Why Should Latinos Care?
Latinos represent the majority of students in LAUSD. The student body at the schools served by Los Angeles Unified School District is 10.5% White, 7.6% Black, 5.9% Asian or Asian/Pacific Islander, 73.6% Hispanic/Latino, 0.1% American Indian or Alaska Native, and 0.2% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.
By Reynaldo Mena
Student children are under attack.
Smartphones, social media, isolation, and economic problems resulting from the pandemic have left them adrift. Like never before, the number of suicides is increasing, cases of mental health issues are growing every day, and their abilities in reading, writing, and math are declining due to the paralysis of society.
‘The Nation’s Report Card’ revealed last week that middle school students nationwide continue to show a decline in math and reading, a trend that started in 2012.
This study reveals that 8th-grade students’ scores in reading and math have dropped since they were last measured in 2013. A disturbing two-thirds of American 8th graders now score “below proficient” in reading, and the same percentage of students score “below proficient” in math. In other words, we are in a deep crisis.
That is why the recent decision by Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho to replace the successful Primary Promise program with a new project in LAUSD has caused outrage among teachers, activists, former officials, and politicians.
“When we learned that the district had done little to share information about the issue with the more than 20,000 families whose children will be affected by cutting the program, we felt compelled to add our voices to those of teachers: Ending Primary Promise is the wrong move,” wrote former superintendents Austin Beutner and Ray Cortines in an opinion column published in Parriva and the LA Times.
But first, what is Primary Promise?
“The Primary Promise Literacy Intervention/Prevention Support is for readers in grades K-3 who need support in accelerating their foundational reading skills through the district’s Primary Promise initiative.
The Primary Promise goal is for every learner to leave third grade with the foundational reading skills needed to transition from being a student learning to read to becoming a student who reads to learn.
The Primary Promise Intervention teacher and Instructional Aide provide targeted small-group instruction in specific foundational reading skills. We will accelerate students’ reading skills by applying systematic teaching, explicit modeling, and individual and small-group instruction.”
In simple terms, according to the column by Beutner and Cortines , Primary Promise provides individual attention to K-3 students to help them learn to read. It takes the same approach to help students build a foundation in math.
“Research tells us that fourth-graders who can’t read at grade level are four times more likely to drop out of school. That, in turn, means they will go on to have much lower lifetime incomes. Surely, we can’t allow more than half of public-school kids to get left behind.”
This is particularly important for Latino and Black children. A report by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) found that while some students are improving, Latino and Black students are falling behind their white peers.
“While a majority of students did better than expected in reading — scoring at levels similar to typical non-pandemic years — this wasn’t true for Black and Hispanic students and those who attend high-poverty schools,” according to NBC News. A program like Primary Promise seems vital for these communities.
What does Primary Promise do?
“Primary Promise addresses the challenge by adding a second teacher or aide into the classroom so one teacher can work with the children who are at grade level while the other can provide help to small groups of students on their specific needs.
” Primary Promise started in 2020. Since then, there have been three published evaluations of its results — October 2021, March 2022, and July 2022. All show that the program works extraordinarily well.
Carvalho has a different approach.
The superintendent aims to replace this program with another called the Literacy and Numeracy Intervention Model. It will reach middle school students instead of stopping at the third grade. They ultimately acknowledged that fewer elementary schools would have intervention services but insisted that overall services to students of all ages would improve.
Officials set the cost of next year’s effort at about $100 million, compared with $134 million this year and about $200 million if Beutner’s plan to reach every elementary school with Primary Promise had been carried out.
The new plan will also rely on training classroom instructors in methods the intervention specialists have used.
Carvalho said he had to find some way to cut costs to preserve such services.
Primary Promise was achieving extraordinary results, according to district officials, who presented a public progress report about 14 months ago. Since then, with the arrival of Carvalho, a district position has emerged that Primary Promise was less effective than advertised, not especially groundbreaking, and too expensive to sustain.
Concerned parties on both sides of the debate lined up for a public showdown. More than 1,700 people signed a petition in support of Primary Promise.
“The LAUSD has plenty of programs that don’t work, so we, a coalition of parents, teachers, staff, and community members, are asking the board to stop Supt. Carvalho from unilaterally dismantling this program that does, in fact, work, in order to enact a lesser version,” the petition says. Parents offered testimonials in favor of Primary Promise.
“I have a seventh grader who, while in elementary school, was part of this amazing program, and without this program, I know for sure he would not be thriving as he is today,” said Maria Morgan. A group supporting the superintendent’s position wants the benefit of the doubt.
“Primary Promise was responsive to a moment in time, but now we have a Board-adopted strategic plan aligned with the Board’s vision and goals,” a letter from the coalition said. “To fully realize the promise of the district’s Ready for the World Strategic Plan, we must be nimble to changes that align to and actualize the plan.”
Groups that signed the letter included InnerCity Struggle, Para Los Niños, and Partnership for Los Angeles Schools.Officials acknowledged that an evaluation of Primary Promise is not due until the end of July.
“The reality is that we can’t wait,” L.A. Unified Chief Strategy Officer Veronica Arreguin said. “We can’t wait for any type of results right now. We need to be able to be ever-changing and supportive as to best practices that we know exist, not only in L.A. Unified but across the nation, that actually have instructional impacts.” She added that “we’ve seen that through research” elsewhere.
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