South Bay Schools Go Extra Mile for Reading Success : Education: Under Fail Safe program, any second-grader not reading at grade level will receive intensive tutorial help.

By this time next year, every second-grader in the South Bay elementary school district will read at grade level or be given free, intensive one-on-one tutoring for as long at it takes to meet the goal, the superintendent promises.

That’s the “Fail Safe” reading guarantee, the latest innovation by Phil Grignon, the district’s iconoclastic superintendent well-known among his colleagues statewide for keeping teachers and administrators on education’s cutting edge.

While South Bay’s heavily non-white student population ranks high among all California districts in terms of academic achievement, almost half the second-graders and 43% of first-graders, nevertheless, read below the 50th percentile--what is termed grade level--on a widely used national standardized achievement test.

And national research shows that students who have fallen behind in reading skills by the third grade often never catch up, their ability to learn increasingly frustrated and their potential to become later drop-outs multiplied greatly.

In order to carry out the audacious promise, Grignon’s 12 elementary schools have been given wide latitude to reorganize their teaching to improve student reading. Each principal and teaching staff has drawn up individual school plans, such as team-teaching kindergarten through second grade, having non-classroom employees trained to read regularly to students, and putting more money into writing and reading materials.

“If public schools are going to survive, we have to be held accountable for the product we turn out,” Grignon said Monday. “I spend almost $50 million a year here, so we should be able to guarantee our work.

“So we’ve redesigned our system to be 100% successful, and we’re not going to be satisfied with anything less than zero defects per student. I think that unless a child is neurologically damaged, we can do it.”

The guarantee requires input from parents as well, much like an extended warranty on a new automobile that requires the driver to change the oil and do periodic maintenance.

Parents must leave their children in the district for the entire academic year because Grignon said frequent absences will negate the extraordinary efforts of teachers. South Bay schools run on a July-to-June year-round schedule. The average family in the district lags behind those in many other districts when measured by socioeconomics; 57% are below the federal poverty level.

In addition, parents must promise to read to their child at home for at least 20 minutes a day, attend quarterly parent-teacher conferences, and check their child’s homework nightly and sign the “skills for student success” forms that students must return to their teacher.

The guarantee will also apply to the quarter of the district’s 9,500 students in bilingual classes whose first language is Spanish. They will be judged on whether they meet the 50th percentile on a Spanish-language achievement test.

“Can Fail Safe be done? I sure hope it will be doable,” Susan Nelson, reading specialist at the district’s Bayside School, said Monday.

“I think that parents realize that reading is the most important skill to be developed, and if we can get them to see their kindergartner or first-grader excited about reading better, then they’ll get excited as well.”

The guarantee crystallizes several years of brainstorming by Grignon and his staff over how to improve the district’s reading scores, as based on standardized tests. While there have been gains during the past several years, they have been smaller than in mathematics.

The district already has a widely touted IBM Write-to-Read program in kindergarten, where sophisticated computer software links reading and writing together at the earliest learning stages. Teachers also use “Stories and More,” a similar project for first-graders.

In addition, South Bay has a new state-approved reading curriculum that emphasizes literature and real children’s stories as texts rather than dry, controlled-vocabulary books that a generation of students found boring.

South Bay runs regular workshops for parents on how to improve the learning environment at home, and each school features parent coordinators to keep tabs on parent participation. There is also the novel CHOICE program, where students can attend up to 45 extra days a year in a free enrichment program where story reading and creative writing are emphasized.

Last year, three schools began an Early Literacy Intervention program, which trains teachers and classroom aides to read one-on-one or in small groups to children for 30 minutes a day. Based on a successful but expensive New Zealand project called Reading Recovery, the pilot brought 80% of the children up to grade level in reading, Grignon said.

Now, Grignon has asked his teachers to build on all these programs to make a coordinated attack on reading problems, arguing that such prevention is far less expensive than continued remediation into upper elementary grades or junior high.

At Bayside, where Nelson teaches, the school will train a large cadre of student teachers from Point Loma Nazarene College as well as many classroom aides to work with students in small groups, in addition to regular classroom lessons.

“The (literature-based) reading curriculum has helped, but it’s not good enough by itself because students need so many more chances to develop their reading habits,” Nelson said. “I think that, by persuading students to read every day, to develop a consistency not only at school but at home, we can encourage a positive attitude.

“We’re ordering a lot more books and stories, to hit them with print and more print in every which way possible.”

At other schools, second-grade teachers have gotten together and listed what they expect from students coming to them from first grade. Similarly, first-grade teachers have drawn up lists.

“That creates peer-pressure accountability among teachers, by setting high expectations,” Grignon said.

At some campuses, the same teacher will spend two years with the same students, first as kindergartners and then as first-graders, in the expectation that such familiarity will foster stronger academics.

Grignon expects that some people will criticize the district for attempting “the impossible” and for laying too much responsibility upon teachers.

“But just because I hold people accountable, some people think I’m a big giant (jerk), but I’m not,” said Grignon, whose teachers are the highest-paid in the county, with salaries ranging from $27,228 for a new instructor to $54,455 for the top veteran.

“I just want kids to be successful, and I expect everyone to take pride in making our product as good as it can be.”