South Dakota educators have pointed to dramatic literacy successes in the state of Mississippi as evidence for lawmakers to support a proposed $6 million investment into expanded phonics-based reading curriculum and teacher training.
But as the appropriation supported by Gov. Kristi Noem moves forward in the Legislature, a top literacy official in Mississippi said that while South Dakotas plan is a good place to start, a one-time investment is unlikely to turn the tide of falling reading rates in the Rushmore State.
House Bill 1022 would provide the South Dakota Department of Education with $6 million for a four-year statewide teacher training effort in the science of reading (SOR), an intensive approach to reading instruction at the elementary level that relies in part on phonics, or using sounds within words rather than letters to help children read.
In the first hearing on the spending bill, Education Secretary Joseph Graves told lawmakers on the House Education Committee that, “in four years, when the money runs out, we are hoping and we believe that the need for the money will (run out) as well.”
But Tenette Smith, director of the Elementary Education and Reading Office in the Mississippi Department of Education, told News Watch in an interview that her advice to South Dakota is to expect a longer, far more expensive process to make reading gains real and long-lasting.
Smith said it will take longer than four years and much more than $6 million in spending on teacher training to replicate the incredible success shown in Mississippi.
“I would tell them to understand that this is not a quick fix,” Smith said. “There’s no silver bullet that increases student outcomes or a single strategy that will get you to the end result.”
Graves noted that phonics-based literacy education was popular 50 years ago but fell out of favor as educators turned to a whole language approach in which it was assumed that students would largely become literate on their own and would naturally develop a love of reading.
Graves said it became clear that whole language literacy training was a dismal failure.
In the 2022-23 school year, English language arts proficiency was at 50% among all students in South Dakota, a drop from 54% in 2018-19, according to the South Dakota Report Card. Language proficiency rates last year were 31% for economically disadvantaged students, 23% among English-language learners and 20% for Native American children.
The House committee voted 15-0 to pass the spending measure on Jan. 17 and send it to the Joint Appropriations Committee for further consideration.
South Dakota started a statewide literacy training initiative in August 2023 using federal COVID funds from the American Rescue Plan Act and has since provided SOR training to nearly 1,200 teachers at the kindergarten to fifth grade levels, Graves said. That funding will run out at the end of 2024, Graves said.
The $6 million would be used to provide extensive training in SOR concepts for teachers on a voluntary basis at any school in South Dakota, including public, private, tribal and Bureau of Indian Education schools, Graves said.
The multi-pronged effort to improve literacy in schools in Mississippi began in 2013 with an initial $3 million appropriation for the state’s first government-funded pre-kindergarten program aimed at 4-year-olds to jumpstart their learning. That year, lawmakers also invested $9.5 million in SOR teacher training programs, Smith said.
Mississippi, with a state population of 2.9 million and 450,000 K-12 students, is about three times the size of South Dakota. But it has a significantly higher overall poverty rate (19%) than South Dakota (13%.)
The initial investment in SOR and other literacy training for teachers rose to $15 million a year in 2014, where it has remained since, Smith said. About 60% of that funding goes directly to literacy coaching and support for teachers. Meanwhile, the state expanded its state-funded Pre-K program to earlier ages and a current funding level of about $40 million a year, Smith said.
The multi-phase literacy efforts have shown incredible results in student achievement, which lagged well behind most states for decades, according to Mississippi Department of Education data.
Samantha Walder is a big believer in SOR because she has seen the positive results at Legacy Elementary School in Tea, where she is the principal.
“If a child memorizes 10 words, they know 10 words,” she said. “But if a child learns 10 sounds, they would know 230 three-sound words or over 4,000 four-sound words.”
In the 2022-23 school year, Legacy Elementary School had 73% of students proficient in English language arts, 23 percentage points above the state average. “An excited reader will turn into a voracious learner,” Waldman said.
Students in the Hill City School District have been taught with a phonics-based reading program for more than a decade.
Superintendent Blake Gardner told News Watch that the efforts have led to strong student success. In the 2022-23 school year, the district had 57% of students testing proficient in English language arts, well above the statewide average of 50% that year. In 2018-19, Hill City Elementary where reading curriculum begins had a reading proficiency of 65%, well above the state average.
Theres a connection between your reading level in third grade and your career earnings, said Gardner.
In the 2018-19 school year, Westside Elementary School in Sisseton was able to bring in a part-time literacy coach through a grant program, and principal April Moen was pleased to see the results the added teacher training provided.
“It’s really important to have someone alongside you to keep you grounded in the foundation of reading, and she did that,” Moen said. “She taught our teachers, she modeled in the classroom, and she led our professional development in literacy.”
Moen said she saw growth in literacy rates at Westside elementary during the time the literacy coach was present. Further efforts to study, understand and implement science of reading methods will help more students learn to read earlier than ever, she said, adding that the school lost its literacy coach in 2022.
This article was produced by South Dakota News Watch, a non-profit journalism organization located online at sdnewswatch.org.
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