The Howard County Education Association has condemned a proposal set to go before the Howard County Board of Education next month that would end traditional reading classes in the county's 19 middle schools.
"We don't think this is a good idea," said Paul Lemle, president of the HCEA, the school system's teachers union that represents more than 4,500 teachers, pupil personnel workers, counselors, therapists and other school employees.
Under the proposed change, reading instruction would be absorbed into English classes and other subject areas beginning with the 2012-13 school year. Some of the 101 countywide reading teachers would be retained to assist students who are reading below grade level, while others would be reassigned, depending on availability and the individual teacher's certification, said Linda Wise, the school system's chief academic officer. No teacher, she said, will be let go.
"That is not an issue," Wise said. "We want to make that very clear: No one is losing their job."
The proposed change is scheduled to go before the board in a report Dec. 8, with a public hearing set for Jan. 12. A vote is scheduled for Jan. 26.
The move to subsume reading into other content areas comes after Maryland adopted a new common core state curriculum. In 2013-14, Wise said, teachers in the state will undergo a new teacher evaluation system, 50 percent of which will be based on student growth and performance, and in 2014-15, a new national assessment for students — the Partnership for Assessment of Reading for College and Career-Readiness — will be given as well. School system staff didn't want students, teachers and parents dealing with a major shift in curriculum the same year as a new evaluation system, or right before a new assessment would be rolled out, Wise said.
In a unanimous resolution, HCEA said it could not support the proposal because the organization opposes the elimination of reading classes, the under-staffing of related arts in middle schools and scheduling concerns such as inequities in planning time and teaching load among teachers and the use of planning time for increased instructional responsibilities.
"It would be unwise to stop teaching reading (after) the fifth grade," Lemle said. "These students still need reading classes. There's no such thing as an on-grade level reader. You need something more sensitive than that to describe how a person reads.
" The same person reads at many different levels; the same person has different fluency when presented with different material. Our middle school students are at the point where they're going to get Shakespeare dropped on them for the first time, and 'on-grade level' doesn't describe them, or their different skills, well enough."
Why take out reading?
Bonnie Whaley, a reading teacher at Harper's Choice Middle School, said the proposed change would be detrimental for that very reason — "on-grade level" doesn't describe the reading needed for science textbooks, for example.
"(Students) still need strategic reading, and the textbooks are above grade-level, so you're going from basic understanding to being able to decode, to evaluate material that's for adults," she said. "Classic literature isn't going to be written at a sixth-grade level, so why would you take out reading in the sixth grade?"
Whaley also is concerned that the change could mean lower test scores, especially since middle school students are still being assessed for their reading skills. In 2011, 93 percent of county middle-schoolers scored at proficient levels on the reading Maryland State Assessment, and 63 percent of those were at the advanced level.
Currently, Howard County students receive separate English and reading classes in elementary and middle school. At the middle school level, English courses are focused on literature and writing, Lemle said, while reading classes focus on the actual skills that a reader needs to read, like decoding.
System staff believe the creation of an English Language Arts class, and absorbing reading instruction into other content areas, would actually strengthen that instruction and allay concerns like those expressed by Lemle and Whaley.
"All of our content teachers (would be) taking on the reading, writing and thinking that's a natural part of the disciplines," said Clarissa Evans, executive director of school improvement and curricular programs. "Within science, being able to read the science experiment, the lab reports, you need to understand how they're put together, and what they do and don't say. We need the science teachers to work with the kids, so they're able to read them and able to write them. They would still have literacy skills in the class."
Such integration already is being done in high school social studies courses successfully, Evans said. As teachers focus on using primary source documents in their classes, they ask students to compare and contrast the writing so they understand "how that relates to the thinking historian."
Professional development would be key in making sure such a move would be implemented well, Wise said, since a science teacher would not talk about reading in the same way as a reading teacher would.
"They're taking the kids to a higher level of understanding, showing them how literacy skills are an integral part of what it means to be a scientist," she said.
It might not be so easy, Whaley said, even with proficient readers.
"You still need strategic reading to understand above-grade level material," she said. "Reading is complicated."