Olivia Chilcote
Appearances
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So a lot of the time, it came down to administrative turnover. It was common for Success for All to be shepherded in with a new superintendent, but when the superintendent left, Success for All was out too. There was one district where people who didn't like Success for All used the change in leadership to lobby for something else.
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For sure. That is one dynamic. I talked to Ryan Mario when he got a teaching job at a charter school in Detroit. The school had recently started using Success for All.
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No, actually. In this case, it came down to money. The school had gotten a grant to adopt Success for All, and when the grant money ran out, they dropped it.
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What emerged during my phone calls was a portrait of how complicated and delicate implementing a new program can be. I talked to Jennifer Hansen. She's the English language arts specialist for Geary County Schools in Kansas. She says Success for All worked better for some schools than it did for others.
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So this district includes a military base, and the teaching staff turns over a lot. Jennifer Hansen told me they get about 100 new teachers a year.
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Yeah, that's like 15% of their teachers. She says there was inconsistency in how different schools and different teachers were using Success for All. Eventually, a new superintendent came in and decided it was time for a new program. And they looked to Ed Reports to decide what that should be.
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Yeah. And something else that came up was how Success for All groups kids for reading instruction. Remember, kids get grouped by ability instead of grade level. Several people I talked to said they had a tough time making that work. They said kids who were behind weren't catching up, and the schools ultimately gave up on Success for All because they couldn't get enough kids up to grade level.
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It does sound like success for all is something you have to stick with for a while to see the full results. It may be that some schools are giving up too quickly. And often it's because a new leader comes in who wants to take things in a new direction.
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That's right. Some schools were using it just as a reading curriculum. They weren't doing all the elements like the tutoring and the attendance. In some cases, it was because they didn't have the staff to do all that. Those schools didn't see great results with Success for All. And maybe that's not surprising since they weren't doing the whole program.
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Yes. Franklin County Public Schools in Virginia had been using Success for All in several of its schools. Some schools had been using it for 17 years. But then Virginia passed a science of reading law and created a list of approved programs.
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She said the district could have tried to get a waiver to keep using Success for All, but district leaders decided it made more sense to adopt a state-approved program for the entire school district.
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I think there's a lot of confusion about the research base for Success for All. Some people I spoke with said they dropped Success for All in favor of a program that was backed by evidence. One person said explicitly that they dropped Success for All because it wasn't backed by evidence, which was probably the most puzzling thing I heard in all my calls.
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There seems to be a perception out there that Success for All is not the science of reading. Maybe because the science of reading is new to so many people and Success for All has been around for a long time. It seems like it's not current or something.