Whatnot

Our church started a reading program partnering with a struggling school in our city.  In this program, volunteers read with a child for 30 minutes a week (sometimes a bit more) and work on fluency and inflection in reading (which improve understanding greatly).  Children who raise their reading test scores 20% are entered into a drawing and 8-10 kids get to go on a field trip to a shoe store in the mall and buy whatever shoes they want.  They get pretty excited.

The school we are working with this year just gave us some figures.  Of 68 fourth graders in this school, only 7 are reading at or above grade level.  61 are reading below grade level, if they can read at all.  

That’s not right.