DC Students Need Your Help to Fight for Literacy Investments in the FY2025 Budget
Read my latest op-ed co-authored with Natalie Wexler in the74. D.C. needs more than phonics to lift our students’ reading scores.
Dear Neighbor,
Please ask your Councilmembers to fund all 4 recommendations put forward by the Early Literacy Education Task Force!
Last September, I worked with colleagues from different educational agencies to put forward 4 recommendations to make evidence-based literacy investments in DC. Here's where we stand:
We’re trying to take shortcuts & unfortunately, we’ve seen in other contexts that such shortcuts don’t work.
Reading instructors seek opportunities to learn how to teach reading. Pedagogy matters. Just because you know how to read does not mean you know how to teach reading. Yet, only a small proportion of DC reading instructors have access to structured literacy training via the DC Reading Clinic (a great home-grown training administered by DC Public Schools) and/or through LETRS training provided by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE).
OSSE is also now offering reading instructors a 25-hour virtual training that was developed for DC by The New Teacher Project (TNTP). The benefit of this training is that it doesn’t cost the city any extra per instructor. The content in this virtual TNTP training is solid, but it completely forgoes the most impactful aspect of more robust teacher training programs: direct coaching support from trained literacy coaches to apply the theory to practice. Funding has also been cut for the stipends to reading instructors participating in the DC Reading Clinic.
Councilmember Pinto and I visited Seaton Elementary and got to observe an experienced reading instructor's classroom.
The Mayor’s proposed budget includes funding for high-quality instructional materials – this is great! However, without properly funding the full set of recommendations, we’ll face a Sysyphian challenge to use that curriculum effectively. Investing in high-quality instructional materials is a critical piece of the puzzle, but it won’t lead to the results we want to see if the other puzzle pieces (such as coaching) aren’t properly implemented.
No matter how high-quality, any curriculum will be highly limited in its impact if teachers aren’t provided the appropriate training, coaching, and administrative support to effectively use it. It’s one thing to learn something in theory. It’s entirely different to apply it in practice. We would not purchase sophisticated medical equipment for medical professionals without providing them with intensive training and support on how to use it.
Literacy investments cannot be piecemeal. The research clearly shows that all the pieces of the puzzle (all 4 recommendations put forward by the Literacy Task Force last September) must fit together in order to generate the outcomes we’ve seen in states like Mississippi, Tennessee, Ohio, and Arkansas. As a reminder, those states have leap-frogged DC in reading outcomes.
We know what we have to do, and I need your help to write your Councilmembers to tell them how important it is to fund all 4 recommendations put forward by the Early Literacy Education Task Force. The estimated ask is an additional $6.6 million to train up to 1,000 Pre-K educators, 3,500 K–5 educators, and 750 administrators (covering recommendations 1, 2, and 3). Our educators deserve compensation and protected time to deepen their knowledge about structured literacy so that we are honoring their time as professionals. And, all teachers and school leaders, regardless of the training and materials they have access to, need on-the-job coaching to support them to implement these practices effectively.
Great to see many Ward 2 neighbors at the Cherry Blossom 10-Mile race!
Tonight, April 17th at 5 pm: Join me at the DCSBOE’s April Public Meeting at 441 4th Street NW. There will be a panel discussion on the FY25 Proposed Budget, an administrative vote approving the District of Columbia’s first Social and Emotional Learning standards, and more.
Saturday, April 20th at 10 am: Join me at the DCSBOE’s Community Budget Forum at 441 4th Street NW. Please register here.
All the best,
Allister
