North Carolina has spent more than $150 million on Read to Achieve in an effort to make sure the state’s elementary students know how to read, but a recent report from the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation has found that the money has largely produced no results. Read the analysis from EdNC here.
As a Literacy Leader, what are your thoughts?
This does not surprise me at all. Though I do not teach in an elementary school, I have heard the angst from elementary teachers about how torturous Read to Achieve has been to students and parents and educators. I still do not understand why money is not invested in people. Why not hire more teachers, in fact, two certified teachers for every core classroom? I thought the most important resource in any classroom was the teacher’s brain—not a program.
I really enjoyed our last meeting on February 22. I came away from that meeting wondering what my first steps would be in bringing this awesome information back to my county. I have decided during our district grade level meetings to present how to use utilize a picture book to explore information texts at varying levels.
I was wondering if there was a model lesson that I could use to help me plan this PD that I will share with grades 3-5 in the next couple of weeks? If not, I was hoping we can work together and make a model lesson that follows Lester Laminack’s process on how to get all learners to access rigorous text on their grade level using informational text.