Overview

Dixon High School – an ethnically, linguistically, and economically diverse school in California’s agricultural Sacramento area – was an early adopter of Reading Apprenticeship. Dixon’s dedicated teachers and students demonstrated that all students are capable of advanced work when given the right support by teachers who believe in them.

After a decade of implementation that began in 2000, Dixon achieved a remarkable transformation from a state-designated “underperforming school” to a “California Distinguished School.” Over the period of 2007-2010, students’ scores on the California Standards Test for English Language Arts increased by 31% overall with scores for Latino students increasing by 46% and scores for low-income students increasing by 92%. And in just one year, from 2009-2010, Dixon students gained 2.9 points on their Degrees of Reading Power (DRP) scores, compared to the expected 1.0 point.

Challenges

• Ensuring schoolwide implementation to reach diverse student population
• Supporting English learners in achieving high-level literacy
• Sustaining and building on initial success with continued teacher professional learning
• Building a culture of literacy; improving reading rates for all students

Implementation of Reading Apprenticeship

In their efforts to turn around school performance and improve student outcomes for college and career readiness, Dixon High embarked on schoolwide implementation of Reading Apprenticeship.

In their implementation of the Reading Apprenticeship instructional approach, Dixon High was determined to reach all subject area instructors in all levels, from English Learners to students struggling with low reading scores to AP students.

Dixon’s Advanced Placement course (AP) teachers, such as Gayle Cribb, used the Reading Apprenticeship framework with specific focus on augmenting the diversity of their classes. From the time she started teaching Honors U.S. History at Dixon High School, Cribb worked to increase the diversity of the class. As a result of her efforts, enrollment of Latino students rose dramatically. Many of the students in Cribb’s honors class are English learners or former English learners. All of them do the work of historians by grappling with primary sources, making text-based arguments, and helping each other think through reading challenges. And while most students in the class score at the two highest levels on the California Standards Test of English Language Arts, scores range from Basic to Advanced.

This video shows Cribb’s 11th grade honors class working with Reading Apprenticeship routines during a weeklong unit on the Japanese American internment. Focusing on the question of the constitutionality of the internment, students read several primary source documents, including the U.S. Constitution; opinions from Korematsu vs. United States, a 1944 Supreme Court case challenging the internment; and U.S. Department of Justice memos.

As students read, Gayle Cribb uses Reading Apprenticeship strategies to engage them in ongoing small group and whole class conversations about their reading and thinking processes. Through these discourse routines, Gayle’s Cribb’s students practice historical reading and thinking skills, gain stamina for challenging reading, and acquire deep knowledge of the history content.

Results

In the school’s successful application for recognition as a “California Distinguished School,” staff at Dixon High cited the core, long-term role of Reading Apprenticeship in improving teacher practice and student outcomes:

“Before Dixon High School began implementing the Reading Apprenticeship model, all students, but particularly Latino and Economically Disadvantaged students, were underperforming. While Reading Apprenticeship is not the only program Dixon High School has implemented over the last decade, it is the most far-reaching in terms of duration and student exposure. Reading Apprenticeship permeates our academic curriculum, from humanities courses to the electives. Most teachers, regardless of field, see themselves as reading teachers and work diligently to help their students access complex and pertinent texts.”

Evidence from criterion-referenced and standardized tests supports the Distinguished Schools award. Degrees of Reading Power (DRP) scores, for example, weigh in at almost triple the increase expected from a year of instruction. In 2009–2010, Dixon students gained 2.9 points compared with an expected 1.0 point gain.

“For nearly the past decade, Reading Apprenticeship has enabled Dixon High School students to become more proficient and confident readers throughout their studies.”

—Dixon High School teacher

On the California Standards Test for English Language Arts, Dixon students’ scores have increased steadily, and achievement gaps are closing. As shown in the graph below, over the period 2007–2010, all students’ scores increased by 31 percent, scores for Latino students increased by 46 percent, and scores for low-income students increased by 92 percent. (Earlier standardized score gains at Dixon are reported in a three-year research study funded by The Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Walter S. Johnson Foundation.)

Dixon High’s steady, decade-long commitment to implementing and sustaining the Reading Apprenticeship model schoolwide is clearly resulting in a positive impact on student outcomes.

For more information about Reading Apprenticeship, contact us.

