are not,” she said.

She went on to explain that every piece of equipment in the room is helping students learn how to do certain things, like manage playing with materials, cleaning up, and interacting with other students.

Some of the big changes Nelson has seen since the implementation of DavieLEADS is increased communication and access to resources.

She explained that pre-K is often separate from the rest of the K-12 education system. They are, in essence, a world apart.

“As you can see, physically here, pre-K stands alone in many places, and you’re the only preschool teacher,” she said.

One of the goals of DavieLEADS is to increase collaboration among preschool teachers across the county. This gives them the natural interaction that many K-12 teachers take for granted. The grant has also allowed Davie County pre-K to access more technology and other resources, including the ability to better collect and analyze data.

Nelson has been working with the DavieLEADS program for two years, but pre-K teacher Jodi Walker was at Cooleemee prior to the grant. She says the technology and programs that help monitor development in pre-K students have been especially helpful. And she says she’s noticed a change in the students since The Mebane Foundation stepped in.

“Do I see a change in them?” she asked. “Yes. They’re more interactive.”

Cooleemee Elementary pre-K. Liz Bell/EducationNC

The pre-K classroom at Cooleemee is, obviously, part of the district’s school system, but through DavieLEADS, Nelson and other district staff are also working with private preschools like Kountry Kids Preschool in Mocksville.

Housed in a stand-alone trailer, the preschool really is in a separate world from the traditional K-12 school, a challenge that separates it from its preschool analogues housed in the traditional school system, according to Lynn Marrs, the site director for NC Pre-K at the facility.

“In my experience in working in an elementary school, they wouldn’t have daily exposure to a school environment,” she said of the students at Kountry Kids.

Kountry Kids pre-K. Liz Bell/EducationNC

Marrs is a former elementary school principal. When she was in a traditional public school setting, she said that preschool students would have regular chances to do simple things that older students take for granted, such as going to the lunchroom, seeing the media center, or even getting exposure to what a kindergarten classroom looks like.

These may seem like simple things, but for preschool students, exposure to what their next level of education is going to look like is a big deal. Through its partnership with Davie County Public Schools, Kountry Kids students do get to make visits to elementary schools, but Marrs said the environment is definitely the big difference between her program and what you might see in a traditional public school.

Other than that, she said the curriculum is pretty much the same. Private NC Pre-K programs have to follow state guidelines around who they hire as teachers and what kind of curriculum they teach, but through the DavieLEADS grant, the school system is trying to coordinate the curriculum between private and public preschools even more, ensuring that the quality of education students get is basically the same no matter the preschool setting.

Student at Kountry Kids. Liz Bell/EducationNC

One of the big advantages of the grant, Marrs said, is the increased resources Kountry Kids has access to. That includes technology, such as programs that allow her school to better assess students using robust data. She said parents were really impressed when Kountry Kids was able to provide more detailed assessments of students thanks to the DavieLEADS grant.

“When we went through report cards and we went through assessments, it was a big eye opener,” she said.

And thanks to the data to which the school now has access, Kountry Kids is better able to differentiate instruction based on the needs of students.

Students at Kountry Kids

When The Mebane Foundation was trying to figure out how best to intervene in Davie County Schools to improve literacy, one of the things it recognized was that it had to create a continuum of educational interventions that started early and extended through the third grade. That’s the big difference with the DavieLEADS grant, according to Larry Colbourne, president of the foundation.

“We went down into the pre-K world,” he said. “Normally, we always got the kids in kindergarten and then try to get them reading by the third grade. We decided to go deeper, and that’s a huge part of this project.”

In year two, DavieLEADS has a long way to go, but Colbourne has already been giving a lot of thought to the future. When the grant is over, if it has been successful, what is a way forward for Davie County? Part of the hope is that the money will have enabled the district to align all its pre-K through elementary grades in such a way that the foundation has been set and the progress can continue. But he recognizes that a monetary infusion will always be helpful.

To that end, he said it’s likely that when the grant is over, The Mebane Foundation will continue to have a role in the district.

“As the Mebane Foundation, I would say, listen, we’re not going to back away,” he said. “Let’s look at what it would cost the state. Maybe we can split the difference. We know if we’re going to sustain, the school system is going to need additional money, and in this environment, it’s difficult to find those funds. Although we’re not going to walk away totally, we would hope in good faith, whether it’s Davie County or anywhere else we’d partner with, that once leadership at the county level sees these types of gains, they would jump in and say we’ll pay some here.”

