Reading Coaches Benefit Teacher Success In Florida High Schools

April 7, 2005

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — As standardized tests show that many high school students lack crucial reading skills, a University of Florida study finds that hiring reading coaches for their teachers may actually help the students in the long run.

The use of reading coaches as models for classroom teachers to follow is common in elementary schools, but it also helps at the high school level, according to the study conducted by Evan Brian Lefsky, a doctoral student in education.

“The role of the reading coach is truly as a professional development tool for teachers,” he said. “They do not have direct contact with students other than in the context of modeling or coaching in a teacher’s classroom.”
Lefsky’s study was conducted with 243 teachers in six central Florida high schools during the 2003-04 school year.

Lefsky said although reading coaches don’t work directly with the students, their impact can reach every student because of their emphasis on improving teaching skills. Lefsky said the study will continue during the 2004-05 school year to measure that effect.

The use of reading coaches at the high school level is a relatively new but necessary practice, because many high school teachers are unprepared to meet their students’ reading needs, Lefsky said.

“Most high school teachers did not receive any specialized training in reading instruction as part of their undergraduate or graduate coursework,” he said. “The reading coach serving as a mentor and model for teachers is a remedy for this situation.”

Lefsky said teachers at the high school level usually have been trained in the subjects they teach but lack training in how to teach reading skills.
“Coaches also assist teachers with assessment of students’ reading difficulties and help teachers interpret the assessment results to differentiate instruction for students,” Lefsky said.

Conventional wisdom once held that if a student was a struggling reader in high school,
it was too late for him or her to improve those skills. But Lefsky’s study shows that’s not the case. “Many students who are performing adequately in the early grades lose some of that momentum as they move into middle and high school where the reading tasks become more challenging and cognitively complex,” Lefsky said. “There is now an understanding that reading instruction must continue through high school in order to meet those challenges.”

Many schools target the efforts of the reading coach on teachers who serve students performing below grade level on the state assessment tests, Lefsky said.

The process works like this: Coaches present reading strategies and science-based reading research to the faculty, model new strategies and then show teachers how to use them in the classroom.

The coaching process involves a pre-coaching conference, coaching observation and a post-conference where coaches and teachers discuss the new strategy and instructional changes that will take place when it is used.

In his study, Lefsky tested four coaching strategies: coaching and modeling; interacting with teachers through informal conferencing; offering suggestions for practice; and providing materials for classroom use. After the coaching process, teachers were evaluated using six measures: instructional practices, minutes of assigned reading, teacher confidence, general reading knowledge, importance and impact of the coach, and understanding the coach’s role.

“Using the regression model, I was able to determine the significance of the relationship between each coaching activity and the six outcome variables, Lefsky said. “Coaching and modeling contributed more to teacher outcomes than offering suggestions and providing materials.”

Richard Allington, a professor of education at the University of Tennessee and president-elect of the International Reading Association, said Lefsky’s research demonstrated that reading coaches can perform a valuable role in high schools.

“Given a coach with expertise in teaching adolescent readers, a reasonable number of teachers to work with, and the time to provide in-class coaching and other forms of support, coaches can help create a high school learning environment where struggling readers can grow their reading skills and acquire the subject matter knowledge we want all students to have,” Allington said.