Overview

In 2006 several counties in Michigan began implementing Reading Apprenticeship and continued sustaining successes through the ongoing development of leadership in partnership with a dedicated Reading Apprenticeship team. Beginning in 2010 Reading Apprenticeship grant funds allowed for a wide dissemination of Reading Apprenticeship throughout the state. Since then, funds from five federal grants and foundations, totaling an investment of over $5.3 Million, have supported more than 2,200 educators and 340,760 students in 53 counties in Michigan. Today, from Dearborn to Petoskey, Reading Apprenticeship is giving Michigan teachers the support, knowledge, and practice they need to help middle and high school students build the high-level literacy they need for success in middle and high school, college, and their careers.

Challenges

• Facilitate broad implementation of Reading Apprenticeship within and across schools, and districts
• Sustain local support for Teacher Leaders and teacher learning communities
• Ensure that Teacher Leaders are not stretched too thinly in terms of planning, facilitation, and their own classes
• Inspiring teachers to continue deepening practice after Reading Apprenticeship professional learning
• Cultivating support for and disseminating knowledge about the Reading Apprenticeship approach at the administrative level

Implementation of Reading Apprenticeship

Facilitating broad implementation with local support

What makes for sustainable Reading Apprenticeship professional learning at scale? Two counties in Michigan were the first in the state to discover the answer to this question and adopt a model that works. These counties led the way for other counties and districts across the state to follow in their footsteps as they began to witness the success of Reading Apprenticeship in strengthening student literacy and academic performance.

In 2005 Washtenaw leaders first acknowledged the elephant in classrooms across their county’s middle and high schools: many students weren’t learning because they couldn’t read their textbooks. County leaders saw it as an equity issue. Lexile data from a sampling of 9th graders showed that nearly half of them couldn’t understand their history textbook. A quarter couldn’t make sense of the science texts.

After a year-long process of exploring available approaches, the county selected Reading Apprenticeship to meet the need it had identified for subject area-specific literacy professional development. In 2006, 24 Washtenaw County teachers – one pair from each high school – were trained in Reading Apprenticeship as a core implementation group.

The next year, neighboring Livingston County merged their literacy initiatives under the Reading Apprenticeship umbrella. By 2010, 826 Washtenaw and 595 Livingston teachers in grades 4–12 had participated in Reading Apprenticeship professional development. But that was only the beginning of the story.

Teacher leaders and learning communities sustain and deepen gains

From the very beginning of Reading Apprenticeship implementation, the counties instituted a plan to include a new level of local support to sustain and deepen teachers’ practice. Rather than letting teachers’ initial enthusiasm for what they were learning tail off in the midst of other demands, two teachers from each school site were selected to participate in “Teacher Leader” professional development to keep the learning going. In addition, the Teacher Leaders themselves met together monthly to share their leadership experiences and deepening their understanding of Reading Apprenticeship in a group facilitated by a county-level Reading Apprenticeship expert.

These Teacher Leaders also conducted school-based meetings with Reading Apprenticeship-trained colleagues on a regular basis to exchange classroom experiences, problem-solve, and plan to support ongoing implementation.

In a 2008 survey, teachers confirmed that Teacher Leaders and the on-site teacher meetings they facilitated filled an important role. Ninety-seven percent of teachers agreed that “Our building-level Reading Apprenticeship meetings helped to sustain the Reading Apprenticeship work amid the numerous challenges of trying something new.”

This network of professionals was key for promoting and sustaining the schools’ literacy work. As one Teacher Leader put it, “This [teacher leader] group has kept me on the cutting edge of continuous learning about Reading Apprenticeship. At every meeting I have learned new things to strengthen my Reading Apprenticeship classroom usage as well as lead building- and district-level PD.”

Districts and counties observed that once the Reading Apprenticeship professional learning began to take hold, teachers often became passionate advocates for the work, creating a ripple effect of enthusiasm and forging true professional learning communities. Pam Ciganick, Coordinator of Professional Learning for the Charlevoix-Emmet ISD in Michigan’s northern lower peninsula has played a critical role in bringing Reading Apprenticeship to hundreds of teachers in this rural section of the state. Her story of a two-day Reading Apprenticeship institute that took place one snowy March reveals exactly this kind of dedication to Reading Apprenticeship professional learning:

Teachers in this area will forever be in my memory: at the time of a two-day institute in March a heavy snowstorm forced all schools in the area to close. North Central Michigan College, our venue was closed, though they opened the building where our professional development was to take place. Participants were from all over the upper section of the state. There was no way to reschedule the training, so we shoveled and opened the doors. To my amazement, 93% of participants showed up! Some arrived on snowmobiles. Everyone who facilitates the training in this section of the state comments on how amazing these teachers are in terms of their engagement, level of participation, and gratitude.

