PSD parents, staff review elementary-school reading literacy curriculum options

Lisa Case wanted to know what type of support families would have for helping their kids learn to read at home.

Amany Elkhwagy wanted to make sure instructional materials would be culturally appropriate for the Islamic community.

Anna Lebedda was concerned about how students with dyslexia would be taught reading.

All three women expressed appreciation Monday night for the opportunity to learn more about the three reading literacy programs under consideration for Poudre School District’s elementary schools during an informational session at Rocky Mountain High School.

About three dozen people, mostly teachers and administrators at PSD elementary schools, attended the informational session, the second of three offered by the district. There were about 50 participants in the first session Thursday night at Fossil Ridge High School, said John Passantino, PSD’s director of curriculum.

The final session was scheduled for 6-8 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 24, at Eyestone Elementary School, 4000 Wilson Ave., in Wellington.

The three finalists — EL from Imagine Learning, HMH’s Into Reading and Amplify’s CKLA (Core Knowledge Language Arts) — were selected by a committee of 31 teachers, two elementary-school administrators, four parents, seven members of PSD’s central-office staff and representatives from the district’s English Language Development, Multi-tiered System of Support, Information Technology and Integrated Services departments.

They started with eight curricula and dropped two early in the five-day process; they were not on the Colorado Department of Education’s approved list of core instructional programs, Passantino told the PSD Board of Education at a meeting Jan. 10. The previous reading literacy curriculum PSD adopted for grades K-5 in 2018 was not on the state education department's list.

The six that remained went through a thorough review process by the review team, and the three selected as finalists clearly stood out above the others, Passantino said. Those same three also scored the highest in separate evaluations of reading literacy curricula for elementary-school students conducted by the Colorado Department of Education and EdReports, an independent, nonprofit organization that publishes online reviews of K-12 instructional materials.

There were no obvious favorites among the nine people who identified themselves as parents or community members at the event at Rocky Mountain High School. PSD teachers and staff were placed in the other groups. Each group attended 30-minute sessions with the vendors of each of the three programs in separate rooms.

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They were given presentations of each of the three programs — all identified as structured literacy with an emphasis on learning phonics patterns and the “code” to reading, rather than balanced literacy that focuses more on memorization, Passantino said — and a chance to ask questions of the vendors and review samples of reading and study materials.

“I feel, overall, very included and appreciative of being offered the chance to review the materials,” said Case, the mother of a PSD first-grader and twins who will start kindergarten in fall 2024. “I think the three companies have a lot of things that seem really great and similar, but they’re also three distinct offerings that they have.”

She was leaning toward the HMH Into Reading program following that presentation.

“But then I heard some of the things that Amplify was saying about their materials being more simple, visually simple, and I was like, ‘Oh, that makes sense.’

“So, I’m between those two.”

Lebedda liked what she learned about the Amplify CKLA program, too, believing that kids with dyslexia, like her fourth-grade daughter and as many as 20% of her classmates, she said, would receive more focused instruction early on to avoid falling behind than the other two programs seemed to offer.

“Their focus isn’t on trying to be everything to everybody,” said Lebedda, who also has a first-grader and 3-year-old and has had foster children at various times. “They’re making sure that they are teaching kids literacy and then building off of that. Because when you lose these kids in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, every year that they don’t find success reading, your mental health takes a dive, your belonging. Another district goal is mental health and belonging. You don’t belong when you are illiterate and you’re in school every day.”

Evaluation sheets were distributed to everyone in attendance that could be filled out and submitted afterward to help guide the district’s decision on which reading literacy curriculum is best for PSD’s elementary schools.

The EL program from Imagine Learning was adopted last year by Greeley-Evans School District 6, presenter Jennifer Wood said. The HMH Into Reading program has been adopted by the Windsor-Severance and Cherry Creek school districts and some schools in the Jeffco School District and is under consideration by the Boulder Valley School District, said the program’s Colorado representative, Brooke Sullivan. Amplify CKLA has been adopted by Denver Public Schools, the Montrose County School District and some schools in the Jeffco School District, said Monty Lammers, a senior account executive for the program.

PSD will continue gathering feedback on the three programs it selected as finalists — additional information on all three can be found online on the vendor’s websites, Amplify CKLA, Imagine EL and Into Reading — through the end of January, Passantino said. That feedback and the findings of the district’s review team will be shared in consultation with Superintendent Brian Kingsley and his cabinet of top administrators to select a preferred program that the district will begin negotiations with next month with the goal of having a contract for the PSD Board of Education to consider for approval in April.

The district has budgeted nearly $3.1 million for curriculum and instruction this school year and will likely spend that much or more on the new reading literacy curriculum for elementary schools next year alone, Passantino said. New curricula costs substantially more money in the first year of its adoption with the purchase of instructional materials and initial teacher training, he said.

“Obviously, literacy’s exceptionally important,” Passantino said in his opening remarks Monday night. “We consider it a gateway to learning. And when we talk literacy, we are talking reading, writing and communicating. You have students reading and writing and communicating throughout the curriculum and across disciplines, and that’s why it’s very important in elementary school that literacy skills are developed successfully.”

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: PSD parents, staff review K-5 reading literacy curriculum options