By Charlotte Matherly, contributor
In some county schools, just 15% of elementary students are marked as high-risk, meaning they’re significantly behind their grade level and could develop reading difficulties. At other schools, that high-risk population is more than twice as large.
Administrators at Rockingham County Public Schools want that number at or below 20% by the end of the year — but they’ve got a ways to go. Three of the 15 elementary schools have already hit that threshold. A few are close, and others will need major improvements.
The division’s literacy team told school board members on Monday that trends are moving in the right direction. In a meeting that focused largely on academic standards, board members voted on and heard detailed plans for improving instruction and support for struggling students.
In most elementary grades, according to data presented to the school board, more students were scoring at or above the benchmark reading level in January than at the beginning of the school year. The most pronounced difference was in kindergarten, where 46% of students met or exceeded the standard — a leap from 26%.
Still, Rockingham County lags behind a passing grade and the national average of 53% with just 49% of students achieving the benchmark reading scores.
Schools nationwide have struggled to rebound reading and comprehension after learning struggles that set in during the pandemic. But for board chair Sara Horst, those pass rates were unacceptable.
“Those would be pretty scary pass rates,” Horst said, for only about half of the county’s elementary students to succeed on end-of-year assessments.
To improve, the literacy team said, for the rest of the year, high-risk students will be monitored by reading specialists every two weeks; moderate-risk students every three weeks; and low-risk students once a month.
Recovery from learning loss during the pandemic is possible, they said, but requires an all-encompassing approach that includes classroom support and parent involvement.
More math on the way?
As much emphasis as the district is putting on literacy, Superintendent Larry Shifflett said another subject needs some attention, too.
A pilot program at Pleasant Valley Elementary School, designed to give students specialized math instruction while allotting classroom teachers extra planning time, is wrapping up its first year. Instead of having classroom teachers include the subject, three math teachers, each who teach two grade levels, rotate around classrooms for 45-minute periods.
If there’s enough funding, that program may expand to a couple other schools next year. Shifflett said he’s heard from teachers who were reluctant to embrace it at first but have since told him that it takes stress off their plate and gives them more time to focus on other lessons.
“It is a big monetary ask, right for our budget to move forward with this,” Shifflett said, but “we’ve spent lots of resources and training … and working with literacy, and I think we need to give some attention to math, and this may be a way to do it without also overburdening all of the homeroom teachers.”
Improvement plans on the horizon
The board voted to approve targeted support and improvement plans for five elementary schools, each with a specific student population whose needs can be better met. John Wayland, Mountain View and Elkton elementaries will need to work on better assisting students with disabilities. Cub Run must improve its work with English language learners, and Pleasant Valley must better support Latino students.
The improvement plans include broader steps, such as conducting a needs assessment, as well as detailed approaches, such as specific classroom instruction plans.
In December, three of these schools were also identified as needing “intensive support” based on students’ Standards of Learning scores, which were several points lower than the statewide average in English reading, writing and math.
Now that the board has signed off on the improvement plans, the state must offer the final stamp of approval.
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