Districtwide Literacy Program
Every year, at the start of a new school year, we set goals and high expectations for our schools. This year, one of our primary goals is to help students improve their reading skills, and we are launching a districtwide literacy curriculum across all grade levels.
Reading is the foundation for learning and research shows that people who can’t read well will have a very difficult time succeeding in our world today. In HISD, we have roughly 70,000 students who aren’t reading on grade level. It has been a challenge to find ways to address this issue, since the way we teach reading varies from school to school, and HISD students often transfer from one campus to another. By creating a districtwide approach, we will be able to gauge each student’s strengths and weaknesses, and we will be able to use data to develop targeted strategies to reach individual students. At the same time, we will still encourage schools that are getting great results to keep doing what they are doing.
Today, the HISD Foundation received a generous donation from the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in support of our new literacy initiative. The $500,000 gift will help us train teachers and principals, and conduct research to determine which literacy programs are most effective.
I want to say a special thank you to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, and its President and CEO Skip Wagner (pictured above). With the group’s support, we will be able to help all of our students, regardless of what schools they attend, to read on grade level.
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