“If we want to keep being distracted about testing and a new curriculum and teaching teachers better, we're gonna continue to dismantle the Minneapolis Public Schools.” – newly elected School Board member Greta Callahan, former MFT President, in prepared remarks during the Oath of Office Ceremony.
Well, this pretty much put a target on our advocacy. For those have following along, you would know why we have been advocating for curriculum that actually teaches kids to read.
Those following our advocacy work know that MPS has made critical progress, including choosing UFLI as its foundational literacy curriculum.
But it is now mid-February and there has been no movement on updating MPS core K5 ELA curriculum, and comments like Director Callahan’s have left us wondering if MPS is back-tracking on its commitment to prioritizing student literacy outcomes.
Attached is our unanswered email to our new Superintendent and the MPS Board.
Dear Superintendent Sayles-Adams, Board Chair Beachy, MPS Board, and Sr. Academic Officer Clasen,
As MPS parents and community advocates who have personally seen and experienced issues with reading instruction in Minneapolis, four years ago we founded the advocacy group, MPS Academics Advocacy to push for a public discussion on how MPS can provide better resources to its educators in order to better serve our students.
We are requesting a meeting with Superintendent Adams, Dr. Tia Clasen and additional staff at your discretion to discuss the conversations we have been having with educators, parents and stakeholders across the district and state around literacy instruction in MPS and hear your vision. We would also extend an invitation to meet with any school board members.
We recorded one such in-depth interview with two educators in MPS, they shared deep concern about the number of students struggling to read in their school, we share a sample set attached, showing a large number of their 5th grade students were still struggling with letter sounds and being able to read simple CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant i.e. cat, map, dog, etc).
Some key points they shared with us:
Teachers want and need to be trained in evidence-based literacy instruction.
There are not enough interventionists to support the many, many students receiving interventions; there are not ample tracking mechanisms to document who is receiving interventions & if/when they “work”
Tier 1 instruction must be improved for real improvements in students’ outcomes
Benchmark curriculum’s foundational skills units are seriously deficient. Schools need a better foundational skills curriculum. Benchmark could be maintained for broader reading skills & strategies, but it is weak in providing students with foundational skills, and knowledge building.
District has only provided a brief 30 minute training session on dyslexia, otherwise no support for teachers (despite MPS identifying 42% of its K-3 students as having “characteristics of dyslexia”)
MPS needs a more systems approach to literacy and less patchwork fixes.
In classrooms with low literacy levels, students are doing project-based work, there is little writing or student reading – compounding future proficiency struggles
Educators want their students to succeed, and it is frustrating when they are using the balanced literacy tools they are told works and they don’t see the results.
We are excited about the progress MPS has been making over the last couple years with investments in teacher training, eduClimber and our investment in UFLi as a foundational reading curriculum.
UFLi is a low cost, foundational curriculum developed out of the University of Florida, a recent study citing UFLi’s effectiveness in reducing the number of students needing outside interventions was met with broad based enthusiasm from educators:
We are concerned about repeated comments made by a new board member dismissing the voices of educators and parents who have repeatedly shared with us their personal experiences about the need to make investments to improve reading instruction in MPS.
We believe it would be helpful to share more in-depth our community conversations and hear how our new Superintendent and her team will be leading MPS in the future on literacy instruction.
District leaders and our previous special education audit have repeatedly said we have a Tier 1 instructional problem resulting in too many of our students requiring expensive out of classroom remediation.
We believe by giving educators the training they deserve and easy to use, effective curriculum tools they need, we can reduce the number of students needing expensive interventions, and attract and retain more students in our district, allowing us more opportunity to reinvest into the general education classroom.
We have heard from many educators who are seeing success in their classrooms, but we need continued district and Board leadership to continue to advance the needs of our students and educators.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
David Weingartner
Sara Spafford Freeman
Khulia Pringle
Additional information:
What is the scope of reading difficulties in Minneapolis Public Schools:
In MPS’ 2021 report to the MDE, 42% of K3 students were diagnosed with “characteristics of dyslexia”.
