Only 32% of Stanislaus County third-graders read at grade level. How Stanreads! helps
Like many great love stories, it started with coins in a fountain.
Only this time, the love is for reading, and the fountain is in the foyer at Stanislaus County Office of Education in downtown Modesto.
“It all started with Dee Dee Baker taking the coins from the fountain to donate to the library,” said Lisa Tiwater, SCOE’s assistant superintendent of instruction, while talking about StanReads!, a program to propel county children to read at grade level by third grade.
Baker has since retired, but about five years ago, she was the director of literacy and the SCOE liaison to the Stanislaus County Library.
When Baker took the coins to the library, she learned about the national campaign for grade level reading and was excited to have SCOE join the effort. SCOE joined forces with the Stanislaus Community Foundation.
From there, Stanislaus Reads emerged, which evolved into StanReads!, which is part of the five action teams that make up Stanislaus Cradle-to-Career Partnership.
Their first action was to discover how proficient Stanislaus County children were in reading. They reviewed the California standardized test scores for third graders, an age where students transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.”
They found that only 32% were proficient, a number Tiwater called “abysmal” and far below the state average of 48%.
StanReads! takes action
Research has shown that reading proficiency at the end of third grade is one of the strongest predictors of high school graduation, as well as success entering the workforce.
Megan Lowery, director of Cradle-to-Career at SCOE, said that though third grade reading is a classroom-based indicator, the group quickly realized that everything that happens in a child’s life, especially early on, impacts what happens in the classroom.
Poverty, lack of access to books and limited parental literacy are among many factors that contribute to low literacy among children, according to the Literacy Foundation.
StanReads! identified schools from eight county districts, including Capistrano Elementary School in Empire, to participate in a pilot program to assess reading obstacles among local kids and to test solutions.
Early actions included trying to curb school absenteeism, maximizing summer learning, understanding kindergarten readiness and getting more books into children’s hands.
Research shows that chronically absent kids in kindergarten and first grade are less likely to be capable readers in third grade and to graduate from high school.
“If they’re not there, we can’t teach them,” Tiwater said.
Chronic absenteeism — missing more than four weeks of the school year — affects about 10% of county pupils across all grades. StanReads! instituted community awareness campaigns about the importance of school attendance and reading to young children.
Meanwhile, over the summer, students lose at least one month of reading ability, called the summer slide. This can be mitigated if kids participate in enrichment activities, so StanReads! took inventory of the county summer programs.
School readiness means that children show up to kindergarten ready to learn, which led to formal assessments of kindergarteners and the start of the StanReady! action team.
“You can’t be an action team without some actions,” said Tiwater. “We have to balance talking and research with doing.”
Applying programs to pilot schools
She said StanReads! took multiple actions at the pilot schools, including the attendance campaign, the Imagination Library, afternoon reading clubs and providing schools with “high interest” books focused on topics more aligned to students’ interests.
One of their first steps was offering families enrollment into Imagination Library, a national nonprofit that promotes literacy. Once a month, children ages zero to 5 are mailed books at no cost to families. Participation is funded by the Stanislaus Community Foundation and other philanthropic groups, including the Modesto Rotary Club.
“The mailman brings them to us, so every day we check the mail to see if there’s more books,” said Forest Arnold, a second grader at Capistrano in Empire.
Forest and his rambunctious 5-year-old brother, Eric Von Hudson, were eager to talk about their favorite books, including “Violet the Pilot,” about a little girl who draws instructions to build and fly a plane.
Eric said his mom reads to him every day, and Forest proudly said, “I read myself.”
Capistrano Elementary became one of the pilot schools in 2016-17, the second year of StanReads!.
“They immediately offered me more books,” said Principal James Jensen. He harvests any resources that he can to get books for his students.
Nearly all Capistrano students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch, about two-thirds are Latino/Hispanic, and 1 in 5 are English learners.
About 40% of their students read at grade level, which is above the Stanislaus County average, but still below the state average. The county’s 32% is in line with Merced and Madera counties, but behind Alameda, Fresno and Sacramento.
Stanislaus County Library’s role
“Reading and literacy is what we do,” said Annie Snell, supervising librarian of youth services outreach and a facilitator for the StanReads! team.
She said parent engagement is one of the library’s concerted efforts with StanReads!, because some parents don’t know the importance of reading to their children. They also help families sign up for library cards.
The library opened “pop-up” libraries at locations where parents and kids visited, such as the county’s Women Infant and Children (WIC) office at Hackett Road.
They also helped place and stock Little Free Libraries filled with gently used books on each pilot schools’ campus, as well as other neighborhood locations. At the birdhouse-shaped structures, anyone can take a free book, and if they can, leave a book.
Lowery said that over the past four years, they’ve seen an increase of 12% of third graders reading at grade level, though they aren’t sure which actions were most effective.
StanReads! and Cradle-to-Career are trying to discover which actions are most valuable, and affordable, to scale up across the county.
Something seems to be working.
That was evident recently at the Capistrano school library, which was full of children enthralled with the story being read by the librarian.
“If the community can get behind anything related to StanReads!, it’s a plus,” said Principal Jensen. “Bring in books. Donate to schools. Volunteer to read to kids in school. We need to do everything we can to get books in the kids’ hands.”
Even if it’s simply tossing coins into a fountain.
Cradle-to-Career is hosting a Community Summit on March 13, 2020, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Modesto Centre Plaza.
Books and monetary donations are always needed. Checks made out to “SCOE” with StanReads! in the memo line can be sent to the Superintendent’s Office, Attn: Valerie Escobar (209.238-1706).
For more information or to volunteer with the partnership, visit: https://www.stancoe.org/division/administrative-services/cradle-career
This story was produced with financial support from The Stanislaus County Office of Education and the Stanislaus Community Foundation, along with the GroundTruth Project’s Report for America initiative. The Modesto Bee maintains full editorial control of this work.
This story was originally published December 31, 2019 at 12:00 PM.
