Southeast Missouri State opens literacy training center

Southeast Missouri State University has opened a Reading Recovery training center in conjunction with the Missouri Statewide Early Literacy Intervention Program, school officials announced Wednesday.

The center is one of just 23 Reading Recovery training centers in the nation.

The announcement, made at a campus luncheon, culminates a rigorous application process that began in February 2001.

As a result, Reading Recovery teacher leaders in Missouri no longer will have to travel to Arkansas or Kansas for training, Southeast officials said.

Reading Recovery involves one-on-one tutoring for first-graders having trouble learning to read and write. Individual students receive half-hour lessons each school day for 12 to 20 weeks with a trained teacher.

Nearly 80 percent of students who complete the full series of lessons can read and write as well as the average student in their class, Southeast officials said.

Gayla Kolb, who finished her training as a Reading Recovery trainer in Texas in May, will serve as the Reading Recovery trainer and director of Southeast's new training center.

During the initial year of the training center, six new Reading Recovery teacher leaders will be trained and more than 20 current teacher leaders will receive professional development services, said Jeanine Larson Dobbins, director of the Missouri Statewide Early Literacy Intervention Program.

"The legislators wanted our teacher leaders to receive this education in the state of Missouri instead of having to travel out of state," Dobbins said. "They now will be able to do that."

Missouri's literacy intervention program, which includes the Reading Recovery component, has worked to improve the reading and writing skills of more than 116,000 students in kindergarten through third grade, Dobbins said.

Over the past nine years, the state has provided more than $4 million to fund the literacy intervention program. The state appropriation cost per child served over those years is about $36, Dobbins said.

The student success rate is 77 percent, she said.

"The program continues to get a lot of bang for its buck," said Dobbins. "It has had wonderful results."