Kanawha school official provides update on elementary reading report

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A Kanawha County Schools official says there needs to be additional training for elementary level teachers who are working to improve reading scores for students.

KCS Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Schools Mellow Lee recently presented an elementary education report to members of the Kanawha County Board of Education which highlighted challenges inside the classroom.

Lee said part of the problem is that there aren’t enough certified teachers.

“We have a lot of teachers that are teaching different grades and we have the issue where we have teachers that might be teaching students that miss the foundational skills that they needed from the early grades,” she said.

The school district is currently using the comprehensive literacy program called Literacy Footprints, which has helped but Lee said there are still concerns.

“One problem that we have is that we need to make sure that we’re looking at reading instruction and that we’re following guidelines and that we’re also looking at new techniques,” she said.

Training needs to focus on how to teach reading, Lee said.

“If I would’ve been a fourth grade teacher and I would’ve had kids come to me that missed the foundational skills, I would’ve struggled as a teacher not knowing how to necessarily teach those foundational skills of phonics for students that missed that,” she said.

Lee added there needs to “intense intervention” in order to keep a student from falling behind.

“We wanted to take the time to look at that first,” she said of the report.

West Virginia’s results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress were well below the national average and amounted to the state’s lowest performance ever for the 2020-2021 academic year. Those scores lagged behind numbers from before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kanawha County Schools is scheduled to return from winter break on Wednesday.