Chelsea School District in Washtenaw county provides another clear example of the power of having professional development accompanied by this level of local support.

Since 2006, the Chelsea district has trained over 90 percent of its core content and special education teachers in grades 5–12 in Reading Apprenticeship. In neighboring Livingston County, superintendents attended a series of workshops which included classroom visits and building administrators participated in the professional development along with their teachers and became strong and steady supporters of the work.

Recognizing the importance of teacher meetings and Teacher Leaders, some administrators increased the amount of Teacher Leader release time in step with the increasing number of teachers trained in Reading Apprenticeship. Starting from a single release period per month, which quickly increased to a half-day per month, the now full-time position provides Reading Apprenticeship-based literacy support for all secondary teachers.

Results

Michigan’s ongoing and deep commitment to Reading Apprenticeship has resulted in remarkable improvements in student literacy rates. The following graph, for example, illustrates the difference in average median growth for the Degrees of Reading Power Assessment (DRP) norming population to all classrooms in Washtenaw County that participated in Reading Apprenticeship from 2006-2007. The red lines represent the average median growth in the norming population for indicated grade levels, with the blue bars indicating the growth in median scores for students in Reading Apprenticeship classrooms.

At Chelsea High School, the effectiveness of the sustained model of teacher learning is reflected in students’ scores on the Degrees of Reading Power assessment. On the DRP test, in which 1 DRP unit of growth per year is the norm, Chelsea students gained 3 DRP units in the first year of testing and 5.5 units on the most recent test. Special education students have shown even more dramatic growth.

Impressive rate of growth for at-risk student population

County schools have seen remarkable academic and literacy growth in student population identified as at-risk in Reading Apprenticeship classrooms. A quasi-experimental, mixed method study in Washtenaw County revealed rate of growth effect sizes for students considered at-risk that were equal to non at-risk student populations.

A 2007-2008 evaluation compared the performance of Special Ed, at-risk, Free/Reduced Lunch, and Title 1 populations to all other in Reading Apprenticeship classrooms. This study revealed large effect sizes for students identified as at-risk of reading failure and for students receiving Title 1 services with moderate effects for Free/Reduced Lunch populations and for students receiving Special Education services. These gains are all the more impressive given that at the time of evaluation Reading Apprenticeship had undergone just one year of implementation.

Passing the model along to other states

The early lessons from Michigan counties such as Washtenaw and Livingston—to facilitate broad implementation of Reading Apprenticeship within and across schools and to sustain local support for Teacher Leaders and teacher learning communities—were subsequently built into the design of a national scale-up of Reading Apprenticeship professional development, the “RAISE” and “iRAISE” projects (2010-2015): Reading Apprenticeship Improving Secondary Education, and Internet-Based Reading Apprenticeship Improving Science Education, respectively. The U.S. Department of Education funded the scale-up along with a randomized controlled study to document results.

The RAISE project brought Reading Apprenticeship to more counties and districts in Michigan, in addition to 4 other states, reaching a total of 1,964 teachers and 631,535 students in 274 schools.

Research shows that the RAISE Project improved teachers’ ability to strengthen students’ reading of complex texts in science, history, and English classes — a key solution to removing barriers to college and career readiness.

Subsequent to RAISE and iRAISE, Michigan participated in SEED grants, known as Reading Apprenticeship: Writing Connections (RAWC) and Reading Apprenticeship Across the Disciplines (RAAD) from 2013 to 2018. Today, Michigan is participating in the ongoing SETDI (Supporting Effective Teaching with Disciplinary Inquiry) grant project through and expanding Reading Apprenticeship implementation statewide, including a focus on more rural areas.

In addition to pursuing grant funds for Reading Apprenticeship, over the past decade many individual Michigan districts and schools have independently implemented Reading Apprenticeship.

Michigan’s deep, broad, and long-term commitment to the implementation of Reading Apprenticeship offers an excellent example of what can be achieved when leadership engages in systemic and sustained efforts.

