‘The magic.’ Does this elementary school hold key to improving CMS reading scores?
It’s Monday morning at Allenbrook Elementary, a small, diverse school nestled in a northwest Charlotte neighborhood, and classrooms are stocked with coaches.
In one room, a 20-student class is broken up into five groups, with five adults providing small group instruction. Down the hall in Jeanice Knockum’s third-grade class, instructional reading coaches trickle in while she prepares students for the same personalized approach to learning.
“I call it the magic at Allenbrook,” said Principal Kimberly Vaught, a 22-year public education veteran. “We don’t have behavioral specialists. We have instructional coaches who are bedside every single day.”
In her third year as principal, Vaught’s approach and the decision to boost daily time spent on reading and literacy — sometimes more than three hours — may be turning Allenbrook Elementary into a blueprint for the rest of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to raise bleak reading scores.
Allenbrook is one of a handful of elementary schools in CMS that improved overall school performance grades after the pandemic, particularly in reading. It went from 14.3% of students being proficient and college- and career-ready in reading in 2020-21 to 25.5% in 2021-22. Allenbrook Elementary also saw a 39.2% improvement in math proficiency.
It exceeded growth expectations five-and-a-half times over, Vaught said, making it the No. 1 elementary school in the district and No. 2 in the state for academic growth.
Across CMS, 43.3% of all third-graders passed reading exams last year, and 25.1% were college- and career-ready. Data show 13.5% of Black and Hispanic or Latino CMS third-graders were college- and career-ready in English Language Arts —1,563 students short of the Board of Education’s 2022-23 year-end goal.
If scores in reading do not increase dramatically this school year, students will continue to fall behind, CMS leaders say.
“There’s no one program that’s going to fix this thing, no silver bullet” Vaught said of reading scores district wide. “Part of what we do at Allenbrook is we take a strong stance of who’s coming in and how we do this work.”
CMS’ goals for reading
School board members set goals last year to increase the percent of Black and Hispanic or Latino third-grade students who score at the college and career ready level in English Language Arts to 36% for this school year and 50% by October 2024. But this year’s data show a decline from the 15.9% level in October 2021.
The fact that data worsened is particularly concerning because students learn to read through third grade and read to learn new information until graduating from high school, said CMS board member Sean Strain.
“When a student is behind their peer group in literacy at the end of third grade, and critically in fourth and fifth grades, then they are almost guaranteed to fall further and further behind due to their peers’ readiness and aptitude to absorb and capitalize on further education and instruction,” Strain told The Charlotte Observer.
The school board’s strategies for reaching its goals include ensuring instruction is engaging, affirming and meaningful, using interventions for second- and third-grade students who need them and hiring highly-effective teachers.
The district also rolled out tutoring programs in and outside of the classroom.
In September, CMS launched its Out-of-School Time Tutoring program for the 2022-23 school year. The program will help offset lost instructional time due to COVID-19 and provide expanded learning opportunities for students to achieve greater academic success through high-dosage tutoring.
The district is partnering with 30, third-party vendors to provide learning time to students from 42 of the highest-need CMS schools. In-person tutoring will occur three times a week after school.
Beyond third grade, about half of CMS students failed state exams for the 2021-22 academic year, according to results the state released in September. CMS’ results were better than the 44.6% last year but below the 59.8% in 2018-19.
The percentage of CMS students who are college- and career-ready is 34.8%, according to the newest results. In CMS, 142 schools, or 83%, met or exceeded their growth expectations. But a total of 50 schools in CMS earned the state’s low-performing schools designation, which includes schools that scored D or F and did not exceed their growth targets.
An Observer analysis found 36.6% of Black students in CMS are grade-level proficient across key subjects, and 20.7% are college- and career-ready. The percentage of Hispanic or Latino students who are grade-level proficient in key subjects is 36.6%, and 21.9% are college and career ready.
Small group instruction
Before students break into small groups in Knockum’s class, they write why reading is important. Small-group instruction aims to reinforce lessons, engages and provides more help to students who are struggling.
“Sometimes we have to overcome our challenges in reading,” Knockum tells her class while reviewing a book with a character who doesn’t know how to read, “because we believe reading is important.”
Vaught began addressing Allenbrook Elementary’s low reading scores by reorganizing staff. At one time, Allenbrook had three instructional assistants, three counselors/social workers and two behavioral specialists. But no instructional coaches.
“Now I have five instructional coaches and no behavioral specialists,” she said. “We have not had one behavioral problem since I’ve been here. We support our kids. And we support our teachers. Now our teachers know they don’t have to lift this load themselves. They have help.”
She says students are more actively engaged. Reading and literacy is pushed throughout the day in every subject.
“We believe in full inclusion,” Vaught said. “You won’t see kids who are struggling, or English Learners being pulled out. We have strategies in place so even kids who aren’t struggling can learn and be side by side with kids who are. That’s another part of the magic.”
The strategies, Vaught says, can help students throughout the district.
Talk to your child
Dee McDaniel is the dean of students at Allenbrook and coaches literacy. Vaught and McDaniel say parent engagement is key for CMS to meet its reading goals.
“Just talk to your child,” McDaniel said. “Ask how was your day? Observing the carpool line, I notice when children get in the car, there’s no conversation. Parents have work. They’re trying to go about life. But talk to your child. Sit at the dinner table and have a conversation.”
McDaniel says even watching a game show and talking about it with your child afterward is a big deal and plays a part in a child’s ability to engage in dialogue. It elevates comprehension.
“Now, they have a memory of a conversation they had with the adult they love most in this world,” McDaniel said. “They’ll remember that conversation, and both of you have made a connection.”
McDaniel says parents also should read books with their child, talk about the book and ask questions after.
And Vaught has one more piece of magic to pass on to parents: “Be in the know. Hold your children accountable. That’s one of the best ways to support teachers.”
Strain said the best-case scenario is that every third-grader in CMS continues to have the right level of preparation and support outside of the school and great leaders in their school and classroom.
“The best case scenario is 100% (that are) college- and career-ready for every subgroup in third grade,” he said, “and a plan by the community and schools that falls short of this leaves many, many thousands of our youth behind each year.”
This story was originally published October 7, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