At the start of our advocacy we shared over 20 testimonials from MPS parents sharing their experiences and frustrations with reading instruction in MPS.
Earlier in 2022, we had the opportunity to interview two MPS educators from a Northside school about their experiences with literacy instruction in MPS elementary schools. At the school where they taught, around 80% of students would have qualified for a literacy intervention; over 50% of fifth grade students were struggling to read CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant words, like cat, fog, mop).
MPS 2014 Special Education Audit, called out specifically and repeatedly MPS need to focus on reading instruction. “At Minneapolis Public Schools, a high number of students struggle to read at the elementary level: Only one in five elementary students with disabilities is above goal in language arts. Over half of regular education students also struggle in reading (below goal).”
Educators have shared a change in practice has reduced students needing special education services for literacy: “Before our switch to structured literacy, 100% of students that entered Tier 3 interventions went to Special Education. Now? 0% of students have gone to special education. It’s a Tier 1 problem, folks” - Educator
What have we been advocating for and why?
Our first question to MPS was what percentage of students were receiving interventions and how many were struggling with foundational skills such as decoding and fluency. MPS did not have a way to systematically track or see this at district level and was haphazardly tracked if at all at the site level. The MTSS model argues that schools with more than 20% of students needing interventions, the school has a to address the problem at the curricular or systems level. In response, MPS invested in EduClimber, that if properly implemented will allow teachers and other stakeholders to see what and when students are receiving interventions as well as a host of other tools to progress monitor.
K5 ELA Curriculum – Benchmark Advance 2018
MPS purchased Benchmark Advance in 2017 and after more than 3 years, only 1/ 2 of teachers were using the curriculum. A common complaint from teachers was the Benchmark lacked foundational skills and was designed for “middle class students from then suburbs who come into school already knowing how to read”. The state of Colorado banned the curriculum for this reason and required Denver school district as well as other to upgrade to a new curriculum. We conducted an in-depth interview on Benchmark who also brought up the concern the curriculum focused more on test prep strategies as opposed to help students understanding and experiencing what they were reading. A common refrain from students is, “Benchmark is Boring”. MPS staff have recommended replacing Benchmark as the core ELA curriculum, we were supposed to restart the curriculum search process, but nothing has been communicated, we suspect funding has been removed for a core ELA curriculum. Families have specifically told us they have left the district because of Benchmark.
Educator training:
Educator’s-at-large have complained about their colleges of education not teaching them how to teach reading. There are now over 240,000 in the Facebook Group, Science of Reading, What I Should Have Learned in College. An educator was quoted in this MPR article about Minnesota’s efforts as a state to improve reading instruction, “But (structured literacy was) not the way Hins used to teach, and it’s not how she learned literacy instruction in college. Like elementary school teachers around Minnesota and the nation, she’s had to come to terms with a difficult reality: What she was doing wasn’t working, and she had to change.
There is a strong correlation between reading difficulties and students/adults entering the justice system. In 1993, the Dept of Juvenile Justice released Reduced Recidivism and Increased Employment Opportunity Through Research-Based Reading Instruction a that called for the private sector to prepare educators:
“In order to remove the barriers to improved reading instruction so as to allow handicapped readers to become proficient readers in the shortest time possible , it will be necessary to provide reading teachers with the opportunity to acquire a knowledge of the alphabetic principles governing English spelling as well as becoming confident in using instructional programs that incorporate intensive, systematic phonics methods. For this to be accomplished, this in-service training most likely will have to come from private sector literacy providers because departments, schools and colleges of education have a poor track record in providing this type of instruction.”
The American Federation of Teacher’s passed a resolution in 1998 calling for better teacher training in beginning reading instruction. They routinely feature Louisa Moats author of LETRS in the quarterly, AFT Educator magazine.