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America’s reading scores are decreasing dramatically.

U.S. News recently reported that reading scores have dropped among fourth-graders in 17 states and eighth graders in 31 states. However, Bellwood-Antis is bucking the trend and there are several factors in its consistently solid reading scores. U.S. News reported at Bellwood, students tested 70% proficient or advanced.  

“Bellwood continues to do a great job of preparing students for the PSSA’s, SAT’s, ACT’s because our curriculum is aligned through the secondary level,” said middle school English teacher Mr. Tom Partner. “We have separate reading teachers in the middle school who can target specific reading strategies. Overall, students are applying these strategies over other content areas.” 

Mr. Partner also noted that B-A provides students with high interest books to read, so that they enjoy their time reading and, for some, hopefully, realize that reading is fun.

Along with encouraging pleasure reading teachers at Bellwood felt several other factors influenced the scores. 

Seventh grade reading teacher Mrs. Susan Nycum said, “The students and teachers at Bellwood work hard to cover the necessary materials.” 

However, there are still issues B-A has got to address.U.S. News reported Bellwood’s testing as 23% basic, 67% proficient, and 3% advanced. This is because, noted high school principal Mr. Richard Schreier, the small class sizes at B-A means that even a a couple students in the basic range can adversely affect the overall average. B-A normally graduates 100 or fewer students.

“The challenge for us now is advancing good students to the advanced range and getting students who are scoring basic into the proficient range,” said high School English chair Mr. Kerry Naylor. “Our philosophy at B-A is refreshing because we try to do all of this without turning students into test-takers. Instead, we want to encourage them to be real-world readers.”

Focus and dedication to school reading and writing can increase your scores tremendously. There are several different classes that students read in,  including history, English, and other non core classes. 

Fourth grade reading teachers say we have to do more than teach comprehension skills. Students need to relate to topics using background knowledge and vocabulary. This comes with aligning curriculum so students can make sense of what they are learning and the repetition of concepts helps students retain information. 

When students read on screens they start strong reading each word closely and thoroughly, but when they get further along to the third or fourth line they start to skim through and not focus on each word as much as they could.  

Mr. Hansard, a fourth grade teacher, said “Our ELA scores are higher at Bellwood than the state average. I think the reasons for this include early intervention and our balanced approach to literacy, including extensive writing instruction.” 

This comes from aligning curriculum so students can make sense of what they are learning, and the repetition of concepts helps students retain information.

The strong performance continues into other tested areas , as well. On the AP LIT test 12% students tested advanced, 65.2 tested proficient, 16.3 tested basic, and 6.5 tested below basic. On the SAT, B-A students average nearly 1100.

“I think at Bellwood our scores are so high because the students come in with great background knowledge. The parents really support education, and kids reading earlier gets them more engaged and well known to the school learning environment,” said Mr. Schreier. “The teachers at Bellwood really focus on the aligned curriculum and the necessary reading skills to advance students in the future.”