About one in every four Rhode Island students reads below grade level. In several urban districts, the problem is far worse — about half of their students struggle with reading.

Recognizing that far too many students are failing to master this essential skill, the state continues to expand “personal literacy plans,” specific interventions geared toward each student who needs extra reading support. A law mandating personal literacy plans for struggling readers in kindergarten through grade 3 passed in 2002 and went into effect in 2004, when it was also extended to grades 4 and 5.

The state Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, acknowledging that many older students also have weak reading skills, required literacy plans for middle school and high school students who read at least three grade levels behind, and has been phasing these grades in over the past few years. High school juniors were added to the program this fall, and seniors will be added next fall.

By 2011, all students reading below grade level will be required to have a literacy plan.

Addressing reading problems early and intensively is critical, educators say.

“Reading is the foundational skill, and you have to be able to read instructions in math, in a science kit, in everything,” said Todd Flaherty, deputy commissioner of education. “Reading is the gateway to everything.”

Deficient reading skills lead to other problems, including student frustration and behavior issues and a higher dropout rate, Flaherty said. Rhode Island’s reading problems are also reflected in the state’s middle-of-the-pack results in national reading tests and the most recent round of statewide testing, results of which were released last week. Statewide, 62 percent of elementary and middle school students scored proficient in reading — a 3-percentage-point gain over last year, but considerably lower than educators and state leaders want. According to the federal education law No Child Left Behind, all students must be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

“We are in a time of raising standards,” said Flaherty, “and it’s the right goal, but we have kids who have no shot at those standards because they can’t read.”

Because the literacy plans are only a few years old, it is difficult to assess how helpful they have been in reducing the large number of students reading behind their peers. About $13 million in state aid flowed to schools last year for literacy aid, enabling districts to hire additional reading teachers and literacy coaches, offer special training to faculty and buy reading materials. School districts have been given wide latitude in how they fashion the literacy plans and offer reading help.” The PLPs are going to be as good as the programs that are developed to support what is in them,” Flaherty said. “If the school doesn’t have the ability or the expertise, it’s just words on a piece of paper.”

IN 2005-06, 37,671 — or 28.7 percent — of the 131,071 students in grades K-10 statewide read below grade level, according to state data. (Only a handful of districts have identified 11th and 12th graders who read below grade level – just over 700 students)

Most of the students – 30,466 – had personal literacy plans. The remaining students were eligible for other forms of reading assistance, said Diane Girard, a specialist at the state Education Department.

In some districts, the reading problem is severe. Providence had more students in kindergarten through grade 10 reading below grade level — 53.5 percent — than at or above grade level last year. In Woonsocket and Pawtucket, 46.7 percent of students were reading below grade level.

Providence, Woonsocket and Pawtucket have high concentrations of low-income students and English-language learners. Studies have shown that those groups often need more time to acquire reading skills because they come to school with less exposure to books and vocabulary than some of their classmates. Roughly 60 percent of Providence’s students are classified as English-language learners; Central Falls, Pawtucket and Woonsocket also have high numbers of students who speak a language other than English at home.

Numbers from the Rhode Island Department of Education reveal that many districts see a spike in the number of struggling readers in middle school.

Woonsocket had 74 sixth graders at or above grade level last year, compared with 397 reading below grade level. Just 156 of those students had personal literacy plans.

Providence had twice the number of seventh graders below grade level than at or above — 1,146 compared with 605. Other districts had a close split between the number of students with weak or good reading skills. West Warwick had 170 sixth graders below grade level last year, compared with 138 at or above grade level. In Pawtucket, 371 fifth graders read below grade level, compared with 334 at or above the standard. In East Providence, 244 seventh graders read below grade level, compared with 223 at or above grade level.

The middle school numbers, while troubling, do not surprise Andres Henriquez, a literacy specialist at the Carnegie Foundation, in New York City, which studies adolescent literacy issues across the country.

“Nationally, we are seeing 70 percent of entering seventh graders two to three grade levels behind in reading,” Henriquez said. “We have for many years supported younger children reading, but reading for deeper comprehension is a complex skill set, and we have a dearth of research on what older kids need to learn how to read.”

Some middle school and high school teachers are trained in their subject area, but either feel insecure about their ability to integrate literacy into their classes or have no desire to do so.” Biology teachers want to focus on biology, and they say they don’t want to be reading teachers,” Henriquez said. “But we need to find a way to embed literacy throughout the content areas.”

Deputy Commissioner Flaherty agrees, and said teachers should receive more training in reading. The state requires secondary teachers to take one reading class for certification.

Middle and high school teachers also need to find new ways to engage their students, said Roger G. Eldridge, interim director of graduate programs at Rhode Island College’s School of Education.

“I think a lot of what goes on in middle and high schools has to do with interest and motivation, not the ability or inability to read,” Eldridge said. “Some teachers don’t provide enough background information to interest their students in the materials. I was forced to read Ivanhoe in the ninth grade and I hated it. I knew nothing about the Crusades. I still get the shudders when I see the book.”

PERSONAL LITERACY PLANS are designed to target the area of reading a particular student is struggling with: vocabulary, phonics, comprehension, fluency or phonemic awareness, which focuses on sound and rhyming.

Under a literacy plan, a student’s skills are assessed and a record is kept of strategies, successes and failures. The plan is intended to follow the student as long as he or she remains below grade level, so a future teacher will have a clear picture of the student’s progress. Some districts, such as Cranston, North Kingstown and Bristol-Warren, have gone so far as to put the literacy plans into a computer data base, making it easier for teachers to access them.

“What we will be doing over time is hopefully see a reduction in the number of kids reading off grade level,” said Flaherty. “[Personal literacy plans] have the potential to do what we want, which is to interrupt the practice of passing kids on through grade levels when they really can’t read.”

Officials also expect literacy plans to lower the number of students referred to special education. A 2002 report commissioned by the General Assembly found that many students were funneled into special education mainly because they needed extra help learning to read and did not receive enough support. If these students received help early enough, the Sherlock Report found, many of them would not end up in high-priced special education classes.

An October evaluation of special education in Providence, which was done by New Hampshire-based consultants, Center for Resource Management, found the problem persists five years after the issuance of the Sherlock Report.

About a third of the students with personal literacy plans last year were in special education.

The Education Department requires districts to submit a report outlining their literacy strategies each year, but schools decide how they provide reading help, including building in extra reading time throughout the school day, offering after-school tutoring or requiring summer school. The department, Girard said, is starting to gather information on what strategies work best.

Because the literacy-plan program is just three years old, and districts are still figuring out how to report the progress of students, education officials say they do not yet have a complete picture of how effective the plans are.

But it is clear that some districts are struggling.

A December evaluation of Providence’s reading program by the same New Hampshire-based consultants found that “too many students are not making sufficient progress in developing essential reading skills” and that the problem grew more severe as students moved through the grades. One problem identified was lax monitoring of the progress of students with personal literacy plans.

More students read below grade level in nearly every grade from 2 through 10 last year than read at or above grade level. The report outlined several reasons why more students are not being taught to read. Among the most glaring were: a lack of expertise among teachers in reading; “insufficient numbers of students” receiving interventions; teachers who “resisted coaching” from reading specialists, and principals who cannot assess the effectiveness of their reading teachers. Gary Moroch, executive director of Providence’s elementary schools, said it takes “an enormous amount of professional training” to turn classroom teachers into reading specialists. But that is precisely what is required, particularly in urban schools with a high concentration of English-language learners, Moroch said.

“We have not, as a district, begun to realize what our specialized population of English-language learners needs to become successful learners, and we are aggressively pursuing that,” Moroch said.

jjordan@projo.com