Ohio elementary schools are moving to the Science of Reading, an approach that emphasizes phonics along with vocabulary- and knowledge-rich content. Keen on learning what this transition looks like inside classrooms, we asked Ellen Belcher, a former journalist with the Dayton Daily News, to visit Toledo City Schools to shine a light on their literacy practices. Read below or download the report to learn more about the approach to reading curriculum and instruction taken at Toledo’s Escuela SMART Academy.
Be sure also to check out this companion video to hear Toledo City Schools administrators and teachers talk about adopting curricula based on the Science of Reading:
In 2022, the first year Samantha Eischen used Amplify CKLA, a reading curriculum based in the Science of Reading, the second-grade teacher at Escuela SMART Academy in Toledo was sold.
Of the school’s thirty-two mostly Spanish-speaking second graders, eleven went on to pass Ohio’s reading proficiency test on the first try in the fall of third grade. Just four students had passed the year before.
Fast-forward to the 2023–24 school year, and almost 43 percent of Escuela students passed the third-grade reading proficiency test. Particularly impressive, the PK–6 public elementary school has received the highest rating—five stars—on the “Progress” component of its Ohio Report Card for the last three years. Its five-star distinction means the school’s nearly 300 students—all of whom are considered economically disadvantaged—are achieving beyond their expected academic growth.
Administrators and teachers aren’t satisfied with students’ reading scores, but they like the direction they’re moving in, especially given that English is a second language for so many of the children.
Maria Bailey, a district literacy support teacher, said Amplify CKLA’s emphasis on phonics and decoding is laying the foundation students need to read well. By the time they leave for the holiday break in December, she said, kindergartners can break apart words and blend sounds—a first step in reading. Teachers “really notice if a student can’t do those things” and can intervene.
Hispanic families flock to Escuela
Situated on the edge of Toledo’s downtown, Escuela was formerly a charter school. Among Hispanic families, the school is seen as a welcoming and nurturing place where their children’s heritage is celebrated, and where language differences are treated as opportunities, not barriers.
The student population is about 75 percent Latino, with most students of Mexican descent. Lessons are taught in English, but non-native Spanish speakers—about 35 percent of the student body—have thirty minutes of Spanish lessons each day, while native Spanish speakers work on perfecting Spanish grammar and expanding their vocabulary.
“We want Spanish kids to learn English,” said Natasha Allen, who is Latina and now in her fourth year as principal at Escuela. “When they leave here, it’s a totally different environment.”
Students must apply to attend the magnet school, and the selection process includes a family interview, though few applicants are turned away if seats are available. A child’s enrollment can be revoked if their family doesn’t attend orientation or parent-teacher conferences.
Students recite the Pledge of Allegiance in English and Spanish, morning announcements are made in both languages, and students’ progress reports to families are written in both English and Spanish. Allen said families appreciate her speaking to them in Spanish. Her students, who constantly stop to hug her, tease her when she slips into “Spanglish.”
She is proud of Escuela’s low staff turnover and attributes it to the school’s familial atmosphere. “Who wants to leave your family?” she remarked.
Eighteen of the school’s forty-three staff members speak Spanish, including a nurse, two secretaries, and several cafeteria employees. Spanish-speaking faculty have given their non-Spanish-speaking colleagues language lessons after school, and the district offered teachers Rosetta Stone® language subscriptions in Spanish.
Two years into using Amplify CKLA, Eischen said she sees a “huge difference” in the reading abilities of her students who were taught using the curriculum in kindergarten and first grade. Now students are coming to her class with stronger foundational skills, and they know CKLA’s practices and drills. “We can move at a quicker pace,” the fourteen-year veteran said.
She particularly appreciates that CKLA gives her “all the resources I need” for remediation, and she likes the knowledge, background, and comprehension components. Her students have tackled topics including ancient China, learning about calligraphy, silk and the Great Wall. In October, they were learning about Greece and the origins of democracy.
When Eischen was using a “balanced literacy” curriculum in her reading classes, students struggled with phonics and phonemic awareness. They were learning to read by memorizing rather than decoding words. “It was very rote and whole-word reading,” she said, and children were often guessing when they didn’t know a word. With the Science of Reading, “They have the skills, they have the strategies,” Eischen said, “to be able to figure it out.”
While her students once favored math over reading, Eischen said it’s now the reverse. In January, Escuela’s forty second graders joined in a reading challenge, and in less than two weeks they cumulatively had read over 300 books.
Initially, Science of Reading practices were a challenge, Eischen said, but now she finds them easier than other methods she has used. She said the emphasis on phonics is particularly critical for ESL students, whose first languages have rules that aren’t the same as in English.
State grants support Toledo’s early implementation of the Science of Reading
Toledo Public Schools’ experience with the Science of Reading dates back to 2017, six years before Gov. Mike DeWine signed a budget bill in July 2023 requiring that Ohio public schools teach reading using the evidence-based approach and dedicating $168 million statewide to the effort.
In 2017, the district received a three-year, nearly $1.2 million Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Grant from the state, followed by a four-year Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grant (CLSD).
Seventeen buildings—not including Escuela, which was still a charter school at the time—participated in the Striving Readers grant. After the Striving Readers grant wrapped up, the district chose five schools, including Escuela, to be model early literacy sites under the CLSD grant. Staff at the schools had to vote to be part of the effort.
Some administrators said Toledo teachers benefited more from the Striving Readers grant, which pulled them and their principals out of school all day four times throughout the year to dig into the Science of Reading practices. Professional development from the CLSD grant was significantly more limited—four two-hour sessions each year, where attendance effectively became optional. Because of a shortage of substitute teachers, the training had to be offered after school. Many teachers couldn’t attend, and those who came were worn out from teaching all day, said Bailey, the literacy coach.
