Fort Worth school official
has confidence in teaching method

FORT WORTH — Many school officials believe they have found the best way to teach children to read — a scripted method that promises to make inner-city students competitive with their suburban peers.

The programs stress learning the sounds that letters make, blending them into words and recognizing common words that break the rules.

By second grade, supporters say, the children will be able to read almost anything. Eventually, students will understand all the words.

Superintendent Thomas Tocco is so confident in the programs, called Open Court and Reading Mastery, that 62 of the district's 69 elementary schools are using them in pre-kindergarten through third grade to varying degrees. He predicts that in three to four years, third-through fifth-graders will match suburban districts on the TAAS reading test.

Open Court and Reading Mastery haven't been around long enough in Fort Worth to accurately assess their effectiveness. Teachers and parents, however, are already debating whether scripts are the best method of teaching and whether the programs are worth taking time away from other subjects.

"Governor Bush and I have roughly the same message: Whatever it takes to make sure children are reading well at early grades, even if we have to sacrifice other things in pre-kindergarten through second grade," Tocco said.

Many parents whose children are in the programs say they are amazed by what they see. But others are uneasy about the rigid, scripted method and are worried that students are learning to call out words but missing the meaning.

Connie De La Rosa, whose great-granddaughter attends Nash Elementary, said she knows nothing about the programs. But what she does know, she said, is that teachers spend a lot of time on reading, and children are learning.

"They are sounding out words at the age of 5," De La Rosa said. "Five-year-olds weren't doing that a few years ago."

Dawn Riley, a third-grade teacher at Nash, said many students in the past entered her classes unable to read at their grade level.

"Now, they are coming in reading much better. So now we can focus on comprehension instead of putting the cart before the horse," Riley said.

The Open Court and Reading Mastery programs were developed more than 30 years ago, primarily for low-income students at risk of reading failure. They have come in and out of vogue as the pendulum swings between whole language and phonics. With the current movement toward phonics, they are gaining popularity from coast to coast.

Tocco and his staff first saw them used in Houston. They were so impressed that, in fall 1998, school officials implemented Reading Mastery in the 20 lowest-performing schools and Open Court in 12 others with below-average scores.

This year, the district added 30 more schools, including some high-achieving schools whose faculty liked the idea of having comprehensive programs that indicate exactly what students should be learning and in what order.

Reading Mastery is tightly scripted and teaches sounds and letter combinations. After each new sound is introduced, students are given short, cheaply printed books to read using the skills they just learned. They build on each skill and move on to more advanced books.

Open Court allows more flexibility but still requires teachers to point and sound out words in a prescribed sequence and pace. By first grade, the children are introduced to excerpts of children's literature.

Both programs promise rapid improvement and are backed by reams of research, including approval from the U.S. Department of Education, the National Institute of Child Health and Development and the American Federation of Teachers.

Meadowbrook Elementary School kindergarten teacher Juanita Irvine, who has 19 years of experience, said Reading Mastery is great for students who need the repetition but falls short for above-average or gifted ones.

Irvine, in fact, recommended that Debra Harrison transfer her daughter, Brandy, out of her class and into a school that wasn't using Reading Mastery.

Harrison said her daughter wasn't challenged, so she transferred her to T.A. Sims Elementary's Spanish Immersion program.

"She was always complaining about being bored and about always having to color," Harrison said.

Irvine said she spends two hours and 15 minutes a day on the program and forgoes other activities such as "author studies," when students study one author's work for several weeks to discuss characters and elements of good stories.

"Now, we don't have the time," she said.

The phonics-based, scripted reading programs are influencing the format of their chief competitors in the textbook publishing market. All five textbooks on the state's list of programs that meet standards contain more phonics than before, and they partially include scripts.

"That's the wave of the future," Tocco said. "It may be the best thing in public education in a long time. Publishers write textbooks for Texas and California and both are going for [scripted programs]."

Districts across the state are considering which texts to adopt for the next eight years. Open Court is on the list of books that meet every state standard and for which the state will pay.

Fort Worth's textbook committee, made up of teachers, administrators and lay people, is scheduled to make its recommendation to Tocco on Feb. 15 and to the school board on Feb. 22. Trustees will vote in March.

Fort Worth appears poised to make Open Court its primary choice.

That prospect has many school officials thrilled. The district so far has invested $1 million in local funds for the programs and has been awarded $4.9 million in grants.

But that prospect also has people worried — namely faculty at the seven schools not using either reading program. They are hoping the district allows them to continue what they're doing now.

Because their TAAS reading scores were strong, they were allowed to stick with the district's old textbook and supplementary programs they had picked up over the years.

Tocco said those schools would have to accept the adopted text but can continue to use the supplementary programs they have found successful.

"But whatever the official book on the shelf is, their instruction methodologies and materials will not change and don't have to as long as they are successful," Tocco said.

High-achieving, affluent schools such as Tanglewood and those with special programs such as Montessori and Applied Learning have been exempt from using the scripted programs. But the exceptions also include the district's poorest school, Van Zandt-Guinn, which uses a combination of whole language and phonics.

Tocco is fond of saying that whole language relies on divine intervention: Surround children with words and stories and pray they learn to read. "Now we're actually teaching children to read," he said.

Teachers counter by saying that whole language uses phonics in its teaching strategies. And in whole language rooms, everything is labeled and common words are listed for easy reference.

School districts throughout North Texas use a variety of reading programs, including a few that use Open Court. Arlington has implemented Open Court at a few of its schools.

In the Fort Worth district, 83 percent of all third-graders passed the reading portion of TAAS in the 1998-99 school year. In Grapevine-Colleyville, the percentage was 98, compared with 90 percent in Aledo and 96 percent in Birdville.

At the 32 schools in the Fort Worth district that were first assigned Open Court and Reading Mastery, students seem to be learning faster and retaining more than their predecessors, according to scores on the Stanford 9 exam and the Texas Primary Reading Inventory.

In fall 1999, 59 percent of all first-graders had the minimum skills needed to learn to read. About half of those children participated in the reading programs the year before. In 1998, only 32 percent of the district's first-graders showed the same ability. The programs weren't around when those students were in kindergarten.

But the real test will be in 2002, when the first children taught by the programs are third-graders and take TAAS for the first time.

By then, Tocco predicts, Fort Worth elementary students will match their peers in neighboring cities. By 2005, the middle school students will pull even, and by 2008, the high schools will do the same, he said.

Tocco also believes the programs will reduce the numbers in special education and will speed up bilingual students' transition to English.

Michelle Melendez, (817) 390-7541

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