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In 2010, Karlee Little attended Central Michigan University to learn how to teach elementary school. Now a veteran teacher, she’s back in the classroom as a student.
Little, like so many Michigan teachers, is seeking as many strategies and fresh ideas as she can to help her students become stronger readers. It’s that extra reading support that she didn’t learn in college, the 34-year-old said.
“I don’t ever remember being taught like this is how kids are best going to read,” Little said. “I remember it being like, if they’re not reading, these are the things you can do, but never really step by step show us what we should be reading.”
Little, who teaches in the Hemlock Public School District near Saginaw, completed her third session of Lexia’s LETRS training last month. She will finish all eight units in three school years. The training provides educators with deep dives into the science of reading, a long-standing body of research about how children learn to read, which focuses on phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
It’s important work right now as Michigan’s reading scores have been falling since 2015, with the biggest decline coming during the pandemic years. Those scores haven’t improved, according to state data released last month.
Only 38% of third graders scored proficient on the state’s reading exam. The Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress also tests mathematics and other subjects in grades 3-8 and 11th grade.
By the start of the 2031-32 school year, Michigan teachers working in grades K-5 must complete professional training that concentrates on the science of reading. All teacher preparation programs in the state are now required to include science of reading too.
LETRS is one of the state’s approved providers for this training. So far, more than 8,000 educators have graduated from LETRS training and another 4,300 are currently enrolled, according to the Michigan Department of Education.
State education officials and lawmakers have called literacy a top priority.
Currently, 28 school districts have adopted or signed on for the state’s LETRS training, MDE officials said.
Improving literacy outcomes has bipartisan support
Both candidates in the state’s gubernatorial race want to build on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s work on literacy, but Republican John James and Democrat Jocelyn Benson differ on what should come next.
James has suggested reinstating the state’s retention law, which required that third graders be held back if they did not perform well enough on the state reading exam. (The retention requirement, which was part of the state’s Read by Three law, was repealed in 2023.)
Benson has called for more literacy resources to ensure every child can read by third grade, though her platform doesn’t go far beyond what the state already has underway.
Sarah Reckhow, a political science professor and public education researcher at Michigan State University, said literacy is becoming a shared focus across party lines, in political campaigns, and among state lawmakers.
“The bipartisanship that we’ve seen in the legislature seems to carry into how they talk about reading and literacy as a priority,” Reckhow said.
Julia B. Lindsey, a national literacy expert and consultant, has observed a commitment to literacy in Michigan, and she assisted school districts moving to a science of reading curriculum even before the state push. In August, she conducted training for dozens of educators statewide that was hosted by the Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators.
“Districts cannot change if they are not being supported by the state, if they don’t have money to support them but also training and programs”, said Lindsey, who received her doctorate in educational studies from the University of Michigan.
What comes after the move to the science of reading will be the next stage of debate in Michigan, especially if test scores don’t improve. Other states have passed retention laws that hold back students who do not read proficiently and banned reading instruction methods that are now disputed.
Teachers say literacy training can be emotional, inspiring
A substitute teacher covered Little’s classroom when she attended the LETRS training.
Saginaw ISD, which includes Hemlock, is making time for every elementary teacher, including Little, to attend literacy training, said Kelly Kujala, instruction and coaching program director for the school district north of Flint.
They have also invited teachers from outside school districts to attend in-person training, she said. The result is open collaboration and problem-solving for different groups of teachers, she said.
“It is hard when you’ve been teaching all day to give up that precious time,” Kujala said. “So now teachers can come to the ISD, get a guest teacher, and spend a full day with us, getting trained in a unit at a time … we’re doing some pretty magical things.”
It’s creating a trickle effect in Saginaw ISD with positive gains in classrooms, Kujala said.
Kujala was part of the state’s first LETRS training cohort and now facilitates sessions. Like Little and other teachers, Kujala had to set aside much of her reading instruction practices, she said.
“Why in my 17 years of teaching, had no one ever taught me this,” Kujala said, calling the training an “emotional experience.”
During the units, teachers learn new activities and strategies to help students decode words by sounding them out, mapping out those sounds, incorporating physical movements, and displaying vowels so they can identify their sounds.
Special education teacher Courtney Wilson tells her Hemlock students to touch their heads – placing their pointer finger where the frontal lobe of their brain is and putting their thumb on the occipital lobe region – to remind them what they are activating when they read, she said.
“Our sounds are here, your letters are here, and I’m working on how we can bridge those gaps,” Wilson said. “They can see kind of why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
Reading is not without frustration, said Sarah Engelhart, a second grade Hemlock teacher.
“When the text becomes lengthier and there’s words that they try to sound out but they don’t know the pattern yet, there’s definitely a drop in confidence,” Engelhart said. “We’ve had tears before on standardized tests or hard texts because they don’t know what it’s saying.”
After her eight-hour training day, Little and her colleagues wrote down a few goals for her return to the classroom. She wrote: Try more activities with sound mapping, physical phonics, and vowel valley – all science of reading practices.
Little said it’s inspiring to return to her students after training and “see what we can apply to help them get better.”
“And they want to read,” Little said. “Kids want to read.”
This story is part of a collaboration between Chalkbeat Detroit and the Detroit Free Press on covering key education issues in the race for Michigan’s next governor.