Tag Archives: reading proficiency

In an over-informationed world we are under-literate.

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Literacy is like a tomato. Do you say “tomaeto” or “tomahto”? Just as either says tomato, the concept of literacy has different definitions for the same word. Some of these definitions technically apply yet are not adequate measures of what it means to be literate in today’s parlance. So, what is the big deal about literacy? Is being literate critical to adult life? Given how much information adults are exposed to every day, can we expect adults with varying levels of literacy skills to effectively consider and understand the constant barrage of information? The answer is “no,” yet our world ultimately spins on the voices and decisions of under-literate adults.

Literacy is a status.

Literacy historically is a status based upon measures of reading and writing. As a statistic, “High literacy rates have been found to correlate to everything from access to economic opportunity, to better nutrition, to environmental sustainability.” We generalize that citizens of economically advantaged nations have high literacy rates and citizens of underdeveloped nations have low literacy rates. A nation boasted its high literacy rate as a cause-and-effect proposition. “Our people enjoy a better standard of living because they are literate.”

https://ncte.org/blog/2020/03/literacy-just-reading-writing

What should we know about this status?

Using the percentage of the population 15 years and older who can read and write as a measure of literacy, Andorra, Finland, Greenland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and North Korea tie for #1 with 100% of their citizens being literate. North Korea? If a dictator says everyone can read, everyone is literate. The United States is in a large group of nations ranking #2 with 99% of the population rated as literate. Sounds good, but is it?

https://www.uscareerinstitute.edu/blog/which-countries-have-the-highest-and-lowest-literacy-rates

These data raise questions as to how we decide an adult is literate at the international level. This is how the data are gathered.

“The breakdown of strategies for deciding literacy covers four categories:

  • self-reported literacy declared directly by individuals,
  • self-reported literacy declared by the head of the household,
  • tested literacy from proficiency examinations, and
  • indirect estimation or extrapolation.

In most cases, the categories covering ‘self-reports’ correspond to estimates of literacy that rely on answers provided to a simple yes/no question asking people if they can read and write. The category ‘indirect estimation’ corresponds mainly to estimates that rely on indirect evidence from educational attainment, usually based on the highest degree of completed education.”

https://ourworldindata.org/how-is-literacy-measured

Based on self-reported data collection, many adults in the world consider themselves to be literate. But are they? Literacy is more than a statistical number.

Literacy is a functional tool.

Literacy is a tool. “… literacy is the way that we interact with the world around us, how we shape it and are shaped by it. It is how we communicate with others via reading and writing, but also by speaking, listening, and creating. It is how we articulate our experience in the world and declare, ‘We Are Here!’”

https://ncte.org/blog/2020/03/literacy-just-reading-writing

This consideration of literacy, that is how we communicate and receive communication from others and how we create communicative information, opens new concepts of what it means to be literate. “According to a study by the University of California – San Diego, the average American consumes about 34 gigabytes of data and information every day. This volume is equivalent of around 100,000 words heard or read daily.”

In our age of digital and virtual information, adults are bombarded by and likewise spew volumes of information daily. A literate adult must be skillful and competent on both sides of receiving and sending literacy.

Interestingly the Cambridge Dictionary points to both definitions – status and tool. Cambridge defines literacy as “the ability to read and write.” And literacy is the “knowledge of a particular subject, or a particular type of knowledge. Computer literacy is becoming as essential as the ability to drive a car.”

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/literacy

UNESCO reinforces literacy as an essential tool. “Literacy is a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich, and fast-changing world. On the historical international scene, literacy is a statistic of the population who can read and write. Literacy also is a broad array of functional skills that are applied in a successful adult life. For others, literacy is the ability to access and understand information in multiple contexts.”

https://ncte.org/blog/2020/03/literacy-just-reading-writing

This other “tomato” version of literacy opens the realm of higher order skills that are necessary for understanding, interpreting, analyzing, and evaluating information that is read and heard. And then doing something with or because of what one has read and heard. Literacy is making meaning of and considering what to do with information.

Able to read. At what level of reading?

Self-reporting is not an adequate measure of how we use literacy as a tool. “The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines literacy across six levels. People with Level 1 or below literacy skills are considered to have very poor literacy skills, while Level 3 is considered the minimum literacy skills required for coping with everyday life.

