RiverCenter Readers show ‘unheard of’ success at chronically failing schools

In addition to being the best venue in town for such a gathering, the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts being the host of the Page One Awards is fitting for an educational reason.

Make that educational reasons, plural, which are too numerous to mention here, understanding that the RiverCenter offers many such programs. But we are focusing on a timely and new one in this column now.

So as the Ledger-Enquirer honored the Chattahoochee Valley’s most outstanding high school seniors with scholarships in 13 categories Tuesday night at the RiverCenter, I thought of the reading initiative RiverCenter volunteers started this spring semester at Davis and Forrest Road elementary schools, two of the seven Muscogee County public schools, out of 53 in the system, that state standards consider chronically failing.

Because if these RiverCenter Readers continue their amazing initial success, more students in chronically failing schools could develop the skills and notch the achievements that amount to being a Page One Award winner applauded on the Bill Heard Theatre stage in the RiverCenter.

During last month’s Muscogee County School Board work session, the crowd applauded RiverCenter education director Rick McKnight after he, along with Muscogee County School District administrators Lorrie Watt and Jackie Mumpower, presented their report on this promising pilot program.

In December, McKnight asked Mumpower, the district’s elementary school English language arts content specialist, how the RiverCenter could help MCSD further. “Through the brainstorming,” said Watt, the district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, “I think we came up with an idea that really has been successful.”

Through the RiverCenter, 31 volunteers, including retired educators with more than 400 years of experience, went through three training sessions with Mumpower to answer this question, Watt said: “How can we use what we have and take some of the load off of the teachers.”

That means while volunteers tutor the students who are on grade level, the teacher can devote more time to boosting the students who are below grade level and enriching the students who are above grade level.

The result is RiverCenter Readers, a pilot program at Davis and Forrest Road, where they use the Achieve3000 and Reading Wonders programs the district already has implemented to give extra attention to students, selected by their teachers, in grades 2-4. The pilot program reached approximately 120 students, 5-6 in each group for 30-minute sessions three days per week during this semester.

They read fiction and nonfiction, with two texts in each book, usually of different genres. New vocabulary words are introduced each week, and text-dependent questions and teacher guides are included in the material.

Tuesdays, the volunteers introduce the students to the weekly vocabulary words. They discuss comprehension strategies, as well as the pictures and graphics, and they read the main text for the first time.

Wednesdays, they reread the text and answer questions along the way as they check for comprehension. They respond to the text by writing answers to more questions.

Thursdays, they read a comparison text in a different genre, and they answer questions about the two texts with similar themes.

Watt presented the data that indicates this program is working – mighty impressively.

MCSD students in grades 3-4 using Achieve3000 have increased their reading level by an average of 122 Lexile points. Those students at Davis and Forrest Road, excluding the RiverCenter Readers, increased their reading level by an average of 191 Lexile points.

“Huge kudos to the principals for their leadership at those two schools,” Watt said, “because they’re showing some phenomenal data.”

And the Davis and Forrest Road students who are RiverCenter Readers increased their reading level by an average of 234 Lexile points, nearly double the district’s average gain.

“That is just unheard of,” Watt said.

McKnight thanked RiverCenter executive director Norman Easterbrook “for letting us do this in the first place, to let me take the time to do this, and it’s been a tremendous undertaking for us. I’m just thrilled to death that we have the opportunity, our volunteers, to be in the schools every week. … Not only do we have this incredible recent data, but we established a different relationship with the school leadership, with the children themselves, that there’s somebody who pays attention to them. … It’s been a blessing. It’s been fun. It’s worked. And we couldn’t do it without these people and all the people they represent every week.”

Board chairwoman Pat Hugley Green thanked all those involved. Superintendent David Lewis said, “This is just one of many programs the RiverCenter does in partnership with the school district. … It’s just amazing how the RiverCenter can impact learning in so many different areas, literacy, the arts, whatever it might be.”

Watt concluded, “We look forward to replicating this program in the future with other schools and hopefully with our Partners in Education. It’s something we’re going to talk about for next year.”

In a follow-up interview Wednesday with the Ledger-Enquirer, McKnight said retired Wesley Heights Elementary school principal Donna Kemp helped him recruit volunteers, but he emphasized folks don’t need to have been a professional educator to help the RiverCenter Readers. All you need is a little time and a lot of desire to improve reading levels in our community.

“This turned out to be way more than a ‘reading program,’” McKnight told the Ledger-Enquirer in an email. “It is true literacy. The children can read just fine. It's helping them comprehend, understand, analyze and then communicate clearly. That is what this program does.”

MCSD has five other schools on the chronically failing list: Baker and Eddy middle schools, and Dorothy Height, Martin Luther King Jr. and South Columbus elementary schools. If the RiverCenter Readers program gets more volunteers, maybe those schools could receive similarly successful help.

To volunteer, call McKnight in his RiverCenter office at 706-256-3609.

This story was originally published May 3, 2017 at 3:09 PM with the headline "RiverCenter Readers show ‘unheard of’ success at chronically failing schools."