Michael Swickard
August is roasting time in New Mexico: fresh-picked green chile and the New Mexico public schools for their Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) numbers. We take green chile most seriously – Big Jim or Sandia? Two sacks, will that be enough? Make it three, no four…
Meanwhile, most New Mexicans shrug at the AYP numbers indicating three of four New Mexico schools are not making the prescribed annual yearly progress.
When I look at the numbers I see something far more ominous in that half of all New Mexico students are not reading at or above their own grade level. Reading is THE core educational activity in schools. Any dysfunction in reading has broad long-term implications for students.
At the very least they do not get all of the instruction since 80 percent of instruction is in written form. At the worst they become turned off to education and form the nucleus of the drop out problem, which is sometimes framed to be about half of the students. Hmmm, half do not read to grade level and in some districts half of the students drop out.
While half the students are not reading at least at grade level their textbooks are carefully written for their grade reading level. Further, tests are first a test of reading level and then a test of the subject matter. So half of the students are not reading at the level of the material being presented or of the tests they are taking.
Time for action
It is time for action. New Mexico must focus on one and only one goal: Making all students able to read at the level of their grade. OK, I would set a realistic goal of 90 percent of New Mexico students reading on grade level.
Remember, the one and only goal is reading on grade level, not reading 10 percent better or using phonics or using some program approach since these are only strategies. The goal, the one and only goal, is that they read on grade level.
This fix for New Mexico schools is in two parts: First, students must start kindergarten on or above grade reading level and keep making one year of reading level progress each year. Or, second, if students start kindergarten behind in reading level then they must make catch up reading level progress while also making one year of reading level progress, which is very hard to do.
Special attention should be focused on no student starting third grade without the ability to read at the third-grade reading level. Period.
A cultural change
This is an educational goal, not a political goal like No Child Left Behind. How New Mexico students got behind is very important. For many students it is their first day in school when it is obvious they lack the literate and numerate skills of a five-year old. There is no way the schools can be blamed when students arrive at school their first day with the literate skills of a three-year old, while some have the literate skills of a four-year old. They go into the classroom with the rest of the students who arrive with at- or above-the-required literate skills. Those who start two years behind rarely can catch up and are always a dropout risk.
To really address the central problem in schools does require a cultural change in the society so that all children ages one to five get read to 20 minutes every day and spend at least five minutes each day in letter/number games. This reading to children each and every day must take on the specter of buckling them into their car seat each and every time.
Failure to read to children has the potential to damage them like not buckling them into a car seat. Each and every family, each and every child care provider must take the sacred 20 minutes seriously. Then all students will start on the correct reading level their first day in school.
To improve, New Mexico’s public schools should forget everything else and concentrate on making reading at grade level THE GOAL. Any attention to anything else is wasted if the core competency of reading on grade level is not achieved by all students.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
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