Here is a video highlighting the EducationNC team’s journey through Davie County reporting on the impact of DavieLEADS.

 

The evolution of Davie County’s elementary schools

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Note: This article, by EdNC staff, was originally published on Education NC (EdNC –The evolution of Davie County’s elementary schools) and is republished here with permission.

A student at Mocksville Elementary School in Davie County. Liz Bell/EducationNC

A student at Mocksville Elementary School in Davie County. Liz Bell/EducationNC

With the help of the Mebane Foundation, Davie County has embarked on a mission to improve reading in its elementary schools.  Yesterday, EducationNC talked about the success the DavieLEADS grant has had in helping turn around Cooleemee Elementary, but the initiative is active throughout the other area elementary schools as well.

DavieLEADS is a five-year, $2.5 million grant, with a specific goal to get kindergarten readiness from 70 percent to 90 percent and reading proficiency in third grade from 60 percent to 80 percent by 2022. It began in the 2017-18 school year and the success is already starting to show. After the 2017-18 End-of-Grade test results were announced, the county discovered it had moved up from 45th to 17th out of all 115 districts in the state for third-grade reading proficiency.

Mocksville Elementary is another school that has seen impressive gains from the initiative. When the 2017-18 EOG results were announced, the school found out its grade-level proficiency in third grade had increased to 64.9 percent from 52.9 percent the year before. Teachers and staff who work at the school attribute that to many things, but it’s not hard to draw a direct line to the work of DavieLEADS.

 

Liz Bell/EducationNC

Madison Wyatt and Suzanne Doub, both third grade teachers at the school, point to the work of the Professional Learning Communities (PLC) from last year.

PLCs are essentially where teachers can get together at the school to discuss the standards they’re working with in the classrooms and get a better grasp on how to teach to them. The focus of the schools working under DavieLEADS last year were these PLCs, while this year they are focusing on implementing guided reading.

Wyatt said that the PLCs last year focused on understanding and breaking down the standards so that teachers knew how to really teach them.

“Really, honestly, you can be handsome on a standard … but what are you teaching and how are you teaching it?” she said.

Wyatt explained how she might go about teaching one particular standard: making connections in a text through sentences and paragraphs.

That standard includes a lot of different skills, such as compare and contrast, cause and effect, and understanding sequences. She said she would start out with fiction reading, because it’s easier for teaching cause and effect and compare and contrast. She would focus on one skill in a week, say compare and contrast. The next week, the students would move on to cause and effect, but meanwhile, she would also be looping back to the skill they learned the week before. She does that with each new skill set, introducing a new one while revisiting prior ones. She said that prior to the PLCs, standards were taught far differently.

Shady Grove Elementary Schools. Liz Bell/EducationNC

“We would just say, here’s our standard, we’re going to teach this standard,” she said. “And we would not have thought and processed it like we have.”

Doub said another part of the PLCs last year was getting a firmer grasp on where kids were coming from and where they needed to go.

“We also looked at vertical alignment,” she said. “What are the kids coming to us with, and what do we need to prepare them with for fourth grade?”

For Meaghan Irons, this is her first year at Mocksville teaching third grade. But watching her more veteran colleagues, she is not at a loss for why the school has improved.

“Being the new kid on the block, I can definitely see how they got here,” she said. “They literally come in every week and break apart every standard.”

She said the support she has gotten in Davie County has been phenomenal, and that’s thanks in part to the literacy coaches and professional consultants brought in using funds from DavieLEADS.

“I have literally probably gotten more support and more training in the last year I’ve been here than I got in the last five years at my last school,” she said.

Different schools in Davie County have different levels of needs and resources, and sometimes it doesn’t pay to be well off. While Mocksville and Cooleemee are both Title I schools, meaning that at least 40 percent of the children in the school are low-income, Shady Grove Elementary School is not. That comes with certain advantages, but also some disadvantages. Title I schools are eligible for federal funds that can help with school programs, but Shady Grove doesn’t get any of that extra money. For Shady Grove Principal Sarah Maier, DavieLEADs has helped fill in that gap.

“The level of support that you get is amazing,” she said.

She previously worked in Davidson County where she was most recently at a non-Title I school. There was no reading specialist or instructional coach. Any new programs or initiatives that were introduced were the responsibility of her and her assistant principal to implement.

Guided reading lesson at Shady Grove Elementary Schools. Liz Bell/EducationNC

“Coming from that to a non-Title I school that has a half-time instructional coach … also the help with implementing guided reading. I can see them implementing the … plan in what took our school in Davidson four years; they’re doing it in three months,” she said. “Because they have coaches in there helping them. If you don’t have coaches in there it’s harder to get that implementation as quickly.”