  • Below Level 1: Adults can read brief texts on familiar topics and locate a single piece of specific information. Only basic vocabulary knowledge is required, and adults are not required to understand the structure of sentences of paragraphs.
  • Level 1: Adults can read relatively short digital or print texts to locate a single piece of information that is identical to or synonymous with the information given in the question. Knowledge and skill in recognizing basic vocabulary, determining the meaning of sentence, and reading short paragraphs of text is expected.
  • Level 2: Adults can make matches between the text, either digital or printed, and information. Adults can paraphrase or make low-level inferences.
  • Level 3: Adults are required to read and navigate dense, lengthy or complex texts.
  • Level 4: Adults can integrate, interpret or synthesize information from complex or lengthy texts. Adults can identify and understand one or more specific, non-central idea(s) in the text in order to interpret or evaluate subtle evidence-claim or persuasive discourse relationships.
  • Level 5: Adults can search for and integrate information across multiple, dense texts; construct syntheses of similar and contrasting ideas or points of view; or evaluate evidence-based arguments. Adults understand subtle, rhetorical cues and can make high-level inferences or use specialized background knowledge.”

As a literacy tool, how well do we read?

We get a different portrait of literacy in the United States when we use the OECD’s evidence-based data. Remember that the U.S. claims a 99% literacy status using self-reporting and other non-scientific methods.

“The most recent national survey on adult literacy is from 2012-2017, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics as part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The U.S. ranks 16th among the 33 OECD nations included in this study.

Nationally, over 1 in 5 adults (in the United States) have a literacy proficiency at or below Level 1. Adults in this range have difficulty using or understanding print materials. Those on the higher end of this category can perform simple tasks based on the information they read, but adults below Level 1 may only understand very basic vocabulary or be functionally illiterate.

On the upside, “46% of adults in the U.S. have a literacy proficiency at or above level 3. Adults at Levels 3, 4, and 5 have varying degrees of proficiency in understanding, interpreting and synthesizing information from multiple, complex texts to infer meaning and draw conclusions.”

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

Huh!

Approximately half of the adults in the U.S. have functional literacy tools that are “considered the minimum literacy skills required for coping with everyday life.” The other half of that statistic have less that minimal literacy skills.

The application of literacy as a functional tool is not just eye-opening for the United States. Using the OECD study, 14.9% (or 1 in 7) adults in England have literacy levels below Level 3, which is the equivalent to the literacy skills expected of a nine to 11-year-old.”

https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/what-do-adult-literacy-levels-mean/#:~:text=People%20with%20Level%201%20or,for%20coping%20with%20everyday%20life.

These conclusions are supported by other studies. A Gallup analysis of literacy information gathered by the US Department of Education reports that “About 130 million adults in the U.S., roughly half of Americans between 16 and 74 – have low literacy skills. In this study, literacy is broadly defined as the ability to read and write, but more accurately encompasses the comprehension, evaluation and utilization of information, which is why people describe different types of literacy – such as health, financial, and legal. Low literacy skills can profoundly affect the day-to-day success of adults in the real world, and these impacts extent to their families, too.”

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

Literacy and public education.

Reading achievement has become the annual dip stick for measuring educational effectiveness in the U.S. since No Child Left Behind became national policy in 2002. State, school district, and school report cards annually publicize the percentage of students who meet the state’s performance expectations in reading. In a nation that self-reports its adults to be literate, children in school struggle with reading.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction reported, “For 2023-24, assessment results show public school student proficiency rates in ELA were at 48%. Students participating in the state’s Private School Choice Programs had a proficiency rate of 30.9 percent. Assessment results show proficiency gaps among different student subgroups continue to exist.”

https://dpi.wi.gov/news/releases/2024/student-assessment-results-forward

It is worthwhile to note that “meeting expectations” on a statewide reading or ELA assessment is not a high standard. State “expectations” are minimal levels of reading ability, very much like Level 2 on the OECD literacy assessment. The number of children meeting “expectations” is nothing to really cheer about. They met a low bar.

In truth, every graduation class fits into the OECD and Gallup estimation of adult literacy in the U.S. – about half of the graduates and young adults in our country meet minimal literacy standards.

