June 7, 2000

Dear Ms. Zampolin, Dr. Evangelist, Mr. Burrell , Mr. Hammond, Mr. Czajkowski, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Mark, Mr. Davis, Ms. Wallace and Ms. Clark,

Our group has addressed you in the past with some questions about the district’s reading instruction. We are very pleased to hear that the 4th grade ELA scores have come back showing a great improvement over last year’s scores. We are encouraged by these results and are eager to do our part so our students’ success continues through their middle and high school years.

We’d also like to bring you up to date on the issue brought before the board earlier this year. On January 31, 2000, we addressed a letter to the board requesting their advice. We were having difficulty in getting a follow-up Question & Answer session to the Reading Workshop given by the district on December 2nd of last year. While no formal response was made by the Board, we did meet with Dr. Evangelist to discuss a follow-up meeting. At her suggestion, there was to be no district-wide meeting but, rather, three separate meetings for each of the elementary schools.

We would like to bring to you the results of those meetings, the things we’ve learned about the district’s reading instruction, and some suggestions that we feel would improve communication between parents and the schools regarding students’ reading problems. While we are not reading specialists (our suggestions are not meant to promote any single philosophical approach towards reading), we do feel strongly that we are experts when it comes to our own children and we are at the receiving end of all that is being taught within the school buildings. We hope you agree that parental feedback has an important place in our continued efforts to help children with reading problems in our district.

As a result of our meeting with Dr. Evangelist, parents in each of the elementary school buildings approached their principal with a request for a reading meeting. In the Liberty School, Liberty’s Site-Based Team stated in a letter dated February 17th, that "there are sufficient support systems within the district to address specific individual concerns." Therefore, no meeting was held in that building. Upper Nyack held a PTA meeting on April 10th and Valley Cottage addressed reading issues at their April 11th PTA Meeting. With some questions still unanswered, Upper Nyack scheduled an additional Q&A session on May 10th with Buzz Ostrowsky answering questions in the school library between 1 and 3 pm.

From these meetings and from discussions within our group and with other parents, teachers and tutors, here are some of the problems we’ve been able to articulate:

- Supervision- Any new reading strategies, methods or programs can only be as successful as their implementation. At present, building principals are said to be ultimately responsible for ensuring that reading is being taught consistently from classroom to classroom. We find this a very difficult task to put on to principals who are already serving a dual role of Building Principal - Subject Coordinator (UN’s Buzz Ostrowsky is Math/Science Coordinator, VC’s Brenda Grier is Language Arts and Liberty’s Alice Blueglass is Music and Arts). There is also no assurance that all principals are trained to supervise teachers teaching reading.

- Communication with Parents- Parents experience a great deal of confusion, particularly in the early grades, with regard to the district’s expectations of students’ reading skills. They are given sometimes conflicting information as to what is expected, how children are assessed and when remediation is needed.

There is not, to our knowledge, any clearly written document that states expectations for children’s reading progress from grade to grade.

-Reading Program- The December 2nd Reading Workshop referred to the MONDO Program as being newly introduced in the lower grades. Upon closer review, we’ve learned that Mondo is not a reading program but rather a publisher that has sold the district a set of literature. Neither district reading teachers nor Mondo Publishing itself describes their literature as a "reading program". Does Nyack, in fact, have a reading program?

- Consistent Assessments- It is unclear, at least to parents, what consistent forms of assessment are being used. While standardized tests have been done away with for K-2, what methods have replaced them that are consistent class to class, grade to grade and school to school?

- Staff Development- How much staff development each teacher is required to do is unclear and how much is done in the area of reading is also difficult to evaluate. What seems logical is that every K-2 teacher should be armed with many techniques and strategies to approach a variety of reading problems. There is no assurance that this, in fact, is happening with every teacher.

- Children with Severe Reading Problems- We are concerned that, with the current assessment tools, children who have more severe reading problems might receive appropriate instruction only if their parents are aware enough, or have the resources, to provide private testing in order to accurately assess their deficits. In the absence of this evaluation, a child’s needs may not be fully addressed.

In some cases, this has resulted in the student being placed in Special Ed where the teacher’s expertise is in special education and not reading instruction. Many of these special ed students with reading problems find that they enter middle school with no improvement in their reading.

- Homework- Parents are not clear on how much they should help their child with homework; be it nightly assignments or special reports. If the purpose of homework is for teachers to gauge the students’ understanding of work done in class, it would make sense that parental involvement should be minimal. Does the district agree? Also, in homes where English is not spoken, or adults are unable to provide the ‘one-on-one’ that homework may sometimes require, is the child’s work evaluated with these circumstances in mind? Nyack’s current homework policy does not clearly address these issues.