Guided reading, the centerpiece of Davie County’s strategy this year, is part of what’s called a balanced literacy approach, and here’s how it works.

There are different elements that are rotated. One is where a teacher reads aloud from a text that is above grade level. Here, students are just listening. Then there is teacher-directed reading. That is grade-level text that each student is holding or viewing via projection.

“Whether they are on grade level or above grade level, that is their window into how to read grade-level text,” said Nancy Scoggin, one of the consultants who came in to work under the DavieLEADS grant. She said this is the portion where standards are explicitly taught.

Then there is guided reading. These are small groups of students reading texts at their instructional level with the help of the teacher.

“It’s all about the mistakes that they’re making, so that we can see what to do next,” Scoggin said.

These components, combined with writing and working with words, comprise what is called balanced literacy, and they are the components of the guided reading model Davie County is using.

In the video below, Kelly McGilvary, a third grade teacher at Shady Grove Elementary, explains guided reading and what it looks like in her classroom.

The model of guided reading used in Davie County is based on the work of literacy expert Jan Richardson. Schools may say they’re using a guided reading method, but not all strategies are created equal.

Julie Fletcher is a third grade teacher at Mocksville. She has been teaching for 22 years, but this is only her third year teaching third grade. Prior to that, she was a second grade teacher. She said implementing the Jan Richardson model has been a huge change.

“I’ve taught guided reading lessons for years and years, but we’ve never done it in this way,” she said, adding later, “I can see a big difference. And like I said, this is my third year, you know, so just in two years it’s a big change.”

Kids use shaving cream to practice spelling at Shady Grove Elementary School. Liz Bell/EducationNC

The foundation of reading is understanding how words work, and that’s where Letterland comes into play. This is a phonics-based program that aims to teach students aged 3 to 8 how to read, write, and spell. Letterland played an integral role in helping improve Cooleemee, but it’s also implemented throughout Davie County’s elementary schools.

Students at Shady Grove Elementary get a lesson on letters via Letterland. Liz Bell/EducationNC

Amy Spade, a literacy coach at Shady Grove Elementary, is a huge champion of Letterland and its efficacy in helping make kids literate.

“Letterland is like a small island that all these Letterland characters live on. So all the letters become characters,” she said. For example, A is Annie Apple. “The kids meet these characters to learn their letters and sounds, how to spell, how to read,” Spade continued.

In the video below, Spade goes in depth into Letterland.

Larry Colbourne, president of the Mebane Foundation, spends a lot of time visiting the schools his organization is helping. He enjoys seeing the academic progress the schools are making, but especially at this early stage (not even two years in), he’s even more excited at how staff are responding to the changes being made.

“What I’ve seen in the way the teachers, the leadership, and the community has rallied around this initiative, is the best I’ve seen since I’ve been here,” he said. “We’ve tried many partnerships with large dollar amounts and large initiatives, but this thing right now is as good as it gets.”

The journey to third graders reading on grade level begins long before third grade, however. It even starts before kindergarten, and that’s where the other part of the DavieLEADS plan comes into play. As mentioned before, one of the goals of the grant is to increase kindergarten readiness in the county from 70 percent to 90 percent, and that means working in preschools.

More on that coming soon.

DavieLEADS gives Cooleemee Elementary a boost

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Note: This article, by EdNC staff, was originally published on February 27, 2019 on Education NC (EdNC – DavieLEADS gives Cooleemee Elementary a boost) and is republished here with permission.

Davie County Public Schools got some good news last year. After the 2017-18 End-of-Grade test results were announced, the county discovered it had moved up from 45th to 17th out of all 115 districts in the state for third-grade reading proficiency. Cooleemee Elementary was singled out in those results for moving into the top 4 percent of all elementary schools in the state for academic growth.

This growing success in the district is being bolstered by a $2.5 million grant from the Mebane Foundation to improve kindergarten readiness and reading proficiency in the third grade. It’s called DavieLEADS, and it’s a five-year grant with a specific goal to get kindergarten readiness from 70 percent to 90 percent and reading proficiency in third grade from 60 percent to 80 percent by 2022.

Lt. Gov. Dan Forest celebrates Cooleemee Elementary becoming one of the top four percent elementary schools in the state for academic growth. Courtesy of Lt. Gov. Dan Forest’s Facebook page.