When we apply literacy as a status to high school graduates, our society annually receives semi-literate young adults into our communities and general employment. As a result of education, more than half of our adult citizenry can only minimally read and write.

When we apply the second definition, we realize that the hierarchy of our layered economic society does not require every adult to be highly literate. Many high school graduates lack the ability to fully read and listen to complex and technical information and then translate it into their daily lives and jobs fulfill society’s economic needs. They are employed and pay taxes. Their earnings circulate in our consumer-based economy. They are law abiding and live socially in our cities, towns, and countryside. The majority do not need more than a high school diploma plus technical or on-the-job training to live in the United States.

“In 2021, the highest level of education of the population age 25 and older in the United States was distributed as follows: 

  • 8.9% had less than a high school diploma or equivalent.
  • 27.9% had high school graduate as their highest level of school completed. 
  • 14.9% had completed some college but not a degree.
  • 10.5% had an associate degree as their highest level of school completed.
  • 23.5% had a bachelor’s degree as their highest degree.
  • 14.4% had completed an advanced degree such as a master’s degree, professional degree or doctoral degree. 

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html

Incomplete literacy can lead to incomplete understanding.

The ability to read, understand, and evaluate information has become more essential as the volume of daily information has increased. When a person hears or reads almost 100,000 words daily, a person must either try to process all that information or begin to categorize and ignore selected types and sources of information. My best bet is the latter. People become increasingly selective in the media they listen to and the text they read, ignoring sources that do not agree with their personal points of view. As they scan text and skim media, they disregard sources they do not agree with and pay attention only to sources agreeable to their perspectives. The loss of a 360-degree listening and reading narrows their understanding to the range of information they choose to hear and read.

Let’s do the arithmetic. In Wisconsin, less than half of our students meet minimal expectations on statewide reading assessments. With their high school and associate degrees, they elect to hear and read only words that express their points of view about our state and world. If this is true, then we need to add a third tomato – incomplete literacy. Given that literacy is a tool, when the tool or reading and listening is applied only to what we want to read and hear, then we have achieved incomplete literacy.

We always do get what we settle for.

Our national and state Founding Fathers valued education. Because they believed a literate populace would be better able to take part in our democratic form of government, they supported public education. The ability to read was essential for voters to make informed choices of leadership and the policies their leaders would execute. As a nation of immigrants, literacy in the English language has always been a pathway to citizenship.

With all that purpose and history, today we have achieved a nation that is minimally and incompletely literate and this is considered good enough for our economic and political welfare.

In a world that is over-informationed, we are under-literate. As educators, we have work to do!

We are what we appear to value.  Reading Proficiency and Censorship.

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Simultaneously the Wisconsin legislature is considering a bill to improve reading instruction for all children and a bill to limit what schools can provide for children to read.  Two bills each with its own perspective on how the state should fulfill its commitment to educating children.  One bill attempts to apply the best practices of the science of reading to ensure all children can be proficient readers.  One bill tells schools to limit what they provide for children to read and see.  Each bill uses the power of the state to transform how schools impact children.  Each bill is an expression of what we value.

What do we know?

Our WI constitution says the state is responsible for establishing and supervising public education.  State statute 118.01(2) outlines the state’s educational goals.  These include instruction in 118.01(2)(a) the basic skills of reading, arithmetic, listening, writing, and speaking, analytical skills to think rationally and solve problems, a body of knowledge in literature, fine arts, and the natural sciences, skills and attitudes for lifelong intellectual activity, and knowledge in computer science including the social impact of computers.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/118

What is being proposed?

Representative Joel Kitchens is spearheading Assembly Bill 321 to improve child literacy by creating an Office of Literacy, focusing teacher prep programs on science-based reading instruction, establishing and funding literacy coaching, and standardizing early literacy screening through grade 3 assessments.  Equally important to the use of phonics-based reading is the ban on schools from using three cueing strategies in teaching children to read.  Every child in 4K-grade 3 will be taught how to decode words and encode sounds – to read and write independently.  Each child will be taught the mechanics of literacy and strategies for building vocabulary.  A child’s ability will no longer be determined by her school’s reading program preferences but by best practice. 

