St. Aloysius's Students Excel In Reading This June marked the sixth year that St. Aloysius students have participated in the Reading First program, which has had an impressive impact on our children, their acquisition of core reading skills, and their performance on standardized assessments. Reading First is sponsored by the United States Department of Education, and it provides support to schools to infuse scientifically proven instructional and assessment tools into their classroom lessons, ensuring that all children learn to read well by the end of 3rd grade. Reading First has had a lasting impact on St. Aloysius teachers, giving them new methods and approaches to lesson planning and implementation. It also has had a strong effect on our students in kindergarten through 3rd grade, most notably on their performance on DIBELS, or Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, which are short, concise assessments that indicate progress in reading acquisition. A comparison of DIBELS results for St. Aloysius students over the last five years (see chart above) clearly shows how benchmark reading performance has steadily climbed since the inception of Reading First. In 2006, 56% of our students participating in the program met mastery on the DIBELS assessment. By the fourth year, this climbed to 74% of our students. This year, an impressive 84% of our children in kindergarten through 3rd grade demonstrated mastery on the assessment. In fact, many of our students did not solely demonstrate mastery — they surpassed benchmark reading levels by more than 100%. Furthermore, this year our students scored better than students at any of the 5 Catholic and 7 public schools in the area that participated in Reading First. These outcomes reflect the commitment that St. Aloysius faculty have for bringing the best educational opportunities to our students. Through Reading First, our children have gained the basic skills necessary for success at St. Aloysius, in high school and beyond.