Kissimmee school teams up to improve reading skills.(The Orlando Sentinel)

KISSIMMEE, Fla. _ At 9:30 a.m., the door to Stacey Scanlon's second-grade classroom swings open, as it does every school day.

It's way too early for recess. The green beans, canned peaches and corn-dog nuggets of lunch are a distant mirage. First, comes the revolution.

It skitters across the hallway on small, squeaky sneakers.

Two other doors across the hall swing open, and a ragged column of about 20 students emerges from each of the three classrooms. The first group files into Scanlon's room to work on reading. The second heads across the hall to Lisa Rutherford's first-grade class for spelling. The third disappears into Mei Zupa's class for an hour of math.

Then the three doors shut, and in the quiet hallway of Cypress Elementary School, you almost can hear the sound of parents and administrators taking a deep breath _ and holding it.

The three classes _ Zupa's kindergartners, Rutherford's first-graders and Scanlon's second graders _ are part of a team-teaching experiment. Teachers at Cypress latched onto the strategy in hopes of solving a problem any elementary-school student can sympathize with: a lousy report card.

The worst subject? Reading.

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Cypress Elementary was one of 219 Florida elementary schools that received a grade of "D" this year in the statewide school-rating system based on results of the annual Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Of the rest of the 1535 elementary schools in the state, 363 got an "A," 332 a "B," 618 a "C."

At Cypress, where 70 percent of the school's 980 students are Hispanic, the reading problem is a particular worry. Test results for its fourth-graders, whose scores help determine the school's grade, showed 79 percent are below standards and 58 percent at two years below grade level.

"People tend to panic when this happens," said Rene Clayton, a reading specialist brought in to help Cypress. "What we discovered so far is that a lot of students can get by in the…