mmilliken@heraldsun.com; 419-6684
DURHAM -- A campaign by Durham educators to improve results in a district where only 41 percent of students passed state reading tests in 2008 has sparked a campaign of another sort.
The introduction last summer of a literacy program that emphasizes the use of a curriculum called Reading Street in every elementary school has prompted criticism by some parents. Although the district has modified some of its guidelines in response to complaints, members of the group continue to contest the way the district is approaching literacy.
"Don't impose it on the whole system, because what you're doing is you're bringing everybody down," said Rodrigo Dorfman, a Web designer and the parent of two E.K. Powe Elementary students, who is very critical of the literacy program. "That's my feeling, that's my problem with it -- the way it was imposed as a cookie-cutter, one-size-fit-all [solution implying that] there is a statistical child somewhere and we are going to teach that statistical child."
Terri Mozingo, the Durham public school system's chief academic officer, sees things differently.
"It doesn't mean everybody's on the same page at the same time all the time," she said. "But it does mean for the most part ... we can guarantee that students from our elementary schools will have access to these elements" in what the district calls its balanced literacy framework.
Although critics have tended to focus on Reading Street, it is actually one resource within the literacy framework.
That distinction seemed to get lost in August and September after Durham administrators introduced teachers to the reading program. The rollout was problematic if not disastrous, according to accounts.
Neither Reading Street nor the literacy framework were new to the county, the former program having been adopted in 2006. But after the state released alarmingly low reading scores for Durham in 2008, the district invited experts from Florida State University and the University of Illinois at Chicago to study reading instruction here in February.
The subsequent report prompted district principals to gather to consider the situation. Their recommendations, endorsed by administrators, included having more consistent use of the framework and of Reading Street throughout the county.
Teachers critical of the district's literacy program would not agree to be interviewed on the record for this story. But much of the information that reached parents and even education professors such as Leigh Hall at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Education was negative.
Durham educators "didn't seem to have an inkling that even some kind of change might be coming," said Hall, an assistant professor of literacy studies who has students who teach in the Durham school system. "So they were really upset. ... One of them said she went home and just cried all the time at night, it was that distressing to her. Because she really felt like she was being told to do things that were not helpful for the students."
Kirsten Kainz, a Durham school board member, said she and other school board members asked administrators pointed questions about the introduction of the new approach to reading. "I did hear a little bit from teachers that this is too much, this is too quick, this will be difficult, you're asking me to do a lot in a short period of time -- frustration with that, and ... that's a very reasonable frustration," Kainz said.
Yet "in terms of the timeline for the rollout" -- a matter of days before the start of the school year -- "I'm not sure how it could have been done any differently this year," Kainz said.
That's because the budget process was conducted in perhaps the most volatile set of circumstances ever. Administrators had to deal with state and local budget cuts and let some instructors go in June. The state budget was not finalized until August.
"We had no idea who was going to be employed and who wasn't, so we had no way of implementing something before the start of the school year," said Steve Martin, another school board member.
