Annual Growth For All Students

My summary of the "meat" of this book: 1. Collect data on kids' test scores entering kindergarten or wherever they are in your school. 2. Figure out how much direct reading instruction (not reading on their own) it will take for each kid to be reading at grade level at end of 3rd grade, based on how much each kid is behind and estimates of how much kids learn per hour of direct reading instruction. 3. Monitor schools and teachers to make sure they are providing the required level of direct reading instruction for each and every student. 4. Along the way, do testing to diagnose specific reading problems and intervene accordingly. 5. Also try to improve the quality of reading instruction, but do not count on quality replacing quantity of reading instruction, as it is much more difficult to increase the quality of reading instruction than it is to increase the quantity of reading instruction. The book does a reasonable job of demonstrating that this type of intervention was probably successful in a diverse school district in the state of Washington, in the sense that they have significantly increased their reading scores on NWEA tests so that 90% of students there at the end of 3rd grade read at grade level (which they appear to define as a reading level of 3.4, which is a little bit low, but probably OK). I don't think the part of the book that talks about pre-K is as strong. The intervention they describe, of workshops for parents three times a year for 90 minutes each, with materials to take home for parents to help develop their child's pre-K knowledge, will certainly do no harm. It might help a few kids. But I suspect that this program is not of sufficiently reliable intensity for enough of the kids who really need the intervention to have a substantial effect on kindergarten readiness scores for entering kindergartners. Actually, this portion of the book seems to forget the lessons of the first part of the book, that we have to monitor and ensure that all students get the learning time they need. This pre-K reading program might be a useful supplement to a program that guaranteed 2 years of high quality preschool for all our pre-K students who need it.

This is a fantastic book for educators! It describes how a school system of 12,000 students brought 90% of their fourth graders to grade level in reading. It took 10 years and lots of hard work. This book details the steps the district took to achieve this goal.