Following the Science: Ohio Higher Education – District Partnerships Build the Capacity for Improved Literacy Outcomes Across the P20 Continuum

“Ohio’s commitment to equity for every child in every school and district in the state is a cornerstone of the state’s 2019-2024 strategic plan for education, Each Child Our Future. Equity in education, described as the plan’s greatest imperative and number one principle, means that “each child has access to relevant and challenging academic experiences and educational resources necessary for success across race, gender, ethnicity, language, disability, family background, and/or income.” (p. 8)

Each Child Means Each Child, released in March 2021, builds on the state strategic plan by identifying strategies for ensuring that Ohio’s education system “works” for all children, including those with disabilities and learning difficulties. “Working” means that the system is responsive to the needs of each child and accountable for preparing each child for success.

The imperative of teaching every child to read well is central to both plans. This grounding belief is stated clearly in Each Child Our Future: “The more literate an individual, the more capable he or she is of reaching education and career aspirations. One might say literacy is equity.” (p. 22).

But the shift to using the Simple View, despite it being supported by education research, and research in cognitive science and neuroscience, is not always accepted by educators who have worked as literacy specialists for many years. Dr. Dottie Erb, formerly dean of Marietta College’s Education Department, explains:

I have a graduate degree in reading, taught reading methods, reading diagnosis, and reading foundations for years throughout my career and tried to stay current with IRA but when I switched to administration I got away from it. My conception of what was appropriate reading instruction was from the 90s and early 2000s and my perception of SoR was that it forced dyslexia instruction on all children, which I didn’t think was appropriate. Participating in the Compact’s P20 Literacy Collaborative and being exposed to the research and to literacy experts like Michelle Elia revolutionalized the way I think about reading instruction. I feel like I need to do penance for what I taught to teachers and teacher education candidates for a number of years using whole language and cueing systems – it wasn’t great for all children even though it might have worked for some children. In many ways, my involvement in the P20 Literacy Collaborative is an opportunity to give back.

State leadership and support. The state’s approach to literacy improvement is based on a deep commitment to ensuring that all learners are supported throughout the continuum of language and literacy development, which includes emergent, early, conventional, and adolescent literacy (Ohio’s Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement, 2020, p. 18). Notably, Each Child Our Future strategy 9 addresses the development of language and literacy skills. In addition, several other priority strategies map onto this work including the employment of highly effective teachers and leaders, the provision of support to principals, the provision of support to teachers and others on instructional teams, the expansion of quality early learning, and the transformation of high schools in order to provide more pathways to graduation.

With leadership from Dr. Melissa Weber-Mayrer, Director of ODE’s Office of Approaches to Teaching and Professional Learning, state initiatives to facilitate, scale, and sustain the implementation high-quality evidence-based language and literacy instruction for all children, birth through grade 12, is supported by four full-time staff working to build a robust statewide support system through Ohio’s regional State Support Teams (SSTs) and educational service centers (ESCs).

The ODE team provides overall guidance and oversight for statewide implementation of $78.2 million in federal literacy grant funding, 95% of which goes directly to Ohio’s local education agencies, birth to grade 12. This funding includes direct support to 42 Striving Readers grantees, three Model Demonstration Dyslexia grantees, and up to 64 Comprehensive Literacy State Development grantees.

The team also supports the direct development of 17 Regional Early Literacy Specialists, two Ohio Literacy Leads, and two Adolescent Literacy Specialists.

All state-sponsored work is facilitated through two ODE literacy units: the Policy Unit and the Literacy Implementation Unit. A brief listing of the state initiatives, the relevant Ohio Revised Code (ORC) sections related to various initiatives, and related selected activities, are presented in the textbox below:

The Role of Higher Education – It Matters!

In 2018-2019, the Ohio Deans Compact, working in collaboration with ODE, convened the Higher Education Literacy Steering Committee (HELSC), composed of members from higher education, school districts, professional associations, regional providers, and state agencies. The charge to the HELSC members was to “develop a model/prototype for required reading course curriculum that could be used by Ohio’s teacher preparation programs to elaborate evidence-based, clinical practices for preparing candidates to provide literacy instruction that meets the needs of each child, including students with disabilities and other learning challenges.”

The Committee was guided by a commitment to productive and sustained P20 partnerships. As current research demonstrates, such partnerships are especially valuable for supporting educators (e.g., teachers, intervention specialists) – through preparation and ongoing professional learning – to teach all children, including those with diverse learning needs, to read.

The year-long HELSC study and collaborative learning process resulted in a set of model syllabi for core reading courses that any institution of higher education in Ohio could use to strengthen reading coursework. The model syllabi and supplemental resources were posted on the HigherEd Literacy Toolkit website, providing universal access to all Ohio educators across the P20 continuum.

Beginning with the 2019-2020, school year, the HELSC Committee was reconstituted as the P20 Literacy Collaborative with membership including the original HELSC members and others representing higher education – school district teams, each of which was working to implement an Improving Literacy Partnership Grant through the Compact.

This larger group continues to meet quarterly. The aims of the collaborative are (1) to provide opportunities for members to learn from each other and from national and state leaders in the area of literacy and (2) to provide feedback to the Compact on literacy grant implementation activities and implications for scaling effective practices statewide.

MSJ has partnered with nearby Oak Hills Local School District and, in particular, C. O. Harrison Elementary School to support effective literacy instruction while also providing teacher education candidates with opportunities to work with K12 teachers and students. School psychologists and speech-language pathologists, in addition to teachers and other staff, continue to be actively involved in expanding the use of SoR districtwide. An IHE-district team has participated in Compact-sponsored LETRS training in addition to other opportunities to increase capacity in the use of evidence-based literacy practices.

