Governor Gary Locke and Dr. Terry Bergeson Honor Union Gap
Students’ WASL Performance
Located in the Yakima Valley of Central Washington, Union Gap is a K-8
school of 595 students with a high percentage of Hispanic and Native American
students.
In February 2002, Governor Gary Locke and Superintendent of Public
Instruction Dr. Terry Bergeson traveled to the Union Gap School District and
presented the Washington State Reading School of the Month Award to Union Gap
School for the exceptional improvement their fourth and seventh graders had
demonstrated on the reading portion of the State-mandated Washington Assessment
of Student Learning. (WASL)
State of Washington, % of all
students meeting WASL reading standard in 2004
Fourth grade = 74.4%
Seventh grade = 60.4%
READ RIGHT® Tutoring was provided for
At-risk 4th graders starting in 1997-1998,
At-risk 7th graders starting in 1998-1999
Additional tutors were added in 1999-2000 so more students
could be served.
Each tutor serves 4 students at a time. 6periods x 4 /period = 24 students/day
Ethnicity of Union Gap Students: Hispanic
and Native American =55%
Students
on free or reduced lunches, current %
Union Gap 80% State
Average 37%
Standardized Test Results, 4th Grade,
1997-1998 School Year
"An effort was made to get every
fourth grader into the
Read
Right program during the 1997-1998 school
year. In the fall CTBS test (California
Test of Basic Skills), the class scored in the 44th percentile for
reading. We tested them again in the
spring and the class average was raised to the 57.5 percentile. In language
mechanics, they went from the 44th percentile to the 67th percentile. We are very pleased with this growth for one
academic year!" Dr. Bob McLaughlin, Superintendent
Eighth Grade Results
In addition to
the 4th graders, 8th graders at Union Gap were also
targeted during the 1997-1998 school year.
After
Read
Right tutoring 48
of 52 eighth graders scored at or above grade level on the Woodcock Reading
Mastery Test including 11 special ed students. A four year longitudinal study,
re-testing these students in 2001 in the spring of their senior year, showed
they continued to increase their reading abilities during high school, scoring
an average grade 12.5 on their Woodcock retests.
Dr. Terry Bergeson, State Superintendent of Public Instruction,
Recognized Union Gap in her Annual Presentation of Washington Assessment of
Student Learning (WASL) Results
In October 2001, Dr. Terry Bergeson,
recognized Union Gap as one of two schools in the State of Washington who had
done an outstanding job in improving their scores on the Washington
Assessment of Student Learning (WASL). She remarked that Union Gap’s
achievement was especially noteworthy considering the high percentage of
economically disadvantaged students and the high mobility rate, which exceeds
50% in the district.
Eliminating Reading Problems: The
Foundation of Student Success
ASCD 58th Annual
Conference, San Francisco, March 10, 2003
Excerpts from an address by Dr. Robert
McLaughlin, Superintendent, Union Gap School District
“For eight years I was the principal in Davis High School with about 1800 students. Davis is one of two high schools in Yakima, WA and generally of the two, Davis has the economically disadvantaged kids, the Hispanic farm workers kids, the Native American kids. Well the first year I was there it was clear we had kids that simply weren't ready to do high school level work. So I said, "We'll meet them where they are at." And I set up a remediation class for incoming freshmen. The second year I had more freshmen behind so I set up another class. I was principal of Davis for eight years. By the eighth year you know how many remediation classes I had for incoming freshmen?
I had eight! Of 500 incoming freshmen I had 200 of them in remediation classes.
“So I asked myself, what can I do about it? Feeding into the high school that I was principal of was this little community next to Yakima with 600 K-8 students. They had an opening for a superintendent and asked me to apply. And I thought to myself, 'This might be a little laboratory out there. Most of the students from Union Gap are failing in my high school. Maybe I can go out there and find some way of turning this around in the five years before I retire.’ I'm now on my tenth year in Union Gap…loving every minute of it. But when I got there it was really a problem. It took me about three months of looking at standardized tests and it became clear, these students can't read and they can't compute. I'm probably the only one in this room with a problem like that? (laughter) And so what are we going to do about it? First, I had every teacher create a detailed plan and we doubled the amount of time spent every day on reading throughout the school. It helped a little but that certainly wasn't going to solve the problem. Just spending a lot of time focused on reading during the school day wasn't enough.
“So I started to take a look at all the reading programs that are out there. I'll name some of them…Reading Recovery, Success for All, you name any of them and I have looked at them all in depth. How can I afford those? For example, Reading Recovery is one-on-one instruction with a certified teacher. How can I afford that? Of 600 kids I probably have 450 that have a reading problem. And we are a poor school district: 82% free or reduced lunches with 55% minority students.
“Then I ran across an article about Dr. Dee Tadlock and her Read Rightâ tutoring program. So I called Dee up and told her, ‘Dee you've got to come and take a look and see if you can help us. We’ve got to find a way of turning this reading problem around.’ So I went to the school board, they asked me to run a pilot study, and after a very successful pilot with 21 struggling third graders, we implemented Read Right.
“What has it done for my district? We started the program in 96-97. In 1998 our state senator went back to Washington, DC and stood on the senate floor and talked about our program here, and the US Senate voted us in the Excellence School of the Month. Since then we have been chosen by the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Governor of our State for a special award for reading. And this last fall, the Governor in his annual address, talked about little old Union Gap and what we've done with our reading program, with a bunch of disadvantaged kids: 82% free or reduced, 55% minority, 51% mobility, plus many Hispanic kids with a language problem, and yet, in spite of these tough demographics our test results are phenomenal.
“Do you have state testing in your states? Aren't those wonderful things? I don't know about yours but ours is really tough. Take a look at this next chart. In 1996, the first time they gave the WASL test, the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, only 20.8% of our fourth graders passed. So the state said that we should set improvement targets for ourselves. So we said let's double it. And you know what. We put every one of our fourth graders in Read Right tutoring and by 1998-1999 we were at 54.6% passing. It even gets better than that. In 2000-2001 62.5% passed and last year in 2001-2002 though it is not on the chart we had 74.6% of the kids pass. That is why the state looks at us as a model of what can be done with disadvantaged kids.”
Dr McLaughlin then discussed a detailed longitudinal study using the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test that showed students that were tutored in Read Right didn’t regress even when their reading was re-tested again four years later. With no additional intervention his student’s reading skills advanced at a normal rate over the four years.
“I was absolutely amazed with what happens in this
program. I almost grab superintendents
by the shirt and say, ‘Look guys, you need a program like this to turn around
your district and get it where it needs to be.
Because if we don’t, charter schools will.’” Dr. Bob McLaughlin, Superintendent, Union Gap School District, Union Gap, WA
Read Right Systems,
Inc. www.readright.com 360-427-9440 310 W. Birch St., Shelton WA 98584