Who would believe that I’d call any MMSD data excellent?
It’s true!
But first, the critical point: I respectfully urge the board of education to approve funding in the next budget to expand Read 180 to West as part of West’s English 9 and English 10. Read 180 would help those students who cannot read well enough to succeed in those courses, as well as all other West courses.
Now the background.
After I asked and asked for data on the costs of various programs, the MMSD finally posted (without any fanfare) useful figures on the cost of Read 180, a successful program used in Wisconsin and across the nation to teach reading to adolescents.
The MMSD praised Read 180, but the superintendent said the district had no funds to expand the program.
Now we see that the computer-based Read 180 curriculum costs about $40,000 per school for hardware and software, according to the MMSD figures.
Read 180 could address the lack of any current proposal for instruction for poor readers in English 9 and 10.
With real numbers about costs, the board of education can now decide whether it’s willing to find $40,000 in the next budget to round out West’s English curriculum. Once low-skilled readers can actually read at grade level, core English might begin to make sense. But not until all the students can read at grade level.
5 thoughts on “Excellent data from MMSD on Read 180”
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I found this conclusion interesting in MMSD’s letter to MCF [Madison Community Foundation] –
“Because MCF has so magnanimously funded READ 180 at seven schools and now accounts for 400+ students per year receiving intense reading assistance, MMSD is positioned to apply for the new federal Striving Readers grant which requires a research-based intervention for struggling adolescent readers. This could mean millions of dollars over five years, boosting reading comprehension for many more students!”
Ed, do you know if the District is applying for these funds; and, if MMSD is applying for such funds, when would the District see these funds if they were awarded? Millions of dollars over five years gets your attention.
In all of my e-mail exchanges with the MMSD, not a single person mentioned any intent to apply for more funds. In the recent budget process, no one in the MMSD advocated “for every school to designate 90 minutes per day to this intervention.” Quite the contrary, the administration didn’t include any funds in the budget for expansion of Read 180 and never offered any advocacy throughout the process from what I saw.
Now is the time for the administration to advocate for expansion of Read 180 in both the 9th and 10th grades at West.
Better yet, wouldn’t it be refreshing to see the administration advocate for a similar program, rather than advocate for more of the status quo, to teach grade schoolers to read at grade level before the third grade?
Congress appropriated $24,000,000 in FY2005 for Striving Readers’ grants. President Bush has requested $200 million for the FY2006. For more information on this relatively new federal discretionary grant program, go to: http://www.ed.gov/programs/strivingreaders/index.html
Ed, with your interest in reading curriculum, you might want to check with MMSD if there is either a district application process underway, or if an application for funds will be done through DPI since this money appears to be targeted toward Title 1 schools.
It might be time for the School Board to get an update on the K-12 sequential reading and language arts standards and curriculum. What data do we have? Where is our money going? What student results do we have. Seems like a good topic for a future Performance and Achievement Committee meeting.
I meant to edit my comment before posting, but pushed post rather than preview. Anyway, this grant money will likely come under the Title 1 federal funds – via DPI via some form of grant process.
From what I understand, the MMSD planned to write a Striving Readers grant at the time it wrote the thank you letter to the Madison Community Foundation.
Ironically, the student scores at West were too good to expect that the DOE would award a grant to the MMSD, and the timeline for an application was very short.
In other words, the MMSD will not be seeking a Striving Readers grant for West, leaving no current plan (I presume) for teaching non-reading 9th and 10th graders how to read.