Montgomery school officials are trying to figure out how to help high school students who aren’t reading properly — or at all — without spending money the school system doesn’t have or piling extra work on its teachers. No magic answer has materialized yet.
“Do not be assured that everybody at the secondary level can read at the level you need them to read at,” Superintendent Jerry Weast told the school board. “I can assure you they don’t.”
Weast said the problem lies with the approximately 12,000 students who move in and out of the school system each year. “A lot of them come to us at the secondary level with very little educational opportunity. We’ve had an increase of 115 percent of students who don’t speak English,” he said.
Last year, students in the county’s English for Speakers of Other Languages program met their reading Annual Yearly Progress goals, the federal government’s method of ensuring a school is on track, in all grade levels but high school.
Erick Lang, associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction, said data shows that literacy gaps cost the country $16 billion annually: “Think about the remediation that happens in college, the professional development businesses have to do to get their employees up to snuff.”
All Montgomery teachers must take two reading courses, but Lang said, “We’re hearing anecdotally that those courses just aren’t that great.”
Weast said requiring any more of high school teachers was the point at which “the absurd becomes the impossible.”
The county government has said it will not increase the schools’ current operating budget of about $2.2 billion — a $97 million cut from fiscal 2010.
“We’re not going to get raises for the third year in a row, it’s hard for us to go back and say you have to enroll in a $1,000-an-hour college course, and at a time when you’re cutting on staff training and development, there is no place for them to get these skills,” Weast said. “I am not trying to be pessimistic. I am trying to tell you the current lay of the land.”