As one Michigan teacher put it, there’s no going back: “The way I approach teaching has changed – I’m more mindful of the important task of creating independent readers of complex texts, and how to achieve that goal. It is helping me get the ownership of learning back into the students’ hands – where it belongs. It is helping me realize the value in helping students learn. Reading Apprenticeship is an authentic tool and not just a professional development activity that will not last. My teaching cannot and will not go back.”

Overview

Environmental Charter Schools (ECS) is a network of public schools located in underserved communities of South Los Angeles. The Environmental Charter Schools (ECS) network has been working with Reading Apprenticeship to build academic literacy for their students since 2015 when ECS’ Inglewood Middle School began participating in a Reading Apprenticeship Writing Connections (RAWC) grant. The participating Inglewood teachers saw a remarkable 20% growth in student achievement on state standardized tests in just one year.

Based on this initial success, ECS developed a plan to enact Reading Apprenticeship in every classroom in all three ECS schools and ECS has sustained this successful intensive implementation of Reading Apprenticeship over the past several years.

This ongoing collaboration between ECS and Reading Apprenticeship has resulted in a new opportunity to build on prior success. In 2020 ECS and Reading Apprenticeship received a partnership grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and will be working together over the next several years to deepen and refine the practices key to strong implementation of the Reading Apprenticeship framework.

Challenges

• Increase use of complex texts to support students’ transition to college and increase college retention rates
• Build on initial success to support school-wide Reading Apprenticeship practices in three ECS schools reaching all ECS students
• Develop Teacher Leader Reading Apprenticeship implementation capacity to serve all ECS students

Background

Most ECS graduates – who are predominantly first and second-generation immigrant youth – are the first in their families to go to college. ECS students are persistent and resilient, most of them facing environmental challenges of neighborhoods with crime rates that are twice that of the national average, low levels of educational attainment, and high levels of poverty (with 86% of local youth qualifying for free lunches). Between 66% and 78% of their students identify as Hispanic, while 18% – 23% identify as African American.

ECS is a strong community and the alumni stay connected. When teachers and leaders invited a panel of ECS graduates who were current college students to reflect on their ECS education and current college experience, many alumni shared the challenges of reading in college. The level and quantity of text was often overwhelming.

ECS’s commitment to preparing students for success in college led ECS to identify a singular focus on disciplinary literacy. Based on the early success of Reading Apprenticeship at ECS-Inglewood, ECS selected Reading Apprenticeship as the instructional framework for all schools and classes. Reading Apprenticeship integrates academic and social emotional learning and aligns with their goals of identifying texts and tasks that are culturally relevant and provides equitable access and engagement for all learners.

Implementation of Reading Apprenticeship

In 2015 Danielle Kelsick, Inglewood’s Assistant Principal, now ECS’s Chief Academic Officer seized the opportunity to participate in the Reading Apprenticeship Writing Connections (RAWC) grant and participated in seven days of Reading Apprenticeship professional learning along with a team of three teachers.

The initial success observed after the first year of implementing Reading Apprenticeship at Inglewood encouraged ECS to deepen their commitment to Reading Apprenticeship professional learning over the following year. For 2019–20, ECS identified disciplinary literacy as a singular focus and invested in training all teachers and leaders in Reading Apprenticeship with the aim for students to use literacy as a tool for fulfilling their own sense of purpose and engage in innovative, real-world problem solving.

In order to produce conscious, critical thinkers capable of creating a more equitable and sustainable world, our students need to participate in text-based research, argumentation, and communication at ever-increasing levels of sophistication.

— Environmental Charter Schools Administrator

Over the following several years, ECS partnered with Reading Apprenticeship on intensive implementation of Reading Apprenticeship school-wide across all three schools. ECS has currently engaged 120 teachers and leaders from all subjects are implementing the Reading Apprenticeship framework in their classrooms. Additionally, six educators completed the capacity building training, Leading for Literacy, and now meet regularly in professional learning communities with teachers. The goal is to include all teachers, staff, and administrators in Reading Apprenticeship professional learning.

Through its investment, ECS has committed to supporting building high-level literacy, academic success, and the social-emotional development of their students by weaving the Reading Apprenticeship classroom practices into the fabric of all three ECS schools.

This framework has the potential to bring staff together as an inquiry community of professionals who seek to learn collectively and individually. We have an opportunity to come to agreement on the core practices that lead to improved student outcomes in reading and writing.
— Environmental Charter Schools Staff Member

Results

Inglewood’s initial commitment to Reading Apprenticeship provided an opportunistic randomized control trial since 50% of the school’s teachers participated. The participating Inglewood teachers saw 20% growth in student achievement on state standardized tests as compared with non-participating students.

