LA GRANDE — The online school format often was blamed for academic backsliding during the COVID-19 pandemic, but a reading program aims to use some of those same tools to make up for lost time.

The Morrow County School District and Eastern Oregon University on Monday, March 28, announced they were partnering with Ignite! Reading to pilot a special reading program over Zoom to significantly boost reading skills in elementary school students.

For 10 weeks, students from EOU’s College of Education will meet virtually with elementary school students from Boardman, Irrigon and Heppner for intensive, 15-minute tutoring sessions focused on reading.

“We are very excited to partner with both EOU and Ignite! Reading to maximize the benefits of this program for our students,” Erin Stocker, Morrow County’s executive director of elementary education and human resources said in a statement. “Coming out of COVID and navigating through a much-needed (English language arts) adoption year, we were searching for innovative ways to better support our students. Based on the science of reading, Ignite’s targeted, evidence-based approach will be a great fit for the next generation of students and teachers.”

Superintendent Dirk Dirksen said Morrow County was allowed to reopen sooner than most other districts in the area, so students didn’t take as large a hit academically. But the district was interested in improving reading at the elementary level, “COVID or no COVID,” he said.

Based on a previous pilot program Ignite ran at an elementary school in Oakland, California, Ignite is expecting strong results. In Oakland, students made three weeks worth of progress for every week they were in the program. And 93% of Latino students passed their first monitoring assessment, a relevant fact in a district that’s more than half Latino.

Ronda Fritz, an associate professor of education at EOU, said she would’ve counted herself among the skeptics about Zoom tutoring three years ago. But that was before she took a sabbatical year and spent part of it tutoring two girls online.

“(I) really found out I could make great gains with these kids in a fairly short amount of time,” she said. “You really could have knocked me over with a feather. There’s no way you would have told me that was what would work.”

Fritz said one of the main benefits EOU derives from Ignite is its potential as a teaching tool for its own students. There was some concern students studying education weren’t prepared to teach reading after graduating, and since all Ignite sessions are recorded, Fritz said staff and students could go over recordings to determine how to better improve the tutoring experience.

Jessica Sliwerski, the founder of Ignite, said the program works because it provides rigorous one-on-one instruction from a tutor who is completely focused on them during the 15-minute session.

“The kids love it and the 15 minutes flies by really quickly,” she said. “They’re super excited to come back the next day and get that support. But also they leave their session and they go back into their regular classroom setting and they bring these new competencies with them, which then gives them the confidence to tackle work that in the past, they might have been like, ‘Forget it, I can’t do this. It’s too hard.’ And now they’re persisting.”

Once the 10-week pilot program ends, Sliwerski said Ignite wants to further integrate itself into EOU’s teaching program and embark on a year-long partnership with Morrow County.

As with many things in education, Fritz said Ignite’s future in Eastern Oregon depends on funding.

“It always comes down to the almighty dollar, doesn’t it?” she said.