‘Disappointing’: Ohio’s science of reading switch not yet bringing results
This story was originally published by The 74.
Ohio’s drive to boost reading scores using the science of reading has had a rocky start in the two years since Gov. Mike DeWine fought for the change, with scores going the wrong direction.
Even with millions spent on new textbooks, and teachers required to take online science of reading training, third grade English Language Arts proficiency fell from 62% in spring of 2023 to 61% earlier this year.
A jump in 2024 to 65% proficiency turned out to be a mirage, as third graders fell right back again last school year.
It’s still unclear whether the scores are cause for alarm or just a natural part of the transition as Ohio joins the flood of states shifting to phonics-heavy lessons to help students decode and understand words better. Some supporters of the science of reading believe small gains should happen almost immediately, even if it takes longer for large improvements statewide.
“We haven’t seen much progress yet,” said Chad Aldis of the Fordham Institute, one of the advocates of adopting the science of reading. “This is disappointing.”
Others urge patience, with some districts that adopted the science of reading early, saying they are on the verge of students showing improvements.
In the Elyria school district about 30 miles west of Cleveland, educators are hoping their patience will soon pay off.
Andrea McKenzie, Elyria literacy specialist acknowledged that scores haven’t improved since the district switched to the science of reading in 2022. But she said this year’s third graders, the first to be using the new curriculum since kindergarten, are on track for an 11 point jump in proficiency rates, according to scores on standardized progress tests.
“This is the moment I have been waiting for,” McKenzie said. “I’ve been waiting for these students to get to third grade to see this through, so I feel like this is the year.”
Though most schools adopted the science of reading right after DeWine started his push early in 2023, Ohio law gave schools until this fall to fully make the switch. Teachers need time to adjust and embrace a new approach. And even Mississippi, whose “miracle” reading gains are the model for Ohio and other states, took a few years before making gains that caught notice.
“Last school year, we had districts who were in very different places in their implementation of science of reading,” said Chris Woolard, chief integration officer of the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. “We had some of those early adopters that have been doing this for a few years. We had others who are (still in) early stages.”
He stressed that this ongoing school year is the first that all schools must be fully using the science of reading, a “really important” consideration when evaluating results.
Melissa Weber-Mayrer, Ohio’s chief of literacy, said this year is “pivotal” since schools now have to be fully using science of reading, but she also cautioned that it could be three to five years before scores grow statewide.
“Looking locally, we will see things start to move,” she said. “But it might be in a grade level, in a school, maybe in one elementary building within a larger district.,” she said.
Elyria, a district of just under 6,000 students, could be one of those pockets. The district’s four elementary schools were named Science of Reading Champions by DeWine last spring for quickly adopting materials and instruction, even as that district’s reading scores are still not rising.
Third grade reading proficiency in that district fell from 45.8% of students in 2023 to 43.8% on state tests this spring.
But the district has been pushing hard to adopt the science of reading, with the school board voting in 2022 to shift to the Core Knowledge Language Arts curriculum and start using it that fall.
The district had 34 teachers start two-year Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading (LETRS) training — a program many consider the gold standard of science of reading — in 2022, with 30 more starting in 2024 and another 22 starting this school year.
The district also hired two literacy specialists in 2022 to help the one already there work with teachers on reading lessons and with students that need extra help.
The change now has kindergarten teacher Lindsay DeCoster giving students focused lessons on letters, their sounds and how to move their tongues and teeth to pronounce them.
“In the past, we have been skipping over this part… like they don’t need to know how to rhyme, they don’t need to know initial sounds and things like that,” DeCoster said. “If you don’t understand how your mouth needs to look and what your mouth needs to do to make those sounds, then you’re not gonna be able to.”
DeCoster, now in her 17th year as a teacher, said LETRS training improved her teaching immensely.
“I just didn’t know what I didn’t know as far as everything that really goes into teaching a child how to read,” she said. “We’ve now broken it down to the smallest, smallest component.”
With so many states adopting the science of reading in just the last few years, experts were unable to point to many strong studies showing how fast scores change after adopting the science of reading. That’s partly because districts and schools adopt new curricula, add coaches, and train teachers at different speed and intensity, often varying within a single school, as in Elyria.
But Stanford University professor Thomas Dee, who studied how low-performing schools in California improved using that state’s Early Literacy Block Grants, said changes can happen quickly if classroom methods truly change too.
He found that low-performing California students improved by about a third of a year’s worth of learning over two years, after changing the curriculum, training teachers, and adding tutoring and afterschool programs using the grants..
“I think it’s reasonable to expect measurable improvements in student literacy to follow fairly quickly on the heels of evidence-aligned changes in teacher pedagogy,” Dee told The 74. “The major concern I have is that state declarations for the Science of Reading may not translate quickly—or indeed ever—into responsive changes in classroom practices.”
Teachers, he said, can fall back into old practices of having students “guess” at words using context or pictures – practices that Ohio banned in its 2023 state reading law – but which can’t be tracked.
Aldis also noted that Ohio is not gaining in another important way that can show progress — whether lower-scoring students are doing better and closing the gap to becoming proficient.
Fordham reported last month that the opposite is happening. More third graders are scoring as “limited,” the state’s lowest rating, an equivalent to an F, than before — 20.9% this year compared to 19.1% in 2023.
One factor, Aldis said, could be Ohio dropping its requirement in 2023 that third graders must read well to advance to fourth grade, which motivated students and teachers to show gains on a deadline.
Casey Taylor, the literacy policy director for ExcelinEd, the education advocacy group formed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, worked on reading efforts in the early days of Mississippi’s shift, as well as in North Carolina, which started a similar push in 2021.
She said Mississppi saw some gains in schools that used literacy coaches extensively within two years, but she cautioned, “It still took several years before we really started to see those performance levels shift at a broad, systemic approach.”
Mississippi, the second-worst worst state in reading when its literacy campaign launched in 2013, didn’t really excel for six years, she said.
“We saw some gains in the 2015 NAEP, but it wasn’t until 2019 that the nation really took note, because that was the first time we reached the national average on fourth grade reading,” she said.
North Carolina, she said, has started seeing gains on standardized progress tests teachers give their students, but not on tests like the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) yet.
Though he wants to see faster improvement in Ohio, Fordham’s Aldis agreed with Taylor in one major way — making real gains takes a long-term commitment.
Ohio, Aldis said, has a history of abandoning improvement projects that don’t show quick results and moving on to something else.
“These reforms are just too important to follow that same path,” Aldis said. “We need to stick with it.”
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.