Rochester Public Schools outlines plans to overhaul the way it teaches literacy

Sep. 26—ROCHESTER — A common saying in education is that at first students learn to read, and then they read to learn. An implication of that modern proverb is that if a child doesn't have a good foundation to build on, the rest of their schooling will be substandard at best.

So, with an eye toward the consequences that literacy has on a child's later academic success, Rochester Public Schools is getting ready to overhaul the way it goes about teaching students to read, as well as the way it goes about reinforcing students' ability to read later on.

Last week, the Rochester School Board heard an overview of the district's work on the issue. Even though the district already had plans in motion, the change also has been power charged at the state level with the passage of the Read Act this past legislative cycle.

"There's no equity, no social justice without literacy," RPS Director of Academics Efe Agbamu said. "So, there is a moral imperative around the Read Act."

District leaders define "at grade level" as the combination of students who are "on track" and "low risk."

The district is aiming toward a goal of having 80% of students meeting that benchmark of reading at grade level.

The Read Act has an even more aggressive goal, which is that it "seeks to have every child reading at or above grade level."

As of the spring of 2023, RPS has double-digit margins to make up before meeting either of those goals. According to the district's data, the percentage of elementary students reading at grade level ranges from 62% to 64.5%.

The grade with the highest percentage of students reading at grade level is sixth, at 70.8%. The grade with the lowest percentage is 11th, at 58.2%.

Recent results from the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments show even less favorable results. RPS didn't conduct the annual test in 2023 because of the cyberattack on the district. However, in 2022,

45.41% of students

met or exceeded reading standards, 10.2% lower than 2019.

RPS Superintendent Kent Pekel said the district's goal of 80% is more realistic considering the challenges facing some students who have learning disabilities or those who come from backgrounds where English was not their first language.

"100% goals are meaningless for improvement purposes," Pekel said. "That's what we tried to do with No Child Left Behind."

So how does the district plan to increase those numbers?

The district's strategy mirrors that found in the Read Act, which includes screening students multiple times a year, monitoring progress, and providing professional development and family engagement.

The RPS literacy plan also talks about the "five pillars of literacy": phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

School Board member Justin Cook, who campaigned on the issue of increasing literacy, said it was hard to find an example that could represent the extent of the sea change on the issue.

"It's a paradigm shift from the literacy plan that's currently on the website," Cook said. "The potential is enormous to change the trajectory of our kids."

The district's previous literacy plan Cook mentioned is listed for the years 2020-21, and it addresses some of the same concepts outlined in the new plan.

Cook, however, told the Post Bulletin that the new plan goes much further in its effort to provide professional development for teachers. He also said the new plan focuses on "structured literacy," which has also been known as the "science of reading."

Essentially, that focus on structured literacy means Rochester Public Schools is going back to the basics with regard to teaching students how to read.

Those in Rochester are not the only ones excited about the move toward structured literacy.

In August, Minnesota Reps. Walter Hudson and Pam Altendorf spoke at an education panel in Rochester. With them was DeEtta Moos, a school board member from Cambridge-Isanti Public Schools, north of the Twin Cities metropolitan area.

During her remarks, Moos praised the Read Act and explained how it's a departure from a flawed method of making students memorize words rather than actually teaching them how the sounds of individual letters join together to create words.

Put another way, she was excited about the new legislation for the same reason Cook was. And like Cook, she stressed how impactful she thinks the change will be.

"If it's properly implemented, this will transform education," Moos told the Rochester audience.

Although American education at one time emphasized the importance of phonics, there was a trend away from that toward something called "Whole language" teaching, which focused on having students comprehend the overarching story without actually teaching them how to sound out words.

The Whole Language method eventually gave way to another trend called "balanced literacy," which theoretically included some instruction on phonics. However, even within the balanced literacy method, the teaching of phonics became de-emphasized.

"You'd say 'guess the word based on the previous words or even the picture," Pekel said. "And a kid can do that, and it looks like they're reading but they're not because they can't sound it out."

During the meeting, Pekel said the new literacy plan shines a light on the district's blind spots and holds it accountable.

Pekel went on to say that Rochester Public Schools had essentially become a poster district for the de-emphasis of teaching phonics. Another issue was there wasn't any standard literacy curriculum for grades 3-5. Teachers simply had to rely on a handful of materials.

Those are the kind of things the district is now trying to turn around — a process they started even before the passage of the Read Act.

But as much as the effort is about teaching students to read in the elementary grades, it's also about supporting students no matter their age — supporting students who maybe didn't learn to read correctly under the previous methods.

Heather Willman, RPS director of secondary academics, said part of the process will focus on helping even non-English teachers foster literacy. The thought is that if students are going to read to learn, their schools have to make sure that foundation of literacy is formidable.

"We're developing training around literacy for our science teachers, our math teachers, our social studies teachers," Willman said. "Because only one part of our students' day is in the English class, and if we want to make progress at the secondary level, we need to have all of our teachers be teachers of reading."