The city is deploying special coaches to every elementary school to train teachers on how to get the youngest students reading. NY1's Lindsey Christ filed the following report.
Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña visited PS 375 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn Thursday to read one of her favorite books: The Big Orange Splot.
Sitting next to the chancellor was one of the school's newest staff members, a reading coach. It's part of Mayor Bill de Blasio's goal of having all third graders reading on grade level within nine years. Right now, only about 40 percent of them are on track.
The reading coaches are the biggest investment toward that goal. The first 103 coaches were hired last spring and deployed to the South Bronx and Central Brooklyn, districts with the lowest reading scores. The chancellor vows to have a coach in every elementary school citywide by September 2018.
"We wanted to start smaller so we could see what was working, what needed to be improved. We're really in a good place right now," Fariña said.
The coaches' role is to help teachers improve how they teach kids to read.
"A coach is not only someone who knows good literacy and can work with students, but also, how do you work with adults who already think they are doing a good job?" Fariña said.
Lisa Pena-Draper was a second-grade teacher for 10 years at another Brooklyn school before she was hired to be one of the first reading coaches.
"I go in and I visit classrooms to watch the teachers and see their strengths and their weaknesses, and then I meet with teachers about what I saw, and we pick certain things that they want to work on," she said.
Thirty thousand students in kindergarten through second grade are now receiving the reading enrichment, at a cost of $16.4 million. It will cost $75 million a year once the program expands citywide.
The chancellor announced Thursday the city will also invest millions in buying books for the youngest readers. The cost will be more than $100 per student to buy the books that Fariña read as an elementary school teacher and still loves reading as chancellor.