Lt. Gov. Dan Forest celebrates Cooleemee Elementary becoming one of the top four percent elementary schools in the state for academic growth. Courtesy of Lt. Gov. Dan Forest’s Facebook page.

That’s the big picture, but the changes happen on the ground, and walking around Cooleemee Elementary, you can feel the excitement buzzing in the hallways.

In the second year of the grant, Cooleemee is focused on guided reading. This combines writing, phonics, word-work, and other lessons together in specialized groups that focus on specific children and the reading levels they’re on. For instance, you may see a group of kids gathered at a table with a teacher, reading a specific book. That book will be one that is suitable to the reading level those children are on. The teacher will do a lesson with them, and then that group will be replaced with a different set of students reading a different book suitable for their specific reading level.

“It’s taking all the components children need to read — balanced literacy — and putting together the components,” said Cynthia Stone, the principal of the school.

The work this year follows on the foundation set last year when Cooleemee focused on Professional Learning Communities (PLC). That’s essentially where teachers can get together at the school to discuss the standards they’re working with in the classrooms and get a better grasp on how to teach to them. Kerry Blackwelder, a reading specialist who has been at Cooleemee for 23 years, said those PLCs were essential.

“Reading a standard and telling [teachers] what to do and having them do it is different than all of us coming together and talking about it and understanding it,” she said. “I’ve been a reading teacher for a long time, and I felt like I knew my standards. I didn’t know my standards like I should have. So I feel like I’m a better teacher because I understand what I need to ask my kids and do with my kids for them to understand that standard.”

Pre-K student at Cooleemee Elementary School in Davie County. Liz Bell/EducationNC

Pre-K student at Cooleemee Elementary School in Davie County. Liz Bell/EducationNC

 

The money from DavieLEADs includes funding for two literacy coaches and two professional consultants in the district. Those consultants were instrumental in helping lead PLCs last year, which put Cooleemee and other schools on a firm footing to focus on guided reading this year.

“When we were trying to run PLCs ourselves, we didn’t really have the training,” said Amy Stokes, another reading specialist at the school. “We made strides, but it’s been just so much more cohesive.”

She said the PLCs and the work under DavieLEADS has made a big difference because the staff of the school all feel like they have a common purpose.

“We’re following our standards, we’re all working together, and everyone is collaborating and working together to help our students grow,” she said.

Nancy Scoggin was one of the consultants who came in to work under the DavieLEADS grant. She was assigned Cooleemee, which she said was already ahead of the curve when she arrived. The grant lasts only five years, and after that the school will have to find a way to keep the gains they’ve made in that time. Scoggin said they are well positioned to do so because they have collaborated in such a way that teachers at every grade level have their fingers on the pulses of their students.

“When we talk about sustainability … every grade level is aware of what the next grade level is dealing with,” she said. “They use every single piece of data in this school that they possibly can. It’s not done with a ‘gotcha.’ It’s done with ‘let’s look at where we are. How do we need to arrange the schedule to use every single person in this building to get every inch of growth that we can?’”

One of the keys to knowing the kids is working with them in small groups during the guided reading sessions. Entering a classroom, you may see a teacher reading a sentence over and over again, substituting one word and asking the students if it makes sense.

Another tool you’ll see in classrooms is Letterland. This is a phonics-based program that aims to teach students aged 3 to 8 how to read, write, and spell. Letterland has characters based on different letters that live together in Letterland. Stories featuring the letter characters explain phonics to children in a way that’s more entertaining than your typical lesson, and thus sticks in the minds of students.

Letterland. Alex Granados/EducationNC

Letterland. Alex Granados/EducationNC

Of course, all of this reading and learning wouldn’t be possible without books, and Cooleemee has a lot, thanks in part to funds from the Mebane Foundation. About six years ago, Stone and others were building a book room in a small space at the school. Larry Colbourne, president of the Mebane Foundation, came over and asked how he could help.

Now the room is huge, with books for every conceivable reading level.

“The teacher can come and pull resources on that level specific to what the student needs,” Stone said.

Stone said that one of the things she appreciates most about DavieLEADS is flexibility. Colbourne is a familiar face around the school, and if teachers or leaders need an adjustment to how they use the money from the grant, they can talk directly to him and work it out. She also appreciates that the grant isn’t just about getting teachers new resources or lesson plans. It’s about showing them how to teach differently, and hopefully, more effectively.

“My teachers are getting skill sets,” Stone said. “They’re not just getting a material to consume.”

Editor’s Note: The Mebane Foundation supports the work of EducationNC.

