May 2007 — Features
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Reading First :: Reading First...Technology Second?
Next door in Kentucky, Bob Fortney is the senior consultant for Kentucky Virtual High School, as well as the state manager for e-Learning for Educators: Kentucky. The state has 700 elementary schools, of which 73 are Reading First schools, with 1,400 Reading First teachers. All seven of the state's Reading First online professional development courses are free, facilitated, and interactive.
At a Glance: READING FIRST
Mission: To enable all students to become proficient readers by the time they complete the third grade.
Origin: A component of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law in January 2002.
Overview: States receive funds based on the number of children living in families with income below the poverty line. Although there is no official list of approved reading programs, Reading First stipulates that programs must provide instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and reading comprehension.
"We're rural and we're poor," Fortney says, so online courses make a lot of sense. According to the feedback he gets, teachers like the ease of instruction, they like knowing they're improving their professional practice, and they like the idea of collaborating with other teachers. Besides, according to the state's Reading First co-coordinator, Linda Holbrook, all Reading First teachers are required to have 80 hours of professional development each year, and this is a good way to get those hours.
Student Assessment
Based in Brooklyn, NY, Wireless Generation provides teachers, schools, and districts with "observational assessment software" in addition to handheld computers for easy, 1-to-1 assessment. Currently, more than 100,000 teachers use WG products, a third of them in Reading First schools. Teachers administer benchmark and progress-monitoring assessments throughout the year, using the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) and other literacy measures. The data is captured in the handheld devices, then encrypted and uploaded to WG's server, after which teachers, principals, superintendents, reading coaches, and parents get analyses and reports.
Previously, company CEO Berger had restricted himself to the not-for-profit world-running computer labs in Harlem, developing educational software for NASA, building an online world for sick children. With WG, though, he says there's "a chance to have a more lasting and important application of technology. What I really love about this is the ability to achieve effect [on a large] scale."
Judging by what's happening in West Virginia, he's certainly accomplished that. In West Virginia, 10 to 20 percent of Reading First funds go to some type of electronic technology. The state's Reading First project director, Beverly Kingery, is a big supporter of WG products: "Everything they have available, we use." The results? "The proof is in the students' achievement," she says. Namely:
- All 36 Reading First schools recorded trend growth at one or more grades; 33 of the 36 showed adequate yearly progress (AYP), and the other three were not far off. Kingery says West Virginia had a higher growth rate in second and third grades than did most other states in the country.
- Ten schools recorded trend growth in all grades.
- Twenty-four schools had at least one class at the 100 percent benchmark.
Kingery says WG products are effective and efficient. Teachers, she says, are protective of their instructional time, and the company's handheld devices, along with the generated reports, allow them to conduct assessments much more quickly than before. That must be why Berger says, "We get a lot of hugs at educational trade shows." One teacher told him, "In my 19 years of teaching in public schools, this is the first time somebody tried to save me time."