Breaking down barriers. “The P20 and LETRS PD played a big role in helping us to break down silos – between general ed and special ed, and between P12 and higher education,” explained Saylor. “Our goals are the same and should be,” she said.

For example, “Walsh has built a strong relationship with the Bedford City Schools by supporting LETRS professional development through the statewide network, and direct support from Walsh faculty who have provided Zoom sessions to support implementation of structured literacy strategies and actions,” said Brobeck. Establishing and maintaining strong mutually beneficial higher education – school district partnerships is essential to teaching all teachers to teach all children to read well,” he added.

Brobeck coordinates a statewide network involving four regional “lead” IHE representatives (from Bowling Green State University, University of Findlay, Lake Erie College, Marietta College, and MSJ) to provide ongoing support to over 200 educators participating as part of IHE – district teams in the Compact-sponsored LETRS PD.

Marietta College redesigned teacher preparation programs through Compact-funded incentive grants, phasing out discrete programs and using only DL programs. Faculty have partnered with Marietta City Schools – the College’s largest partner district – through an Improving Literacy Partnership Grant and have also participated in LETRS professional development as an IHE-district team. “For the clinical portions of our reading courses, Marietta is placing teacher candidates in Marietta City Schools because of the district’s commitment to SoR,” said Erb.

“The grant was a critical piece, not that this can’t be done without grant dollars. But the grant allowed faculty members Drs. Raven Cromwell and Amanda Rider to work intensively with partner districts and to participate in a statewide effort and know that they weren’t doing this by themselves,” added Erb.

ALL benefit. Erb believes that candidates and the children served by them now and in the future will benefit from the use of evidence-based literacy instruction aligned with SoR. “In the past, we were great at teaching strategies without any knowledge behind their use. Now, candidates will graduate with the knowledge to understand why a particular strategy works or doesn’t work, and the ability to look in particular schools and know why they have students not achieving. They’ll leave with the confidence to be change agents, able to meet a broader range of student needs. Many of them become employed in districts in southeast Ohio that have huge literacy issues with many students not meeting the 3rd grade reading guarantee in any of buildings where our students are placed.”

Dr. Cassandra Johnson, Interim Superintendent of Bedford City Schools, agrees with Brobeck and Erb and appreciates the benefits of the Bedford-Walsh partnership: “We believe that it is imperative to equitably implement high quality, evidence-based practices that ensure every child improves their reading skills. LETRS has provided very practical evidence-based instructional literacy strategies for our early childhood teachers. These strategies are assisting our teachers to meet students where they are academically and therefore positively impacting the literacy success for each student regardless of their race, gender, academic ability, or economic status. LETRS has supported our mission that ALL students can achieve!

The UC SDI Center works as a partner in supporting the state’s work to improve literacy teaching and learning on behalf of all children and youth. The Center is coordinating the development of the ALL Ohio website, an interactive website that houses a variety of professional learning materials for Ohio’s P20 education system.

A main feature of the ALL Ohio website is the Ohio Literacy Library, which allows educators to engage in asynchronous professional learning through comprehensive learning modules that are universally accessible to all who are interested in using them. The modules explore various literacy topics in-depth through narrative text, linked resources, realistic scenarios, reflections, learning activities, and embedded audio and videos.

The Simple View of Reading module is recommended as the first module to be completed, because it provides foundational information relevant to all other modules. In addition, the first two modules of a five-part series on word recognition are currently available on ALL Ohio, as is the first module in an adolescent vocabulary series. These series will be completed in 2022, along with an 8-part series on evidence-based literacy instruction for English Learner students.

Also under development, is an online learning module to be offered through the website of the Ohio Leadership Advisory Council (OLAC). Guiding the development of the module is a panel of higher education, district, and regional representatives with expertise in evidence-based literacy instruction. Due to be released in summer 2022, the module will be particularly relevant to leaders at all levels of the education system. It will help them gain greater understanding of evidence-based literacy practices and show them how to use the Ohio Improvement Process (OIP), with its collaborative team structures (i.e., district leadership teams, building leadership teams, and teacher-based teams), to prepare for, implement, and support systemwide use of evidence-based literacy instruction.

What’s needed? “I would love to see more engagement of IHEs and P20 partners working together to use evidence-based literacy instruction grounded in SoR. The closer we get to P12, the more we see teachers that want this training. And, the more that IHEs and ODE get the voice of P12 in the conversation, it tells such a compelling story that you can’t not do it. The Hunt Institute work is important and it is moving; I get the sense that there’s an exponential effect in how the work is progressing,” reflected Saylor.

Erb, who co-facilitates the P20 Literacy Collaborative, agrees: “I’m not an advocate of forcing, but I would like to see more IHEs involved in the work and more people involved in the P20 Collaborative out doing more presentations at conferences to say here’s what SoR is, here’s why it works, here’s what it does for all kids, here’s how we incorporate SoR into our program. With this type of change, you see benefit down the road, several years from now when we have critical mass of teachers teaching reading the right way. It won’t be in the next year or two years from now. We need to stay the course.”

“Good lasting systems change doesn’t happen with a hammer; it takes time, commitment, and resources,” offered Saylor.

References

Gough, P., & Tunmer, W. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7, 6-10.

Scarborough, H. S., & Brady, S. A. (2002). Toward a common terminology for talking about speech and reading: A glossary of the “phon” words and some related terms. Journal of Literacy Research, 34(3), 299–336.

Seidenberg, M., & McClelland, J. (1989). A distributed, developmental model of word recognition and naming. Psychological Review, 96, 523-68.