Texas teachers struggle to complete required reading training. These changes could help.
Teachers in Fort Worth and elsewhere across North Texas have been struggling to complete training mandated by the state legislature and intended to increase low reading scores across the state.
The professional development programs known as reading academies were meant to fit in with existing preparation and training for teachers. But some educators have spent early mornings, late nights, weekends and even vacations to complete the courses.
“I did most of the reading academy during the nighttime and on weekends,” said Meradith Reese, a Fort Worth kindergarten teacher. “I have a family as well, so it was difficult in the beginning — I won’t lie and say it was easy.”
The curriculum, which was launched just months after the legislature passed the mandate in 2019, was shorter and less comprehensive when the first teachers started learning in the academies.
Sharon Wittsche, the instructional coordinator for Education Service Center 11, which serves 10 counties in North Texas, said that the course was intended to be completed in 60 hours.
“The second year it was much more in-depth and comprehensive, but it also exceeded the 60-hour timeline the TEA said it would take teachers,” she said. “If you have a really great literacy background, maybe you could have done it in 60 hours, but many Texas teachers don’t have that kind of in-depth background.”
Lily Laux, the deputy commissioner of school programs at the Texas Education Agency, said that the agency has heard similar feedback statewide.
“We have always been trying to strike that balance between how much content do folks need ... and of course teachers’ really valuable time,” Laux said. “We’ve gotten feedback from folks that it was taking longer than estimated time projections, particularly in the version this past year.”
Laux said there is still a wide range of how long it takes teachers to complete, with some finishing before the expected time frame and others taking “too long.”
The extra work, which for many teachers began during the hectic era of partial virtual learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was viewed by many teachers as an added stress with no built-in room to actually learn the material.
“Some of us resorted to just clicking through the modules, and passing around answers. That is the point it got to,” one Fort Worth teacher told the Star-Telegram.
The teacher requested anonymity so as to not be disciplined for those actions.
While not all teachers had negative experiences with the academies, enough complications were shared with the Texas Education Agency over the years that the agency is dialing back the program for the final year — the deadline legislators set for all kindergarten through third-grade teachers to complete the academies.
“For this coming year, they have again refined it to ensure that what should take 60 hours does indeed take that time,” Wittsche said.
Teacher training will be shorter, more refined in final year
Laux said that the academies have been evolving since they were first introduced, culminating in the final version rolled out at the end of June.
“Each year now since 2019 that reading academies have been out, we’ve been on a continuous improvement journey,” she said. “And we’re able to use data to continue to make sure that we’re getting the best learning transfer, that folks going through are really learning the information as easily as possible.”
Changes include removing redundant content that teachers have shown they understand in pretests, as well as offering options for teachers to test out of the requirement if they already know the content, which is centered around the science of teaching reading.
“We really have gone through the modules in great detail to take out places where either the content could potentially be considered redundant, or participants were already grasping the concept,” Laux said.
“We were able to cut content or streamline it, and those edits are actually already out,” she said. “So folks who started in June or July should be getting a streamlined content version that hopefully more accurately matches the 60 hours that we’ve shared.”
The academies are led by cohort leaders who present the material, either from an Education Service Center, like the one Wittsche works for, or literacy coaches at larger districts like Fort Worth ISD, which became an authorized provider itself.
In the most recent update, the grading responsibilities have also been transferred to a third party for some aspects of the training, allowing the coaches to spend more time working with teachers. Combined, the changes could free up more time.
That is important, Kathryn Pole said, as with learning any concepts, it takes time to actually implement what you’re learning. Pole is a literacy researcher and teacher educator in the Curriculum and Instruction Department at the University of Texas at Arlington.
“Solid learning takes time,” she said. “So, if we do have people who are just clicking through just because they are under this time crunch to get it done, that would not be the most effective way of doing it.”
Pole said she hadn’t personally heard of teachers rushing through the materials, but that in general there is a need for more time when teachers learn new concepts.
