Lakeland Ponders Adding Academic Coaches to Help Students
The Lakeland School District is woefully behind other regional districts in terms of its academic intervention services and is considering switching to the more common coaching model.
“No other district in the region is still providing services the way we’re doing it,” Superintendent of Schools George Stone told the Board of Education last week.
Assistant Superintendent for Instruction Jean Miccio presented data that showed the majority of elementary school students receiving Academic Intervention Services (AIS) in math and English Language Arts (ELA) over a five-year period failed to improve.
“It’s not good news,” Miccio said. “This data to me is very alarming. It’s not something we just discovered. We’ve been looking at this for the last two years and trying to make changes.”
Students who score 1 or 2 on State Assessment exams are referred to AIS. This year, 44 students receive the services, up from 39 in 2011-12.
“Support services are supposed to improve scores for 90 percent of students,” said Assistant Superintendent for Pupil Personnel Services Mary Ellen Herzog.
Instead, according to figures provided by Miccio, only 34 percent of students who received five years of math AIS improved, and only 20 percent of students who received five years of ELA AIS achieved higher scores.
As a result, Miccio is recommending Lakeland change to the Response to Intervention (RTI) model, which is a process of identifying and addressing learning needs with a tiered approach to early intervention. Such a change would have 15 reading and five math teachers replaced by 10 coaches and three reading specialists, although some current staff would be retained as coaches.
Board of Education members seemed convinced by the numbers that adopting the RTI model was long overdue.
“If we had a losing softball team, we would change our approach. You’ve got to do something,” said Board of Education Vice President Carol Ann Dobson. “It’s almost like a false hope. You’re doing something to help students but you’re really not helping.”
“We would be insane not to change,” Trustee Glen Malia remarked.
But some parents with students currently receiving AIS are satisfied with the current program and accused district officials of causing “a ripple effect of misinformation.”
“We learned of this change second hand. The steps taken by administrators have created an atmosphere of distrust,” said William Salerno, father of 10-year-old twins at Lincoln Titus Elementary School in the remedial reading program. “I urge administrators to be more transparent.”
Another parent suggested current specialist work hand-in-hand with coaches, while another said he judges his child’s success by his report card, not by his State Assessment scores.
Rick has more than 40 years’ experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, running the gamut from politics and crime to sports and human interest. He has been an editor at Examiner Media since 2012. Read more from Rick’s editor-author bio here. Read Rick’s work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/pezzullo_rick-writer/
