The Sacramento Bee – Diana Lambert
“Jennifer Sandfort devotes nearly two hours each morning to English instruction in her third-grade class at Empire Oaks Elementary School, ranging from interactive lessons to free reading time. She moves swiftly through lessons and assignments in an orderly manner at the Folsom school, but sometimes feels like she can’t get to everything she wants each day. “We have so much to cover and so much to teach the kids,” she said. While students focus on reading and writing the minute they set foot in kindergarten, the stakes are particularly high in third grade. Three decades of research have shown that students who can’t read at grade level by that point are more likely to drop out of high school than their reading-proficient peers. In impoverished communities, students have an even slimmer chance of catching up. Local teachers are redoubling their efforts after a new statewide test administered last year showed that 60 percent of third-graders in the Sacramento region performed below the state standard in English. The region includes Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer and Yolo counties.”(more)