For better or worse, Ohio does most of its education policymaking during the biennial budget process. This year is no different. The current budget legislation is chock full of education provisions, and some of the most significant are in the realm of early literacy. Specifically, Governor DeWine has proposed revamping reading instruction in Ohio schools to align with the science of reading. His plan focuses on curriculum reform—schools would be required to use high-quality curricula and materials that have been vetted by the Ohio Department of Education (ODE)—and providing professional development for current teachers to support rigorous implementation.
For the most part, the House and Senate commendably kept this plan intact. Even better, the House went one step further and added provisions that would allow the state to exercise more significant oversight over teacher preparation programs. This oversight specifically focuses on early literacy and ensuring that programs teach prospective educators scientifically-based reading practices. The Senate maintained the House’s additions, and since they dovetail perfectly with the governor’s agenda, they are likely to be included in the final budget.
So what would these teacher-prep reforms do? Their main purpose is to establish a transparency and accountability framework that doesn’t currently exist. First, on the transparency side, the budget bill requires ODE and the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE) to create metrics that will ensure every teacher preparation program is teaching “evidence-based strategies for effective literacy instruction aligned to the science of reading.” ODHE will then develop an audit process to review each institution’s alignment with these metrics. The results will be used to create summaries of the reading instruction strategies and practices being used in each program. The departments must complete and publicly release these annual summaries by March 31. The bill also requires the departments to develop a public dashboard that reports the first-time passage rates of students, by institution, on the Foundations of Reading exam, which many prospective teachers must pass to be licensed. Tracking this data is crucial, as first-time pass rates are important markers of how rigorously preparation programs are training aspiring educators (as opposed to only reporting rosy overall passing rates that count candidates who need to take exams multiple times).
These are big steps forward in transparency. But the legislation also focuses on accountability, too. After the initial audit, programs will be reviewed every four years to ensure their continuing alignment with the established metrics. Those that are found to be out of alignment and that fail to address audit findings within one year will have their approval revoked by the chancellor of ODHE. That’s a big deal, as it will help ensure that programs aren’t ignoring reading science in their training.
The draft budget also requires the departments to identify approved vendors that can provide scientifically-based professional development to any educator responsible for teaching reading, including the faculty of preparation programs.
It’s hard to overstate just how important these teacher preparation reforms are to the success of Ohio’s early literacy efforts. The governor’s initial plan wisely sought to address the knowledge and skills gaps that many current teachers have in the area of scientifically-based reading instruction. That’s a critical step in the right direction, as Ohio’s current workforce will be responsible for teaching tens of thousands of kids to read over the next few years. But supporting current teachers isn’t enough. To sustain Ohio’s literacy reforms, the state also needs to ensure that future teachers are well-trained.
Unfortunately, recent research indicates that too many of Ohio’s preparation programs (and many in other states, too) aren’t aligning their training with the science of reading. In May, Fordham published a report outlining an NCTQ analysis of how well (or, sadly, how poorly) Ohio’s teacher preparation programs incorporate reading science into their coursework. Just nine out of twenty-six elementary programs provide adequate coverage of all five components of reading science (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension). Six programs, including Kent State University’s graduate program and Miami University of Ohio’s undergraduate program, adequately cover just one component, or none at all. And more than half promote multiple approaches that are contrary to research-based methods—things like three-cueing, which encourages students to guess at words rather than actually read them and would thankfully be disallowed under the governor’s proposals.
Those are troubling findings. When considered alongside Ohio’s low reading proficiency rates, they demonstrate a clear need for the state to step up and ensure that teacher preparation programs are following the science of reading. Failing to do so would hamstring the proposed early literacy reforms in K–12 education. It would also make the millions of dollars set to be invested in the current teacher workforce a short-term investment with limited payoff, as schools would need to retrain many incoming teachers all over again.
Fortunately for Ohio’s students, state leaders seem to recognize the importance of holding teacher preparation programs accountable for teaching the science of reading. Kudos to leaders in the House, especially, for supporting the governor’s early literacy initiative and seeing the need to align higher education with K–12. Let’s hope that the final piece of legislation keeps all of these important literacy reforms intact.
