Reading Solution: Moving High School Students to College Reading Levels

 

Learning from a Community College’s Success with Freshman Developmental Students

 

“Read Right is the best program for eliminating reading problems that I’ve ever used. The success rate is phenomenal,” says Karen Poore, who has seen plenty of reading methodologies during her 31 years of experience as a reading specialist and three years as a reading consultant for the State of Kentucky. She currently tutors Read Rightâ, an interactive constructivist model based on the pioneering work of Jean Piaget, at Ashland Community and Technical College.

 

Poore knows from experience that many students coming out of high school struggle with the language and concepts in college textbooks. At her college, one-fourth of entering students require developmental reading classes.

 

Poore has taught in both the college’s developmental education program and at the Adult Basic Education center and was recently trained to tutor using the Read Right system. Historically, according to Poore, it has taken 2-3 years of instruction before a student moves 2-3 levels on the ABE National Recording System (this assessment covers many skills, all of which are reading-dependent). In the three semesters that Read Right has been the core of the reading program, students’ improvement has been 2-3 levels in only one semester rather than 2-3 years.

 

A Prized Possession

 

Such results have caused Dr. Greg Adkins, in his 26th year as Ashland Community and Technical College’s president, to be committed to the new Read Right program. “It’s labor-intensive, but it’s worth it. We’re getting great results with individual students. It has permeated the college community, and if we were to abandon it, I would have some very unhappy people on my hands here at the college.

 

Reading is the focus of our accreditation Quality Enhancement Plan, and we’re going to hold on to Read Right. We’re facing budget cuts in our district, but it’s like your prized possession: when you’re wading across a river and the water is rising, you hold your most prized possession above your head.”

 

Comparable Success in High Schools

 

High schools that have used Read Right have enjoyed comparable success, with students typically improving at the rate of one grade level per 12 hours of tutoring. Indeed, of 88 high schools in King County (Seattle and surrounding districts), only Mt. Rainier and Garfield, earned Washington State’s “School of Distinction” award in October, 2007. Significantly, both have Read Right small group tutoring projects.

 

Principal of Mt. Rainier, Toni Pace, says, “Read Right has found the solution to what we need to do to get kids to read. And it is not as simple as just another reading program. It is based on brain research, critical thinking and the constructivist theory of teaching and learning. It has been a catalyst in my building. It is their whole approach to teaching that has shown us that all students can learn and it is just a matter of theory on how to teach them. It has impacted all of us. It is integral to everything we do.”

 

Read Right creates an environment which compels the brain to remodel neural circuitry to eliminate errors encoded when the brain learned an incorrect process for reading. The small group tutoring program successfully guides the brain to construct circuitry for guiding the complex process of anticipating the author’s meaning, no matter what the category of student.

 

Pace continues, “It doesn’t matter if the kid is labeled Special Ed, LD, ADHD, dyslexic, MMR or if a kid doesn’t have a label at all. In the first three years we served 388 students [in our Read Right project]. Two-hundred and sixty-two of those were Regular Ed, 74 were Special Ed, and 52 were ELL. The hours of tutoring for one grade level of gain on average has been 9.4 hours for our students.” She explained that when kids are not successful, it’s not because  “. . .they don’t try or because they are not intelligent. They just don’t know how to read well enough. Read Right gives them a jump start and the rest of the teachers in the building capitalize on that. Now you see them succeed right before your eyes, students transformed.”

 

To Learn More about the Read Rightâ small group reading intervention program:

 

A school information packet may be requested by contacting Tamie Brown at Read Right Systems. This includes implementation details, investment, theory, methodology, case examples, etc. Phone: 360-427-9440 or Email:TamieB@readright.com.

 

Reading teachers and special education teachers across the country who have first-hand experience implementing this new methodology are more than willing to share their experiences. A referral list is included in the school information packet.

 

Articles about Read Right implementations are available at www.readright.com.

 

Visiting a school already using Read Right will provide first hand opportunities to talk with teachers and students and to observe tutoring. Tamie Brown can help you arrange a site visit.

 

Attending the Fifth Annual Read Right Conference at the Hyatt Regency Conference Center, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, May 15-17, 2008 will give you the opportunity to network with principals, tutors and program administrators who have implemented the program at over 350 sites across the US.  Dr. Tadlock, creator of the Read Right methodology and a former president of the College Reading and Learning Association will be making several presentations.  School visitations will provide an opportunity to observe tutoring first hand and to talk to students, tutors, and administrators. Over 30 concurrent sessions will address everything from High School and Middle School Intervention Programs, College Implementations, Early Childhood Approaches, the Read Right Whole-Class Primary Model, Effectiveness at the Elementary, Middle School, High School and Community College Levels and Effectiveness with Special Ed, ELL, and other at-risk populations including incarcerated youth. More information about the conference is available at www.readright.com.

 

The book, Read Right! Coaching Your Child to Excellence in Reading, McGraw Hill 2005, is available from Amazon.com, or from bookstores.

 

Theory and research underlying this new approach are detailed in Dr. Tadlock’s monograph, Interactive Constructivism and Reading:  The Nature of Neural Networks Challenges the Phonological Processing Hypothesis. This may be downloaded from www.readright.com or ordered by phoning the Read Right office at 360-427-9440.

Please forward this Email along to any of your colleagues who are particularly interested in exploring how to solve the most difficult reading problems.     Thank you.