In my district, we had 30 elementary school staff leave this particular school where most of the kids come into 6th without knowing phonics and read at least one year below grade level. So…yes, I think sometimes we can blame the elementary schools, but I think it’s mostly admin’s responsibility to give these teachers what they need for their students to be successful instead of leaving them hanging.

I went to a great elementary school and we always had a para. Sometimes, we had two paras and were able to do small group interventions. I know for a fact that some of the elementary schools that feed into my middle school don’t have the resources to do this, while the ones with the better PTOs do get those resources.