ECS’s subsequent deep and ongoing commitment to implementing the Reading Apprenticeship model across all three schools has resulted in remarkable student progress in building literacy, learner disposition, and overall academic performance.

In 2019, 98.2% of ECHS graduates completed the A-G requirements to gain acceptance to a four-year university (compared to 45% in California). In that same year, 97% of ECHS graduates were admitted.

A successful partnership brings new opportunities to deepen and expand the Reading Apprenticeship model

Since ECS had a critical mass of teachers who are successfully implementing Reading Apprenticeship’s instructional framework, they were the ideal partner for a grant to further develop the model.

ECS and Reading Apprenticeship were awarded a 2020 Chan Zuckerberg Initiative grant through their whole-child work for a two-year collaboration to focus specifically on Metacognitive Conversation and Extensive Reading as pathways to the development of curiosity and self-direction.

In 2020 ECS and Reading Apprenticeship will begin working together to refine Reading Apprenticeship instructional routines and practices already in place through co-designing and iteratively testing student-facing formative assessment tools.

This grant will allow ECS and Reading Apprenticeship to develop formative assessments that will include more robust, easy-to-use tools for students to self-monitor and for teachers to monitor student progress. These formative assessments will then be introduced to the faculties of all three ECS schools. The goal for these tools is to better reveal the thinking process to further develop support and deepening implementation of Reading Apprenticeship.

In addition, the grant will focus on identifying relevant, high-quality texts that reflect students and provide for equitable access and engagement of all learners and identities. In the last phase of this project we will focus on building leadership capacity to sustain these practices and integrate formative assessment routines into classrooms and professional learning communities.

Through our work on this project we seek to deepen our understanding of how enacting Metacognitive Conversation and Extensive Reading as schoolwide practices can support equitable, whole-child outcomes.

Reading Apprenticeship and ECS are enthusiastic about collaborating on this project to refine Reading Apprenticeship practices that address both academic and social-emotional learning and build evidence and exemplars that work for students who are often furthest from opportunity. Our work with ECS is fueled by a shared commitment to equitable outcomes for all students, which is reflected in ECS’s powerful mission, vision and results.

ECS’s exemplary and unwavering commitment to equipping their students with the knowledge and skills to succeed—in college and beyond—is opening a new pathway of opportunities for many future students nationwide.

A shining example of sustained success in building high-level literacy schoolwide

Overview

Fordson High School in Dearborn, MI, home to the largest Arabic speaking population outside the Middle East, has accomplished something that few schools achieve – namely sustaining Reading Apprenticeship for a decade. Fordson, housed in a building constructed by Henry Ford in 1928, serves 2,782 students, 42% of whom are classified as English Learners. Twenty-six percent of these are new arrivals from countries like Yemen, Iraq, and Syria and 87% are eligible for Free or Reduced-Price Lunch. Fordson began their investment in supporting Reading Apprenticeship implementation in 2010 as participants in the RAISE grant and has continued with steady support for sustaining initial success through the years.

Fordson’s commitment to the Reading Apprenticeship model has paid off for its students, particularly English learners. In the 2016-17 academic year students in sheltered Reading Apprenticeship classrooms saw average gains on the Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (EBRW) section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) significantly above EL students in non-Reading Apprenticeship classrooms.

Challenges

• Supporting English learners in achieving high-level literacy
• Creating a safe learning environment for immigrant students to learn English and explore a new culture and academic system
• Sustaining and building on initial success with continued teacher professional learning and Teacher Leaders
• Building a culture of literacy; improving reading rates for all students

Implementing Reading Apprenticeship

Fordson was the first million-dollar high school built in the United States. Henry Ford built the school to educate the children of the diverse community of his employees. For over 90 years Fordson has been a safe haven for the diverse immigrant community of the Detroit Metropolitan area—European, African, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern families.

Fordson’s decade-long investment in Reading Apprenticeship has benefited all of its students, particularly those who are newly immigrated and must contend with the cultural and academic demands of a new country. Fordson offers these students the additional support of “sheltered” instruction in English Language Arts taught by seasoned Reading Apprenticeship teachers who are Arabic speakers.

