New reading effort targets pre-school, primary grades

To get a head start preparing young children to read, and ultimately be successful in school, CPS is expanding its reading initiative to include pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and 1st-grade.

The move stems from an analysis of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills that showed younger students were coming to school with limited literacy skills. "In the primary grades, we found that word knowledge is a deficiency, so we want to make literacy a larger part of our younger children's time," says Albert Bertani, chief officer of professional development.

The district's efforts to improve early childhood literacy skills will focus on teacher professional development, cross-training of …