Reading advocates want Oregon literacy funds directed to teacher training and “most neglected” schools

By ALEX BAUMHARDT/Oregon Capital Chronicle

SALEM — More than 250 Oregon schools since 2023 have gotten some portion of the state’s Early Literacy Success Initiative grants, a pot of $90 million meant to pay for new elementary reading curriculum, reading tutors and after-school reading programs, and to train teachers in reading instruction backed by scientific study and review.

More than 100 educators signed an open letter drafted by the nonprofit advocacy group Oregon Kids Read asking the Legislature to tie the training requirement to Early Literacy Success Initiative grants.

Over the past 25 years, nearly two in five Oregon fourth graders and one in five eighth graders have scored “below basic” on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the nation’s report card. That means they struggle to read and understand simple words.

The nearly 10,000 elementary school teachers in Oregon learned different methods for teaching reading depending on where they went to college. Many colleges are failing to prepare teachers to teach reading, according to a recent analysis by the National Council on Teacher Quality.

On Wednesday, Kotek’s proposal to tweak her bedrock literacy initiative — House Bill 3040 — will get a vote in the House Education Committee. It updates the 2023 Early Literacy Success Initiative legislation so that schools could spend their literacy grants on training classroom assistants, not just teachers and administrators.

It would also require grant money spent on new reading curriculum for grades K-5 to be used on instructional materials approved by the State Board of Education and would create a regional network of literacy experts housed in the Oregon Department of Education to support school and district literacy specialists and help with coaching.

“As we continue to roll out the Early Literacy Success Initiative, we owe it to our students to stay focused on the details and get this right,” Kotek said in a news release.

But advocates at Oregon Kids Read want the governor to go further. In a news release Thursday, they said they are asking Kotek and Legislators to amend the bill to direct 20% of the $100 million grant funding to 42 of the state’s ‘most neglected’ schools.

Those schools have the highest percentage of third through fifth graders not reading at grade level since at least 2018. The schools, including Caesar Chavez K-8 School in Portland and Washington Elementary School in Salem, also have a higher than average percentage of students who are Black, Hispanic or Latino, Indigenous, rural or experiencing poverty.

Of the 42 elementary schools Oregon Kids Read identified, 12 are in the Salem-Keizer School District, the most of any single district in the state. Salem-Keizer is the state’s second-largest school district, with about 40,000 students and a higher proportion of low-income students than the state average.

Schuberth, a volunteer with the group, said in an email that 20% — or $20 million — would be best used for targeted time with a literacy tutor throughout the school year. That isn’t enough for all children in those 42 schools to access reading tutors, “but it’s a start,” Schuberth said.

Targeting 20% to those schools would work out to about $476,000 per school, or roughly 20% more than the average $363,000 each school received during the last biennium in literacy grants.

“Families in California had to sue to get their state to do the right thing and target literacy funding to their lowest performing schools,” Angela Uherbelau, founder of Oregon Kids Read, said in the news release.

In 2017, students in three LA-area school districts struggling to read sued the state of California for violating their civil rights by denying them a quality education. In a settlement reached three years later, the state agreed to allocate $50 million to improve literacy instruction in 75 California elementary schools where students have the lowest literacy rates.

Uherbelau said accountability for spending and student outcomes in reading and writing in the coming years will certainly focus on districts, but “the buck stops at the state.”

• Oregon Capital Chronicle is a nonprofit Salem-based news service that focuses its reporting on Oregon state government, politics and policy.