This class is a two-hour, dual-language block that utilizes the Reading Apprenticeship instructional framework to create a safe classroom setting where teachers and students can work together to build literacy and language learning. Use of Arabic, written or spoken, is an option anytime it is needed to promote learning. Students often annotate texts in two languages, working in pairs and small groups to support one another using Reading Apprenticeship metacognition routines for collaboration.

In this learning community, students readily share their thinking, their confusions, and their moments of understanding, acting as resources for one another. The focus here is on the Social and Personal dimensions that support Reading Apprenticeship’s interactive instructional framework. Creating safe learning environments where students see themselves as successful learners support the framework’s Cognitive and Knowledge-Building dimensions.

Deepening and sustaining Reading Apprenticeship through steady work

Over the past ten years Fordson High School has exemplified steady work in transforming instruction to build academic literacy. Today, Fordson serves as a model school, hosting Learning Tours for teachers, schools and districts nationwide to see Reading Apprenticeship in action.

How exactly does Fordson sustain Reading Apprenticeship as a core practice?

Fordson’s approach to scaling up Reading Apprenticeship focuses on integrating the framework and routines into all regular subject-area classrooms and therefore doesn’t require special scheduling.

Fordson has also continued to regularly seize opportunities to participate in ongoing Reading Apprenticeship professional development.

Another important factor is that Fordson’s administrators have consistently invested in internal coaching that helps teachers integrate disciplinary literacy routines into their classrooms. Amy Keith-Wardlow, a full-time Literacy Coordinator who has coached over 500 teachers in Reading Apprenticeship implementation, was instrumental in bringing Reading Apprenticeship to Fordson. She coaches and supervises Fordson teachers throughout the process of implementation, ensuring its ongoing success. She is constantly in classrooms and asking questions that provoke teachers to consider how they can move from Reading Apprenticeship as isolated strategies to Reading Apprenticeship as an essential part of classroom life.

Both the school’s and the district’s administrators have also committed to Reading Apprenticeship. They demonstrate how it connects and advances myriad initiatives to improve student learning.

Mature Reading Apprenticeship Classrooms

Reading Apprenticeship supports coherence by offering professional development that enables teachers to integrate core literacy routines into their existing curricula. The Fordson High School classrooms illustrate this principle. They also give us a glimpse at what the framework in action looks like in mature Reading Apprenticeship classrooms.

In teacher Julie Jamieson’s 10th grade English class, Jamieson selected two highly accessible sources – Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit, historical photographs of lynchings—to scaffold her students’ understanding of inference and metaphor in To Kill a Mockingbird. Throughout the class, students worked collaboratively to interpret these texts. Ms. Jamieson asked metacognitive and cognitive questions: “Why do you think that?” “What does her voice add?”

In Sanaa Ayoub’s 11th Grade psychology class, Ayoub extended students’ understand of how the brain works by having them read an article for researchers related to a high-interest topic. Students individually and collaboratively read about new experimental evidence related to the effects of marijuana on adolescent brains. Together students answered their guiding inquiry question, “Should marijuana be federally legalized?” Ms. Ayoub modeled her own practice as a reader of psychology, noting terms she didn’t understand, sharing her how she chunked and analyzed words, pointing out features of research articles. By the end of the class, students had both identified the strongest evidence and added to their reading strategies list.

Results

A model that brings significant gains for English learners

In sheltered classrooms where Reading Apprenticeship is being implemented with fidelity, students are showing amazing growth. For the 2016-2017 academic year, the average gains on the Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (EBRW) section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) were 64 points and 13 points on the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) test. By contrast, in classrooms that were not implementing Reading Apprenticeship with fidelity, overall average growth on the EBRW of the SAT was 38 points and no average growth was noted for the WIDA. Overall, the highest average gains for EL students at Fordson were made in classrooms fully implementing Reading Apprenticeship’s instructional framework, demonstrating the power of the model to transform the educational experiences of those learning English.

Reading Apprenticeship classrooms at Fordson High School continue the tradition of fostering a sense of community in which academic excellence is both valued and achievable.

Building a culture of support among educators brings sustainable success

Today, Fordson continues with a strong commitment to sustaining Reading Apprenticeship schoolwide with district-level Title II funding. Over 100 of Fordson’s teachers have participated in Reading Apprenticeship professional development and all incoming new teachers participate in Reading Apprenticeship professional development in the summer prior to their first semester teaching at Fordson. These teachers are then supported with ongoing Teacher Leader push-ins to their classrooms.

