Given the right tools, Alabama schools and Alabama students can succeed.
That is the important lesson in last week's announcement that the state's fourth-graders had caught up with the rest of the nation in reading proficiency. Becoming average may sound like a modest achievement, but to get there, Alabama had to post bigger gains in reading scores than any other state over the past eight years.
The 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress also showed progress for Alabama students in eighth-grade reading and fourth-grade math.
The progress in fourth-grade reading scores is particularly significant because we know how we got there. State school officials attribute it to the Alabama Reading Initiative, The News' Marie Leech reported. That program began in a limited number of classrooms in 1999 and now is in every kindergarten through third-grade school in the state.
"We have focused ARI on K-3, and you can see from these scores that this had a significant return on investment," said Tommy Bice, deputy state superintendent in charge of curriculum and instruction.
The reading initiative has been a model for reading instruction in other states, and has even attracted attention from as far away as France, according to Gov. Robert Bentley. But it is not just the quality of the program that is producing results. It is the attention we are paying to reading in Alabama schools.
What is measured and monitored is most likely to improve. We saw ARI work in a few schools, and we expanded it to serve all K-3 students. That investment was a strong statement in support of reading education, and teachers and pupils responded.
Having sent the message that reading is important, we need to send the companion message that reading is fun. The NAEP report shows students who reported reading for fun almost every day scored higher than those who read less frequently, and those who read for fun the least scored the lowest.
While we celebrate our success in improving fourth-graders' reading, we still have much work to do. As Bice said, we need to improve reading in the higher grades.
We also have the same challenge and the same opportunity in math instruction that we did in reading. We have a good program in the Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative, but like the reading program in its early days, it is not available to as many students as it should be. Today, AMSTI is in about half the state's schools.
In praising Alabama's improvements in both reading and math, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan challenged the state to "sustain the momentum" to continue that progress.
"Like the rest of the nation, Alabama has to invest in reforms that prepare all students for college and careers," he said.
Fortunately, we already have identified some very good investments. We need to support and expand Alabama's successful reading and math initiatives.
Tom Scarritt is editor of The News. E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.org.