Learning by the book

By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Diane Parker, above, a second-grade teacher at Waikele Elementary
School, reads with students Allen Michael De Guia,
center, and Kyle Arzaga.

Hawaii's schools have new
standards designed to help raise
reading skills, which are among
the nation's worst

Waikele teacher: one at a time
Tougher test may affect scores
Summit sign-ups Also: Libraries facing budget cuts

By Christine Donnelly
Star-Bulletin

COMING TOMORROW

Blanche Pope Elementary School in Waimanalo blazes a reading trail for Hawaii.
How to start your child out on the right reading path

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IT'S one of the most intractable problems in Hawaii's public schools: Students who can barely read.

Ask a million experts, you'll get a million reasons why: Parents who let their children watch too much television, and read too few books. The prevalence of pidgin. Overcrowded, underfunded and few air-conditioned schools. Poverty. Scattered instruction, spotty teacher training and undisciplined kids. Private schools creaming off promising students. Standardized tests that don't accurately gauge Hawaii's diverse population. A large number of immigrants who are just learning English.

Paul LeMahieu, state public schools superintendent, has heard all these arguments, and sees merit in some. But the diverse causes do not distract him from the bottom line.

"I happen to think that we have an obligation to teach kids to read," he said. "The point is to create a system not primed for failure, but that accepts the responsibility to succeed."

Hawaii's public school system has struggled for years to improve students' ability to read, write and understand standard English. A variety of standardized tests, from elementary age through high school, has shown similar results: Overall, public schoolchildren here do better in math than in reading, where they tend to lag behind an already low national average.

Especially alarming news came this year with the reading results of the 1998 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which ranked Hawaii worst among the 39 states that participated. (The NAEP is considered a better gauge than many other standardized tests because it is more comprehensive.)

Next month, national and local educators, parents and community members will convene a Hawaii Reading Summit aimed at making kids independent readers by the end of third grade.

The participants will come armed with refined Hawaii language arts standards spelling out what all students should be able to achieve at various grade levels.

By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Waikele second-grader Rosellyne Tungpalan practices writing in
Diane Parker's class. The class is immersed in reading -- whether
aloud by the teacher, together in small groups, or alone -- as a
meaningful, enjoyable and useful life skill.

LeMahieu said the standards, an update of the 1994 model, put greater priority on language arts, especially in the early grades. They don't dictate a specific curriculum or teaching method, but they do build in the balanced instructional approach favored today by reading specialists, emphasizing phonemic awareness (more commonly known as phonics) and elements of the "whole language" philosophy that stresses reading for meaning.

Diane Parker, a second-grade teacher at Waikele Elementary School, likes that the standards set high goals for every student but do not pigeonhole teachers or students.

"There is no one magic answer for every child and every teacher. The standards recognize that," said Parker, who has taught for 21 years.

For the system to work, it is critical that teachers, students and parents accept that setting higher goals is the first step toward higher achievement. States that blazed this path have improved reading scores on tests such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, LeMahieu said.

But Malcolm Kirkpatrick, a former public school teacher and frequent DOE critic, warned against putting too much hope in the refined standards. After all, he notes, similar praise was heaped on the original set, now considered lacking.

"What I think about standards generally is that platinum measuring rods won't make us grow any taller," said Kirkpatrick, who spends his free time looking for research that backs up -- or debunks -- the DOE's claims on everything from budget requests to student performance.

He said standards fail to motivate until rewards and punishments are built in. The DOE has planned such an accountability system, but it's not in place yet.

As for improving reading proficiency, Kirkpatrick looks to the University of Hawaii College of Education, which produces the bulk of Hawaii's public school teachers.

"We know what the research says about how to teach reading," Kirkpatrick said. "But do we know that UH College of Ed students are being taught it?"

Kathryn Au, a UH education professor, said her students are. "What I really push is balanced literacy instruction. We want kids to be motivated to love reading and love books, but we also have to teach them the basic skills."

Parents, meanwhile, seem heartened by the renewed emphasis on this most crucial subject. John Friedman, president of the Hawaii State Parent Teacher Student Association, said all the players -- including the teachers' union -- seem committed to creating a workable system: "I've got to say I'm as hopeful as I've ever been that we're embarking on very meaningful change."

