By Matthew E. Milliken

mmilliken@heraldsun.com; 419-6684

DURHAM — You won’t find too many people who praise the way Durham Public Schools administrators informed teachers about the way they wanted reading to be taught to elementary-schoolers in 2009-10.

“We do recognize that there were some challenges with the initial implementation of the literacy framework, and I think we’ve said that over and over again to many groups,” said Terri Mozingo, the district’s chief academic officer.

Mozingo’s assessment is one of the kinder ones.

In August, a matter of days before the school year began, teachers were told that the balanced literacy framework — the Durham district’s comprehensive reading program — and Reading Street — a program that provides many of the elements of the framework — were to be used in every elementary classroom. The move to standardize elementary literacy instruction was partly a response to a November 2008 report showing that 41 percent of district students had passed state reading tests; it followed a reading audit and meetings of district principals.

Teachers critical of the district’s literacy program would not agree to be interviewed on the record for this story. But their complaints quickly became apparent to parents and others, who took up their banner.

Critics charged that:

- The program stifles teachers’ individuality and creativity.

- It does not allow the use of reading material chosen by teachers.

- It fails to differentiate — that is, to help learners of different levels — adequately.

- It crowds out time for teaching social studies, science and other topics, including those that are integral to the curriculum of the district’s magnet schools.

- It crowds out time for activities such as lunch and recess.

Those involved in the issue agree that the school district has granted — or explained more clearly that teachers retain, others might say — more flexibility than was contained in the August program rollout.

A Sept. 10 document titled “Durham Public Schools Literacy Framework Flexibility Guide” stipulated that outside texts — that is, those not provided by the district or by Reading Street’s publisher, Scott Foresman, for the explicit purpose of reading instruction — can be used. The guidelines also freed teachers in other ways. For example, they allowed instructors to use different activities in teaching specific skills and vocabulary words.

Those skills and words being taught, however, as well as each lesson’s “big idea and essential questions” remain prescribed by the framework and Reading Street.

The district’s goal with the framework was never to stifle creativity, Mozingo said.

“For the most part, it guarantees that we pretty much have ... a coherent, balanced literacy framework,” the Durham chief academic officer said, “one that is fairly consistent around the elements, so that whether you’re in A, B or C, these various schools, you know for a fact that there is strategic instruction.”

District officials say the concerns about other academic subjects being crowded out are exaggerated. Teachers are encouraged to work other topics into the literacy instruction. And harming the magnet schools was the last thing on officials’ minds, Mozingo said.

She also noted that lunch and recess are protected by law and are not being impinged upon by reading instruction.

No one knows just how many of the district’s elementary school teachers embrace the reading curriculum and how many disdain it. Mozingo said planning for a midyear evaluation of teachers’ attitudes are under way — part of the response to the outcry over the program rollout. (The district has discouraged independent surveys by the Durham Association of Educators and by the DPS Concerned Parents group, which is critical of the reading curriculum.)

But there are definitely enthusiasts for the program. Audra Goodman, a fifth-grade instructor at R.N. Harris who is team-teaching literacy with reading coach Catherine Long this year, is one.

A recent visit to her classroom over a nearly three-hour period showed kids spending time listening to Goodman and Long talk. But much more time was spent with her students reading, writing and working on projects independently. They sometimes helped each other, either because they were already working in small groups or at the behest of the instructors who sought feedback.

“I really like it, and I like it because ... they’re teaching each other,” Goodman said. “I’m not lecturing.”

But critics remain dissatisfied with the district’s reading program.

Jennifer Minnelli, the parent of an E.K. Powe second-grader and a pediatric speech pathologist who is critical of the program, criticized how the reading curriculum deals with students of different abilities. “It does not differentiate the way it claims to, and therefore it makes it difficult for teachers to differentiate if they have a wide spectrum of reading proficiency within their classroom.”

Dorothy Singleton, the chairwoman of the curriculum, instruction and professional studies department at N.C. Central University’s School of Education, agreed. “If you go back and think in terms of pacing guides, and you ... have time schedules in which you are implementing ... different strategies or skills at that particular time, then you think about the child who has mastered maybe reading at the fifth-grade level or what have you,” she said. “So what are we doing in a second-grade classroom — what are you going to do with those children?”

Mozingo, when asked about differentiation, replied: “I’ve gone in and actually looked at the kids reading different levels of text.”

Despite an admittedly rocky start, implementation of the program is improving, Mozingo asserted. “The teachers are learning to manage and understand the whole process,” she said.