How Do You Catch Up 4+ Years?

Yesterday I met up with some friends to watch the Georgia-Georgia Tech game. Sadly, Tech lost, but fortuitously, I was able to converse with three other educators--two of whom are teachers at a public school in rural NC and a turnaround public school in DC, and one who is the director of operations at a charter public school in Nashville--about challenges they face every day.

The teacher in DC talked to me about working with students in her remedial reading class. Like many of the students I'll be working with in Memphis, her 9th graders are several years behind their peers and are reading at 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade reading levels. [Don't get me started about why kids are reading 4+ years below their grade levels in the first place.]

The DC school uses a reading intervention program called READ 180, and she feels that the program is effective thus far and will likely catch the kids up 1-2 grade levels each year. She thinks it is possible that the kids could catch up even more, but because they have not been good readers for so long, they don't enjoy school, and by the time they reach high school, they just aren't excited about learning even though they have special classes to improve their reading ability.

This conversation caused me to think a little deeper about how we can catch kids up (bring them to an appropriate reading and comprehension level) quickly beginning in 9th grade and before 11th grade. Also, how do we make learning fun again? I don't think it's acceptable for these students to catch up only one year at a time and graduate at an 8th or 9th grade level because they won't be competitive in the world once they leave high school; many of them won't even have an opportunity to go to college. It's like watching the UGA-GT game but one of the teams is a high school varsity football team--it's not a fair match and not a fun game to watch.