After two years, the Barksdale Reading Initiative's mission to promote literacy among Mississippi's elementary students appears to be working, if only in one grade, says Claiborne Barksdale, the program's executive director.
Testing data from 2001 and 2002 shows that 8.5 percent more second-graders who learned the Barksdale approach were reading at grade level. That figure compares to about a 4 percent growth in non-Barksdale students.
"We feel like that is progress," Barksdale told a group of principals, teachers and college students Monday afternoon at Mississippi Valley State University's School of Education.
Still, he said, more needs to be made.
By the third grade, the numbers aren't quite so definitive. In many cases, those second graders who had reached proficiency dropped to a "minimal" score the following year, said Barksdale.
The reading initiative is being evaluated on a three-year scale. As the Barksdale program wraps up the third year with more than 24,000 lower elementary students, scores from this May's tests will be the final indicators of whether its aim is true.
"This is a critical year for us," said Barksdale. "I'm not going to say it's a make-it-or-break-it year for us, but it's a critical year."
Barksdale explained that learning to read is a complex process requiring complex teaching strategies. "The more I become familiar with the process, the more amazed I am that anyone learns how to read," he said.
In 2000, Netscape founder Jim Barksdale and his wife, Sally, donated $100 million to expedite that process in Mississippi public schools. Claiborne Barksdale is Jim Barksdale's brother.
Using a method called the Mississippi Reading Reform Model, the Barksdale Reading Initiative was set up with a combination of one-on-one instruction, group learning and tutoring. While teachers address individual problems student-by-student, the rest of the class reads in cooperative learning groups. Tutors come in to read aloud to the students, who must hear a fluent reader to become one themselves, says Barksdale.
This is the way Jennifer Trusty of Grenada says she learned to read. An education student at Valley, Trusty is excited to learn the Barksdale approach, which is being passed to future teachers in classes at all eight public universities in the state.
"I think it's necessary," said Trusty. "I don't know why anyone wouldn't want to teach with this process."
But in the Delta classrooms she has observed, teachers are reluctant to subscribe to Barksdale, she said. "I know some of the schools don't like it."
Barksdale has found a number of obstacles that frustrate this approach. The program is not successful at all schools, he said, especially those where principals are more concerned with bus schedules, lunchroom discipline and other daily maintenance than with teaching children how to read.
The biggest challenge is to win over obstinate teachers, he said. "Teachers are like every other human being in the world. They resist change."
But that hasn't been the case at every school. The reading experts responsible for implementing the program in each school did not meet resistance from Veronica Richardson, a former principal at Leland Elementary School. She invited the Barksdale methods and ideas into her school with open arms for two years before she retired, and the students benefited.
"The teachers were really receptive," said Richardson. "They were interested in the person coming in and bringing them new ideas."
The program's success in Leland rests on the effectiveness of the reading expert that Barksdale sent to Richardson's school, she said. "The expert and the principal have to jibe."
Barksdale has already pulled out of schools where that relationship hasn't worked. It's better to leave than to keep wasting money, Barksdale said.
"If we don't see satisfactory results as reflective in test scores, then we're going to move the money somewhere else," he said. "We have left schools which do not implement. It's hard on those children, but the money is not going to anything good."
Despite the still uncertain future of Barksdale's place in the schools, the program is already testing new waters. Inspired by the comparative success among the younger children enrolled in the program, Barksdale is beginning even earlier in childhood.
"My theory is the earlier you intervene, the more you make difference," Barksdale said.
The initiative is moving into pre-kindergarten programs, including Head Start and day-care centers, that are caring for children whose home lives haven't nurtured their reading abilities. Many of these children come from low-income households, where studies have found children hear approximately 40 million fewer words than those raised in a "professional family," said Barksdale.
"Families in poverty do not talk to their children," he said. "And it's not a race-based issue. It is a socio-economic issue that transcends race."
With support from state political and educational leaders, the Barksdale program is setting out to train child-care providers, many of whom are lacking in reading skills themselves. By 2005, Barksdale hopes to have enough data to convince lawmakers of the need for this approach statewide.
"Hopefully, we can go to the Legislature, and we'll have a story to tell," he said. "And it will be a compelling story."
