After lagging test scores, Minnesota overhauled reading instruction standards. One district says it's already seeing results
Half of Minnesota students can't read at grade level, according to statewide test scores. Two years ago, the Legislature took that as a lesson and overhauled the standards of how kids are taught to read.
In St. Paul Public Schools, teachers and administrators who began transitioning literacy instruction during the pandemic — before lawmakers mandated the change — say they are already seeing results, providing a glimpse into how the state is poised to the page on lagging test scores in the years to come.
"The way that we had been teaching literacy for years was not working for a very large population of students," said Jessica Bernard, a fourth grade teacher at Chelsea Heights Elementary School, in a recent interview with WCCO.
Bernard is one of thousands of teachers who is in the midst of training on the new standards approved in what's known as the READ Act, short for "Reading to Ensure Academic Development."
Its approach is rooted in "the science of reading," which is a body of research that shows the most effective strategies focus on explicit instruction on phonics and teaching students to decode different parts of words to make sense of them. For years, there was more of an emphasis on context clues and sometimes using pictures on a page to determine what words mean.
Bernard said that method left more children guessing than actually learning how to read.
"There's those kids that just reading comes very naturally, and they already can kind of attack those words and figure them out on their own," Bernard explained. "Then for the vast majority, they're looking at the beginning sound and they're guessing based on the picture, or they're just skipping the word altogether."
Forty states plus Washington, D.C. have overhauled state policies for reading instruction in the last decade to align with the science of reading, according to an analysis by Education Week. Mississippi was the first in 2013, but the bulk of the states adopted those laws within the last five years.
Minnesota's law came in 2023 and it's still in the process of taking effect in schools across the state. But St. Paul was already making the shift two years prior, using pandemic-era federal funds to start a program where specialized teachers work in small reading groups with kids who need additional help.
They taught similar techniques required by the new law and even though those federal funds have dried up, some of those teachers are still around.
Administrators at St. Paul Public Schools say the data speaks for itself. According to their literacy screenings last school year, 87% of kindergarteners who were part of the special reading program improved their reading skills. That's more than students who weren't in the program with 81% of students seeing those results.
Overall, the district is seeing improvement across kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms, according to a spokesperson.
"I did not expect how effective the program would be, the amount of growth and the amount of students that we've seen that kind of come to school, shy, unable to read, and then in, you know, months, they are reading and enjoying texts," said Andrew Lee, one of the reading specialists who is still working within the district. "It is so unbelievably exciting."
Lee said he has seen enormous growth with the small groups he works with between third and fifth grades as a reading intervention teacher. He sees those students for about 30 minutes every day.
"Is this like the golden ticket? No. But is it for sure going to be effective? We're obviously seeing that it is," Lee said in an interview.
"We believe in the science of reading and what it's doing for kids," Bernard added.
Full impact of READ Act on test scores not expected until 2030, key education official says
The READ Act is not a quick fix. Training will be ongoing the next two years to get all teachers up to speed on the standards and full implementation is charted over a four-year period.
And statewide results won't be immediate: Not until the 2028-2029 school year will students get three full years of foundational instruction and reading skills set by the new law, said Bobbie Burnham, assistant commissioner for the Minnesota Department of Education's Office of Teaching and Learning during a briefing to legislators earlier this year.
The department expects to see some improvement on the statewide test scores — the results from the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment — in 2027 but won't see the full impact of the changes until 2030.
But the law requires other screenings required in the beginning, middle and end of school years starting in kindergarten to track progress. That's what St. Paul has used to monitor its success so far.
The Minnesota Department of Education will begin collecting that information from districts next summer.
"The goal of the READ Act — it used to be read well by third grade, that children would read well by third grade. The READ Act really moves that target further into the system by ensuring that kids are reading well at grade level beginning in kindergarten," she said.
As of January, there were 34,000 teachers registered to take training on the new standards, which is expected to end in the summer of 2027.
Bernard admits it's time-consuming on top of everyday lessons in the classroom. She does the work after the bell rings on professional development days.
The training amounts to anywhere from 60 to 130 hours, depending on the course type. The state approved three of them so far, but they could make additions.
"I think it's important. And I think the people who have bought into the science of reading know its importance and are willing to kind of take on that big, heavy lift," Bernard said. "But I'm not going to say that it's been easy for people, because it hasn't."
Lawmakers concede a change as large as the READ Act will require revisions. This session in the House and Senate versions of K-12-related policy and budget bills there are some adjustments to the law, including tightening up definitions and other additions to make the process smoother.
"This is something that we took on as a state, which means we're going to have to continue to tweak this as a state. As we learn more information and as we encounter new deadlines, we're going to have to do those things," said Sen. Erin May Quade, DFL-Apple Valley, during a February hearing on READ Act implementation.
GOP Rep. Patricia Mueller, a teacher of 20 years, believes there should be more options for training teachers. Right now, there are just three state approved courses.
She also wants to make sure future teachers getting their degrees are trained on these standards. Other states with similar laws have this requirement.
"They create a certificate or a reading endorsement, so that as teachers are graduating, that they have that superintendents and principals have the assurance that these teachers have been trained in the science of reading, so we don't have to guess, and we don't have to retrain, and we don't have to wonder," Mueller told WCCO.
The state budget is tight because of a looming $6 billion deficit in future years, but the House earmarked $40 million in new money for READ Act, providing a boost for districts to pay teachers for that training time, according to initial budget documents.
Mueller believes lawmakers can and should make literacy a priority this session. With just days until the session ends, the Legislature is ironing out the details of the next two-year budget agreement and READ Act changes are subject to end-of-session negotiations.
"Everyone from right, left center, all of us agree that reading is key and that we need to be doing better at teaching reading," she said.
