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But why change now?

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ALUMNICORNER

ALUMNICORNER

By numerous measures, the SDNB has historically been a highachieving district. It is one of just 13 K-12 school districts to “significantly exceed expectations” on the 2022 Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction-issued report cards, with an achievement score higher than 96.3 percent of districts statewide. SDNB students are largely successful on ACT tests and collegeplacement exams. And the district is considered a leader in academic and career planning and its focus on ensuring all students are ready for college, careers and life after high school.

But look a little closer.

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• The SDNB is regularly one of the highest-scoring districts in the area in standardized testing in both math and science, but has not seen the same results in reading.

• Over the last five years, the percentage of students who scored at or above the benchmark on the ACT reading exam hovered between 49.3 percent and 53.6 percent.

• Standardized test results revealed reading proficiency scores had become stagnant - and even declined - over the last six years.

In fact, third grade proficiency scores for the spring of 2021 and spring of 2022 were 53 and 52 percent, respectively. The pandemic and state-ordered school shutdowns certainly influenced those scores, and the proficiency percentages were well above the state averages. But almost half of SDNB third grade students were not yet proficient in reading. And there were more concerns: students had grammar deficits and lacked perseverance with more difficult texts.

“For a long time we were happy with our level of success and how our district compared to others,” Superintendent Joe Garza said. “But we couldn’t get past, ‘Is good, good enough?’ And quite simply, the answer is ‘No.’”

A Learning Process

Before instituting change, however, homework was required. In 2020-21, the first year of the multi-year transition process, district administrators researched everything they could about different reading strategies. They admired the science of reading success stories they learned about and the evidence-based research that the methodology worked where implemented.

They analyzed more district data, and just as importantly, they listened to teachers and had focus groups with parents and students.

“Our younger students told us we were teaching them the same things every year,” said Brady Reinke, Director of Elementary Teaching and Learning. “They thought we didn’t trust them to learn new things. That was eye-opening.”

The district’s previous resource relied on teaching short mini-lessons followed by students reading and writing independently for extended periods. That system was built on the assumption that reading skills can be developed by exposure to reading, which is not always the case. Also missing was a focus on building vocabulary and background knowledge, both critical to reading success.

Year 2 of the process included a review of curriculum resources. The district built a team of teachers from all six schools; that team put together a checklist of everything it wanted out of a new curriculum and poured over resource after resource. It eventually selected Amplify CKLA, which the School Board approved last spring.

Simple View Of Reading

The new resource is built on what is known as the “Simple View of Reading”, where reading comprehension is the product of a person’s word recognition multiplied by their language comprehension.

Foundational skills are taught systematically to ensure there are no gaps in understanding of important reading concepts. Language comprehension is built through engagement with and learning about a diverse yet systematic set of topics to build background knowledge and vocabulary.

The district also switched its common assessment to Fastbridge. Fastbridge is more focused on foundational reading skills, is more interactive in grades kindergarten through third, requires students to spend less time testing and offers suggested skill recommendations and interventions for students in need.

“We also increased the urgency of the situation with our staff by sharing more data, sending them research and articles we had read,” Reinke said. “We began to share the vision of where we wanted our district to be and how we were going to get there.”

After selecting a resource - and a summer of training - the district is now in year three of its process. The new curriculum is in place, and the district has built more K-12 collaboration time into the schedule to allow for calibration, clarification, celebrating success, peer support and more.

Reaching Beyond New Berlin

As the School District of New Berlin implements a new reading curriculum centered on the science of reading in its schools, it is hoping to help effect change statewide.

A team of administrators and teachers recently presented the district’s story on why it made a change at the Wisconsin State Education Convention. The SDNB also teamed with Wisconsin Reads for two showings of the powerful documentary The Truth About Reading*, once at the state convention and again at the West Performing Arts Center. Before another showing of the film in Madison last month, SDNB Superintendent Joe Garza presented to a group that included K-12 educators and school leaders, technical college and university faculty, state and government officials, business leaders, parents and more.

A similar crowd of more than 400 hundred people attended the showing at the West PAC. After the movie, a panel of special guests that included two of the featured subjects in the documentary along with the district’s directors of teaching and learning, Brady Reinke and Kelli Kwiatkowski, answered questions from the audience.

“Reading proficiency isn’t just about percentages of students and increasing numbers to make a school or a district ‘look’ better,” Superintendent Garza said. “This work is incredibly important to everyone whether they realize it or not.”

In 2021-22, only 37 percent of all Wisconsin students in grades 3-8 scored proficient or advanced on the Wisconsin Forward Exam for English Language Arts, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. The department also reported that only 35 percent of students in grade 11 scored proficient or advanced on the ACT exam for English Language Arts.

And according to the non-profit organization Wisconsin Literacy, currently, one in seven Wisconsin adults struggle with low literacy. An estimated 1.5 million Wisconsinites need help building literacy skills because they have difficulty understanding short simple sentences necessary for following printed instructions, filling out forms and performing simple tasks.

“Reading deficiencies and illiteracy negatively affect taxpayers, the local workforce and economic development,” Garza added. “We believe the steps we are taking in our district today will bring positive change to some of the issues facing our community, region and state, and we want to be leaders in this effort.”

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