Iowa summer reading programs go from ‘must do’ to ‘may do’

NORTH LIBERTY - When 7-year-old Hallie Nolte was struggling to read last year, she enrolled in a summer reading enrichment program offered by the Clear Creek Amana School District.

'It really did help her catch up,” said Christen Nolte, Hallie's mother. 'She's actually to the point where she can read chapter books now.”

The program that helped improve Hallie's reading skills won't be offered this summer by the Clear Creek Amana district, which covers parts of Iowa and Johnson counties.

For Nolte, a single mother attending the University of Iowa part time, paying for a tutor for Hallie this summer isn't an option. Instead, Nolte said she'll try to maintain her daughter's skills by reading with Hallie herself.

'I'm hoping she doesn't fall behind,” Nolte said.

Summer reading programs in Iowa have been a topic of interest since 2012, when legislators adopted an early literacy bill.

The law included an initiative to implement a summer reading program for third-graders who weren't meeting reading standards, as well as a requirement that those struggling readers be held back or required to attend summer school.

Earlier this month, lawmakers scrapped the summer program and the retention requirement, both of which had been delayed until 2018.

Some lawmakers argued the program amounted to an unfunded mandate the state Legislature put on school districts.

Most Corridor school districts' summer school programs are continuing as usual, according to representatives from the Mount Vernon, College Community, Linn-Mar, Solon, Iowa City and Cedar Rapids school districts.

Many summer education programs - including the Kids on Course program offered by the Zach Johnson Foundation in cooperation with the Cedar Rapids Community School District - are funded by nonprofits or private donors.

Clear Creek Amana's math and reading enrichment program cost between $10,000 and $12,000, said Lori Robertson, the district's director of financial services. Early literacy money from the state paid for most of the reading instruction, she said.

Funding levels from the state were 'certainly a factor” in deciding to cut the program, said Superintendent Tim Kuehl, though student attendance, staff recruitment and lackluster score increases also were factors.

'As we looked at our achievement data, kids weren't declining as badly in summer school, but we weren't seeing great growth,” Kuehl said. 'If we're not getting results, what are we doing it for?”

Only about 25 percent of kindergarten through fifth-grade students invited to the school district's enrichment program showed improvement, Kuehl said.

Few students in the state's pilot program, which targeted third-grade students in about 120 schools, improved their reading last summer.

But many warded off 'summer slide,” a common loss of skills during the summer break from school, according to an Iowa Reading Research Center report.

The center's Research Director Deborah Reed said that while the state is no longer mandating summer reading programs, data from the pilot program is informing many districts' individual summer schools.

'My understanding is that the summer reading program will now just be encouraged rather than required,” Reed said. 'So it's changing from a ‘must do' to a ‘may do.' It's not that they're going away entirely.”

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