The bill institutes change in teacher education and professional development to ensure that teachers know how to teach phonics-based reading.  Today most teachers do not teach phonics as it was not part of their baccalaureate preparation or their school district’s PD.  Most teachers learned to teach whole language or blended reading strategies dominated reading instruction.  Teachers will learn to teach and be accountable for teaching all children to read using the science of reading concepts and skills.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2023/related/proposals/ab321

State Senators Andre Jacque, Romaine Quinn, and Cory Tomczyk presented a bill that would cause schools to remove books and material that are “deemed harmful or offensive to minors from public schools and libraries” and “enact policies that ensure minors do not view harmful materials on public computers”.

Under the guise of parent rights to supervise what their children learn, the bill requires schools to publish their curricular materials so that parents may object to what they deem harmful and/or remove their child from that class instruction. 

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2023/proposals/sb10

One bill supports our educational goals and the other subverts those goals.

I fully agree with Joel Kitchens when he says “Students will succeed by returning to the way most of us learned to read.  I truly consider this to be the most important thing that I ever worked on in the legislature”.  AB 321 advances the educational goals of our state by improving how we teach all children to read. 

Senate Bill 10 contradicts our educational goals to provide all children with opportunities to consider, think, and become intellectual problem solvers.  It ignores or does not trust the authority of school districts to supervise the materials they provide for children to read and see and experience in school.  Instead, this bill creates a new right for a parent to make that decision not just for that parent’s child but for all children.

SB10 is Wisconsin’s effort to keep up with other conservative-dominated state legislatures with book banning.  If successful, the bill ensures that schoolbooks and materials can be censored by a single parent or small group of parents.  It also places school boards in the bullseye of the issue to ban or not ban books.

https://www.wortfm.org/following-national-trend-wisconsin-lawmakers-introduce-book-ban/

Where is our educational high ground?

As a former school superintendent and school board president, I applaud Assembly Bill 321 and shun Senate Bill 10.  The high ground of public education is to teach children how to think and to resolve issues.  It is low ground to tell children what to think and to insulate them from issues they should, with appropriate instructional support, be able to consider. 

Our state constitution explains the educational goals of a public education in Chapter 118, section 118.01.  118.01(d) says “Each school board shall provide an instructional program designed to give pupils: (8) Knowledge of effective means by which pupils may recognize, avoid, prevent and halt physically or psychologically intrusive or abusive situations which may be harmful to pupils including child abuse and child enticement.  Instruction shall be designed to help pupils develop positive psychological, emotional, and problem-solving responses to such situations and avoid relying on negative, fearful, and solely reactive methods of dealing with such situations.  Instruction shall include information on available school and community prevention and intervention assistance or services and shall be provided to pupils in elementary schools.”

The high ground for our state is to implement the goals of its statutes.  Schools must constantly improve how we teach children while we constantly are vigilant regarding the educational materials we use for that education.  The state constitution gives schools the authority and responsibility to do these, and the role of legislation is to enhance not impede schools.  The constitution commends parents to work with local school boards to understand and advocate for the education of all children.

The high ground for local school boards is to constantly supervise the materials and experiences used to educate its students.   When a challenge arises the board can engage in an appropriate conversation with the conviction that the district has and is meeting its responsibilities for the entirety of our state’s educational goals.  We teach all children to become proficient in basic skills and to consider, think, problem solve and make decisions regarding their school experiences.  We do not teach them what to think or how to value their experiences.

When Labels and Data Contradict

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I invite you to read the WI DPI State Report Card for your local high school and you also may learn two contradictory facts.  I use my local high school’s 2022 school report card for this purpose. 

  • 65% of the students in the high school are proficient in reading and 25% are proficient in math, and
  • the DPI says this school’s achievement significantly exceeds the state’s expectations for high school reading and math.

Based on the DPI labeling Niche claims these achievement scores rank the school 83rd out of 496 high schools in the state and US News and World Report banners on the school walls recognizing this as a school of excellence.

https://apps2.dpi.wi.gov/reportcards/home

https://www.niche.com/k12/d/gibraltar-area-school-district-wi/

https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/wisconsin/districts/gibraltar-area-school-district-103996

What Should We Know

There should be a head scratch arising when we assign excellence to a school where 35% of students are not proficient in reading and 75% of students are not proficient in math, especially the math statistic.  How would we interpret these school results if the headline on the report read “One of every three students lack proficiency in reading and three of every four students lack proficiency in math”?  This is more than seeing our world as a glass half full as compared to a glass half empty.  35% of high school students not proficient in reading and 75% not proficient in math is not good news and is not excellent.  Not!

