Ohio school report cards were released in September, and the only category where every school district in Marion County did not meet the state standard of three stars was in early literacy.
Between the pandemic and changing requirements, educational leaders across the county have noted an increased emphasis on literacy basics in the early learning classrooms and expanded staff to help meet this need.
In the early literacy category of the state report card, Elgin, Pleasant, Ridgedale and River Valley scored two stars while Marion City and Marion Prep each scored one star.
Noting that the district was six-tenths of a point away from gaining its third star, Pleasant Elementary Principal Travis Issler said he did not feel two stars accurately represented the work of Pleasant Elementary’s staff and students. He also shared the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic across statewide education could not be ignored, as the students who took the third grade reading test in the spring were affected since they were in the first grade.
“COVID threw a wrench in everything the last few years. We’re trying to bounce back from those things. I think you’re seeing that,” Issler said.
“There’s very fine other elementary schools in the county as well, and it’s really hit the early literacy in those early young kids – being absent, the COVID protocols, the third graders that took that test that represent that lost a quarter of instruction as first graders. They lost their entire spring quarter as a first grader, and first grade is really huge year in early literacy it’s where the reading really takes off.”
Amid the challenges and setbacks related to COVID, the Ohio House passed House Bill 497 in June which would end the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, or the requirement that students repeat the third grade if they do not pass the English language arts standardized test. It has now moved on to the Ohio Senate.
Within districts across the county, work was already being done to address this deficit before the data was released from the report card last month.
Ridgedale Superintendent Dr. Erika Bower was an English teacher and literacy coach throughout her career in education prior to taking over from former Superintendent Bob Britton this year.
She said the district is working to address literacy overall, beyond just early literacy, along with the statewide initiative through the Ohio Department of Education, Ohio’s Plan to Raise Literary Achievement, which focuses on improving students’ foundational skills.
Bower said across education there is a resurgence toward phonics instruction.
Jennifer Layne, district literacy teacher-leader at Marion City Schools, said the district is expanding its training and is researching additional ways to provide phonics help to early learners who need extra help.
Layne also noted the early benchmarks the district has passed with the implementation of new language arts curriculum, Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA).
Marion City Schools Assistant Superintendent Olympia Della Flora said there has already been improvement in student scores this year with CKLA, noting that literacy learning expands beyond learning to read.
“When the community or people who don’t work in schools like we do hear the word literacy, I think a lot of people just jump to, ‘Okay that means reading,’ but literacy really encompasses a lot. It encompasses not just reading but there’s problem solving. There’s memorization. There’s written skills. You have to take what you read and make sense of it,” she said.
Della Flora explained in the Monday State of the Schools address that there will be greater planning and organizing its multi-tiered systems of support, or MTSS, to help all levels of need. Likewise, at Pleasant, the district completely restructured its MTSS to focus on foundational skills to help struggling students.
Pleasant Elementary’s Principal Issler said the building leadership team has spent a lot of time in curriculum meetings with Title I Literacy Coach Nikki Snively figuring out how to align the district’s assessments with the state test. The team also added an extra staff member.
“With that phonics piece, we kind of knew that with our demographics and what the research says, we knew we need to hit that more often, so that person is just another layer of support helping students build those early literacy prerequisite skills,” Issler said.
“We realized there’s a need for more extensive and systematic phonics instruction in our world, and we had 25 teachers undergo that weeklong phonics training over the summer,” he later continued.
As a literacy coach with Pleasant, Snively said she has been working to help the district create common assessments that model the state test.
“We knew it was important, so we began with unwrapping those standards, really digging in and knowing that we knew what these standards meant and what was expected of students, so we did pacing guides. We mapped out what are the skills that build upon each other, and so what are we teaching first quarter and second and so on,” Snively said.
The goal of this work is not only to focus on what is necessary and will be tested but also to create building-wide standards for students to equally be equipped and allow teachers better opportunity to collaborate. Also, like the school report card, Pleasant Elementary also transitioned to a standards-based system of grading instead of the traditional letter grade system.
Pleasant wasn’t the only district to revamp its programming and add to its staff to help address early literacy.
Bower said her team is using a framework she developed as chief academic officer at North Union Local Schools to build new literacy and numeracy plans, and at Elgin, the district hired a new elementary dean of students, Angie Carpenter, this year whose focus is early literacy.
Elgin Superintendent Lane Warner said literacy was his top priority when filling this role.
“The primary thing that Matt Holsinger, our elementary principal, and I talked about was finding somebody that had a strong literacy background, and she’s leading the processes with our literacy team right now. We have an increased focus on MTSS, which is ‘multi-tiered systems of supports’ for kids, trying to be more active in identifying some of those issues early on and addressing those,” Warner said.
Carpenter and Holsinger have been meeting with Warner about ways to promote literacy. This includes holding an upcoming literacy night to encourage parents to read to children at younger ages. The team is also trying to plan a staff trip to other area districts that scored better on the state test to learn from different structures and programming.
With schools across Ohio facing the same struggles, Warner said he believed there needed to be more research to learn whether the statewide scores were due to the test providing skewed results, a crisis of literacy across the state or both.
“We know and I’m sure all the other schools know that early literacy is a difficult area, just from past test scores, not just from the grade card this year. I think that the star system shows a little bit of that, but I think that it’s important that we recognize issues with literacy in younger kids. It’s not just an Elgin problem – it’s all over the place in the county. It’s all over the place in the state,” Warner said.
Similarly, Issler said he met with the North Central Ohio Educational Service Center to discuss the report card scores and ways his team can grow and improve. He said he learned at that meeting that the English language arts portion of the test has increased in rigor, possibly providing another reason: that the state standards are simply harder to achieve.
Issler said looking forward he is still hopeful for the next round of standardized testing and another year education within his building.
“Our map data, our internal data, as well is also showing we’re really starting to move the dial and our student growth has been excellent, so we really are optimistic that we’re kind of past the COVID struggles and things like this and this year is really a prime year for us here in this building,” he said.
Story by: Sophia Veneziano (740) 564 – 5243 ∣ sveneziano@gannett.com
