OhioReads test scores have fallen after 2 years;
But a number of educators see benefits to Taft's pet program

Stephen Ohlemacher - The Plain Dealer
Sunday, October 6, 2002

OhioReads is Gov. Bob Taft's signature program.

Through it, schools throughout Ohio have recruited more than 45,000 volunteers to tutor children in reading, and the state has awarded $114 million in grants. Today, more than 2,000 Ohio schools participate in OhioReads, involving more than 100,000 students in kindergarten through fourth grade.

The goal: improve reading scores on Ohio's fourth-grade proficiency test.

The early results: Passing rates dropped at most OhioReads schools during the first two years of the program.

The Plain Dealer examined test scores from 749 schools that received two-year OhioReads grants in 1999-2000, the first year of the program. During the two-year period, 59 percent of the schools saw their passing rates drop on the fourth-grade test. The percentage is nearly identical to the one for all 1,968 Ohio schools that reported fourth-grade test scores for those years (60 percent), providing no statistical evidence that OhioReads affected the passing rates.

"There is no evidence in this data that this program has been successful," said William Notz, professor of statistics at Ohio State University.

Still, teachers, principals and reading specialists said there are many benefits to OhioReads. It gets communities involved in schools, provides adult role models for children and exposes young students to more books. The grants provide reading materials and teacher training that many school officials said they could not afford otherwise.

The program has helped create an unprecedented emphasis on literacy in Ohio, said Kelly Davids, executive administrator for OhioReads.

"The mind-set about reading in Ohio has changed, and we helped with that," Davids said.

There are many reasons the passing rates did not improve, according to teachers, principals and reading specialists:

In many schools, students' reading skills improved but not enough to pass the proficiency test. In fact, most students continued to read below grade level after completing the OhioReads program in 2000-01, according to an analysis commissioned by the OhioReads Council.

In most schools, not all students are in the program. In some, the youngest students in OhioReads have yet to take the fourth-grade test.

The program is still young, and the average passing rate on the fourth-grade reading test dropped for all students in 1999-2000 and 2000-01. The statewide passing rate jumped 8 percentage points last year, to 64 percent. Officials hope that passing rates at OhioReads schools also improved, but the data are not yet available.

OhioReads has few statewide guidelines, giving schools flexibility to tailor their own programs but also leading to disparities in quality.

Many schools have difficulty recruiting and keeping dependable volunteer tutors.

There are no statewide training requirements for tutors, though the state has run two training conferences and developed a training manual, and offers two-hour training sessions.

Many students who have been unable to master reading at the hands of professionals are simply beyond the help of a tutor with little training.

"Often people believe that if you can read, you can teach someone else to read," said Barbara Wasik of Johns Hopkins University. "This may be true in teaching young children who are highly motivated and who are prepared to learn to read."

But, she said, teaching struggling students can be complex.

"To believe that anyone can teach reading is as naive as saying that anyone can, with a little training, do brain surgery," said Wasik, principal research scientist at Johns Hopkins' Center for the Social Organization of Schools.

Ohio's top educator praised OhioReads but said a volunteer tutoring program cannot be expected to improve test scores by itself.

"OhioReads did a wonderful job of opening the school door to the community," said Susan Tave Zellman, state superintendent of public education. "But is it ultimately going to improve reading scores? No."

Zellman credited Taft with making OhioReads part of a broader education reform effort, including new statewide academic standards, to be aligned with new student achievement tests that eventually will replace proficiency tests.

Davids said OhioReads should be viewed as a supplement to classroom teaching, not a replacement.

"If you have to build a bridge and you are a trained engineer, you still need a crew to get across the river," Davids said.

The governor's office declined to make Taft available for an interview for this article. Instead, Taft's spokeswoman Mary Anne Sharkey denied that OhioReads was ever intended to improve fourth-grade reading scores.

Sharkey's statements, however, contradict the OhioReads Web site and the governor's public statements.

The Web site touts OhioReads as "Governor Bob Taft's major education initiative to improve the reading skills of Ohio's K-4th grade students so they can pass the Fourth Grade Reading Proficiency Test."

When Taft signed the OhioReads program into law in 1999, he called it "a first step toward making sure that all Ohio school children can read by the fourth grade."

The legislation created an 11-member OhioReads Council, which awards three kinds of competitive, two-year grants directly to schools: up to $30,000 a year for in-school programs; up to $7,500 a year for programs run by community groups; and summer school grants of up to $7,500 a year.

The schools can use the grants for many resources, including reading programs developed by private vendors, books, manuals, computer software and training for teachers. Some schools have used the money to pay tutors, but that is discouraged, Davids said.

Many schools team up with local businesses to provide tutors, usually for an hour or two a week. Others recruit parents, senior citizens, school employees and college students.

Loosely modeled after President Clinton's AmericaReads, OhioReads has become widely recognized as Taft's pet program. The governor has promoted it on television, billboards and radio commercials. OhioReads has survived budget cuts while many services haven't.

Taft, a Republican, mentions OhioReads often in his re-election campaign. His opponent in the Nov. 5 election, Democrat Tim Hagan, called it a "sacred, unproven" program and vowed to eliminate its funding, if elected.

OhioReads has contracted with both the University of Akron and Indiana University to evaluate the program, though the Indiana review is incomplete, and the Akron one acknowledges shortcomings.

Schools that receive grants also are required to fill out evaluation forms. The Akron study reviewed evaluations from schools that received grants in 2000-01.

Most school officials spoke of the program in glowing terms.

"This grant has been a godsend," wrote Linda Dawson, then-principal of Bassett Elementary in Westlake. "It has helped to transform how we teach reading."

Gail Ali, principal of Clark Elementary in Cleveland, said the school used its grant to buy books for students and training materials for teachers.

"It's overwhelming to see the amount of materials that have come through the door for this," Ali said. "The value at Clark school has been to instill a love of reading in all children."

The Akron review found that most OhioReads students started the program reading below grade level. Students showed substantial improvement at the end of the program, but in every grade, the average reading level was still below grade level.

The report cautioned that there was no mechanism to determine how much of the improvement could be attributed to OhioReads. It recommended using a comparison group of students not in OhioReads for future studies.

Well-trained tutors and close supervision by certified teachers are among the keys to a good tutoring program, said several reading specialists.

Evangeline Newton, director of the Center for Literacy at the University of Akron, found a way to get qualified tutors: Education majors at the university are required to donate their time.

The university provides tutors for an OhioReads program at Windemere Elementary in Akron, and all the tutors must take courses in reading methods. Reading scores have soared.

"It is more complicated than just reading to kids," Newton said. "You have to read with them, and you have to read to them and you have to talk to them about it, and you have to do it in very structured ways.

"A lot of volunteers, if not trained, do it the way they were taught to read," she said. "It works effectively with a lot of kids, but it's not enough for kids who are struggling."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
sohlemacher@plaind.com, 1-800-228-8272
Copyright 2002 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.

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