Perhaps our understanding of schooling excellence is like Billy Bean’s answer to Peter Brand after disconnecting his phone call with another team’s general manager in the movie “Money Ball” – “when you get the answer you want, hang up (the phone)”.  Such thinking tells us “Don’t argue with US News and World Report when they say your school is excellent or with the Department of Public Instruction when they say you significantly exceed Wisconsin’s expectations”.  However, what do we say to the too many students who are not proficient?  Your school did well even if you did not.

Using labels to describe how well schools cause children to learn is political appeasement.  In general, everyone wants to feel good about their local school.  Parents don’t want to think badly of the place they send their children to be cared for and educated.  Secondly, like parents, taxpayers don’t want to think badly about the schools their taxes support.  Sadly, property taxes in support of schools are generally higher in many of our districts where achievement is lowest.  Thirdly, political leaders know they have little power to change educational outcomes at the local school level, so they create labeling that does not rock their political boat.  For these three reasons, we are given inflated words in our annual school report cards that often do not align with statistical truths.

The bar for school excellence is a low bar.  Few want to tear the scab from the historic dilemma faced when school report card data is disaggregated by the socio-economic characteristics of schools in our state.  It is a fact that students in urban schools with neighborhoods of poverty, high numbers of children of color,  and children with significant educational challenges generally fare poorly on academic state report card measures.  As a result, the bar for school excellence in our state is set very low so as to not exclude all such schools and the bar is obfuscated by including measures of annual growth from preceding school report cards.  We applaud upward changes in annual tests even though the measures may never achieve proficiency.

What Needs Doing

As a mentor would tell me years ago when we faced a difficult task, “Let’s pull up our socks and get about doing better”.  When we stop labeling and address the data, the work before us changes immensely.

  • Label the data as if we were grading a student’s daily academic assignment.  Use a generally accepted grading scale.  Why grade schools differently than we grade our children’s schoolwork?  Soft sellers will tell us that there are many other variables to consider when evaluating the success of a school, but do they also use those variables when grading a student’s daily assignments?  No.  So, use a grading scale even children will understand.
A+97 – 100
A93-96
A-90-92
B+87-89
B83-86
B-80-82
C+77-79
C73-76
C-70-72
D+67-69
D65-66
E/FBelow 65

https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/plan-for-college/college-basics/how-to-convert-gpa-4.0-scale#:~:text=Common%20examples%20of%20grade%20conversion,D%2D%20(below%2065).

Using the College Board’s grading scale, our local high school would receive a D grade for reading proficiency and an F grade for math proficiency.

  • Urgency attaches to how we label the quality of our work. The current rating of “exceeds expectations” conveys very little urgency, even though 35% of students are not proficient in reading and 75% are not proficient in math.  From our students’ perspective, there is immense urgency.  And if we graded our work accurately, grades of D in reading and F in math would indeed be urgent.  In fact, there may be hell to pay for such results.  The use of current labeling blinds us to real urgencies.
  • Instructional analysis and change follow how we label our schools.  Analysis is short-lived when a school is labeled as excellent.  The general conclusion is “if we are excellent, little needs to be changed”.  And that is the case in most schools taking comfort in the current DPI labeling.  However, if we base our analysis on a grading of our schools, how we instruct children in reading and math is in for extreme rethinking.  A reading program that results in 35% of students being non-proficient and a math program that results in 75% of students being non-proficient are not acceptable reading and math instructional programs.  Instruction needs to change.

If we continue to teach children in our elementary school the same way we taught our current high school students when they were elementary students, that instruction will cause similar statistical results.  The changes needed are K-12 not in the high school alone.

The requirement for honesty in reporting school data is essential because we use the data as our perception of education in our schools.  Words like “succeeds expectations” and “excellence” cause a warmth of pride followed by complacency.  When schools are told they are good, they smile and relax.  When told they are not good, they frown and are prodded to do better. 

