ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Five years ago this week, the pandemic began shutting down schools. Since then, students all over the country have been doing worse and worse on national reading tests. There's one state, though, where students have actually gotten better at reading since 2019 - Louisiana. We wanted to know what's their secret sauce, so NPR's Jonaki Mehta went to a rural parish in central Louisiana that's defying the odds.
JONAKI MEHTA, BYLINE: The historic downtown of Natchitoches sits along a river. Its streets are laid with cobblestones. It has an old-timey charm.
KATHY NOEL: This is a really special place. It's the oldest settlement in the Louisiana Purchase.
MEHTA: That's Kathy Noel. She was born and raised here.
NOEL: Yeah. And we call it our little New Orleans.
MEHTA: People in Natchitoches are proud of how much history is here. But that history is also riddled with what was a persistent problem with its schools.
NOEL: So even though I just shared how magnificent the city is, it is one of the poorest parishes in the state of Louisiana.
MEHTA: Ninety-one percent of kids in this district are considered economically disadvantaged. And in poorer parts of the country, students have hurdles that make it harder to do well in school. Five years ago schools here were failing. Noel says a big part of the problem was that kids just did not know how to read.
NOEL: That was a big urgency call, that we needed to make some differences in a hurry, not only in Louisiana, but also back here in my hometown.
MEHTA: In 2021, Natchitoches' superintendent brought on Noel as a school improvement specialist. She works with every school in the district, including Provencal Elementary.
NOEL: You come upon this nice building in the middle of nowhere, and it's like walking into this magical world.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Over loudspeaker) ...Where we are preparing students for lifelong success.
NOEL: It's what schools should be. You know, children are excited to be there.
MEHTA: In every classroom I walked into at Provencal Elementary, each teacher was using the same strategies - small group, evidence-based, explicit reading instruction that's called the science of reading. Now, kids knowing how to read is in the foundation of every subject - science, social studies, even math. It's part of a concerted effort that began five years ago.
CADY CASKEY: So today, we are learning to identify two-syllable schwa (ph) words spelled with A.
MEHTA: Students learn all together for only 10 to 15 minutes before they break up into small groups, like here in Cady Caskey's second-grade class.
CASKEY: Let's blend it. Tuh (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: Tuh.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: Tuh.
CASKEY: Undra (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: Tundra.
CASKEY: Tundra.
MEHTA: The district's reading specialist, Andrea Penrod, walks us through what's happening in the lesson.
ANDREA PENROD: The lesson that they teach small groups is still the same standard, but it's scaffolded down to meet the students where they're at. That is not something that we did five years ago.
CASKEY: Does A say ah (ph) in this word?
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: No.
CASKEY: No.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #3: No, it says uh (ph).
CASKEY: It says uh. OK?
MEHTA: The students are split up by reading skill level. Here, Caskey is teaching four second-graders how to sound out words and decode them, again, based on the science of reading. Each group gets a turn at her table. In the meantime, other groups read independently or play games to identify words.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #4: Alone.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #5: Dylan's kind of winning.
GRANT ELOI: When I first got here, it was just everyone survive the day. Buses came on time. We're good. And that wasn't improving student achievement at all.
MEHTA: That's Natchitoches' superintendent Grant Eloi, who started his job right at the start of the pandemic. His focus was using reforms to bring cohesion to the district. And all this change began just as the world was dealing with one of the hardest times to teach and to learn. But Eloi says pandemic or not, there wasn't a moment to lose.
ELOI: When you say let's wait a year, what you're really saying is it's OK to let these kids suffer another 365 days.
MEHTA: Using COVID relief money from the federal government, Noel and Eloi started by setting rigorous academic goals for every school and every single student.
ELOI: If you don't expose them to the highest level of rigor, then what chance do they have of making it out of the cycle of poverty?
MEHTA: So the district went out with the old and in with a new version of high-quality reading materials approved by the state. Noel says before, teachers used to read to children and kids read back as a group, but the voices of the struggling readers got lost in the chorus.
NOEL: We were just hoping they would read. And as you know, hope is not a strategy.
MEHTA: And it's not just Natchitoches that changed its strategy. In 2021, Louisiana passed a law requiring K-3 teachers and administrators to take mandatory training in the science of reading. Many states have similar laws now, but experts say Louisiana was ahead of the curve. It's long had a strong system for holding its schools accountable and for years has required struggling schools to use state-approved materials if they want to receive certain funds. By the state's deadline, 100% of teachers in Natchitoches had completed the science of reading training, while other districts lagged behind. Cady Caskey says the training revolutionized her instruction.
CASKEY: It has changed tremendously.
MEHTA: In the past, she used to teach her students all together.
CASKEY: And you either got it or you didn't, whereas I have transformed that into more small group instruction so that I'm able to tailor it per each individual child's needs.
MEHTA: And none of these lessons are just based on what's next in the curriculum. Teachers collect data on each student every week and base their lessons on how they're doing.
CASKEY: I've looked at your progress monitoring. Two-syllable words is something that you guys struggled with.
MEHTA: Teachers then take that data and meet every week with a master teacher, whose job is to coach and support classroom teachers.
CHRISSY YORK: By the end of the meeting, teachers will be able to effectively implement the continuous blending strategy.
MEHTA: Master teacher Chrissy York is leading this week's meeting, and she's teaching her teachers.
YORK: OK, let's blend the first two sounds together.
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHERS: Tom. Tom.
YORK: Very good.
MEHTA: Master teachers and these weekly meetings came as two of the reforms here in Natchitoches. Cady Caskey says she sees the changes in her students every day. Like, that morning, she'd noticed one of them reading above grade level.
CASKEY: At the beginning of the year, this child came to me knowing very few letter sounds, could not read at all. And to hear him somewhat fluently read that page, oh, it almost brought tears to my eyes (laughter).
MEHTA: Now, data-driven instruction, teacher support and accountability are built into every school in the district. Kathy Noel says the proof is in the pudding. Natchitoches used to have what the state labeled struggling schools.
NOEL: Proud to say we've removed all but three of those labels. We no longer have any D or F schools.
MEHTA: For every educator I spoke to in Natchitoches, helping students become good readers is a guiding light in their work.
NOEL: There are consequences for graduating on time for having a higher-paying job. There are consequences to being a citizen. If you really think about the broader aspect of reading, why wouldn't we make it the foundation for student learning?
MEHTA: Alijah Oaks, a kindergartener here at Provencal Elementary, put it more simply.
ALIJAH OAKS: It makes you more smarter to know all of your words and know how to read.
MEHTA: Jonaki Mehta, NPR News, Natchitoches, Louisiana.
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