 

The Mebane Foundation leads Davie County schools into the future

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Note: This article, by EdNC staff, was originally published on February 26, 2019 on Education NC (EdNC – The Mebane Foundation leads Davie County Schools into the future) and is republished here with permission.

Larry Colbourne, Mebane Foundation, listening and learning from the team at Book Harvest.

Larry Colbourne, Mebane Foundation, listening and learning from the team at Book Harvest.

As part of the EdNC series on early-grade literacy, EdNC is focusing on what Davie County is doing to improve kindergarten readiness and reading for students by third grade. Part of the strategy Davie County Schools is using involves funding from the Mebane Foundation, which has launched a five-year, $2.5 million initiative called DavieLEADS. We’ll be talking a lot about DavieLEADS this week, but first, here’s a Q & A with Mebane Foundation President Larry Colbourne to kick things off. The interview has been edited for clarity.

Q: Tell me a little bit about how the Mebane Foundation has been intervening in schools in Davie County historically.
A: Since its beginning in 1998, the Mebane Foundation has been actively involved in numerous initiatives in Davie County. Many of those revolved around literacy interventions and helping kids reach their potential before third grade. The Foundation supported the Hill Center as it developed HillRAP and other programs that made its product even better and purchased Smart Boards and other technology for the school system to try and help teachers do their jobs better. Since I joined the Foundation in 2007, we have continued to be literacy driven. For a while, we veered away onto a professional development model, which wasn’t a bad thing, because we partnered with more county schools as well as the Mooresville Graded School District. However, we came back together as a board in 2016 and said, “Okay, is this a direction we want to keep going in? Professional development is important, but do we want to go back to our roots, which is literacy?” And what came out of that whole process was, “Yes, we do.”

Q: How did that lead into DavieLEADS?
A: It all began with a report I read by Dr. Jim Goodnight of the SAS Institute for the Business Roundtable. He was getting ready to make recommendations to the state about what needed to be done to help children with literacy. The report included six recommendations, and as I read them, I thought, “You know, that’s exactly what my board is talking about, those six bullet points. Why couldn’t we do this?” Their recommendation was to go to the state, and hopefully get some movement there to try to support some of the recommendations. I said, “You know what? Why don’t we try and partner with a school system and see if we can’t prove this out.”

Several of the bullet points were similar to initiatives the Foundation had worked on individually in the past. It made sense to combine them together and to propose a partnership with one school system. We were already in Davie County and had all of the resources and all of the connections, so we decided to try to make a go of it. I sat down with Dr. Hartness, the superintendent, and I said, “Dr. Hartness, do you think based on what we’re seeing here, we can move the needle in Davie County in the next five years?” And that’s how it all started that January.

And then we met many, many times. It was called the Mebane roundtable and included senior leadership from the school system, top teachers in the area, and some folks with Smart Start and other groups. We came up with this plan and presented it to the board in April 2017. DavieLEADS was based around what we had seen in that business roundtable, “Why Reading Matters and What to do About It. And when I look at how we’re executing it, it really does match up with those six policy recommendations.

Q: Give me a high-level view of what DavieLEADS is.
A: When we got together in the Spring of 2017 we said, “What are the one or two most important things for getting kids ready and able to read after third grade?” The first thing, we all knew, was pre-K, and making sure that all children show up to kindergarten ready. Our first metric became kindergarten readiness scores. At that time we were at 70 percent ready. We decided push for 90 percent in a five year span. That became our first goal.

We then decided to vertically align kindergarten readiness with third-grade EOG (End of Grade) scores. At that time, Davie County was at 60 percent reading proficiency and the best district in the state was at 80 percent. Our second goal became increasing reading proficiency from 60 percent to 80 percent by 2022, which would put Davie County at number one in the state based on that year’s numbers. Those were the two metrics we decided to use. In the past, we’ve started with kids in kindergarten and tried to have them reading by the third grade. This time we decided to go deeper, back to the pre-K world, which is a huge part of this project.

Q: How is the funding used with DavieLEADS?
A: A lot of the funding has been for professional development to help the teachers. We brought in two consultants and hired two K-3 literacy coaches. It’s their role for the next five years to ensure the fidelity of the program that we’re trying to implement in the six elementary schools. We also hired a pre-K teacher coach to help vertically align what all the pre-K’s are doing, not just the ones in the school system but also the private facilities. When the children show up for kindergarten, we want them to have all had access to the same things taught in a school-based NC Pre-K program.

