We know nearly one-third of Colorado’s high school graduating class of 2009 entered a state university or college needing remedial help in at least one basic skills classreading, writing or math.
Follow that class back in time. Were they performing at grade level in high school? Eighth grade? Sixth grade? The Colorado Department of Education now has an answer. It shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Among those who entered a two-year college and needed remediation, 66 percent were reading below grade level as far back as sixth grade. Half of the students who entered four-year colleges and needed remediation were not reading at grade level in sixth grade. Most behind in sixth grade were still performing below grade level in the eighth and 10th grades.
They never caught up.
If you flip it the other way, you find a similar correlation. Those who tested at grade level on the CSAP test in sixth or eighth grade or whose 10th-grade ACT and Colorado Student Assessment Program scores showed them to be college- ready were less likely to need remedial classes upon entering college.
About 30,000 newly minted state high school graduates entered a state college or university in fall 2009. The CDE, working with the state Department of Higher Education, was able to follow a representative sample of about 15,000 of these freshmen back to middle school.
Researchers tracked students using the identifier numbers first assigned to them in 2002. The 2009 graduates make up the first class the state has been able to follow into college.
“That’s what makes this so exciting for both systems — and a little intimidating for both,” says Dianne Lefly, CDE’s director of research and evaluation. “It’s not about going back to dig up old bones. It’s an opportunity to take stock of what’s happening on the K-12 side.”
The kindergarten through high school side, long aware that students who fall behind generally stay behind, has been tackling the problem in more ways than I can count, including teacher and principal training, intervention teams, charter and innovation schools. But I stopped at TreVista at Horace Mann for principal Veronica Benavidez’s take. TreVista is in its third year as an early childhood education through 8th- grade school. It’s just off West 41st Avenue and Navajo Street, and its student body includes the children of Quigg Newton, the city’s largest housing project.
The halls are lined with charts tracking student progress on assessments, attendance, reading. Posters congratulate students on their successes. Were schools judged by the warmth with which staff and students welcome visitors, TreVista would rank among the most successful. But it is not.
Last spring’s CSAP results show fewer than half of students in third through eighth grades could read at grade level. Its students are now showing small yearly gains, which is the more important indicator of school performance. But the December 2010 school district benchmark tests show only 21 percent of sixth- graders are meeting reading goals. This is the group that would enter college in 2017.
“No, I’m not surprised by the study,” Benavidez says. “My hope is that people understand that for many kids learning takes time. Forty percent of our kids are coming in unable to recognize letters, seldom having used scissors or crayons. My fear is the study will be used to point fingers rather than as a catalyst for change.”
“If you had your druthers, what would you do for your struggling kids?” I ask.
“Individualized instruction, one-on-one tutoring,” she says, and we both know that’s a pipe dream.
Benavidez brings out more charts. At TreVista, first-graders with the most trouble reading have been placed into a grant-funded Reading Recovery program. They get one-on-one help every school day, 30 minutes a day.
Benavidez shows me how much they improve after only 18 weeks. More letters and sounds recognized. More words learned.
Then she pulls the reading results of first-graders not in the program. “They’re moving, but not as fast. If we could do this for all our students below grade level, we would be catching them up.”
How much would that cost? I ask. “A lot,” she says.
How many first-graders do you have? “Seventy-four,” she says. How many kids are in Reading Recovery now? “Twelve,” she says.
Tina Griego writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
