Committee Passes Bills Creating Reading Initiative Bill For Literacy Classes For 4 Year Olds Fails, Committee Wants To Study Plan

After four days of exhaustive hearings, three of four bills that would start a statewide reading initiative were approved by the House Education Committee on Wednesday.

“We’ve been waiting for something like this,” Boundary County superintendent Reid Strabbe said.

Strabbe said his district has been hoping for a summer program that would help kids at risk of dropping out. High-risk kids, he said, are the ones having trouble reading.

“The funds for something like that have always seemed like a pie in the sky, until now,” Strabbe said.

That’s because until now there hasn’t been a legislative plan for a statewide reading program.

“The trickiest part is over,” said Rep. Lee Gagner, R-Idaho Falls, a member of the reading committee that has been working for two years with PTAs, school board members and educators researching and writing proposals for what has become Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s top education priority.

Three of the bills - HB176, HB177 and HB178 - made it out of the committee with slight changes. The changes were the result of testimony given by educators and school board members over the past four days.

The fourth bill, HB179 - a plan to create six experimental preschools to teach preliteracy skills to 4-year-olds - was put off a year for further study.

The committee unanimously approved HB176, the cornerstone of the reading plan, which proposes a statewide reading assessment for grades K-3 at the beginning and end of each school year. “This bill says that Idaho is in agreement with what kids should know,” said Sen. Betsy Dunklin, D-Boise, a member of the reading committee. “Nothing in the program will work if teachers can’t identify the kids with problems.”

The other two bills, HB177 and HB178, met with more opposition.

HB177 would provide $3.1 million to establish a summer school program to reach the kids who scored low on the assessment. “This is the priciest item in the package, but it’s the most helpful for the kids who are behind,” said Dunklin.

Of the 72,000 Idaho kids enrolled in grades K-3, 18,000 of them could benefit from the summer program, Gagner said. Those 18,000 represent the 25 percent of Idaho’s kids who are currently reading below grade level.

Chairman Fred Tilman, R-Boise, said he had no problem with giving money to school districts, but thought the bill mandated what should be done with the funds.

“Let them go to work and decide how they’ll get reading where they want it to be,” he said. Tilman felt the same way about HB178.

That bill proposes that all Idaho elementary teachers and principals be educated in the latest research on teaching kids how to read. Teachers would have to take three credits of state-approved reading courses every five years, and new teachers would have to pass a test to prove they could use the new methods, which would mean some changes in university elementary education courses.

The cost for all that: $524,000 for in-service training, and an undetermined amount for universities to beef up their elementary education programs.

The committee approved both HB177 and HB178 on a 13-4 vote.

“The hard part is over,” said Gagner. Gagner is confident that the plan will make it through the House and the Senate, and “once it’s on the Governor’s desk, we’re home free.”