Knowledge foundation turns focus to Central Va.

By Rachana Dixit

Published: December 1, 2008

The Charlottesville-based Core Knowledge Foundation, a nonpartisan educational reform organization, is turning its attention to its own backyard.

“We’re missing the boat in the state of Virginia,” said Matthew Davis, the foundation’s reading program director.

After receiving national attention for its other programs, Core Knowledge, founded in 1986, is trying to stir up interest in the Charlottesville area for its new early childhood reading curriculum. The foundation says that the key to the program — designed for kindergarten through second grade — is having a systematic approach and providing sequenced information to give context, so students are not just reading words but understanding their meanings.

“These skills don’t work unless you have the context,” Davis said.

Various curricula crafted by the foundation are being used in more than 1,000 schools across the country, and Albemarle County’s Cale Elementary School has incorporated some Core Knowledge materials in the past. Richmond schools have begun to show interest in the reading component, Davis said, but apart from that, the closest area using the pilot is in North Carolina.

“We would love to pilot something locally,” said Linda Bevilacqua, Core Knowledge’s president.

Though Core Knowledge has faced obstacles in its efforts to compete with larger publishers both nationally and in Central Virginia, area public school divisions say they would not rule out using some of the organization’s materials in the future and are open to fresh ideas for instruction. Charlottesville and Albemarle school officials say, however, that they have not heard from the foundation.

The Albemarle school division has been forming its own curriculum for the past two years.

“Albemarle County is not afraid to try new things,” said Brian Wheeler, chairman of the county School Board. The county has also adopted a different curriculum for the newly opened Community Public Charter School, housed at Burley Middle School.

“That was an opportunity that came to us that we embraced,” Wheeler said.

Bevilacqua said the foundation’s teaching strategies are language focused, largely because there is an age disconnect between oral and reading comprehension.

“You can’t immerse kids in language in the abstract,” she said.

Both the county and Charlottesville’s public school divisions base their elementary reading curricula on a range of materials and sources, supplementing what the Virginia Department of Education requires for its Standards of Learning.

“There is no one best way to teach reading,” said Gertrude Ivory, associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction for city schools.

Debora Collins, Albemarle schools’ director of elementary education, echoed that opinion.

“We’ve found over the years that no one program meets all our learners’ needs,” she said.

The city’s schools use a framework that focuses on five areas in developing reading skills — including phonics and vocabulary — but they don’t focus only on reading comprehension.

“Our emphasis has been on training teachers,” she said.

The city last adjusted its reading curriculum in 2003 and Ivory said it would be reviewed again in 2011. Albemarle reviewed its curriculum last year. Both divisions preach a similar mantra to that held by Core Knowledge — understanding the words is at least as important as being able to read them — and Collins said the foundation likely influenced Virginia’s learning standards in emphasizing this notion.

“It’s about kids learning to read at early ages, and then as they get more sophisticated in their learning development, they begin to learn,” Collins said, adding that an understanding shift typically occurs around the second grade. “You kind of work on it all together.”

And while students learn at varying paces, Bevilacqua said reading rooted in solid content knowledge is needed early and often.

“That is very true of all children,” she said.