“They need … much more time and then actual ... practice with children, if they’re trying to integrate a new skill into their teaching toolbox,” she added.
Wittsche echoed that sentiment.
“It is a master’s level course, and the unfortunate thing was that the first year it ended up being in the midst of a pandemic,” she said. “Because it was in statute and legislation, it still had to move forward so it was kind of the perfect storm of terrible for those teachers.”
Alleia Hobbs, executive director of instructional initiatives and school supports for Fort Worth schools, said the district has opened the courses up months before the school year begins so that teachers can get a head start.
To counterbalance the challenges of completing the training, leaders across North Texas districts including schools in Birdville and Fort Worth have offered compensation to teachers, as well as offering some time during the school year to work on the courses.
Districts pay teachers to take state training
In Fort Worth ISD, where almost all but new teachers have completed the reading academies, teachers are eligible for $1,000.
“We knew that there would be an ask of teachers,” said Marcey Sorensen, chief academic officer at Fort Worth ISD. “We always want to remind teachers that this is out of our purview... this is a state mandate.
“We looked at ourselves in the district and said, ‘How do we help teachers at least ease the blow?’” she added.
Teachers receive $1,000 throughout the school year while completing the courses in three payments, two of $250 and one of $500, Sorensen said.
“The other thing that we’ve done is that we have strongly encouraged our principals to use their (federal) title funding, to compensate teachers to have professional learning communities, and get together as groups in grade-level bands, and do this together on after-school time and compensate them to do that time, and many of our strongest principals have done that,” she added.
Birdville schools, which switched from fully in-person to a blended model after COVID-related substitute shortages, also provided stipends for teachers completing the academies.
Do reading academies work?
Despite the hiccups and challenges, teachers, administrators and state leaders point to recent increases in statewide reading scores on the STAAR exam and other successes as proof the reading academies are working.
Reese, the Fort Worth kindergarten teacher, said that while the training could take a few years to improve reading scores, she has seen more progress in the last year than in her decades of using other approaches to teaching reading. She’s taught kindergarten for 22 years.
Over 96,000 teachers have participated in reading academies statewide a year out from the deadline, according to numbers provided by the agency.
“I think that speaks to the fact that it is very doable for folks who were planning to make this a part of their larger schedule on our professional development,” Laux said. “But at the same time, I don’t want to minimize the fact that it’s been a huge effort and it’s been really fantastic work on behalf of districts and authorized providers.”
Sorensen said that despite major disruptions from two waves of COVID infections that kept hundreds of teachers out of classrooms at the beginning of the year, the Fort Worth district has been able to train the majority of the required teachers.
“While this is a lift for teachers, I do want to remind us of the purpose of this work, which is to develop the capacity of our educators so that our students are getting what they need,” she said. “Which is why we then put funding behind it, why we tried to create spaces for adult learning … because at the end of all of this learning are young people who need to learn how to read.
“I’ve never shied away from this — it will be a challenge,” she said. “It is a challenge that will yield results for our young people.”
Kathryn Cottrell, who teaches fourth-grade literacy and social studies at a Fort Worth elementary school, said that while the courses were time consuming, she and many of her peers didn’t find the content difficult.
“As teachers, we are often sent off with very little instruction given in our educator prep programs about how the brain learns to read,” she said. “The reading academies offered teachers the opportunity to give our students the foundations and understanding of the steps, or systematic ways that students learn to be successful readers. Regardless of the subject matter students are learning about, they need a foundational understanding of reading to be able to be successful.”
Wittsche, the Education Service Center 11 coordinator, said that at the end of the day, the training will be worth it.
“I do think that curriculum is meaningful and valuable, and that teachers once given time to, you know, reflect on what they’ve learned will definitely have pieces of learning that help them to be better able to serve their student,” she said. “Even though the struggle has been real, I think at the heart of it the idea is a really great one.”