Though formal CLSD professional development was limited, Escuela benefited immensely from having two reading coaches assigned exclusively to the school two days per week as part of the grant. “Embedded coaching was very helpful,” said Tamara Lemle, senior director of early childhood and elementary curriculum and instruction.
As part of that CLSD grant, teachers were required to take before-and-after knowledge tests of early literacy, the results of which showed that teachers at the model sites significantly improved their understanding of evidence-based practices. The documented professional growth, Lemle believes, is driving the improved test results.
While pockets of teachers in the district were learning the Science of Reading principles during the life of the two state grants, it wasn’t until 2022–23 that the district formally adopted reading curricula based on the Science of Reading for all its schools, choosing Amplify CKLA for grades K–2 and SAVVAS myView for grades 3–5.
That transition for the district, as with schools across Ohio, is a work in progress.
“I think the biggest shift was moving to a new curriculum, not so much moving to a curriculum aligned with the Science of Reading,” Lemle said. But, as time has passed, she said, “It’s just becoming what we do.”
Prior to adopting curricula based on the Science of Reading, the district used “balanced literacy” practices that reading experts say fail to give children the foundational skills of reading, particularly by shortchanging them in phonics instruction. In addition, reading instruction wasn’t standardized across the district.
"I wouldn’t say teachers could do whatever they wanted,” said Dr. Amy Allen (no relation to Escuela’s principal), chief of student supports. “But it was possible and very probable that teachers, while they might be teaching the same skill, might be doing it in a variety of ways.” The new curricula are more regimented, she said, and require “more intentionality and a lot more planning.”
Formal Science of Reading transition wraps up this year
To help educators transition to the Science of Reading, Ohio has mandated that by the end of the 2024–25 school year, all PK–12 administrators and teachers complete between eighteen and twenty-two hours of training using online modules created by the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.
Chief of Student Supports Amy Allen said the modules have been helpful and are well done, but she wishes there had been more flexibility in how large districts were allowed to train teachers in the Science of Reading.
The modules created the perception, Allen said, that teachers need to check a training box rather than become part of a learning community in which they are encouraged to feed off each other’s understanding and experiences. Allen encourages teachers to watch the modules in groups (which some Toledo teachers have done).
Bailey, the literacy coach, said that implementing Science of Reading curricula across a large urban school district (Toledo is Ohio’s fifth-largest school district and has forty-two elementary schools) is infinitely more challenging than introducing the materials in smaller districts where fewer teachers need to be trained and then supported if they’re struggling with new practices. Ensuring that the curricula are being followed to fidelity is also more difficult. In Toledo, that task has been left to building administrators who may not be as steeped in the details of the Science of Reading and the new curricula as reading coaches.
Everyone agrees that one misstep Toledo made was choosing two reading series—one for grades K–2, and a different one for grades 3–5. Each curriculum has its own protocols and comprehension content that is scaffolded, with each year’s lessons building on the previous year’s. The difference in nomenclature used by the two series is confusing for students, slowing their progress in the very year the pressure is on to pass Ohio’s third-grade reading proficiency test.
The district ended up adopting two series because under Toledo’s teachers union contract, curricula choices are made by teams of evaluators. The K–2 team chose Amplify CKLA, while the grades 3–5 team chose SAVVAS myView.
Natasha Allen, Escuela’s principal, acknowledged that having the two curricula is not ideal but said she and her teachers have adapted.
Students tackle advanced topics
Formerly a student teacher at Escuela, Liliana Barrera-Roman, who is bilingual, teaches third graders. She shares in the enthusiasm for the Science of Reading.
On a January day, she walked her students through a lesson explaining symbiotic relationships between animals that have seemingly unlikely “weird friendships.” The students looked for text evidence of answers to questions and referenced annotations.
Barrera-Roman, who is in her third year of teaching, was not trained in the Science of Reading during college. She appreciates how the Science of Reading braids instruction of phonics, comprehension, vocabulary and fluency.
She and the school’s other third-grade teacher have divided students into two reading groups, with Barrera-Roman assisting those who have not yet acquired a command of English. (Of her eighteen students, five are new to the country.) Once an ESL student herself, Barrera-Roman fluidly moves back and forth between English and Spanish if students are struggling with directions, ensuring no child is missing out. Lessons that are supposed to take one week might take two, she said, but her focus is on mastery, especially around phonics and vocabulary.
When it comes to adopting the Science of Reading, Escuela has been “a community of learners,” said Dr. Amy Allen, Toledo’s chief of student supports, “They (the teachers) have a growth mindset. …They’re all in. They’re invested.”
Acknowledgments
We at the Fordham Institute are deeply grateful to the many people who contributed to this work. Foremost, we extend thanks to Ellen Belcher and videographers Ransome Rowland and Colton Puterbaugh of B2 Studios, whom we commissioned to shine light on Ohio schools that are putting the Science of Reading into practice. We appreciate their professionalism in working with educators, as well as their ability to capture what this approach to literacy instruction looks like in classrooms. We extend special thanks to Dr. Amy Allen and Tamara Lemle of Toledo Public Schools for their leadership and support coordinating the project. We also wish to thank the educators who took time out of their busy schedules to share their thoughts and experiences. On the Fordham team, we wish to thank Jeff Murray, who assisted with report production and dissemination. Kathi Kizirnis copyedited the manuscript and Stephanie Henry created the design. Funding for this report comes from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies and our sister organization, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
Aaron Churchill, Ohio Research Director
