by Carrie Moritz, Gazette

            Reading is an enormous predictor in how successful one may be in life, and an inability to do so can prevent a person from reaching their full potential. Yet, it’s an area where the numbers are dire in the U.S., with a recent report showing that 68% of South Dakota fourth graders are not proficient in their reading skills. In Garretson, though, students are performing well above that statistic, partly because of the elementary school's Title I reading and math program. It has been seeing remarkable success thanks to the school's ability to put two teachers in the position for the past three years.

            The Title I program is designed to close achievement gaps by helping elementary students who are performing below the 30th percentile in reading and math develop the skills they need to be on grade level. It is not special education, though some students may transition to special education or have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP).

            Title I teacher Kim Macziewski (pronounced "mah-chess-key") and Title Education Assistant Stacey Williamson have been working hard with Garretson Elementary students, and in the past four years, the Title I program has served 139 students in reading and 121 in math. Mrs. Mac, as she is known by her students, pointed out to the Garretson School Board last week Monday that the program has seen a lot of success in the past few years, and most of that success is because there are two teachers.

            "What we have done in the past... there was one Title I teacher and that person serviced students in grades K through 5th in reading, and 2nd through 5th in math," she said. "And I did that for a year when I came here, along with the ELL (English as a second language) program, and basically met 15 minutes with each grade level."

            It was, she pointed out, like putting band aids on the problem, but it wasn't fixing it.

            "We didn't really make tons of progress in that short period of time," she said. However, three years ago, extra federal funding made it possible to hire a second educator. And with two teachers in that position, Macziewski found that students started improving in leaps and bounds.

            "With the second person we've really been able to do quite a bit more diagnostic work with kids, instead of just looking at a MAP test score," she said to the board. "That (the MAP test) is a one-hour screenshot in a day of how a student is feeling and performing."

            And that extra assessment work was where the difference was made.

            "Before, we would look at the test and identify who was below the 30th percentile... sometimes [now] I've had students who are in the 60th percentile in first grade, but they're not performing in their reading level like they should. One of the reasons we see that is the kindergarten and first grade test is read to the students, so sometimes it reads as a listening comprehension test as opposed to an application test."

            Garretson was able to hire educational assistants for the Title I program in 2020 thanks to the ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) funds, which were geared toward maintaining and improving student academic achievement during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, the district was able to hire Stacey Williamson who, despite having the title of education assistant, is a trained teacher.

            However, those extra funds have now run out, potentially leaving a difficult decision for the school board to make during budget time. While the Title I program is funded through four different sources, including federal sources, according to district superintendent Guy Johnson, the difference between a part-time and full-time funded position can be one or two foster children. This can make planning difficult, and it may be possible that the second position would be on the line if staffing at the school needs to be reduced or changed to fit the general budget. That, however, would take the improvements back to band aids, and those may not be as effective as they were before.

            "The number of kids that we've served since COVID has gone up, and the number of kids that have needs have gone up," Macziewski told the board. "That hasn't really gone down [post-pandemic] like we thought it would."

Student needs increasing

            When asked after the meeting if there was any known reasoning for why the need for services has gone up, Macziewski was unable to answer.

            "I can't pinpoint it, you know?" she said. She has been in education for a few decades, and pointed to several changes that could have made a difference, from reduced communication or interaction between parents and children to a reduction in unscheduled play, to an increase in playing video games, but none of those have been found to be a direct cause in studies. Expectations for each grade level have definitely gone up over the past thirty years, she said, with standards that used to be for first grade now seen in kindergarten. She also noted that Garretson is a bit of a magnet school, attracting students who may have been failing to get the help they needed at another school.

            "I just know that every year more and more kids needed to have that specific [skill], know the rules and how they applied. And then they could put that puzzle together to make the words."

            If the school board did have to make the decision to reduce staffing, there are a few courses of action they could take, though none will make the impact that the current system has.

            The first idea is to go back to what it was before, with 15 minutes instead of 30 minutes with kindergarten through fifth in reading and third through fifth in math, and only taking those students who score below the 30th percentile. The second could be to only have intervention in reading and not in math. The third would be to have reading and math intervention for only kindergarten through third grade.

            "The school has to be accountable to the tax payers," Macziewski noted, "and it is good to start thinking about what might happen if we have to go back to one person [staffing the program]."

A headstart

            The news isn't all bad, though. While kindergarten teacher Jacki Liester said during the meeting that students of all levels are found in her class, Macziewski pointed out that Garretson students do tend to start school at an advantage to students in large cities. She worked in Omaha prior to coming to Garretson, and she noticed right away that students entering kindergarten here have higher scores compared to that of the nation.

            "Our kids come in, they have parents that have talked to them, they have a good vocabulary, they've had preschool provided by our school," she said while addressing the board. Later, she pointed out to the Gazette that reading to and with your child is the best way to ensure their success in reading, and that activity can continue until well into middle school (or later, if the child is willing).

            However, it doesn't mean that students don't fall behind, or that all have that advantage, hence the need for the Title I program.

            The most important thing to remember, she said, is to know that each student learns differently. While some do well in a large group setting, others need small group or one-on-one learning opportunities, which the program provides.

            The best part of the Title I program having two educators, according to Macziewski, is the ability to not only catch more students earlier, but those who may have otherwise slipped through the cracks can get the help they need to propel them to future success.

