CHARLOTTE, N.C. — After historic pandemic learning setbacks, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is now aiming for a historic academic goal for reading readiness scores, specifically regarding Black and Hispanic students.
The CMS school board and superintendent are calling for at least half of its Black and Hispanic third graders to have reading scores that put them on track for academic success by 2024.
In a special called board meeting on Tuesday the CMS School Board, its chief accountability officer, and superintendent agreed a major overhaul is needed to get students back on track after virtual learning during the pandemic.
“If we take on this big, hairy, audacious goal is requires us to have a big, hairy, audacious aim to help our schools and families to achieve them,” CMS chief accountability officer Frank Barnes said.
The goals are big, hairy, and audacious because only 16% of the students reached that goal in the 2020-21 school year. That was a dramatic drop from 32% the previous year according to the district.
School board members agreed this is going to be a tough haul.
“This level of growth, and this quickly, in two years and the circumstances that we’re still operating in is extremely ambitious," board member Elyse Dashew said.
The district wants to broaden the scope of who will help the school reach these goals and they include the community.
Community Help
The Charlotte Augustine Literacy Project (ALP) already helps a little over 200 students in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools improve their reading, writing, and spelling skills before they leave the third grade.
"First- through third-grade students learn to read then they’re reading to learn," Ellen Babb, the operations director for ALP, said. "So if you go into fourth grade unable to read at a third-grade level you’re not keeping up with social studies and science and the other subjects.”
That’s why Charlotte-Mecklenburg School is so focused on its third-grade students to get back on track.
Barnes said they realize the goals are bold. He called for the central office staff and board members to step up.
“This board must grapple with what its goal is to help our schools succeed and indeed our philanthropic, our corporate and civic community must ask what are their roles to help us succeed," Barnes said.
ALP is continuing to help answer this call, by recruiting more volunteers.
ALP trains community members to teach those students who need help free of charge. The organization uses the Orton-Gillingham approach to teach kids. It's the idea of breaking reading and spelling down into smaller skills involving letters and sounds, and then building on these skills over time.
“We have the privilege of working one-on-one with a student a teacher would love to spend that time one on one with students but they just simply can’t because they have a whole classroom of students to serve," ALP executive director Alison Houser said.
ALP said it's being asked for more help by CMS every year and is looking for more volunteers for next year.
If the school district wants to reach its new reading readiness goals the next three years will be vital for its relationship with non-profits like ALP.
"If we achieved it would it be mission accomplished? No, no, no, but we feel that we had to aim higher based on the feedback that we received and the moral mission that we embraced when we took on these positions," Barnes said.
Contact Shamarria Morrison at smorrison@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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