The Blanchester School District in OH started using SFA in its elementary schools a decade ago, and the schools have made amazing progress across the board ever since. Blanchester’s K–3 school, Putman Elementary, was recently honored as a National Blue Ribbon school, placing it within the top one percent of schools in the nation. The intermediate school, which serves grades four and five, isn’t far behind in reading performance; 90 percent of those students are reading at or above grade level. 
 

So much for omens though because the first day of district SFA training for Blanchester City Schools, held in September of 2001, couldn’t have gone worse:

“We found ourselves crammed in an office, watching the twin towers fall on TV,” said Chris Branson, director of special education for Blanchester Intermediate and former principal at Putman Elementary. 
 

Despite the anxiety of 9/11 looming over those initial days, the district still had a mission: improve their low reading scores. Putman Elementary was struggling at the time, with just 33 percent of third-grade students reading at or above grade level. Bridgid Carson, a teacher at Putman Elementary at the time and current principal of Blanchester Intermediate, remembered the scattershot, ineffective approach the school took to address reading performance:

“Everybody did their own thing. Some were doing awareness, some whole language, some were doing cutesy stuff. Nobody was focusing on teaching reading strategies.”  
 

This scattershot approach continued even when teachers looked outside the classroom for solutions.

“Teachers would go to one conference or another, and all would come back with separate ideas,” said Carson.

As a result, when the initial trainings were completed and Success for All was implemented in the Blanchester School District, the biggest change was the transition from a fragmented school culture to a whole-school approach. The teachers who were used to their own methods of instruction had to adopt a new strategy. Most of them were on board with the plan, with the exception of those teachers with the “cutesy” strategies, according to Branson. Those particular teachers ended up moving on to other schools.

“With SFA, it went from ‘my kids’ to everybody’s kids, everyone had a stake in each child’s development,” said Branson.

During the years of SFA implementation, reading scores have risen steadily. In 2002, the first year of implementation, the number of third-grade students reading at or above grade level went from 33 percent to 56 percent. The next year, the scores went up to 74 percent. In the fourth year, the scores cracked 80 percent, beating the Ohio achievement baseline of 76 percent.

“We’ve never missed since,” said Carson.

One of the most-important benefits of SFA, according to both Carson and Cole, is the early intervention strategies for students with learning disabilities. Like many other school districts across the nation, Blanchester has seen an uptick in its special-education population, as a result of an overall rise in diagnosed ADHD and autistic children. Despite these challenges, Putman Elementary and Blanchester Intermediate have reduced their special-ed populations, a reduction Branson credits to SFA’s cognitive strategies and its grade-level grouping arrangement.

“Our biggest reservation before adopting SFA was the reaction kids would have to being regrouped,” she said, “but the kids don’t mind their reading group at all.”

After years of building up the success of Putman Elementary, Carson transitioned to Blanchester Intermediate five years ago, looking to replicate the success of SFA at the fourth- and fifth-grade levels at the new school. Both schools recently saw their first full SFA class graduate through grades 1–5.

“This graduating class did not miss a reading indicator in six years,” said Carson.

The efforts of the Blanchester School District culminated in Putman Elementarys receipt of aforementioned Blue Ribbon award based on the school’s overall academic excellence and their success in closing achievement gaps. The award places Putman within the top one percent of schools in the nation.

While the awards are certainly welcome, both Carson and Branson take the most pride out of Blanchester becoming a destination district for parents of children in open enrollment and for having a high level of parental involvement:

“The parents are very much in tune with what their child is doing in reading and beyond,” said Carson.