Baton Rouge schools are moving to implement a new statewide rule that requires districts to identify current third and fourth-graders who are struggling in reading and provide them with 30 hours of additional reading instruction, either at school or through private tutoring services.
And while Baton Rouge school leaders agree it's pushing for a noble goal, some are concerned that it will take money they didn't plan to spend.
This effort starts with the end of the current school year. Identified students who don't get 30 hours of additional instruction may be compelled to repeat third or fourth grade, though schools are not required to make students do so.
Louisiana, one of the poorest states in the country, has long struggled with early literacy. Only 39% of kindergartners who started school in August were reading on level. That number improves as kids get older, but only to 54.5%.
Statistics like these, which declined during the pandemic, have fueled a push to increase the amount of reading instruction that young struggling readers receive.
Until now, Louisiana has required start-of-the-year literacy screening for public school students in kindergarten to third-grade. The state’s top school board in October approved expanding this screening. Starting this spring, third-graders must undergo end-of-the-year literacy screening, but so must fourth-graders, students who previously did not have to.
The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board on Thursday agreed preliminarily to spend almost $92,000 to purchase 3,200 extra testing kits — roughly the size of the district's fourth-grade class — as licenses for students who will need to undergo this additional screening. A final vote is set for Feb. 16.
Louisiana allows school districts to pick from four different literacy screeners. East Baton Rouge schools use one called DIBELS, short for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, developed by the University of Oregon.
To obtain the fourth-grade screeners, the proposal is to add on to an existing contract the school system has with New York City-based Amplify. Amplify also supplies the school system with a reading intervention program known as mCLASS as well as training in its products.
To pay for the unanticipated $92,000 expense, school leaders plan to draw once again on federal COVID 19 relief funding.
Board member Mike Gaudet supports the literacy effort, but nevertheless describes it as an “unfunded mandate” from the state.
“We continue to get regulations put on us with no funding to meet those regulations,” Gaudet said.
State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley justified the new rules last fall by pointing to the $4 billion injection of federal coronavirus aid for school districts, of which East Baton Rouge Parish is receiving more than $200 million.
The rules approved in October are less stringent than what was originally envisioned, softened after complaints from superintendents and school leaders. Brumley’s original proposal was that students who were identified as needing summer reading remediation and failed to get it would be forced to repeat the grade.
That proposal is similar to a state law in Mississippi as well as a nearly approved Louisiana state law that was proposed by Rep. Richard Nelson of Mandeville, who recently announced he’s running for governor this fall.
Several East Baton Rouge Parish school board members made it clear Thursday that they see raising the reading level of Baton Rouge schoolchildren as crucial. The school system generally has low reading levels as well, usually a bit below the rest of the state.
“It is the number one priority of the board,” said Gaudet. “It is the number one issue in the (district's) strategic plan, and it is a state issue.”
Board member Cliff Lewis said failing to help children to read early on can have lifelong consequences. He pointed to himself, noting that he was forced to repeat fourth-grade largely due to his reading level at the time.
“I’m an avid reader now but it took me years to catch up and I still bear those scars,” he said. “I know what some of our kids are going through when they cannot read fluently.”
He said children who read poorly often “act out” in school.
“Children are asked to read aloud and they can’t read aloud so they do other things to cover up the fact that they’re not a fluent reader,” Lewis said.
Board member Patrick Martin V said he realizes that low literacy in Baton Rouge is a deep-rooted problem, but he said the school district can dramatically improve child literacy for its youngest children over the next few years and that “we need to do everything we can.”
“When I ran for this seat, that was my biggest focus and desire because if a child is not reading in third grade and in fourth grade, making the transition from learning to read to reading to learn, it’s unlikely that they are going to be successful after that,” Martin said.