Fordson also continues to support teachers in the completion of the Reading Apprenticeship Consultant in Training program. Fordson will soon have a total of six national facilitators for Reading Apprenticeship, the highest number from a single district anywhere in the country.

The ongoing work of Fordson’s administrators, faculty, and staff provide us with an excellent example for sustained success in implementing Reading Apprenticeship.

Fordson’s graduation rate is a remarkable 94%, well above the state level. Student growth is clearly seen in the Lexile measures which regularly increase between 200-400 points a year. Their 2020 senior class has seen an average 3.5 grade level increase in Lexile points. Even more impressive, their 10th grade class Lexile rate recently increased 2.1% in just one academic year.

Fordson exemplifies the kind of instructional transformation and improved student outcomes that can be accomplished when a school commits to long-term, school-wide Reading Apprenticeship implementation.

Overview

After receiving a 2018 Striving Readers grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Maryland began a large-scale, multi-year implementation of Reading Apprenticeship and other interventions in all 24 districts. Their goal was to improve instruction and student reading scores. First results indicate impact in academic achievement with 87 percent of students in Reading Apprenticeship intervention classes showing up to three grade levels worth of growth, as well as a slight increase on the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program in ELA proficiency. Initial reports from teachers indicate positive transformations in their classroom practice.

Challenges

• To support Maryland’s middle and high school students struggling with literacy in science, social studies, and other subjects
• Build students’ reading capabilities statewide amid increasingly rigorous standards for students to be able read and comprehend more advanced texts in all subjects
• Ongoing implementation and sustained practice of professional learning within locally controlled districts

Implementation of Reading Apprenticeship

Answering an urgent call to build academic literacy statewide

In 2016, Cecilia Roe, the director of instructional assessment and professional learning for the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) and formerly an English teacher, noted that the state’s middle and high school students were struggling with literacy in science, social studies, and other subjects and began to call to attention to the urgency of this issue.

When Maryland received a Striving Readers grant from the U.S. Department of Education in 2017, Roe proposed a large-scale implementation of Reading Apprenticeship instructional approach to literacy across the curriculum. Maryland began offering summer and fall Reading Apprenticeship institutes for educators in all 24 districts in the state in 2018.

The Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS) is just one of those systems that has widely implemented the model in its middle and high schools, with Reading Apprenticeship training for seven cohorts of 40 teachers. In fall 2019, BCPS principals also began professional learning aimed at becoming familiar with the Reading Apprenticeship model and learning how to transform teaching and best support teachers’ implementation of Reading Apprenticeship.

Phasing in a new approach to literacy across all subjects

Interest in Reading Apprenticeship in middle and high schools has grown with increasing demands on students to read and comprehend more advanced texts in nearly all subjects. Many of the most current academic standards emphasize the role of reading and writing throughout the curriculum, making the recent drops in reading test scores especially concerning.

“It’s a matter of urgency at the secondary school level,” which requires helping educators prepare students to meet these standards, says Sharon Sáez, a partnership development director with WestEd’s Strategic Literacy Initiative who has been working with Maryland and districts throughout the state implementing the model. As a new round of states are now receiving Striving Readers grants, Sáez notes it will be important for state and local leaders to have examples of how the Reading Apprenticeship model can be most effective.

One approach is the way leaders are phasing in the model in the Washington County Public Schools (WCPS), in the western part of Maryland. Just before the 2018/19 school year, administrators and counselors at South Hagerstown High identified 70 incoming 9th graders who were reading below grade level and, in addition to engaging teachers in professional learning, set up a 9th grade intervention course called Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy (RAAL).

One recent lesson in the intervention class involved using the “roadblocks” strategy to discuss words or terms that might stand in the way of comprehending Gary Paulsen’s “Winter Room.” For a passage with the word “oiled,” teacher Kate Kendernine asked the group, “What do you know about oiling something?”

“I guess it like, makes it like, work better,” one student responded, in a questioning tone of voice.

“You’re absolutely correct,” the teacher said, adding that it’s okay for them to “leave a roadblock behind” if they feel they grasp the overall meaning or action in the text.

Another student circled the word “harness” and drew a line to the definition: “used for dogs and horses.” A circle around “bucksaw” connected to “used to cut wood.”

