In pushing 'science of reading,' Gov. DeWine touts Helen Arnold bookworms in Akron

With the governor of Ohio standing behind her, 11-year-old Aliyah Klee put a coin in Helen Arnold Community Learning Center's hallway vending machine and made a selection on the keypad.

It wasn't a snack or a drink that popped out, but a book — "Billy and the Mini Monsters."

"This is really cool," Gov. Mike DeWine remarked after thumbing through the book and seeing the Bookworm vending machine, which is used as a reward for students with good behavior, in action.

DeWine and First Lady Fran DeWine — who met in the first grade — visited Helen Arnold Community Learning Center, an elementary school in Akron Public Schools, on Tuesday to see its reading program in action.

What he was there to highlight, he said, was the way the school approaches teaching reading. Specifically, it uses the "science of reading," which he is pushing to be adopted in every district in Ohio.

"They're implementing what we now know is really the best way to teach reading," DeWine said.

DeWine's budget proposal includes $162 million to be spent over the next two years for districts to purchase a new curriculum and train teachers in the science of reading if it's not something they are already doing.

The science of reading is rooted in the teaching of phonics, but also other components like comprehension and fluency. It gives students the skills to "decode" any word they don't recognize.

The science of reading isn't new, but the education pendulum has for years swung away from phonics and more toward a system of using clues other than the word itself, like the pictures next to it, to figure out a word. Critics have said that approach encourages kids to guess and to memorize words instead of actually learning to read.

Helen Arnold's curriculum for teaching phonics is a program called Neuhaus, along with a program from the University of Florida Literacy Institute, and was implemented four years ago with money from a donor. The rest of Akron Public Schools also teaches with the science of reading, but uses two other more recently adopted programs, Wonders and Heggerty, to achieve the same goal.

Helen Arnold Principal LaMonica Davis serves as the principal on a state committee that wrote the dyslexia handbook for Ohio schools, and said she invited DeWine to see the work underway at the school. DeWine also visited a school in Warrensville Heights on Tuesday to see its reading program.

In second grade classrooms at Helen Arnold, DeWine saw students working through Neuhaus lessons, calling out letters and the sounds they make, and the sounds made by different combinations of letters. They identified vowels and consonants, the number of syllables in the word, and could explain why an "e" at the end of a word is silent but it changes the sound of the letters before it.

"It's very intense but the kids love it," Davis told DeWine in between classes.

DeWine noted he learned how to read with phonics, but now, "it seems more systematic, more cumulative."

DeWine, who was accompanied by the state's Interim Superintendent of Public Instruction Stephanie Siddens, also saw a small group of students receiving intervention help in reading, and a community partner who came to the school to distribute books to students.

Davis noted the school is on the state's priority list, meaning it tested in the bottom 5% of schools in the state. That designation brings with it a lot of scrutiny, but also a lot of support. Davis said they are expecting to see test scores continue to climb after positive growth last year, but teaching literacy is more about the test.

"A test can come and go, but reading is power," she said.

DeWine complimented the culture of the school and its staff at the end of his visit and said they were ahead of the game with science of reading.

"Can we clone you all?"

Contact education reporter Jennifer Pignolet at jpignolet@thebeaconjournal.com, at 330-996-3216 or on Twitter @JenPignolet.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Gov. Mike DeWine touts Helen Arnold school's literacy program in Akron