The Meyer administration launched its Early Literacy Plan Oct. 10, responding to what it’s called a statewide literacy emergency.
The plan puts more than $10 million into the education system with the bulk of that going toward Bridge to Practice grants, which local districts and staff can apply for.
Secretary of Education Cindy Marten said the goal is to have schools apply for grants for their individualized needs.
“We want more teacher training, more coaching, more innovative staffing models…” Marten said. “It's really about just turning the really good ideas that we already have in Delaware that are sprinkled all across the state and putting even more power behind it with more training and more support for our teachers.”
Marten added another part of the plan offers Delaware public and charter school educators to order up to $750 in classroom materials to support their literacy goals.
“We want to make sure that teachers have a team building approach so they can work collaboratively,” Marten said. “And the kinds of supports teachers are getting, we have actual funding direct to classroom funding.”
Another important part of the Early Literacy Plan is ongoing formative assessments, which track learning throughout the year.
End-of-year assessments act somewhat like autopsies, Marten said, while ongoing assessments track learning throughout the year.
“Am I monitoring student growth on an ongoing basis?” Marten posed. “I'm not waiting for the end of the year SBAC results to come in and wonder if my new teaching practices worked.”
Equity is at the center of the Meyer administration’s plan, Marten said.
That means strong learning strategies in initial instruction from classroom teachers, and intentional efforts when students are re-introduced to topics they may not have fully grasped the first time around.
The Plan also involves sending 25 Reading Assist tutors to the schools that need them the most. They will help with the re-learning, Marten said.
But some of the work has to happen at home.
“Of course, the teacher is going to teach the kids how to read, the decoding, the encoding, phonemic awareness, phonics, like the really detailed aspects of learning how to become a reader,” Marten said. “But what really matters for kids is falling in love with the book, having a favorite author. Does every child in Delaware have a library card? Are they using their library? Is their reading time at home?”
Marten said raising literacy rates in the First State is not a hopeless endeavor.
“There are pediatricians, sadly, that have to talk about childhood diseases and cancers that have no cures,” Marten said. “And those are very hard conversations because you're talking about very difficult things for children that we don't have answers to. A child not reading at the earliest ages, we have answers for that. We understand what to do.”
And getting there calls for more resources for students and educators alike.
That will come through the $7.2 million available in grant funding through Bridge to Practice.
Marten said she’s excited to see what ideas educators bring to her department.
“The superintendents know their districts best, and they know how far are they in their journey,” Marten explained. “If this is a continuum towards best practice, where are you on the journey? And some superintendents are going to say, you know, our weakest link right now is kindergarten. We need to put more supports in kindergarten, support and training.”
Students, their dreams and strengths are always top of mind, Marten said, not test scores.
