First grade teacher Stacy McGuffee is about to begin her reading skills block at Paw Creek Elementary School. She starts the “sound shuffle,” an exercise designed to help students break down the sounds that make up words.
“Say ‘slob,’” she tells the students. They repeat it.
“Say it again, but don’t say ‘-ss’,” she says.
“Lob,” the students shout.
She’s preparing them for their end-of-year Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills assessment, or DIBELS. North Carolina students in kindergarten through third grade began taking those tests last week. These drills are part of a suite of techniques in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools curriculum, informed by the science of reading — an approach that draws from research studying how children learn to read.
“Those types of skills are all tied in, and it all translates into our DIBELS assessments that we're doing at the end of the year,” McGuffee said.
In 2021, North Carolina invested about $114 million to require all K-5 teachers to complete a professional development program called Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, or LETRS. The intensive course trains educators in the science of reading.
“Going through that training made me a better teacher because I was able to see the ‘why’ behind all of the instruction that I was providing,” McGuffee said.
Early results
States are increasingly investing in similar initiatives amid nationwide concerns about declining reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Experts say those declines can no longer be explained solely by pandemic-related disruptions. North Carolina and Charlotte fared a little better, staving off declines and, in many cases, outperforming peers — but still failed to see significant gains.
So, is the state’s investment improving student scores?
Much like trying to teach reading — it’s complicated.
North Carolina has touted big gains for K-3 students on the DIBELS test since investing in the training. But that success hasn’t been as clear for older students taking the state's end-of-grade exams or EOGs, in grades 3 through 8.
A similar story is playing out in CMS, where officials said they’re closer to meeting the school board’s DIBELS goals than their EOG goals. Devin Kearns, a professor of early literacy at NC State, said this year’s EOGs could be an important benchmark for the state’s literacy investments.
“So far, the results are not as clear that the science of reading efforts are having the impact on EOG that people want,” Kearns said. “And that’s where people are wondering what will happen.”
It’s a big year for the LETRS program — it marks the first full school year where all of the state’s teachers have completed it. Still, it's early, so Kearns cautioned against overinterpreting the results — noting that massive educational changes can lead to short-term gains or losses before longer-term trends are identified.
“It’s not ever going to be an easy story to tell, but this will be helpful,” Kearns said. “It will be important. This will give us a really nice way to talk about where we are now in another way.”
DIBELS measures basic reading skills, such as phonics and word recognition. EOGs focus more on comprehension. The differing results point to a key concern among some academics — that efforts to implement the science of reading have at times put too much emphasis on basic skills and not enough on making sure kids understand what they’re reading.
LETRS focuses on the full scope of the science of reading — including both early literacy skills and comprehension. But it’s a professional development course, not a curriculum. Lexia, the company that created LETRS, is clear about this. Cassandra Wheeler, a senior education advisor at Lexia, told WFAE that LETRS is “program agnostic.”
“So once you’ve had your LETRS experience and you understand, again, how to teach and what to teach, you are then better equipped to pick up whatever your core instructional materials are, or your supplemental reading instructional materials are, to support your students,” Wheeler said.
More comprehension skills?
But some believe that without the right curriculum resources, teachers may struggle to implement LETRS training effectively in the classroom. From a curriculum standpoint, there are more resources available for teachers focused on early literacy skills than comprehension, said Annemarie Hindman, a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill.
“It shouldn’t be up to teachers to then say, 'OK, I’m going to figure out whole-cloth how to do this in my classroom,' ” Hindman said. “It kind of behooves the field of reading to be able to say here are some foundational curricular supports that you can tailor based on your experience and what you just learned in LETRS.”
CMS, for its part, uses a district-wide curriculum called EL Education. That aimed to ensure all schools were teaching reading the same way. The curriculum is informed by the science of reading and aligned with much of what’s taught in LETRS, according to Kimberly Schroeder, the district’s associate superintendent for teaching and learning. That curriculum includes comprehension early on, but really starts to double down on it between grades two and three.
Still, many education leaders have acknowledged a need for progress in comprehension skills. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green said as much on Charlotte Talks last week.
“I do think there is still significant room to grow, particularly as we move from those early literacy skills to more sort of incorporating comprehension,” Green said. “And that’s where I think there is going to need to be additional strategies implemented, so that students can go from not only being able to read the words, but actually understand.”
At a CMS school board meeting earlier this year, Superintendent Crystal Hill made a similar point about listening comprehension — an early literacy skill that is considered a building block for later comprehension skills.
“What we’ve noticed is that in the classroom, we know how to teach all of these skills — phoneme segmentation, we’re very skill-based — but sometimes we don’t always focus on that listening comprehension that really builds so when students get ready to take an assessment, they’re able to put all of those things together,” Hill said.
Munro Richardson, executive director at Read Charlotte — a nonprofit that partners with CMS and other organizations to share reading resources and improve reading education. He agrees there needs to be more focus on comprehension, particularly listening comprehension for younger students, which newer research is starting to emphasize.
Richardson said that’s one of the challenges of the science of reading — as a science, our understanding of it is always evolving. Keeping up to date on the latest research is important.
“I didn’t know this stuff when I got here because the research wasn’t published yet. Not at this level,” Richardson said. “So again, it’s this idea: if you think science is — or the science of reading — is like this static thing, it is not.”
Listening comprehension has been a major focus for Read Charlotte in recent years, which has advertised the importance of family reading time and developed a “community-read aloud” model designed to develop those skills.
Community support
Of course, Richardson notes, there are even more complex roadblocks. National exams have shown widening gaps between high- and low-performing students. Multilingual students face unique challenges, and disparities between socioeconomic and racial groups persist.
At CMS, in an effort to improve reading outcomes, Schroeder said CMS progressively monitors students, trying to provide targeted intervention for those who are falling behind.
“It’s meeting students where they are. What particular skills do they need additional supports with, and when and how are we providing them with those supports and interventions?” Schroeder said.
The district also shares resources with families to help them continue to support families at home.
Helping families advocate for their children is a major focus for the Black Child Development Institute. Executive Director Devonya Govan-Hunt said there needs to be a community-wide focus on enabling families to support their children. Not all families have access to the same opportunities, she says, so educators need to try to meet families where they are.
“I don't care how many LETRS trainings and opportunities we create for our educators,” she said. “Without our families and our communities, we are never going to get to where we need to be collectively.”
At KIPP Change Academy charter school, one day last week, the Black Child Development Institute held one of its after-school literacy programs. Students participated in an AI-assisted reading computer program, played literacy games with counselors and received one-on-one help. This was a special day — BCDI’s first-ever spelling bee. Parents would be coming to support their kids. Third grader Imani talked strategy with her friends, counting the letters in the word “banana.”
After the spelling bee, Imani’s mom, Lamesha Collins, said she had been concerned about her daughter’s reading — which is why she changed schools to KIPP, and why she signed her up for BCDI. Since then, Imani’s DIBELS scores have jumped more than 20 points.
“We have been able to see a difference in her reading skills and being able to read fluently, and just excelling with her reading skills,” Collins said.
As for Imani, she finished second in her grade place for her grade — holding her own in a lengthy, sudden-death final round. It’s a sign of the strides she’s made — and an encouraging one ahead of her first-ever EOG this week.
