Local students part of U.S. reading project
By Elizabeth Barczak, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Hundreds of Allegheny County students at 40 local schools are to take part in an $8.5 million research project aimed at changing how American children are taught to read.

About 800 children are expected to participate in the Power4Kids Reading Initiative when school resumes in September. The idea is to test which teaching techniques work best for the worst readers.

Researchers said the three-year study could change the way children are taught to read in classrooms across the country.

" This is going to have a major impact nationwide. It's a landmark study of a scope that we really haven't seen in education," said Rosanne Javorsky, project coordinator for the Allegheny Intermediate Unit.

The Intermediate Unit provides special education and other services to the county's 42 suburban school districts.

Allegheny County was chosen because of its mix of suburban and urban communities, said initiative chairwoman Cinthia Haan, head of the Haan Foundation for Children, a nonprofit group dedicated to improving education through scientific research.

The study is being funded by several nonprofit foundations and the new federal Institute for Education Sciences.

At each school, the study is to focus on 10 of the poorest readers in third and fifth grades. Six of the 10 will receive an hour of intensive reading instruction every day of the school year. The remaining four will be part of a control group that will not take part in the sessions. Instead, those students will receive the reading help the school normally offers.

All 10 will be assessed before and after the school year to see if the intense intervention made a difference.

About 75 students are to undergo functional MRIs to determine brain function before and after intervention. Researchers believe that certain teaching techniques can activate the part of the brain that controls reading.

" The neuroscience component of this is very interesting. The idea of being able to see physiologically where learning and when learning is taking place in the brain is very exciting," said Patricia Dunkis, Upper St. Clair director of elementary education.

Boyce Middle School and Eisenhower Elementary are expected to be among the 40 schools selected for the study.

Thirty-four of the 42 suburban districts in the county are vying for inclusion. Researchers ultimately will determine which schools and students participate. Some districts could have more than one school involved while others could have none.

Parents must give permission for students to take part in the study.

A teacher at each participating school will be trained in one of four nationally recognized reading strategies.

" We will have a resident expert in that strategy that can then teach our teachers," said Deborah Deakin, Quaker Valley coordinator of instruction.

Deakin said it is critical to ensure students can read before fourth grade.

" If students don't get reading by the time they are finished in third grade, the more likely that they will not get it at all," Deakin said.

Nationwide, more than one-third of fourth grade students in the nation read below grade level, according to the National Assessment Education Panel.

In Pennsylvania, 20 percent of fifth-graders fell below the basic reading level on a state-required standardized test, according to the state Department of Education.

" Reading is power," Dunkis said. "When students don't have the ability to read, it affects a whole plethora of school tasks. It affects their whole life."

Eleanor Barczak can be reached at ebarczak@tribweb.com or (724) 320-7932.