The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) wants at least 70 percent of third grade students to read at grade level by the beginning of the 2027 academic year. Three years ago, just 52 percent of third graders achieved grade level reading proficiency, in part because of housing insecurity, homelessness, and school closures prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
SFUSD measures student literacy through numerous tests, including the Star Assessments in reading, devised by Renaissance, a Wisconsin-based company, as well as Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments in English Language Arts/Literacy and mathematics.
In addition to core classes, there are a host of supplemental offerings to help students perfect their reading skills. These include instructional coaches, writing workshops offered by nonprofits, and afterschool programs.
Last year, 826 Valencia worked with Starr King Elementary School students to advance writing skills. The nonprofit will continue its intervention at Sarr King during the upcoming academic year.
“In the 2024-2025 school year, our staff and volunteers came to Starr King Elementary School to hold 45-minute creative writing sessions in three third and fourth grade classes. We came every Monday morning,” said Misha Villatuya, 826 Valencia programs director. “Kids (wrote) everything from opinion pieces to informational research projects to scary stories told as narratives. We called the last ones ‘scarratives.’ When our organization came to a class, the regular teacher remained in the room. We also had a staff member for our organization in the room, as well as one or more 826 Valencia staff members or volunteers. At times, there were over 10 adults in a room with 30 students. This helped students get really individualized attention and the positive feedback they needed to succeed at reading and writing projects.”
During visits, Villatuya observed students struggle with basic reading abilities, such as sounding out words and understanding compound sentences.
“The individual support with a trained staff member or volunteer is what helped move the needle the most. The end of third grade is a critical point,” said Villatuya.
San Francisco Public Library’s free reading intervention program also offers support for struggling first to fourth grade readers. Orton-Gillingham (FOG) Readers consists of one-on-one tutoring in which trained volunteers aged 15 or older help younger students “catch up” on decoding, focusing on letters and sounds.
The library launched FOG Readers in 2018 and now has 175 “work-pairs” of tutors and students, evenly distributed by grade level, meeting at libraries – including the Potrero branch – and online. Tutors provide reports, documenting student achievement on FOG Readers benchmarks, like spelling accuracy, every three months.
Alina Ferguson