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Readers turn a page.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard

It's as if a gigantic light bulb switched on over River Road/El Camino del Rio Elementary School.

After years of lackluster results on state reading exams, scores soared this spring, with close to 90 percent of fourth- and fifth-graders and a remarkable 94 percent of third-graders meeting benchmarks.

While the performance probably will place River Road only in the middle of the pack for Eugene's perennially above-average elementary schools, it signals an impressive turnaround for a school where one year ago just two in three students read well enough to pass the standardized test.

"It's just so amazing to see kids succeeding like this," said Principal Paco Furlan, now in his second year at River Road, which serves the highest percentage of poor and minority children of any district school.

But the about-face was hardly happenstance. All year, staff and students have immersed themselves in reading, embracing a multipronged approach aimed at reversing a stubborn trend.

No one's sure which particular strategy may have paid off the most, although a few have pet theories.

Second-grade teacher Leah Roderick, for instance, raves about the new Houghton Mifflin reading curriculum, which the school was able to adopt...

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