-Tutors- While no data is available on this, we believe that there are many parents who use private tutors (many at over $50 per hour) to help their child with reading difficulties. When this issue was raised, the insinuation was that these were "overly anxious" parents who sought private tutoring to create ‘gifted students’. We strongly disagree. We’ve found that, while there may be some parents who are tutoring an already successful student, the vast majority only go to outside help when the child’s needs are not being met by the school’s remedial programs. This not only creates great financial burdens for some families, but also skews any statistical data on which we might evaluate the performance of our schools.

The following are our suggestions to improve communications between educators and parents and to raise the level of parent participation in our schools regarding reading concerns.

1. A NEW POSITION: ELEMENTARY READING COORDINATOR

An Elementary Reading Coordinator would be a visible point person for parents, classroom teachers and reading specialists to contact and coordinate with, in the effort to solve a student’s reading problems. It would benefit all to have one person in charge of supervising classroom teachers, reading specialists, and those responsible for evaluating students with more severe reading problems in all three elementary buildings. While this would add money to the budget, it is our feeling that this is money well spent. A Music and Performing Arts Coordinator has a well-deserved part of our regular budget so it seems to make sense for us to also have a coordinator in the crucial area of elementary reading.

We strongly feel we can rally support from all parents and teachers in order to include this new position in the 2001 budget.

2. WRITTEN SET OF BENCHMARKS/ A HOMEWORK GUIDE

It would be extremely helpful if, by Fall 2000, within the first week of school, families could be mailed a simplified version of the Grade-Level Benchmarks derived from the core curriculum. These Benchmarks should be written in easy to understand language (and available in Creole and Spanish). If an assessment form is derived from this, parents will be able to see their children’s progress (or lack of) in a clear manner. (The New York City Board of Education distributes a version of this pamphlet for all grade levels.)

In addition to this, it would also help if the district sent home a simple, clearly written "Homework Guide". While we do not want to infringe on the rights of individual teachers to customize their approach to homework, we do feel there needs to be more clarity on the subject. A general guide would give an overview about expectations for parental involvement and serve as a starting point for discussions with a child’s teacher.

3. INFORMATION REGARDING THE CORE CURRICULUM

We understand that the Nyack District Core Curriculum should be completed and ready for State review by June 2000. We would like to request that copies be mailed to the undersigned families at that time and the document be made available to all who are interested in reading it.

4. A READING FORUM IN OCTOBER AND DECEMBER

It would be very helpful if, by Fall 2000, Reading Workshops could be held in the early months of the school year for Grades K-2 so that parents who have the concerns in these areas can be better informed. The early grades are where parents are most involved in their child’s schoolwork and are encountering homework and spelling tests for the first time. Armed with the Benchmarks and a Homework Guide, parents will have a month or two of actual experience working with their child and will have a scheduled forum to voice their concerns.

5. TERRA NOVA TEST RESULTS

The district has stated that the Terra Nova Standardized Tests are excellent tools to learn about a child’s performance and to pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses. Although parents receive the scores for this test with their child’s final report card, our understanding is that the school principals are given a manual which helps interpret these scores and explains exactly what skills were tested. If, starting June 2001, parents could receive a simple version of this information, they would have a much clearer understanding of their child’s abilities.

6. EXPANSION OF STAFF DEVELOPMENT

We feel strongly that all K-2 teachers should be provided with intensive training in a variety of reading strategies as part of their State mandated staff development. The staff needs to be armed with different techniques to help all children and we (both parents and administrators) need to provide them with as much support as they need. We want to emphasize our desire for ‘varied’ reading techniques to serve individual needs as there is concern that parents are blindly demanding ‘only phonics’. We share the goal that all children must master all skills (including phonemic awareness), regardless of the different methods employed and individual teaching styles.

7. ASSESSMENT OF REMEDIAL PROGRAMS

As we understand it, there is no assessment of the remedial programs, including the Summer Stars Program, that students with reading problems participate in. We’ve heard (and assume the schools have too) from parents and students that some of these programs are not helpful and feel that an assessment of student performance before and after participation in these programs is key to their success.

We also feel the need to evaluate the remedial programs themselves. Here is a case where our Reading coordinator can study the programs in all three buildings, and maybe find methods that are succeeding in one school which can be used in the others.