Engagement That Boosts Student Reading

Focus: STUDENT LITERACY

Boosting student reading achievement. Encouraging parent engagement. Increasing community/business support for education.

These are three key goals for any superintendent. We seek ways to increase reading test scores while stimulating students’ passion for reading. We want to involve parents beyond one-time Parent Nights. We try to raise understanding of and support for public education among businesses and the local community. These were some of my key goals when I became superintendent in Little Rock, Ark., in 2016.

Like many urban districts, our district faced some significant challenges. Student achievement ranked far below acceptable levels. Parent involvement was low. The business community had negative perceptions of the schools. I made it a priority to address these issues, taking the following three steps:

• Determined where the interests of business and education overlap.
  Throughout Arkansas and across the nation, banks and businesses have a vested interest in boosting financial literacy among students. Economics Arkansas, a consortium of business leaders, eagerly supported a reading initiative that engaged elementary students across Little Rock and several other districts in reading The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies. This book depicts children acting as entrepreneurs, planning a business, honing their math skills and learning to work together on a project.
  
  Economics Arkansas developed a companion guide for The Lemonade War to support parents and students in learning about economic principles while enjoying a great book together. The organization also created lessons for use in the classroom. As a final project, students presented what they had learned in front of Economics Arkansas members. Students enjoyed the experience, and EA members were impressed by the knowledge the students displayed.


• Engaged parents in their children’s literacy development.
  Our One District, One Book initiative, a program of the nonprofit organization Read to Them, engages elementary school families across the city in reading the same book at the same time. We ask parents to commit to reading one chapter a night with their children over a period of about three weeks. Exceptionally high numbers of parents participate — even parents who don’t typically get involved in school programs.
  
  Why are they participating? Everyone else is doing it, and they don’t want their children to be left out. Parents’ enthusiasm then carries over into other areas of participation.


• Motivated wider reading.
  Our reading initiatives are designed to help students have fun as they learn through reading. Because our programs engage students across the city reading the same book at the same time, there is positive peer pressure to participate. Students discuss the book in the classroom, at lunch and at recess. Reading becomes the topic of conversation through-out the school, and everyone wants to be involved.

Positive Gains

The proof of any initiative is in the results. We have measured the following positive developments:

Surveys after families read The Lemonade War found a 75 percent increase in families reading together and a 78 percent increase in students reading outside of school.

About 22 percent of survey respondents reported a change in their own personal financial habits.

Little Rock was one of 12 school districts in the state that improved in every tested area in English language arts, math and science. (Data were provided by Arkansas Learns and reflect aggregate scores from ACT Aspire.)

Little Rock was one of the three school districts in the state that met or exceeded its expected growth based on state assessment results compiled by the Office of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas.