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Grant allows focus on reading skills By JOHN DARLING ASHLAND - Thanks to a new federal grant, Southern Oregon University's teacher training program will be taking reading a lot more seriously - and using Internet and video technology to pass on skills to students. Using the $593,899 grant, Southern Oregon University will help develop a statewide program to train teachers - both reading teachers and regular classroom teachers - working in grades K-12. The three-year grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education will pay for a collaboration between six public universities to create a dozen new three-credit courses and 30 single-credit courses. The classes may be available starting next summer in classrooms, on the Internet or as video courses, said SOU Associate Dean of Education Geoffrey Mills. "It's a high priority to strengthen reading in public schools," he said. "Forty-three percent of low literacy children live in poverty, 70 percent of the prison population is in the lowest two levels of literacy, and reading problems are emerging as a big factor in students having problems with math and science." The grant also will fund a new Classroom Literacy Competency Certificate for classroom teachers, and it will help redesign the endorsement reading specialists earn, said Holly Zanville, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs of the Oregon University System. She will manage the project. Representatives from Southern, Eastern and Western Oregon universities, Oregon State, Portland State and University of Oregon meet Oct. 12 in Salem to select a team and map out the project, called The Oregon Reading Education and Distance Education, or TO READE, Project. Oregon has a shortage of reading specialists and TO READE, while it will target public schools reading below the state average, will be used across the board to help students at all skill levels, Zanville said. SOU will develop some of the classes. Most, whether developed at SOU or on other campuses, will be available to all teachers and teachers-in-training via the Internet or live video link, said Zanville. The grant includes tuition assistance and substitute teacher costs for 50 to 75 teachers. John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at [email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.