Despite the fact that many Reidland students are considered at-risk due to low socio-economic status, and they generally do not have books at home or parents who are readers, the reading culture is strong at this high school. Kirk says Accelerated Reader has played a huge role in building and maintaining the appetite for books.

“Without AR, I would have a much harder time getting students to read,” said Kirk. “Not only are they learning to read more voraciously, but they’re learning to love reading. They’re also getting the valuable chance to experience things through books that they may not experience in life.”

Reidland High School started using Accelerated Reader around 2001, because their block schedule was not allowing time for reading during class and students were not picking up books on their own. In 2002, only 2,803 books were checked out for the entire school year. In 2011, 8,113 books were checked out—and the average age of the collection has improved drastically as well. “I’d say the necessary ingredients for success are STAR Reading, AR, lots of variety in books, and TIME to read at school. I can't harp on that enough!” Kirk said. “If we didn’t use AR, I’m afraid that dedicated time would be taken away and reading would suffer.”

Kirk, who reads 100 young adult books each year and views it her role to connect students with stories they will love, says the program’s element of reading choice is also critical. Reidland students know Kirk will try to buy the books they ask for, and their active engagement in the process gives them ownership and greater interest in the collection.

“I like that AR doesn’t mandate which book to read, because the flexibility teaches them to love reading,” Kirk said. “If they get stuck on one genre, we encourage another, but they still have crucial freedom on which book in that genre they choose.”

Kirk has seen that freedom transform even the most emblazoned book haters into avid readers. She’s had two students, in particular, this year who said they hated to read and are now “reading up a storm.” One of them was just awarded a “Student of the Month” honor by her English teacher, in part because she excelled in her Accelerated Reader goals.

The goals, Kirk said, level the playing field because they’re calculated individually based on STAR scores. With everyone reading at their appropriate levels, struggling readers are no longer frustrated with overly difficult assignments. “AR is both a motivator and a way to determine that the book is actually read—instead of just checked out,” Kirk said. “The program is a vital part of our day.”

“It’s been a journey, but AR has been the critical piece in our success,” said former Principal Dr. Barbara Walton, who retired in July. “AR not only taught our students how to read and made the difference in our scores, but also engaged parents and brought us together as a faculty. AR has played a huge part in everything we’ve done, and we have a culture of readers to show for it.”

Every sixth- to twelfth-grade student knows there’s no such thing as downtime—that’s more reading time. Reading has become so “cool” that Walton says kids question others who don’t have a book in hand. Parents witness the difference at home. One called to accuse Walton of turning her son into a “reading monster” because suddenly all he wanted to do was read.

“I told her that was a wonderful complaint,” Walton smiled. “It’s such a rewarding experience to watch students who initially struggled with reading go on to graduate with top honors.”

Accelerated Reader was initially implemented at Cleveland School of the Arts to help intermediate students practice state standards at their functional levels—whether second or tenth grade. This approach allowed teachers to address needs of multiple reading levels and still cover necessary standards.

Soon, the program became infused into the entire curriculum for grades six through twelve, whereby every teacher can now be involved with reading and Accelerated Reader. Teachers are asked for topics they will be teaching, and grants help purchase books on those subjects. Students who read and pass the quiz on a social studies-related book, for example, are rewarded in both English and social studies.

Walton said this infusion was a way to further motivate students and give teachers varying levels of materials to support more needs. The school saw drastic improvement in student behavior-from a daily fight to one or two per year. Accelerated Reader allowed students to work at the appropriate level, replacing feelings of shame with success. Another plus was full faculty buy-in and cohesiveness, which wasn’t always the case.

“We had huge resisters at the onset of AR, and my role was to support the program and say, ‘yes, we’re going to do it,’” Walton said. “For AR to be successful, it must be driven from the top. It’s also critical to empower teachers as leaders and have an AR champion who will troubleshoot, own, and love the program.”

For Walton, that champion was Linda Germo, whose role was to provide a supportive, team approach to using the program. She took teachers through best practices, reading plans, goal-setting, reports, other areas of support, and stayed current on developments. Although it required effort and grants to get to Renaissance Learning conferences, Germo, Walton, and a team of teachers attended all but one.

“Professional development makes all the difference,” Germo said. “It kept us up-to-date because AR is constantly evolving based on research, plus it gave us that renewed spark. Ideas we got at those conferences from other educators and the sessions accounted for 90 percent of what we implemented.”

The training helped Germo, in turn, show all teachers how Accelerated Reader could simplify their daily tasks while benefiting students. The key, for both teachers and students, is valuable data.

“AR put a tremendous amount of instant data at our fingertips for any need,” Germo said. “Whether we were trying to determine a need for intervention, group kids for state testing prep, or direct instruction in a certain way, the data allowed us to promptly act on the total history of a student—not just a moment.”

Frequent monitoring of Accelerated Reader data drives instructional decisions and is critical in obtaining grants and keeping parents up-to-date. Parents know to look for weekly TOPS reports. Germo’s go-to resource is the Diagnostic Report, which she ran nightly as the school neared certification for Reading Master School.

“We knew exactly what we had to do to make it, and everyone got into it—it was so exciting!” said Germo, who also retired this summer. “In all my years of teaching, I’ve never worked harder than I did in my 14 years with AR, but I’ve also never gained more satisfaction because of how it grew the kids’ love of reading. For me, test scores were a by-product.”