The consultants also worked with the leadership and teachers at each school to build PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) that provide teachers the opportunity to meet on a weekly basis to discuss how things are going and to ensure that the program is being implemented with fidelity.

Q: How do you feel it is going so far?
A: I try not to get too caught up in the results, but the first year’s results were phenomenal! Davie County Schools went from 45th to 17th in the state in 3rd grade reading proficiency. We’ve seen a 4 percent increase in our EOGs, and a 10 percent increase in kindergarten readiness scores, but more importantly, and what really makes me happy, is to listen to teachers talk and know that there has been a cultural shift. So I think it’s going great. All that being said, who knows?

I have no idea what the new cohort coming through this year looks like. I’ve learned over time that cohorts are often very different and last year’s might have been an “A” team coming through. But what I’ve seen in the way the teachers, the leadership, and the community has rallied around this initiative, is the best I’ve seen since I’ve been here. We’ve tried many partnerships with large dollar amounts and large initiatives, but this thing right now is as good as it gets.

Q: How do you make this sustainable after the money from the Mebane Foundation is gone?
A: When Mr. Mebane was alive and I started working with him, our goal was to provide funding for three years. We would inject a lot of capital, prove a model, and then hope either the county school system or someone else would say, “Wow, this thing worked, let’s go ahead and take over the funding for the remainder and sustain this through time.”

Deep down, that’s still what we want to do. Basically, the budget comes down to about $400,000 a year in year five. From my perspective, I don’t think we will be able to live by that model where we pull out totally. If 2022 rolls around and we’ve moved the needle by like 15 points over a five-year period, I would hope the local municipality in Davie County would say, “Okay that’s huge. We need to go ahead and pony up a little as well,” but we haven’t had those conversations yet. As the Mebane Foundation, I would say, listen, we’re not going to back away. Let’s look at what it would cost the state. Maybe we can split the difference. We know if we’re going to sustain, the school system is going to need additional money, and in this environment, it’s difficult to find those funds. Although we’re not going to walk away totally, we would hope in good faith, whether it’s Davie County or anywhere else we’d partner with, that once leadership at the county level sees these types of gains, they would jump in and say we’ll pay some here.

HillRAP: Direct, individualized literacy instruction to help struggling students succeed

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Note: This article, by Molly Osbourne, was originally published 08/24/2018 on Education NC (EdNC – HillRAP: Direct, individualized literacy instruction to help struggling students succeed) and is republished below with permission.

Watsie and Will perform a fluency test as part of the HillRAP program at the Hill Center. Molly Osborne/EducationNC

“On your mark, get set, go!”

Will, an eager, confident second-grader, reads the words in front of him as fast as he can.

“Oh man, not quite,” his teacher, Anita Shore, tells him. “Tomorrow, okay?” she asks. “That word is brick. Are you good to do it again tomorrow, Will?”

Disappointed, he hangs his head.

“Want to try one more time?” Shore asks.

Will nods eagerly and gets ready to read his word list again. On his second try, he reads them faster and with more confidence, reaching his goal.

“Oh yeah, that’s how you do it!” Shore says. “Good job!”

Will is a student at the Hill Center, an educational nonprofit in Durham serving K-12 students who struggle academically. The Hill Center was founded in 1977 by George Watts Hill. Originally part of Durham Academy, the Hill Center became its own nonprofit in 1998. Today, the Hill Center runs its own school and summer camp, provides teacher training and tutoring, and works with North Carolina school districts.

The Hill Center specializes in teaching students with learning differences, but their programs are used to provide remediation and differentiated support for students across the state. They recently received funding through the state’s Read to Achieve program and the Mebane Foundation to train 400 educators in their reading program, the Hill Reading Achievement Program or HillRAP. In June, I had the chance to visit the Hill Center and learn more about HillRAP.

 

Anita Shore assessing her students’ fluency at the Hill Center. Molly Osborne/EducationNC

 

As Will moves to his reading comprehension work, Shore turns to the student next to Will.

“Alright, Martha, you ready?” Shore asks.

Martha reads through her list of words as fast as she can, only stumbling on a few of them.

“Very good!” Shore exclaims. “You reached your goal. You jumped from 64 to 72. That’s awesome on a review day!”

Shore is assessing the students on fluency with an activity they call “word attack.” Each student has a list of words that follow a certain rule. The students review the words with Shore and practice reading them until they can read the words fast enough and with enough accuracy to reach their goal. Depending on the students’ reading level, the lists start with identifying letters and sounds and progress up to multisyllable words.

