CH-UH's third grade reading guarantee

Kelly Stukus, coordinator of educational services

During the 2010-2011 school year, the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District reviewed its resources to ensure that all children experience a challenging curriculum. The district's goal is to have every student reading at or above grade level by the end of third grade.

Meetings with elementary teachers were conducted on three occasions to gather feedback and suggestions regarding the strengths of the district and changes that would better support its students. The common themes presented by teachers were to eliminate interruptions during instructional time, increase instructional time in English Language Arts (ELA) and math, reduce the student-to-teacher ratio for struggling students, and provide an alternative for addressing the wide range of students’ abilities within each classroom. From these meetings, the district's performance grouping structure was created and organized.

A Q&A with Kelly Stukus, coordinator of educational services follows:

Q: What has been the reaction from teachers?

A: The teachers have enthusiastically embraced the structure for performance grouping of students. Their positive energy was observable during our first district ELA pullout sessions held in October for teachers in grades one through four. During these sessions, teachers had the opportunity to share what they liked about the reorganized structure and to identify additional resources needed to support their students. 

Q: What has been the reaction from students?

A: During our ongoing teacher feedback sessions, it has been noted that new student leaders are emerging. These new leaders are emerging because of the opportunity they have to more actively participate by speaking up and taking risks. A second grade teacher shared that he has seen a decrease in student behavior problems and an increase in student motivation. 

Q: Any parental input yet?

A: We are putting a parental feedback structure into place. Three parents are being identified at every school. The parent group will work together to address topics including, but not limited to, the following:

• Educating parents about ELA assessments, flexibility, reading behavior, and serving as an informational resource for other parents;
• Discussing the role of parents in student achievement;
• Acquiring strategies for supporting the achievement of all CH-UH children;
• Creating a plan for welcoming new members into the school community.

Q: What types of benchmarks are in place to determine how it is working? What were the results?

A: Currently we are using observational assessments to determine what is working and where additional support is needed. These observations are gleaned through weekly on-site school visits and continued feedback sessions with teachers. In grades one and two, students are being assessed on their reading during the month of November. This is one current source of data to determine student growth, as well as day-to-day teacher observations of student performance.

Q: What are some of the downsides?

A: Some of the downsides include the need to increase the number of staff members for our ELA support team as a result of new students entering our district with below-grade-level reading levels. This unanticipated need has caused a re-examination of district resources. An additional downside is that even with the increased instructional time during the ELA block, teachers are reporting that there is still not enough time to provide quality instruction in all the components of the Literacy Framework. We continue to look for ways to be more efficient with the time we have.

Q: Overall, how would you say the performance grouping is going?

A: Performance grouping has enabled teachers to focus instruction on meeting students’ needs because the range is smaller. This enables the teacher to spend more time with students, meeting them where they are, so that all students grow to their potential. In previous years, students were instructed in homeroom groupings for ELA instruction for shorter lengths of time. Student needs ranged from below-grade-level to above-grade-level readers within one classroom. Our new performance grouping structure provides the opportunity for more individualized student attention within a larger block of instructional time.

Q: What changes will be made next year?

A: At this point, it is too early to say what changes will be made. Teachers will have more strategies and tools to draw from at the conclusion of the year because they will have experienced a full year of performance grouping with students. This experience will increase everyone’s understanding of the Literacy Framework and how to provide all students with individualized attention so that individual student needs are met.