SRC! Success at Adairsville Middle School, Adairsville, Georgia

Adairsville Middle School began using SRC! schoolwide nine years ago. Tommy Tatum, media specialist, relates that the media center circulation soared upon implementation of the program. He says, “Students will never learn to love reading if they never have books in their hands!"

Tommy also says, “Our school could be a model school for using SRC! to improve scores—seriously!" For the past two years, Adairsville has met AYP and are no longer designated as "failing." Over the past three years, reading scores on Georgia’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT) have skyrocketed— from 80% to 94% for 6^th grade, 79% to 86% for 7^th grade, and an incredible 70% to 91% for 8th grade. Reading scores show more improvement than any other discipline. This is in large part due to Adairsville’s program, "Reading Tigers," which incorporates SRI/SRC! and Lexiles into the grading process.

Students are tested using Scholastic Reading Inventory at the end of each semester, and at the beginning of the year for 6th grade. Then students are required to read and pass SRC! quizzes on at least three books in their Lexile range every nine weeks. This is a requirement for students’ English/Language Arts grade. Last year, students read and passed SRC! quizzes on a total of 10,461 books, averaging 15.3 books per student—well above the requirement. For the students that meet or exceed their grade’s Lexile level (last year this was 394 out of 689 students), they are rewarded with a dance at the end of each semester. Students who may be below the targeted grade level Lexile, but who meet their goal for improvement for the semester, are also allowed to attend the dance.

Adairsville loves using SRC! because of its flexibility—quiz questions are drawn from a pool of 30, so that a student may take a quiz more than once and each time it is a little different. Adairsville allows a student to take a quiz up to three times, and if the student still doesn’t pass, he or she is encouraged to read the book again and retake the quiz.

Tommy shares that, "With this requirement, many more students check out books and learn to enjoy reading than otherwise would."

Parents, administrators, central office staff, and other schools have been impressed with the improvement evident in Adairsville Middle School’s data, and are looking at the "Reading Tigers" program as a model. Tommy, along with the school’s teachers, will be presenting their program at this year's Georgia Children's Literature Conference in February.

It looks like the "Reading Tigers" program is a great model!