Reading Teacher

Anne Arundel County second-graders are making large gains in reading, while fourth- and sixth-graders are falling behind, according to scores from the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills, a national standardized test. The jump in second-grade scores can be attributed to the school system's push to improve reading instruction in the early grades, including stronger phonics instruction, more teacher training and class sizes as small as 16 pupils in some higher-poverty schools, said Nancy M. Mann, assistant superintendent for instruction.

Margaret Carver Flowers, a reading specialist and authority on English gardens, died Friday of cancer at her Chancery Road home. She was 89. Beginning in the early 1960s, Mrs. Flowers was a reading specialist in Baltimore public and private schools, helping dyslexic children learn to read. She tutored children in her home and in reading clinics and retired in the 1990s. Mrs. Flowers was an accomplished gardener who "combined an artistic sensitivity to design with pragmatic skills," said her daughter, Margaret Flowers Sobel of Baltimore.

Smaller class sizes will have to wait a year for some Howard County second-graders and frayed band uniforms will have to endure -- casualties of last-minute school board budget cuts. The County Council tentatively agreed yesterday to restore $1.3 million to the schools budget, but the school board said that was not enough. The majority Democrats rejected a Republican suggestion to restore $1.1 million more by deferring spending on a new emergency radio system for county police and firefighters.

Sister Mary Rolendis Smith, S.S.N.D., a retired educator, died Sunday of cancer at Maria Health Center at Villa Assumpta, the motherhouse of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Woodbrook. She was 96. She had lived at Villa Assumpta since 1990. Sister Rolendis, a remedial reading and math teacher, was assigned to Our Lady of Fatima parochial school in Baltimore from 1971 until 1990 when she retired. Earlier, she had taught at St. Pius X in Baltimore County, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Benedict parochial schools in Baltimore, and in Massachusetts, New York City, Camden, N.J., Washington and Pittsburgh.

Maryland's colleges, universities and school systems should have new classes by the end of 2000 that will better prepare teachers for reading instruction, state educators announced last week. The state also expects to have an exam prepared by Educational Testing Service and in place by next school year for experienced teachers who want to demonstrate their reading instruction skills by means of a written test, rather than taking the newly developed classes. The effort to bolster teacher preparation is one of the key steps taken by the state during the past two years as it has sought to improve stagnant reading achievement among Maryland students.

DONALD B. HOFLER taught his last college class Monday evening, so Loyola College students will hereafter be deprived of watching the professor write on the chalkboard upside down and backward with both hands simultaneously. That little trick is one of Hofler's trademarks. He's been teaching reading courses to Loyola education students since 1973, so hundreds of teachers, principals and professors in Maryland -- a couple of generations of abecedarians -- have seen the routine. About to turn 66, Hofler retired last year.

THEY FLOATED from booth to booth at the annual convention of reading teachers, book bags in hand, looking for the magic formula that would solve a major problem, perhaps a crisis: What to do about the elementary or middle school child who's been passed from grade to grade into puberty -- and can't read. "Intervention" for these kids -- victims of social promotion -- was the buzzword last week at the three-day annual conference of the State of Maryland International Reading Association Council, which drew more than 1,000 reading teachers and administrators to the Towson Sheraton.

FOR 21 YEARS -- THE blackjack number -- JoAnn Fruchtman's Children's Bookstore has defied the odds. Fruchtman never gave her store a cutesy name, never stocked it with videos, stuffed bears and music boxes. Selling primarily quality children's literature, Fruchtman survived the onslaught of superstores and online booksellers. But something was nagging, something over which she says she "fretted": those city public school teachers regularly dipping into their pockets to buy books for their kids.

READING THE same book over and over again can become tedious. For the casual reader, even a favorite book can lose its mystique after the 10th reading. So to assure that her pupils have new pages to turn, Brooklyn Park Elementary School reading teacher Kathy Fieldhouse is staging a book swap for them this week. Children may exchange up to five paperback books that they have read for coupons that they can redeem for books that others have donated. Fieldhouse said the BPES pupils are excited about the trade-in -- or trade-up -- opportunity.

Baltimore County Superintendent Anthony G. Marchione is expected to announce today that he will retire at the end of the coming academic year as head of the nation's 25th largest school system.The retirement of the 67-year-old veteran educator would set off a nationwide search for a replacement that could take months. Several of the county's top education administrators could compete with outside candidates for the $128,750-a-year job.School officials and others expect an announcement to come today at an annual meeting of district administrators, ending months of speculation about Marchione, who rose from a Baltimore County math teacher to top administrator.