[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 16071]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1020
                  HONORING SPRINGFIELD LITERACY CENTER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Meehan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge the Springfield 
Literacy Center, which is an innovative district-wide initiative in 
Springfield Township, Delaware County School System in the Seventh 
District of Pennsylvania, which I have the privilege to represent.
  Like so many of my colleagues, when we have our district work week, 
it gives us the chance to go back and really spend some quality time 
engaging with a number of the groups. While the principal focus of my 
work weeks is to go back and work on the issue of jobs and the creation 
of opportunities, particularly with small businesses, one of the issues 
that many of them will talk to me about is the unpreparedness of many 
of our graduates to be able to take on the jobs, particularly the jobs 
in the expanding global economy which we face.
  One of the issues is the ability to do fundamental things. I visited 
this literacy center last week because it's setting the standard for 
educational excellence in the 21st century. It's a community-wide focus 
on the issue of the fundamental of reading, and it started with the 
superintendent on down and every teacher in the school district focused 
on having the ability for every child being able to read.
  This particular literacy center brings their entire second grade 
class from the full district together to learn. While it's an 
architecturally impressive area which supports the learning concept, 
it's really the individualized attention that's given to each and every 
student, identifying where they are in the process and, if necessary, 
going down and even to an individual basis to help them stay current 
with their class.
  The literacy center is the foundation of Springfield Township's 
literacy first initiative, which aims to ensure that every child leaves 
elementary school reading at grade level. Let me repeat that: every 
child leaves elementary school reading at grade level. The center's 
teachers accomplish this by designing an individual literacy curriculum 
designed for each student. Lessons often use creative techniques, and 
the settings are tailored to individual students' learning styles. The 
key thing here is that students do not fall behind and they are 
prepared as they move into later education to stay with the rest of 
their class.
  With these innovative techniques and through the hard work of the 
literacy center's teachers, students and families after only 5 years of 
operation, 99 percent of its students were reading at grade level. Let 
me repeat that again: 99 percent of its students were reading at grade 
level.
  Mr. Speaker, I commend the Springfield Literacy Center and its staff 
for all that they do in making a difference in the lives of their 
students and their communities. But I suggest to you that this is the 
kind of model that we should be replicating so that all American 
students will be prepared to have the fundamental of reading be a 
central part of their ability to be prepared to compete in the global 
economy.

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