Many thanks to everyone who expressed interest in the Brookline Literacy Coalition and to those who attended our kickoff conversation on October 23rd. We had a great turnout with lots of interesting questions and comments. You can watch/listen to the recording of our kick-off meeting https://youtu.be/lp5_PIiCa9o.
In this newsletter, you will find:
- Highlights of our first meeting
- Information about the K-2 screener
- A brief update from the latest Curriculum Subcommittee meeting
- Coming up…
FIRST MEETING HIGHLIGHTS
- Topics discussed: Attendees expressed interest in a variety of topics: early literacy assessments, instruction and intervention with those who are having difficulties; assessment and intervention for older students, achievement gaps; MCAS results and what they can tell us about reading in Brookline; the possibility of a district-wide literacy review; how to change mindsets about struggling readers; and considerations for diverse groups of students. To name a few!
- Our affiliations: At our meeting, we had the opportunity to clarify that we do not have any affiliations or official partnerships with any organizations, and we do not represent the school district or our own employers, or any other entity.
- Our mission statement: Our mission is to bring together a diverse and evolving group of parents, educators, and other community members who care deeply about literacy and equity and want to work together to ensure that all of our children receive high-quality, evidence-informed instruction in school to become strong readers and writers. Our goals are to inform, connect, empower, and advocate.
- Inform: We will share a variety of information in order to increase awareness of literacy-related issues, including research and practical advice for parents and teachers; summaries and reflections on discussion in School Committee; information about what is happening in Brookline; news about developments in schools across the state, country, and beyond.
- Connect: We will provide opportunities for members of the community to connect with us and with each other and share their questions and experiences of children learning to read and write in Brookline, both their struggles and successes.
- Empower: We will provide resources and information to empower people to understand the issues, have substantive, productive conversations, and take action on behalf of their children and students.
- Advocate: We will promote and support initiatives and practices in the district that are informed by scientific evidence about what all students need in order to become proficient readers and writers.
- Brief surveys:
- Please complete this survey if you are interested in getting involved and this survey to indicate what topics you are interested in.
K-2 DYSLEXIA SCREENER
- The early literacy assessment, mClass/DIBELS, is an established and well-validated assessment that is new to Brookline this year in K-2 (three times each year).
- The goal of the assessment is to identify risk, monitor growth, and proactively differentiate instruction and better support student learning.
- The assessment measures basic early literacy skills: phonemic awareness, alphabetic knowledge, accuracy and fluency with connected text, and reading comprehension.
- Children perform poorly on these assessments for a variety of reasons (especially in KG!). Repeated evaluation of students will help identify whether they need additional support or whether their low scores were just a “fluke”.
- Although teachers did receive some basic training, there is a learning curve during this first year and they will need continued support in order to administer properly and understand and use the information effectively.
- The assessment is of little value if there are no plans in place for how to effectively support at-risk students. We need to better understand what these plans look like in Brookline.
- There is no state-mandated requirement to share the results with families and caregivers this year (this will be required next year). However, we would certainly encourage families to ask their children’s teachers about it.
There are many misconceptions about the text reading accuracy and fluency measure of this assessment (“Oral Reading Fluency”). In order to understand it better, we highly recommend this 26-minute recent interview with Dr. Jan Hasbrouck, an educator, researcher, and expert on these assessments. In a clear, accessible way, she describes the history, purpose, and appropriate uses of this oral reading fluency measure.
OCTOBER 18TH CURRICULUM SUBCOMMITTEE MEETING
The Curriculum Subcommittee meeting on October 19 included a presentation and discussion of the MCAS results. You can find the slides here. The MCAS discussion begins around the 20:22 mark and a deeper dive into English Language Arts (ELA) is from the 36:41 mark to 56:50. At 1:22:23 there is a discussion of “How are we addressing the results?”
- From 2019 significant drops (in double digits) of percent of students meeting or exceeding expectations across Massachusetts
- In Brookline, we saw flat results or small drops from 2019 in the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations, not as significant as the state aggregate drop.
- Across Massachusetts, the Black/white achievement gap stayed the same or decreased slightly, while in Brookline the gap increased. We have a larger gap than the state does.
- The gap between Students with Disabilities and other student groups has also widened slightly from 2019.
- As Gabe McCormick ( Senior Director for Teaching and Learning for Secondary Education) said, “The key that we can acknowledge: if our white and Asian students, in particular, are outperforming the state at such a high level and our African American and Black students are theoretically accessing the same curriculum, then we’ve got significant work to do.”….57% of Black 10th-grade students did not pass; doesn’t mean they’re not graduating, but it does mean they are in danger….”The MCAS standard for graduating (“Partially Met Expectations”) is not a good enough standard. That means we’re not doing our job right. MCAS shouldn’t be a high bar. We should be looking at MCAS as a minimum standard.”
- Michelle Herman (Senior Director for Teaching and Learning for Elementary Education) noted that between grades 3-8 and grade 10, Brookline has a bigger increase in the gap for our Black and African American students and that overall, the areas to focus on for improvement in ELA are early literacy and writing. In the writing portion of the test, the number of students that received 0 increased significantly, and “In science, math, and ELA we lose a lot of points in writing”.
She said, “Where they are falling down is responding in writing based on what they’ve read. “How do we develop students’ writing in response to their reading? This is something we can address (pretty easily) and address it using science, social studies, math, and ELA writing.”
- Lesley Ryan Miller noted that the district is working to address these issues via the Child Study Teams and very targeted interventions for specific groups of students and also that the incoming mClass/Dibels data “may highlight a Tier 1 instructional issue”. Michelle Herman noted that the new mClass/DIBELS shows variability among schools and that this warrants a closer look at what is happening with Tier 1 classroom supports in different schools. She echoed Lesley Ryan Miller that “it’s possible this isn’t about specific intervention, but maybe thinking about what we’re doing every day in the classroom”.
COMING UP
We are planning to host Sunday evening Zoom meetings approximately monthly.
Some topics we plan to discuss in our next meetings:
- Features of effective instruction: What, Why, How
- Promoting educational equity through evidence-based instruction
- Building reading comprehension through content knowledge (importance of science and social studies)
- The brain and reading
- Oral language and literacy
Watch your inbox for info about future meetings. In the meantime, please fill out those quick surveys here and here. We’d love to hear from you!