Higher playing field

After the Lincoln Parish School District’s youngest learners saw drastic improvement in their reading proficiency throughout the previous school year, this fall the new cohort is starting out from a better place when it comes to literacy.

The district’s schools have finished their fall assessments for K-2 reading levels, and the results improve upon last fall’s measure.

A little more than half of all K-2 students (50.6%) in the system demonstrated they can read on grade level, compared to 39% in the fall of 2021.

Another 27.4% of students are “at risk,” meaning their reading level is one grade behind. That’s an improvement on the 34% of students at risk last fall. Finally, 21.8% were deemed “emergency” cases this year, meaning their reading level is at least two grades behind.

That’s also down from the 27% of students who were at an emergency level at this time last year.

By the end of the school year last spring, those rates had seen huge improvements — 73.5% proficient, 14.3% at risk and 12.2% emergency — but officials say the figures are expected to fall somewhat as a new year begins.

“You’ve got new kids coming in (to kindergarten), then there’s the summer slide, and the bar has also moved,” K-2 Coordinator Michelle Thrower said.

In other words, the reading level students are expected to demonstrate isn’t the same at the start of first grade as it is at the end of kindergarten, for example. But the fall-to-fall improvement means students are starting off on better footing overall.

What it means

For students in K- 2, community members reading these percentages may wonder, what reading level is expected of kids so young, and how is that assessed?

These students choose several books to read every day that are grouped and color-coded based on different levels of difficulty that correspond to the skills that schools want those students to develop — from identifying initial consonant sounds of a word in early kindergarten to tackling irregularly spelled words and chapter books by the end of second grade.

“Every classroom is equipped with books,” Thrower said. “Baskets and baskets of books at all of these levels.”

These books come from the American Reading Company and are specifically designed to address each reading level.

Teachers periodically hold oneon- one sessions with students to assess their reading level based on the highest group of books the child can handle without struggling. Then administrators and content specialists perform “level checks” to verify the teachers’ assessments.

“I think we’re in great shape,” Chief Academic Officer Dana Talley said. “We’re always checking to make sure teachers fully understand how to execute the curriculum, how to support kids. It’s very important that the data is accurate.”

What they learn

For kindergartners, “ emergency” students are typically in the “read to me” literacy category, meaning the child hasn’t been around books at home and doesn’t know how to interact with them — hold them the right way, turn the pages, etc.

“We put them on an intensive plan right away because we’ve got to intervene,” Thrower said. “We’ve got to make sure that in the first five or six weeks of school, we’ve read them 500 books, 20 books a day. We try to loop in the parents too.”

She said most students who go through pre-K as “read to me” are elevated out of that category by the time they get to kindergarten.

“Then we move into: can they point to each word as they read, or can they hold the stem?” Thrower said. “A stem is like if every page starts with ‘I see the,’ so can they recognize the ‘I see the’ from page to page?”

Up next is initial sound fluency, meaning identifying and saying the first sound of a word. By the second half of kindergarten, if a student is advancing on pace, the focus turns to building “sight word” vocabulary.

Sight words are frequently used words like “and” or “could” that children learn to identify on sight as a whole without needing to break it down phonetically.

Then phonics — sounding words out — enters the picture in first grade, and on it goes through each level.

Bringing it home

For the school system’s youngest learners, reading is a two-way street between the classroom and the home.

“We want to give parents the information — this is what we’re working on in class, here’s what you should be working on at home,” Talley said. “Because if they’re getting it in both places, that just accelerates their learning.”

Thrower said the concept behind the early-grades reading approach is the belief that every child can read and simply needs the practice and resources to get there.

“Just being around my granddaughter and watching her learn language — it’s amazing what they can do,” she said. “That’s the whole thing, it’s leveling the playing field — any kid can do it. That’s why we love the curriculum we’ve chosen because it’s providing the resources and tools to level the playing field for kids.”