7/12/05 -- Nailor Elementary School in Cleveland, Miss, is a very poor school in the poorest section of town.
Ninety-nine percent of the students receive free or reduced-price lunches, and many are being raised by young, single mothers or single grandmothers, says Principal Lester Fisher. “We also cover the entire gamut of students with disabilities and special needs.”
It’s rare for the school’s 340 pre-K-6 children to see adults reading at home, and most never have regular bedtime stories. As a result, Fisher says, many students start school not knowing what the letters of the alphabet look or sound like.
Now, thanks to the Barksdale Reading Institute (BRI), things are starting to turn around for Nailor students.
Five years ago, Nailor Elementary became one of 70 schools across Mississippi to receive assistance from BRI, an ambitious literacy program supported by Jim Barksdale, the creator and former CEO of Netscape.
Barksdale, a Mississippi native, invested $100 million in BRI, which provides books and teacher training for some of the state’s neediest and lowest-performing schools. His goal is to significantly improve the pre-literacy and reading skills of Mississippi’s children from birth through third grade.
BRI emphasizes small-group instruction and cooperative learning techniques.
Teachers receive extensive training in such areas as diagnostic administration and evaluation, intervention prescriptions, tutorial partnerships to address fluency and comprehension, and classroom management. Parents also receive training so they can help their children at home.
To be eligible for a BRI grant, schools must have low scores on the state’s test for second and third graders. Schools are selected on a competitive basis.
The principal must demonstrate how BRI’s reading model would be implemented in the school and must agree to attend training sessions, and at least 75 percent of the teachers and staff must sign off on the grant application, indicating their commitment to the program.
Each selected school receives a one-year grant to implement the BRI reading model, with the possibility of the funding continuing for up to four more years.
Selected schools receive $2,000 for instructional materials or to support extended instructional opportunities, such as before-school, after-school, or summer school reading programs. They also are assigned a a master-level, experienced reading professional one day a week.
Most BRI schools have Parent/Family Centers, where parents can check out instructional materials and students can come for tutoring.
Nailor Elementary gradually improved its rating on the Mississippi Curriculum Test from the lowest level, Level 1, to Level 3. Fisher hopes the school will reach Level 4 this year, and is aiming for Level 5, the highest.
He gives credit to BRI and the increased focus on reading and the creative individual instruction the teachers have learned to give young students.
BRI officials say the year-over-year improvement in BRI schools versus comparable schools has shown a “statistically significant” difference in improving reading scores.