‘We can’t do this alone’: Superintendent, School Board president address concerns about low reading scores

QUINCY — Quincy School Board President Shelley Arns recognizes and appreciates Rev. Carl Terry’s mission to help improve reading scores.

“Whenever we have community members, organizations that want to step up and help what they see as needs in our community, absolutely we support that,” Arns said.

Arns met Terry three years ago during a back-to-school fair while Terry was conducting a computer drive. She believes she knows the kind of person he is.

“He is someone who sees needs and tries to fill them in our community,” Arns said. “I see him as someone who when he sees a need, he’ll focus on that, and he’ll make things happen.”

Terry addressed the Quincy School Board at Wednesday’s meeting regarding QPS third graders’ low scores on the 2023 Illinois Assessment of Readiness. Proficiency scores were at 21.1 percent or worse at four of Quincy’s five public elementary schools, with the best score of 30.6 percent at Dr. Abby Fox Rooney Elementary School.

“I’m not going to point any fingers because I don’t know who’s at fault,” Terry said at the meeting. “All I want to do is get solutions. I want to know the solutions.”

Arns said the IAR is more than a simple literacy test.

“It’s more like, ‘Can you understand, interpret and make choices from these given options for that passage that you just read?’” she said. “It isn’t just someone sitting and listening to them read.”

Arns said the style of questions on this exam has changed over the years.

“It’s not just ‘right there’ questions,” she said. “When I was growing up, it was more just about straight comprehension. It wasn’t about inferences, drawing conclusions or things like that. It was more, ‘Are you able to read the passage and answer a question directly from that passage?’ kind of a thing. 

“More and more, we’re expecting students to draw conclusions and make inferences from what they’ve read and determine motivations and things like that. The assessment of reading is a lot deeper than what a lot of people might realize.”

Terry said on Wednesday there is “no cookie cutter way” to address the needs of each student, a point Arns reiterated.

“There are many factors that enter into a student’s ability to learn, achieve and grow, and when any of those aren’t met, that does become a challenge for that student and for the teachers who are working to try to help them,” Arns said.

Arns said the district’s mentor program provides students an excellent resource to get through any challenges they may face at school.

“I see them as a really helpful extra hand in helping students and having that consistency across grade levels because often times those mentors go along with the students, sometimes all the way until graduation,” Arns said.

The district will have new curricular materials available to its teachers this year in math and ELA (English Language Arts).

“There are steps that are going to be happening in the classroom, but I do want to remind teachers and our community that our curriculum is the Illinois state learning standards, so that doesn’t change,” Arns said. “We have different materials that we can use to help students learn those standards.”

Arns said a big movement is being made toward the science of reading.

“Several components make up the reading program,” she said. “Benchmark Workshop is the curriculum materials that we have adopted for ELA. That just makes sure that all the aspects of the science of reading are covered as far as phonics, comprehension, decoding skills, things like that.”

Arns said she learned in her 20 years as a teacher that bouncing ideas off one another to determine the best ways to teach the curriculum is commonplace. However, it may not be as necessary with these new materials.

“We always had this saying, ‘Borrow, beg and steal,’ when I taught because you’re going to borrow, beg and steal anything to help you help students learn,” Arns said. 

“It could be your neighbor across the hall, or now that we have the Internet, it could be other places where teachers pull materials to help them. We want the core materials to be the programs that have just been adopted. It’s going to come with all the materials that they need to help students learn. It’s all going to be right there together. Hopefully they’re not going to have to go out and borrow, beg and steal a whole lot.”

In a video message posted Thursday on the Quincy Public Schools’ Facebook page, Superintendent Todd Pettit said teachers, administrators and district support staff is “working diligently” to address the needs of each student.

“Each day, students are welcomed into our classrooms with different academic strengths and challenges,” Pettit said. “Our educators build on these strengths while responding to our students’ academic and social needs.”

He said a new elementary literacy and math curriculum will be introduced during the 2024-25 school year.

Pettit also made a pitch for people to volunteer as mentors. The district’s student mentor program will celebrate its 30^th anniversary this year.

“We can’t do this alone,” he said. “Parents and community members, we need your help together. We must instill in students the value of education by making school and learning a priority each and every day.”

Arns also admitted the district staff can’t do it all.

“I do want to make sure we give accolades to our educators,” she said. “They are the ones in the classroom every day doing the work and helping children learn, succeed and grow.”