After the students review their words, Shore gives them a test to see how many they can read accurately in a certain amount of time. If they reach their goal, they get to color in the number of words they read on a graph on their iPad, a way to visually track their progress.

Will colors in a graph representing the number of words he read accurately. Molly Osborne/EducationNC

HillRAP doesn’t just focus on fluency. Students also practice phonics and phonological awareness, vocabulary, spelling, and reading comprehension skills. These areas are integrated, so students see the same words during word attack as they do during spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension.

HillRAP is also highly individualized. Each student is on a different level, and working in a small group allows the teacher the ability to differentiate instruction. It is mastery-based, so students do not move on until they have achieved mastery.

“You saw the level of explicit direct instruction,” Beth Anderson, Executive Director of the Hill Center, pointed out, “and that is what the students really need and that is what doesn’t happen too often in general classrooms.”

Because HillRAP is so individualized and requires direct instruction, the program cannot be used for a whole group. Teachers must work with students one-on-one or in a small group, which means teachers and schools must intentionally schedule time to implement the program.

Krista Jones, a former Orange County special education teacher and current HillRAP trainer, used the program during an intervention block at her school. At some schools, literacy interventionists or reading teachers will pull groups to do HillRAP, while at others, classroom teachers will administer HillRAP during stations. Often, however, those teachers have a teacher’s aide or assistant who can help, Jones said.

Martha and Will attend the Hill Center half the day and then return to their normal elementary schools. However, the majority of students receiving instruction in HillRAP are in North Carolina public schools.

The map below details the districts across the state that are using HillRAP as of June 2018. The colors represent whether the districts have access to the iPad version (green) or are using the paper version (blue). The orange represents districts that have a mix of technology and paper versions.

A map of districts implementing HillRAP, color-coded according to technology. Molly Osborne/EducationNC

Anderson is excited about the move from paper to iPads, although some veteran teachers were highly skeptical at first, she said.

“There are two things that really help the teachers. One is it cuts down significantly on the prep time for them and on the time managing the program in the class so they can really focus on instruction and get through more content,” Anderson said.

“The other thing that it does is it gives all of the data right there at their finger tips … You can log into a portal online that has reports and all kinds of things. In the public schools, we hear they are using these reports for IEP meetings, for setting and tracking goals, and for showing progress to parents and other teachers.”

The move online has also helped the Hill Center track where and when their program is being used. They can tell how long teachers and students are using the program, which allows them to better understand the data and provide coaching.

Additionally, the online version allows for the alignment between the different sections — fluency, vocabulary, spelling, and comprehension. With the paper and pencil version, teachers do not have access to texts that are aligned with the fluency, vocabulary, and spelling sections.

Will works on the comprehension component. Molly Osborne/EducationNC

An example of the vocabulary component. Molly Osborne/EducationNC

Students can draw on the iPad to group words or letters. Molly Osborne/EducationNC

Currently, the Hill Center is training about 1,000 teachers a year. Not all of those are trained in HillRAP — they also train teachers in their programs HillMath and HillWrite. With the new funding, they will train approximately 400 literacy trainers from every district as well as roughly 23 charter schools.

Anderson stated, “[The literacy trainers] have been designated by DPI and by their districts as their literacy expert, so we are training them in HillRAP so that they understand what a high quality individualized Tier 3 intervention looks like.”

The funding does not mean that those trainers will go back and implement HillRAP in every school. As Anderson described, “They hopefully can learn those strategies and use those strategies as they are coaching and teaching and leading and developing their own district’s approach to support for struggling readers and literacy instruction.”

According to Anderson, the cost for the full certification, which includes training and observations, is around $3,000 per teacher. While the cost can be a barrier to participation for some districts, Anderson believes their program is competitively priced. Teachers come out of the training with a certification through the Hill Center and the International Multisensory Structured Language Education Council.

As they roll out the online version, they will also charge a $250 licensing fee per teacher for the first time. “This has been all funded through philanthropy for the most part,” Anderson said. “We really need to find a way to get some earned revenue…[The fee] includes the app. It includes all of the comprehension texts, vocabulary, all of the data and reporting, access to the online portal that has online courses, resources, and a video observation tool. It’s the complete package.”

Anderson is optimistic that the demand will remain even after instituting a licensing fee because teachers and districts see the value in the program.

“The teachers love the program,” she said. “The teachers also love the mentorship and professional development.”

Note:  This story was written by Molly Osborne for EdNC and has been republished here with permission. 

