DEGRAFF, Ohio — Just over an hour’s drive away from Columbus, you’ll find Riverside Local School District.
For years, students attending the elementary school struggled with literacy until they became part of an early literacy pilot launched by the state. While they’re making a comeback from COVID, the foundation to succeed again is already present.
What You Need To Know
- From 2014 to 2017, about 25% passed the third grade reading assessment in the fall and about 50% would pass in the spring
- Students hit a 91% passage rate in 2019 after the school became a part of an early literacy pilot
- Every student, regardless of performance level, receives interventions
- Currently, only two students in sixth grade are on Individualized Education Plans
Literacy Specialist Margo Shipp said there were several reasons kids were not doing well, but when you look at 2017 and prior, she said the school was in a critical state.
“In the fall, their scores for the third grade test were 25% passage. They were lucky to get to 50% in the spring. So it wasn't good and everyone was doing their own thing,” Shipp said, meaning there wasn’t a standard way of teaching with a curriculum that all teachers used.
That, she noted, was one of the biggest problems.
“Everyone was talking a different language, and that makes it very difficult if you don't have that cohesion across grade levels," Shipp said.
Plus, they did not know the science of reading and how kids learn to read in the best way.
“So if the teachers don't understand how children learn to read, and they don't understand what to do when a child struggles with reading, then you can't help them,” Shipp said.
Getting selected by the state to be part of an early literacy pilot in the 2016-17 school year turned that around. Through extensive professional development, staff spent time trying to figure out if the methods they were using actually worked. Realizing what they were doing wasn’t working, they stripped down their curriculums to find what would work best for their students.
Some teachers acknowledged they were skeptical at first of the new training (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling), that they’d be using to teach kids how to read. Eventually, veteran teachers like Jennifer Walls, who works with fifth and sixth graders, said she had to change her whole thought process because she saw the interventions working and the children responding to them.
Support from administration, with expectations and goals to meet, helped push them into a new place.
It’s a place that Shipp said surprised the Ohio Department of Education too, as students hit a 91% passage rate in 2019. Besides high literacy scores, the school saw that less intervention time was needed to help kids struggling with reading. Even now, there are only two students in the entire sixth grade on individualized education plans. These days, intervention specialists work to push kids past where they are.
“We got that momentum back and we’re seeing the growth in our kids," said Principal Bryce Hodge.
Looking at this year, Christina Mann, a teacher, said the students are reading much more fluently.
“Their writing’s just grown so much. I mean, they're able to write paragraphs where at the beginning they were just writing sentences,” Mann said.
Schools officials believe that with the support of the administration and the right training, what they saw within Riverside can be replicated anywhere.