The Big Duh!

What a difference it would make if a school’s banner read “Grade A School:  More than 93% of students are proficient in reading and in math”.  That truly would be a school of excellence that significantly meets expectations.

More importantly, what a difference it would make for the children of the school who would be proficient in reading and in math.

We need to pull up our socks and get about the work of being better.

Improving Reading is like “Trouble With The Curve” – Current Players Are Not Prepared To Do It

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Educators statewide should applaud parents, educators, and legislators in Wisconsin who are advancing AB 446.  The proposed legislation will strongly improve the state mandates for assessment of reading readiness and reading proficiency for all our youngest learners.  The current mandates are weak and ineffective; AB 446 is robust in its requirements.  Proponents of the legislation are impassioned for these changes.  As expected, there is opposition to doing what is right.  Legislators claim the bill to be an unfunded mandate ignoring the current state funding given to districts for this very purpose.  Political opposition for opposition’s sake.

Parallel to AB 446 we need the President of our University of Wisconsin System to acknowledge and remedy the companion problem causing children to fail as proficient readers.  Educator preparation programs in Wisconsin do not teach prospective teachers to teach reading.  I overuse the term “teach” on purpose.  Reading is not a natural skill set; it is learned.  Proficiency in reading is yet more difficult; it must be taught.  Teachers must be taught to teach children to be proficient readers. 

Take note:  A person who can read proficiently is not prepared to teach a child to be a proficient reader.  The set of reading skills we want all children to learn and use is complex and compound.  There is a clear and distinct science underlying proficient reading.  Many children obtain these complex and compound skills through a combination of untargeted instruction and the opportunity to read.  However, more than 50% of children in Wisconsin do not.  Data support this statement.  A majority of children in Wisconsin are not proficient readers and are not prepared to be critical readers for the decades of their future lives.

Why is this?

For lovers of the “the game”, Clint Eastwood’s Trouble With The Curve (2012) highlighted the difficulty of finding baseball players with requisite talent for playing in the big leagues.  A power hitter can feast on fastballs, but throw him a curve and he will walk slowly to the bench.  The game requires talented players who can hit the irregular pitch.

Children need teachers who are prepared to teach all children to be proficient readers because they are trained to hit the curves of children who present challenges in their mastery of reading skills.  Our current teacher preparation programs do not do this.  Our colleges of education must strengthen teacher preparation with requirements in –

  • Phonemic awareness
  • Decoding skills
  • Word sight recognition

combined with

  • Background knowledge
  • Vocabulary development
  • Knowledge and use of language structures
  • Skills of verbal reasoning
  • ELA literacy

Check the transcript of a graduate of a WI-system college of education and look for this preparation.  It is not there.

For AB 446 to be effective, it must be paired with improved teacher skills in the teaching of proficient reading.  As with the legislation, this needed improvement bangs against the status quo and proponents of the status quo oppose changes in our teacher preparation programs.  Such institutional thinking and behavior is arcane and archaic.  This is why the action of the President of the UW-System is required.  He can mandate change. 

If we are to hit the curve of reading proficiency challenges and use the assessment data handed us by AB 446, we need players/teachers who are prepared and do not have trouble with the curve.

“Just Go Do” Goes Nowhere

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Our common mythologies tell us that men will not ask for directions. Men would rather drive and get lost or fail at assembling a new purchase than display the unmanly plight of seeking help. “I can do this” is a real man’s mantra. However, to paraphrase Louis Pasteur, “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” Whether it is man, woman or child, understanding the directions and gaining the skills for how to get from here to there, literally or hypothetically, is the best preparation for success. Without preparation and direction, we tend to go nowhere. Note: the following is not a diatribe about men, but a story concerning all of us.

In recent school discussions of student reading performances over the past five years, we realized that these outcomes were far below our students’ capacity to perform and our school’s expectations for all children. Disaggregation of statewide and local assessment scores showed about 15% of children performing at advanced levels of reading and 30% at proficient levels. These data matched state and national reading trends. Yet, we were chronically looking at the larger pool of 45% of children who were in the basic category reading performance. What kept these children from being proficient readers. We had a problem.

