Greeley-Evans School District 6 enjoys the unwelcome distinction of being the largest district in Colorado to have been placed on academic watch. Board President Bruce Broderius stopped by last week to tell me what they're doing about it.

When the state moved to put them on the watch list, in November 2005, the school board decided to call for an audit, to assess where the district was and where it needed to go.

"We knew achievement was a big issue," Broderius said, "we didn't know how big."

The board elected to focus on early literacy as its highest priority, and it adopted Houghton Mifflin's reading series, one of two national reading series that rely on direct, explicit instruction by the teacher rather than leaving much learning to children's initiative. Over the summer of 2006, the district offered paid in-service training in the new materials and even credit on the salary schedule.

Greeley-Evans, with nearly 19,000 students, has 17 elementary schools, with approximately 600 teachers, and all but a handful participated. "Nobody ducked," Broderius said. The new program was introduced in fall 2006.

There was also an audit specifically for kindergarten, which found that there were major inconsistencies in expectations in different schools. In the district's strongest school, 28 percent of children weren't ready for kindergarten; in the weakest, it was more like 80 percent to 90 percent. The district moved to full-day kindergarten in eight Title I schools.

Although there is not a great deal of test data as yet, what there is is encouraging, and teacher testimony indicates notable improvement. In the middle of the preceding year, Broderius said, 40 percent of kindergarten children still needed intensive instruction. At one of the most troubled schools, that is now down to 10 percent.

So people are pleased, no? No.

"We had overdone site-based management," Broderius said, so there were almost as many different reading programs as there were schools. There was a lot of resistance to giving up control. In private, he says, teachers tell him "this stuff works," but they don't want to risk being ostracized by associates who resent the changes.

And they might have reason to worry. In October, the teachers union released results of a "climate survey" showing that 79 percent of those responding were dissatisfied with the school board and its strategic plan, while 88 percent were dissatisfied with the leadership of Superintendent Renae Dreier. Greeley Education Association President Lori Maag told the Greeley Tribune, "It's teachers at all levels. They're not feeling respected."

In the course of my conversation with Broderius, I said several less-than-charitable things about schools of education and how they turn out teachers who resist change even when what they are doing isn't working. Dreier had told the newspaper that half of district students ended first grade unable to read at grade level.

Then I asked Broderius about his background. Oh, dear. "I come from 30 years of college education, and was dean of the ed school for 10 years, and director of elementary education and reading," he said.

I apologized for insulting him, but he just laughed. "You're not wrong," he said. "I was summarily eaten alive, but I managed to survive."

This is his fourth year on the board, he said, and this is the critical year for the board to hold firm. If the strategic plan gets results, even the doubters might come around.

Linda Seebach is an editorial writer for the Rocky. She can be reached by telephone at (303) 954-2519 or by e-mail at seebach@RockyMountainNews.com.