 

 

 

 

Book Harvest’s Book Babies: Unleashing parent leadership at birth could lead to a lifetime of benefits

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Note:  This article, by Mebane Rash, was originally published 11/22/2017 on Education NC (EdNC -Book Harvest’s Book Babies: Unleashing parent leadership at birth could lead to a lifetime of benefits ) and is republished below with permission.

“Not all kids go to sleep at night with a bedtime story,” says Ginger Young, the founder and executive director of Book Harvest in Durham, when Larry Colbourne of the Mebane Foundation and I visited her earlier this year. “And yet literacy begins with language.”

Young is imagining a new normal for newborns in Durham — and across our state and nation. It starts, she tells us, by unleashing parent leadership from birth. Both Young and Colbourne agree there is a “colossal failure” in our society between birth and grade three when so much of the brain develops, and both are investing in “coherent community strategies” to support these kids during this span of their lives.

Book Harvest started in Young’s garage back in 2011 where she collected donated books, premised on her belief in “the power of books to transform children’s lives.”

It begins with raising awareness so here is the pop quiz Young gives us:

Please fill in the two columns:

What percent of a child’s brain develops in the first three years of life?

Summer learning loss accounts for what percent of the income-based achievement gap?

What percent of a child’s life between the ages of 0 and 18 is spent in school?

What percent of our population are our children? What percent of our future are our children?

The answer to that last question is 100 percent. But income-based achievement gaps hold back too many of our children.

What if there was a way, wondered Young, to get any Medicaid-eligible baby kindergarten ready for $5,000? Book Harvest has several programs to promote literacy, but our visit focused on Book Babies.

Here is the basic idea:

Over five years, 120 new books + at least 12 home visits + a robust array of additional supports = a million words per year if a parent reads to their child for 15 minutes every day = kindergarten readiness

Book Babies is premised on this narrative: 1) you, the parents, are the experts; 2) we are here to support you on your journey; 3) your baby is capable of greatness; and 4) together we can make sure your child is kindergarten ready.

On the left, Meytal Barak, the team leader for Book Babies, talks to Manju Rajendran, a mother in the program who has a 17-month-old, Azadi. “Our kiddo,” Rajendran says, “she just got into it.” On the right, Young embraces the young mother.

Young tells us, “Authentic relationships. Trust. Showing up. Deep respect. It matters.”

Colbourne and I are both invited to go on a home visit. I visited this mom, Karen, her 2½-year-old Kayla and her 4-year-old brother Matthew. The mother does not have transportation so she is home bound during the day. Demonstrating the innate resourcefulness of parents, she covered an old pack-n-play to create a reading zone for Kayla. Barak’s excitement about this “micro-moment of brilliance” is palpable, confirming her belief that parents are the very best teachers for their children.

The Book Harvest staff is tenacious when it comes to making sure the home visits happen. They have a whole toolbox of ways to get them scheduled: text, phone, an alternate phone, email, driving by the home, and as a last resort the family’s pediatrician. They make the home visits happen on the family’s schedule not theirs, which often means they happen at night or on the weekends. This video unpacks the elements of each home visit:

Evaluations of the Book Babies program look promising. As excerpted from a report by Duke University’s Center for Child and Family Policy:

“…Book Babies children show advanced knowledge of emergent literacy skills such as print knowledge and phonological awareness. This finding demonstrates that the Book Babies program is successfully targeting the key early literacy skills…. Exposure to these skills is critical for kindergarten readiness, later reading ability, and future academic success. … The findings of this evaluation are both encouraging and exciting, as they indicate that the Book Babies intervention has unique potential to positively impact the literacy skills of Durham’s youngest children.”

The Center for Child and Family Policy is conducting a randomized control trial on cohorts of 180+ babies in 2017 and 2018 over five years to evaluate the Book Babies interventions and, if warranted, establish the evidence-base necessary to scale the program across North Carolina and beyond.

This Thanksgiving, engage a child in your life using the goals of Book Babies:

as you read, name objects, actions, and emotions;

let the child hold the book and turn the pages;

sit close to the child;

use an animated voice and expressions to engage and interest the child;

ask simple questions;

make everyday connections;

AND instead of screen time, have a conversation and play games with the child.

Perhaps you will enjoy it as much as the Book Babies parents:

“Each time, you teach me something different that motivates me more.”

“This program is something very beautiful.”

“I am very thankful, this has helped me a lot with my children.”

Young reminds us, “the stories we read to our children become their stories — touchstones that help children shape their identity and their sense of their place in a complicated world.”