There were other indicators, such as poor spelling and confusion with the structures of grammar and syntax that consistently showed up in the daily work of our basic readers. We observed stumbling with reading fluency, especially with new, technical vocabulary. Our in-house screener showed these children making progress in their reading skills, however they did it make enough progress to become proficient on any assessments. Our assessments led us to questions and direct observation of children led us semi-conclusions. Too many of our children were weak in demonstrating phonological awareness, abilities to decode new words and had limited sight word recognition. Our advanced and proficient readers learned these skills, either from our instruction or parental assistance or through their own intuitive processes. But, for 55% of our children, we were at Point A, an unacceptable level of reading performance. We needed to get these children to Point B, student proficiency in reading built upon stronger student phonological and orthographic understanding and skills.

The Board’s Student Learning Committee, led by a Board member and comprised of teachers, parents, and administrators, began to study the nature of phonology. Parent members were vested in the issue; most were parents of children with reading challenges. Generally, the problem did not arise from a lack of reading interest at home or parental support of school. It did not arise from intellectual disorders. And, it did not arise from ambivalence. Parents and teachers and administrators were concerned with the stalled improvement in reading performance and wanted solutions.

Several of our children of interest displayed characteristics of dyslexia and their instruction was guided by an IEP. By looking at these children intensely, the committee began to understand that our teaching and learning model had several significant gaps. The committee met with representatives of Lindamood-Bell to understand that vendor’s approach to diagnostic and intense, clinical reading instruction. In addition, teachers trained in Orton-Gillingham and Wilson Reading explained how their preparation told them to address the needs of children with dyslexia and coding/decoding problems. A consultant from the International Dyslexia Association explained what reading is like for a child who can’t code and decode. She helped the committee to understand best practices in reading instruction for these children. The committee concluded that improvement in each student’s phonologic and orthographic skills was necessary to cause every student to be a proficient reader.

To get from Point A to Point B, we needed to change and improve our teaching-learning model. We could not say to our K-6 teachers, “just do it” – somehow make the necessary changes in your teaching to cause different results. Pasteur’s model told us that we needed to prepare for success if we wanted to be successful. Our starting point was to discern the current level of teacher preparation for phonics-based reading instruction. We found that our results were consistent with our preparation. Due to no fault of any teacher, most of our faculty had completed only a unit or two of instruction in phonics in a single course as part of their baccalaureate preparation. That was the extent of their academic preparation. Through self-designed continuing education, some had developed their own understanding of phonics-based reading and were achieving some success with some children. As a whole, we were not Pasteur-prepared for success.

It took half his life for Pasteur to be Pasteur. After six months of study, we still are not prepared, but we know how to be prepared. We know what our teaching-learning models lacks and we have a plan to provide each teacher with the directions and skills needed to move our children to Point A to Point B. We also know that our plan for success preparation takes time to achieve. This summer, each K-6 teacher, reading specialist and special education working with K-6 children will receive training in the Orton-Gillingham methodologies for intensive and sequential phonics-based instruction of word formation. These teachers will receive additional training the following summer. We will prepare each teacher to “go do”.

Our new designs says that all children will receive grade level instruction in our core reading program that is embedded with phonological and orthographic training AND each child who demonstrates phonological weakness will receive developmentally-appropriate OG instructional intervention. Our superintendent proposed a strategy of curriculum compacting that will provide more time each day for children needing deeper interventions of clinical and intensive instruction. Through district-provided preparation, all K-6 teachers will be able to teach a stronger phonics-based reading program, diagnose a child’s weaknesses in phonological understanding and skills, and give direct instruction to remediate the weakness. This approach to district-provided professional development is a change for our district. This PD is mandated and required for all current K-6, elementary special ed teachers and reading specialists. It is performance-based. We will be able to associate student achievement in phonics-based reading with a teacher(s) prepared for phonics-based reading instruction. It is prospective – all new-to-the-district K-6 teachers will receive OG training in future years.

Most importantly, this approach to professional development sets the stage for future analysis of student academic performances. When the district identifies a teaching-learning problem in the future and our educational outcomes are adjusted, an immediate question will be “How well are we prepared to ‘go do’?”. We will be Pasteur-like in our preparation for success.