It is heartening that Gov. Rod Blagojevich is turning his attention to education in Illinois. As an educator with more than 35 years of experience as a reading specialist and teacher educator, I agree that getting books into children’s hands and having well-trained professionals in the schools are ways we can move our students ahead. I would, however, like to offer a few alternative suggestions to starting with a book giveaway, which may have limited effectiveness:
– Fund the training of school reading teachers and specialists. The governor is correct that the research supports the importance of these trained personnel to school progress. This training, however, is expensive and takes time. The state should be collaborating with districts to offer tuition assistance for those undertaking this work.
– Provide better funding for early childhood centers, school and classroom libraries, and the training of school library professionals. In many schools, students do not have adequate, up-to-date libraries; in some schools with libraries, there are no professionals to open them, staff them or work with children. Further, the school library professional certification in Illinois is almost exclusively technology-focused, with little emphasis on training about books and reading. This should change.
– Help streamline assessment for state and federal programs. I applaud the Illinois State Board of Education for aggressively seeking federal funds for our schools. Being an early adopter, however, tied us to convoluted assessment rules that became more flexible for later adopters. The number and types of assessments our teachers are expected to use, particularly for Reading First, don’t make economic or educational sense and eat up valuable teaching time. We should work to modify this.
– Lobby with other governors and mayors, and state, city and district superintendents to refine the concept of annual yearly progress used by the U.S. Department of Education. We now have excellent early literacy assessments that document the wide diversity in the literacy readiness, skills and knowledge our students bring to school. Many of our schools make outstanding progress with students who arrive not only never having owned a book but never having had a book read to them. Often the amount of progress they make far outstrips progress made in schools with “luckier” populations. Many of these schools are labeled as “not making progress,” which is contrary to the fact and demoralizing to children, teachers and parents. Our governor and these other officials should be advocating forcefully for indexed reporting of annual yearly progress, which looks at how much students grow.
– Recognize, affirm and use your partners. I call on the governor to actively work to change the climate so that it affirms the important work educators do, even as we all strive to do better.
