Three school administrators from a rural school system in Colquitt County, Ga., shared how their district is tackling low literacy rates among students in secondary schools during a presentation at the AASA national conference on Saturday. The session was titled “Equity for All: How One Rural District Tackled Literacy for Secondary Success.”
“Literacy is the root of many of our academic woes,” said Dan Chappuis, superintendent of Colquitt County School District, based in Moultrie, Ga. Roughly 50 percent of students in his district performed below grade literacy level on national assessments, he said.
Jessica Graves, director of student achievement in Colquitt County, introduced the district’s Strategic Literacy Implementation Plan, or SLIP, which required an interdisciplinary team to tackle the district’s literacy problem. “This is not an English teacher’s problem,” she said.
Graves emphasized the importance of addressing students’ literacy needs in secondary schools. “It’s malpractice to give a kid a diploma if they’re reading at a 2nd-grade level,” she said.
Graves defined literacy as “not just reading and writing, but speaking, listening and viewing.”
The lack of literacy skills among Colquitt’s high schoolers was a deep-seated issue that the district needed to tackle, she said.
Literacy issues in students were measured by their Lexile levels. If students’ test scores indicated they were below grade level, a year-long college readiness composition English course would be arranged for them. Faculty members were trained on Lexile levels to collect accurate data.
Rondesha Williams, director of student services in the Colquitt School District, addressed the schools’ reward programs for their students’ literacy progress. These included treats such as pizza and hot dogs, “fun Friday” events and recognition for students, she said. “Everybody wants to win, and our kids enjoyed it.”
The Colquitt County Schools saw its efforts at the high school level contribute to a 9 percent increase in students reading at or above grade level. They also saw a 10 percent increase in overall content mastery in American literature composition and biology.
(Sia Moon, a junior at Benjamin Franklin High School, is a reporter for Conference Daily Online.)
