4K and Reading-- the MMSD, as of December 9th

Happy Snow Day!!!

You guys better thank me! I handed Superintendent a check under the table at Monday night's board meeting. Am now accepting donations to reimburse.

Just kidding. Wow-- I can't remember a day before this when school was actually canceled the night in advance. It was sure nice, though, to go to bed knowing for sure there was no chance we'd have to go to school.

Since I have the day off, and since my Calc 2 homework or research on Millard Fillmore (the world's boring-est president) don't look like such a good idea, I've decided to instead write a little bit on Monday's meeting.

It was surprisingly intense! We discussed 4 year old kindergarten, and heard several day care providers from the community urging the MMSD to reconsider how much they will be reimbursed. Basically, when 4k starts next year, some of the 4 year olds will be within a MMSD school building, and others will go to a community day care center. But now the education will be free, and the district and these community providers are joining forces to make it happen.

4k is really exciting, since it provides a great opportunity for four year olds to get a head start with learning before they get to kindergarten. It's also a promising step towards eliminating the achievment gap. Right now, we're smooting out some rough edges-- deciding whether to start with all of the buildings and teachers, or whether to "phase in," starting with 1/3 or 2/3 the amount of resources, and then increase it in the next few years.

However, though there's still some negotiating to go, the 4k plan seems to be on its way. Another issue that involved a lot of intense discussion was the district's Reading Recovery Program.

Reading Recovery is a program for first grade students who are really struggling with reading. Targeted at the lowest 20% reading level students, Reading Recovery provides very intense one-on-one training every day which, when continued throughout the year, has very good national results of getting kids back on track.

However, in the last few years, RR in the MMSD has had less success than the national average (42% students finish the program versus around 60% nationally). This lead the district to worry and evaluate the program. At our meeting, we discussed schools that had experienced success with reading recoverey, and other ones that had not. The team that evaluated the program has recommended "full implementation" of reading recovery at schools with the most needy children, which would hopefully increase the success rate at those schools. However, due to limited resources, Reading Recovery can not be implemented at every school.

School Board members have expressed a desire to evaluate not only the RR program, but to take a comprehensive look at ALL of the reading programs in our district, to see which are working and which are not. Reading, as most will agree, is the single most important step to ensure students a continued successful education.

More to come! Let it snow!