Revolution is under way in IPS schools

August 23, 2001

With all the headlines revolving around the school district's building project, the public may have missed the revolution under way in Indianapolis Public Schools.

It starts today when primary-grade students enter the classroom and meet their teachers, all newly trained in a phonics-based reading program called Open Court.

All students in kindergarten through grade 2, in all but a handful of magnet and option schools, will receive the same reading curriculum.

Open Court is a methodical and scripted method for teaching beginning readers the sound-symbol relationships in our alphabetic system. It had been used previously in a handful of IPS schools with notable success, so last spring the district adopted Open Court system-wide. Previously, school buildings had flexibility in choosing reading programs from a state approved textbook list.

"This will help control the effects of mobility," said Willie Giles, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. "When a K to 2 student leaves School X to go to School Y, he will not be going to a brand new reading series."

The mobility issue is significant because so many IPS students change schools over the course of a year. The district-wide transfer rate is 54 percent. That doesn't mean half of the kids in any one classroom will switch schools every year, but it does reflect a hard-core population of homeless and low-income renters who move frequently and consequently change schools frequently. (One fifth-grader recently told me she'd been to six different schools).

That kind of disruption is especially damaging when a child is learning to read. It's one reason Open Court will help.

Another reason is that this reading curriculum is based on research about how children learn.

In a recent publication, the American Federation of Teachers cited Open Court as one of several model reading programs. According to a study comparing achievement levels in classrooms of at-risk students, the AFT reported, the Open Court "students' mean score on word identification and comprehension was found to be close to the national norm (46 percent) whereas the mean score for students using a standard curriculum was in the lowest academic quartile (23 percent)."

School 161 in Brooklyn, N.Y., with a 97 percent poverty rate, adopted Open Court a decade ago and hasn't looked back. In reading assessments, 80 percent of its third-graders scored above the state's minimum level, compared with 43 percent in similar schools and 79 percent statewide.

In Laredo, Texas, Heights Elementary School registered an 85 percent passing rate on reading tests taken by third- and fourth-graders, despite the fact 98 percent of its students are Latino and 55 percent are considered limited English proficient.

Anita J. Holten, director of the Indiana division of the Right to Read Foundation, calls the IPS move "a gigantic step forward." And she says something not often heard about the state's largest school system: "IPS is showing leadership for the rest to follow and get in line. This is the right thing at the right time."

Holten cautions that it will take two years or so to see the benefits of phonics reflected in student scores, in part because it will take teachers time to absorb the new system and adjust their teaching style.

Education schools continue to teach prospective teachers the whole language approach, which stresses context and whole word recognition over sound-symbol relationships, she says.

Giles says every teacher new to Open Court has received training, and professional development will continue until everyone is comfortable with it. "You have some resistance coming from teachers initially because there is a change expected," he said. "That's why you have to give them a lot of in-service training to create a high level of awareness of the materials."

He doesn't use the word revolution, but Giles speaks as a rebel to the cause.

"This is a changed district," Giles insists. "It's changing all the time and it's changing for the better. Believe me, we're going to show that there's nothing these students aren't capable of. Given appropriate materials and appropriate instruction, our students will succeed at the same height as any other group of young people."

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Neal is editor of the editorial pages. Contact her at 1-317-444-6177 or via e-mail at andrea.neal@indystar.com

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