            Macziewski used an example of a few students who were testing at the level needed to graduate from the program, but because the district had the staffing, they were able to keep them in Title I services slightly longer. Those students, she pointed out, have continued staying at or above grade level at later testing opportunities. She compared it as akin to "getting students over the hump" to full success.

            "Twenty-six percent of our students who have tested out are still in the 40th percentile, 22% of them are above the 50th percentile, 13% are above the 60th percentile, and 13% are above the 78th," she told the board.

            Of the 139 students served in reading in the past four years, 24 students, or 17%, moved out of the district and 45 students (32%) tested out after one year. 20% graduated from the program after three years, 9% after four years. Ten percent of the 139 students transitioned to special education and 20% (39 students) remain in the program.

            Macziewski highlighted the importance of striking a balance in how reading is taught, as she has seen the pendulum swing between whole language systems and the phonics system. Both are needed, she pointed out, and each kid may need a different method or approach to help them figure out the puzzle that is different types of words and sentence structures.

            "Reading instruction is not a one size fits all process," she said.

How is reading taught?

            She, and all teachers, have to teach five key concepts in order for students to reach proficiency. Those components are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Phonemic awareness is being able to hear, identify, and manipulate the different sounds within a word. Phonics is putting those sounds together with the shape of the letters in the word. Fluency is reading with accuracy and expression at a conversational speed. Vocabulary is understanding the meaning of the individual words within that sentence, and comprehension is understanding the text as whole.

            Students spend much of their reading time until the end of third grade developing those skills. Starting in fourth grade, they begin using their reading abilities to expand on those skills, and not being a good reader can keep students from further understanding in all subjects. This is why early intervention is so important, and for those who haven't been caught early, to be able to have the instruction and time to catch up before middle school.

            "There should never be a stigma about needing Title services," Macziewski said. She said that if the school approaches a parent to enroll their child, that it's a goal for them to help the student get the skills to thrive well before it becomes a crisis. She pointed out that everyone develops differently, and some students are late bloomers. If they can receive the services they need to keep them from falling behind, then they will leap forward once things click.

            In the half hour time slot that they spend with students, Macziewski and Williamson work on four areas in order to approach the same material from different angles, thereby ensuring all of the 5 to 8 students in the time slot can attain the goal. Those areas include sight words, phonics, multi-syllabic words or vowel combinations, and comprehension.

            "We can apply them and say 'oh, here's how they come together and work,'" she said. "Or, you know, I can try the four different ways and see what I can get."

            With a second person in Title I programming, it has allowed them to catch students who might not have developed the skills they need. Macziewski spoke of visiting a classroom and listening to students read aloud, and noticing they were making mistakes on certain types of words. With that caught, she could apply intervention techniques and help those particular students.

            "When you get to listen to students read a passage, and you sit down then afterwards and you analyze their mistakes, you can go, oh, wow, you know, five out of the six mistakes on this story are multisyllabic words. And then I go back in and I use my intervention tool, which teaches all of the vowel combinations and then prefixes and suffixes and you learn how to break down all the different parts. And all of a sudden, those words aren't overwhelming anymore."

            She noted that it isn't the teacher's fault if students aren't necessarily performing at grade level. There's so much material that needs to be covered in a school day, and sometimes it can seem like students are doing fine when they could just use a little bit more of a push in the right direction. Since each student is different, sometimes it's just being able to pull that student aside for a short time and focusing on whichever teaching method that works best for them that makes all the difference.

            "So what I love about how we're determining a student's help needs right now is that it's not just on test scores," she said. "It's on other assessments that we're doing. And without two people, there is no way that I could do all that on my own."

State testing results

            Another portion of instruction that the second staff member position has allowed the school to pursue is focusing on introducing and practicing the skills that are needed for success in the writing portion of the Smarter Balanced Assessment test. This is the test given at the end of each school year, and the one that is released publicly as the School Report Card, but isn't the one the school uses to determine Title I eligibility. That is decided via the school's MAP testing, along with teacher recommendations and other assessments. (Editor's note: The Gazette covered the state test and its results in-depth in the October 26, 2023 issue of the Gazette.)

            Last fall, the Garretson School District's report showed a concerning drop in English Language Arts over the past few years to 38%, bringing it well below the state's average of 50%. Some of that has been addressed with a change in curriculum for the 2023-24 school year, but to help propel the school to better performance, it was suggested that focusing and practicing the skills for the test would be the best course of action.

            One of those skills, especially for the third through fifth grade, is to go back and re-read their work. Macziewski pointed out that she will read words incorrectly to her students so she can use it as a "teachable moment," one where she can explain how the brain skips or fills in words as needed, but that it means the work is incorrect or incomplete.

            "I'll say a word, and I'll say it incorrectly, and I'll read it in a sentence. And they'll just laugh at me. They know what the word is. And I said, 'But do you know how many times you guys will read a word incorrectly, and never go back and fix it, you have to realize that when you hear it incorrectly, you have to go back and try to figure it out.'"

            "[Reading] is really a place where your money is really impacting kids," Macziewski said when she addressed the board. "This is a place that makes a difference for kids."

            Earlier, she pointed out that "I don't want to go back to the band aid method where we just put band aids on things when we really can make a difference. And now that we've seen that, that would be really hard to go back."