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Only a few months into Rosie Leyva’s job as a literacy specialist at Butler Academic Center, Alameda County’s juvenile hall school, she learned that success looks different for each student.

One student could not write his name. Over three sessions, which turned out to be all the time they had together before he left the facility, they practiced reading and writing his first name, last name, date of birth, and address.

“I don’t know what’s to come for him, but at least I know he walked out with those skills,” said Leyva. For her, part of defining success includes “creating the possibility for them to believe that they can learn.”

Alameda County is one of three California counties that is rolling out a literacy intervention program a year after it was piloted in San Diego County. The other two counties are Riverside and San Mateo. The program is the state’s first coordinated effort to tackle the lowest reading levels among high school students in the juvenile justice system.

The range of literacy levels for students across California’s court schools is disparate, with some lacking foundational literacy skills and others taking college courses while detained. Until now, there has not been a coordinated effort to address their varied literacy needs, in part because counties independently determine the curriculum in juvenile facilities, which are locally controlled.

“This is the first literacy intervention program designed to support high school students that fall in the literacy range of zero to third grade. Most high school literacy interventions presume a fourth grade capacity,” said Michael M. Massa, chief of health policy for the Office of Youth and Community Restoration (OYCR), which oversees the juvenile justice system. “This effort was created so that all students can be appropriately supported.”

What is Alameda County up against?

Leyva was hired this year to lead the implementation of Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words, or SIPPS, which was developed by the nonprofit Collaborative Classroom and relies on evidence-based literacy practices.

She has worked as a literacy specialist for years across different academic settings, serving both students with disabilities and English learners. It’s a background that Jessica Goode, principal of the county’s court schools, called “magical” because it aligns with the facility’s student population, many of whom had Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) to support a disability or who might be literate in their native language but are still learning how to read in English.

The Alameda County Office of Education has long partnered with the county’s library, which has several staff members working inside the juvenile hall as literacy coaches and librarians. But there was no established program until now to address literacy gaps from the moment students entered the facility, especially among high school students with grade school reading skills.

While state standards exams provide an incomplete view of achievement for detained students, the data does reflect the lack of a program like SIPPS. None of the detained students in the 2022-23 school year met literacy standards, and just under 7% nearly met them, according to the most recently available test scores for Alameda County.

The last time any of their students exceeded literacy standards was in the 2014-15 school year, when only 2% exceeded. No other students met standards that year.

For these students, their struggles with literacy can make them feel vulnerable, Leyva said, which means teaching them requires building trust. On top of that, many are experiencing a great degree of uncertainty as their case moves through the juvenile court system.

What does this literacy intervention program look like?

Under the new program, students arriving at Butler Academic Center this school year are taking a literacy diagnostic exam as part of the orientation and assessment process.

The diagnosis takes just a few minutes and requires students to read a few lists of words. How far students can read on these lists and how many of the increasingly difficult lists they can read determines whether a student might need either one-on-one or group literacy intervention sessions with Leyva. If they are at or near grade level in reading, they receive reading support from the facility’s library staff.

Of 36 high school students currently enrolled, about five are working one-on-one with Leyva. While she typically works with 15- to 17-year-olds, her youngest student at the moment is 13 years old, and the oldest is 18.

A student with a higher need for literacy intervention might meet one-on-one with Leyva multiple times per week, leaving another class during the school day. But Goode noted that since the school has a rotating block schedule, it avoids taking students out of the same class each time, which would risk them falling behind in that class.

Why this program and these counties?

The SIPPS program was chosen for its focus on older readers with very low literacy skills, according to OYCR.

Leyva said that an age-appropriate program is critical to building trust with students.

Even when a high school student is reading at a kindergarten level, the decodable texts in the program they use need to remain relevant to their age group, she added. Otherwise, Leyva said the risk is having a student who might reject the lesson and shut down because they feel disrespected.

It’s too soon to say whether this intervention effort will be a success in Alameda County, but the pilot in San Diego County appears promising.

During a 30-day period last year, the literacy skills of 107 students in San Diego County’s Youth Transition Campus, a juvenile detention facility, were assessed, and 24 were placed into the SIPPS intervention program.

As reported by OYCR, students’ literacy was assessed every five lessons, and all showed “measurable literacy growth.” During the month in which the pilot was active, three students who were released and then returned to the Youth Transition Campus were able to reintegrate into the literacy program. Transitions in and out of juvenile detention can be disruptive to students’ education access, making it critical to build in the capacity to reintegrate students as quickly as possible into programming if they are detained again.

OYCR also noted that 14 of the 24 students had disabilities and 10 were English learners. Across the juvenile justice system, there are generally high rates of both student populations, making it critical for any instructional program to incorporate lessons specific to their needs.

Capacity to train staff was just one of the factors OYCR considered when choosing counties to implement SIPPS. Another was existing partnerships among stakeholders in any juvenile detention facility, the education department, probation staff and community organizations.

As Goode, Leyva and other education staff continue to implement the program, the challenge is to improve test scores as students shuffle through juvenile detention. For a student in such a setting, a key factor is often whether they will be able to return to school upon release and avoid a cycle of incarceration as they age.

“If a student has come here, they’re in an emergency situation, not just because of the charges but because they haven’t been in school for years or haven’t been in school for a semester,” said Goode. “If we do our job well, and we can reengage students with school, what we know is that the further along we’re able to get them, the lower the recidivism rate.”

This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter