COMMUNITY PROFILE BRIDGING THE LITERACY GAP BY JAMIE MILLER DENVER’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS celebrated an increase in elementary literacy this past year with a glass-half-full perspective; 61% of K-4 students tested were reported to be reading at grade level or above. This is a 3 percentage point increase from Spring 2023 and a 12 percentage point increase since fall of 2023, according to DPS. The flip-side of the statistic: 39% of students still tested below grade level. Melissa Monforti, executive director of the non-profit Reading Partners Colorado, is working towards a future where this percentage is zero. “Reading partners grounds itself in the concept that reading is a civil right. We exist to make sure that the basic skill of literacy is given to every child — absolutely every child needs and deserves that skill,” she said. “It's a disaster that we don't provide resources to achieve that skill to every single student.” Reading Partners is one of the organizations working to combat the gaps in resources by providing reading tutoring services to K-4 students, specifically targeting students who are six months or more behind grade level. The organization partners with 10 Title I schools — schools where 75% or more students are considered low-income. Title I schools receive government funding as either a Schoolwide Program (PW) or the Targeted Assistance Program (TA). This funding aims to “ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and close the achievement gap…especially the achievement gaps between minority and nonminority students, and between disadvantaged children and their more advantaged peers,” according to the Colorado Department of Education. Monforti explained that despite government funding, educational gaps remain, due to a deeper issue. “There's a lot of inequity in the world of education. It's systemic and it's never the fault of the students or their family situation," Monforti said. “It's because our system is set up to leave out resources for certain groups, and it has done so historically. That is where [Reading Partners] come in — we serve the underserved communities.” Some schools in Colorado struggle more than others to provide these resources. In fact, Rocky Mountain Prep made the decision to pivot 6th-grade science classes to reading intervention earlier this year due to the large number of students who were reading below grade level. Educational gaps were worsened by COVID-19, and new research from the Education Recovery Scorecard shows how certain groups of students were disproportionately affected. This research found that the average U.S. public school students in third through eighth grades lost the equivalent of a half of a year of learning math and a quarter of a year in reading during the pandemic, where test scores of Black and Hispanic students declined more than those of white students. The research continued to point out that test score improvements were larger for non-poor students than for poor students when educational recovery was broken down by economic status. PHOTO: COURTESY OF READING PARTNERS COLORADO 6 DENVER VOICE October 2024
7 Publizr Home