If reading remains the gateway to learning almost everything else, one of the most important things a school can do is teach children to read well. A year ago, The 74 started looking for schools that were beating the odds in teaching kids to read. More than 2,000 Bright Spots across the country were found by comparing literacy and poverty rates for 10,000 districts, 42,000 schools and 3 million kids.
The 74 identifies Bright Spot schools as public schools that achieve high student test scores and strong academic progress despite high rates of student poverty or low district funding.
The 74 interviewed teachers, principals and literacy coaches at numerous Bright Spots schools to understand how they are succeeding. Five takeaways:
Basics matter more than magic: Across schools, we kept seeing the same organizational factors: they all have strong leaders who are resolutely focused on student outcomes, they pay attention to the quality of their curriculum and how it’s being implemented, and they closely monitor student performance data in service of continuous improvement.
Focus on core instruction: The Bright Spots schools all prioritize high-quality core instruction for all kids. The Worcester County, Maryland, district protects its reading instructional time and doesn’t allow interruptions, even for providing a student with personalized help. Connecticut’s Meriden school district prioritizes a common reading block across the entire district.
Emphasis on foundational skills. National data suggests that all boats rise when kids have strong foundational skills. The Indian River district in Florida has an afterschool program that gives students who need extra literacy help explicit instruction on the letters or sounds they’re learning during the school day. In Illinois, a Rockford school saw strong gains after it shifted to skill-based, rather than grade-based, reading instruction.
High expectations. Many of the schools on our list simply set higher expectations than other places are comfortable imposing. A district in Florida officially adopted a goal of getting 90% of their students reading proficiently by the end of third grade and is holding itself accountable for it.
Strong overall learning gains: Schools that are good at teaching reading also tend to be good at teaching math.
State and local leaders should spend more time identifying where students are succeeding despite the odds and what other schools can learn from these outliers. Every state has schools that outperform what their circumstances would predict, and leaders should find them, study them and figure out how to create more of them.
The 74