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By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Rosellyne Tungpalan reads on the floor of Diane Parker's
second-grade class at Waikele Elementary.

Waikele teacher enriching
her students one at a time

By Christine Donnelly
Star-Bulletin

Diane Parker believes all children learn at different rates, in different ways, and deserve individual attention.

Waikele Elementary School, which opened two years ago, embraces that philosophy, and frees teachers like Parker to apply it. "It's so gratifying at this stage in my career to be at a school that truly believes every child can learn, can achieve, and deserves a rich educational environment," said Parker, a teacher for 21 years.

Her second-grade class is immersed in reading -- whether aloud by the teacher, together in small groups, or alone -- as a meaningful, enjoyable and useful life skill.

Parker wrote a booklet for parents to foster reading at home. In it, she cautions parents not to endlessly drill their children with flashcards or to correct every little mistake they make when reading aloud.

As for buying expensive at-home phonics programs, she wrote: "Ask yourself if you might meet your child's needs better by investing in books and in time spent reading to and with your child."

Reading guidelines Here are some of the Department of Education benchmarks specifying what students should know early in elementary school: K-1: Comprehension: Make reasonable predictions about what will happen in a story. Draw on personal experiences and prior knowledge to comprehend text. Select and organize information to tell a story. Skills: Show knowledge of the foundations of literacy (concepts about print, phonemic awareness, commonly referred to as phonics, experience with text) when reading. Apply letter knowledge, spelling-sound word recognition strategies, and meaning-based word recognition strategies to decode unknown words. Demonstrate increasing fluency, including the ability to read frequently occurring words by sight. Grades 2-3: Comprehension: Make conscious connections between prior knowledge and text to construct meaning. Verify and clarify ideas by referring to text. Recognize breakdowns in comprehension and repair them by rereading, asking questions and seeking clarification. Relate critical facts and details in narrative or informational text to aid comprehension. Skills: Demonstrate fluent reading of grade-appropriate texts, applying spelling-sound word recognition strategies and meaning-based word recognition strategies as appropriate. Apply knowledge of suffixes, prefixes and word parts as meaningful cues to words. Apply knowledge of fiction and nonfiction genres to understand text.

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Tougher test may bring
Hawaii students’ reading
scores down

By Christine Donnelly
Star-Bulletin

Reading scores for Hawaii's public school students might get worse before they get better, experts warn.

That's because students took a new edition of the Stanford Achievement Test last year that included essay questions for the first time, along with the usual multiple-choice ones.

The open-ended questions better assess reading comprehension but also make the test harder, said Selvin Chin-Chance, administrator of the state Department of Education's testing section.

The ninth edition was given last spring to more than 50,000 public school students in grades three, five, seven and nine. Statewide results have yet to be compiled.

Earlier Stanford editions consistently showed Hawaii public school students faring better in math than in reading, where they lagged behind the national norm. That's been true on other standardized tests as well.

On the 1999 college-entrance SAT exam, the average verbal score among Hawaii's public high school students was 458 out of 800. That's a point lower than last year and continues to lag the national average.

And the 1998 National Assessment of Educational Progress ranked Hawaii last out of 39 participating states. That test assessed the reading proficiency of fourth- and eighth-graders.

SUMMIT SIGN-UPS The public is welcome at the Hawaii Reading Summit scheduled for Oct. 1-2 at Kamehameha Schools in Honolulu. The registration deadline is Sept. 17. The cost is $50 per person, $45 per person for groups of four or more who register together. Groups consisting of a parent, administrator, teacher and community member are especially encouraged to attend. Among the scheduled speakers are Elfreida Hiebert, executive director of the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement; Carol Rasco, director of the U.S. Department of Education's "America Reads Challenge"; and Hawaii schools Superintendent Paul LeMahieu. There also will be smaller sessions with discussions among educators and parents. For more information, call Jamie Mitte of Pacific Resources for Education and Learning at 441-1395 in Honolulu. The conference is co-sponsored by 15 organizations, including Pacific Resources for Education and the U.S. and state education departments.