BEACHWOOD, Ohio — This is a big change that will impact the way children across Ohio learn to read.
This is the first school year in which all districts in the state must teach the same method of reading comprehension, that is, relying on traditional phonics or sounding out a word.
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A report from the Ohio Department of Education shows that 39.9% of all third graders in Ohio do not have sufficient reading skills.
“We have about 300,000 students in preschool through third grade whose reading skills are not at grade level, and I don’t understand how you can’t consider that a crisis,” said Steve Dackin, director of the Ohio Department of Education and Employment Services.
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What is the difference?
In a phonetic approach, a word is broken down letter by letter and pronounced by the student.
Other methods may teach words as wholes rather than individual letters, using context clues such as other words in a sentence or pictures to help recognize and remember the word.
What the change looks like
When you visit Bryden Elementary in Beachwood, you can feel the success as soon as you walk through the door.
Beachwood is one of 30 districts in Northeast Ohio that received an overall 5-star rating from the state on its report card last year.
“We are small but mighty,” said Dr. Linda LoGalbo, director of curriculum and instruction.
However, Beachwood is one of many districts in the state that are in the process of eliminating old curricula and replacing them with new, state-approved curricula that place a strong focus on phonics in reading.
“Phonics is the part where we are refocusing our efforts,” LoGalbo said. “In the past, our focus has been solely on comprehension and not decoding skills. This re-centers or rebalances us by focusing first on being able to decode the words.”
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The problem is that students rely on pictures to decipher the words,” she said.
Like Beachwood, top-performing Solon district is in the midst of moving away from its previously successful approach to reading comprehension.
“Our district is in the process of implementing the changes required by law,” said a Solon City School District spokesperson. “Our staff will be busy throughout the year on professional development and implementation.”
News 5 spoke with several school districts who expressed frustration with the implementation of this initially unfunded mandate. They called it an unusual mandate that the state doesn’t typically see, and it left only a few months to learn if their curriculum was approved and adjust accordingly. Districts can be compensated by the state after changes are made to their reading curriculum.
In Cleveland, CMSD CEO Dr. Warren Morgan told a crowd at Mayor Justin Bibb’s Science of Reading Summit that they revised their reading curriculum this year to make it more consistent from school to school.
“I’m really excited that this year, for the first time ever, we have a single curriculum based on the science of reading,” he said. “Some schools have used it, but we’ve also implemented so many other curricula in our schools, and when we talk about supporting teachers and learning, you don’t know what works and what doesn’t.”
For some, the change has not been quite so drastic. Euclid schools began transitioning to reading science in 2020.
“We thought we were doing the best for the kids by providing balanced literacy instruction,” said Becky Mamich, senior director of curriculum design. “But we realized that wasn’t effective.”
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“I read everything and the kids mostly listened,” she said. “They took books, but they didn’t really know what to do with them. They had to memorize a lot.”
A year ago, the governor visited Euclid’s Early Learning Village to highlight the disparities in reading instruction.
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As Principal Mary Thomas points out, she has already found that 84% of her kindergarten students are making progress on incorrect letter sounds and that 63% of kindergarten students are making above-average or significantly above-average progress.
“We’re closing the gap,” she said. “When we decided to buy a curriculum that supported the science of reading, that was a big deal. That was a big deal because I think everyone was still unsure how realistic that was.”
Districts must complete the transition to phonics and reading science by the end of this school year.
According to Education Week, Ohio is one of 39 states and the District of Columbia that have passed laws or new policies related to reading science.
Clay LePard is a special projects reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow him on Twitter @ClayLePard or on Facebook Clay LePard News 5.
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