Jodi Smith — now the district’s secondary literacy achievement coordinator — previously worked in one of South Hagerstown’s feeder middle schools and so was familiar with many of the students assigned to the intervention class. As Smith has noted through watching the impact of the intervention, students that Smith never would have expected to participate actively were volunteering to help other students, telling them how to do things.

Says Smith, “For the first time some of those kids felt a sense of accomplishment — maybe even smart.”

In addition to having an intervention class focused on academic literacy, these students have had general science, English, and social studies classes led by teachers trained in the Reading Apprenticeship framework, providing additional reinforcement of routines and strategies that support comprehension yet make it clear how texts and evidence differ by subject area. For support, the teachers participate in a monthly professional learning session to reflect on and share ideas for lessons and reading strategies, Smith says.

Smith is also seeing growth among teachers. During this fall’s follow-up institute, a veteran teacher with 22 years of experience told Smith of having been “transformed” as a teacher by Reading Apprenticeship and, instead of always having be the one leading instruction, has learned how to “step back and let the kids do the work.”

Results

Remarkable initial academic gains and ongoing expansion

According to the results of a reading comprehension assessment, by the end of 2018-19, 87 percent of the students in the Reading Apprenticeship intervention class showed growth over the school year. Some gained as much as three grade levels worth of skills.

Nearly 90 percent of 9th graders responding to a survey found Reading Apprenticeship to be more helpful than their middle school reading interventions. Participants also reported an increased sense of efficacy. One reflected on her experience this way: “Being in this program/class has helped me understand what I’m reading and makes me want to read more books.” Teachers corroborated this impact. One noted, “The program is especially meaningful to social studies instruction. Never before have I seen the kind of engagement, deep discussion and collaboration amongst my students at this point in the year until I started using this program.”

By starting with a coherent focus, the Washington County team spurred fellow educators’ enthusiasm for Reading Apprenticeship. This past summer, an additional 52 teachers voluntarily participated in the professional development, and the district intends to gradually expand the program with five additional schools conducting pilots during 2019-20. Kathleen Maher-Baker, MSDE’s acting English language arts coordinator, notes this district’s gradual approach — moving from one school to four — allows interest and willingness among teachers to grow.

See how Reading Apprenticeship is transforming engagement, learning communities, and confidence for Washington County students and teachers

In addition to county-level implementation, there are individual teachers in schools across the state implementing Reading Apprenticeship. While it is more challenging to be the only teacher in a school using new strategies, rather than having an interdisciplinary team of teachers working together, Maher-Baker encourages such educators to introduce Reading Apprenticeship materials to their colleagues, perhaps as part of a professional learning community or book study, or invite them to the next Reading Apprenticeship institute.

Roe points to initial signs of progress in the state, including a slight increase on the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program in ELA proficiency — from just under 40 percent in 2018 to just above 41 percent in 2019, which Roe attributes at least in part to Reading Apprenticeship.

Districts in Maryland will determine how to evaluate their own progress, Roe says, but adds that state officials also will be looking for evidence of changes to teacher practice, based on observations and reviewing student work examples. And a solid evidence base from previous large-scale research indicating the effectiveness of Reading Apprenticeship is part of what led Roe and others to take up Reading Apprenticeship in the first place. Over the past 20 years, multiple rigorous studies have demonstrated that students whose teachers are trained in Reading Apprenticeship gain more knowledge and score higher in areas such as comprehension than students in control groups.

Nonetheless, as with most professional learning related to shifts in instruction, the demands on teachers’ time and the competition from other priorities are among the biggest challenges for teachers trying to implement Reading Apprenticeship.

Because Maryland districts have local control, MSDE officials don’t prescribe how districts should move forward after a Reading Apprenticeship institute. But the districts that implement Reading Apprenticeship “know they are investing in their students and teachers, and time is an important issue,” says Maher-Baker. Like WCPS, many have scheduled weekly or bi-monthly planning sessions to provide extra support for teachers.

For Mary Stump, Associate Director of WestEd’s Strategic Literacy Initiative, the takeaways from Maryland so far reinforce experiences of Reading Apprenticeship implementation in other sites across the country. When teachers fully engage in implementing Reading Apprenticeship and have support from school leaders, Stump says, “We see teachers lecture less and students’ collaboration and confidence increase, and studies have shown that the test scores tend to follow, especially when districts support this work over time and across subject areas. Lecturing is easy. Facilitating text-based knowledge making and dialogue in every discipline is more challenging, but ultimately yields remarkable results.”