The Future of Education

The purpose of this paper is to explore the plausibility of providing rural schools in Colorado with synchronous online structured literacy instruction for struggling readers and professional development opportunities to teachers. Colorado Read Act reports indicate schools are identifying students with a significant reading deficiency and call for, “intensive support.” (p 8).  However, Colorado Statewide testing results indicate the literacy scores of third and fourth grade students are not improving as anticipated with the enactment of The Colorado Read Act; Therefore, current intervention practices are in need of being  reevaluated. Providing rural districts with highly qualified Literacy Specialists utilizing synchronous reading intervention is a viable, efficient option which would allow the Specialist to consistently provide intensive reading intervention and professional development to teachers while covering a large geographical region.
The proposed study follows a qualitative mixed methods research approach, involving the use of examination of synchronous online reading intervention programs. A case study involving three groups of students using Take Flight as an intensive online tutoring intervention. One student is a 10 year old male, attends a traditional school, and lives in a remote area of Canada. The other student is a 10 year old female, is homeschooled, and lives in a remote area of California. Both will be tutored a minimum of four days a week. The third group includes a boy and girl homeschooled in Northern Colorado. They are related and are 8 and 9 years old. All participating students began reading intervention unable to read independently.

Keywords: Online Synchronous Reading Intervention.

References:
[1] Colorado Department of Education. (2018).www.cde.state.co.us.
2018 Annual report on the Colorado Read Act. Retrieved from
https://www.cde.state.co.us/coloradoliteracy/coloradoreadactreport
[2] Colorado Department of Education. (2018).www.cde.state.co.us.
2018 CMAS English Language Arts/Literacy and Mathematics State Achievement Results. Retrieved from https://www.cde.state.co.us/assessment/2018_cmas_ela_math_state_summary_achievement_results
[3] Sundeen, T. H., & Sundeen, D. M. (2013). Instructional technology for rural schools: Access and acquisition. Rural Special Education Quarterly, 32(2), 8-14.