BEACHWOOD, Ohio — It’s a major change affecting how kids across Ohio are learning to read.
This is the first school year where districts across the state are required to teach the same method of reading comprehension, reverting to traditional phonics or sounding out a word.
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An Ohio Department of Education report points out that 39.9% of all Ohio 3rd-grade students are not considered proficient in reading.
"We have about 300,000 students in K-3 who are not reading at the grade level and I don't see how anybody can not see that as a crisis," Steve Dackin, director of the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.
What's the difference?
A phonics approach involves breaking down a word letter by letter and a student sounding out the word.
Other methods can teach words as a whole, not individual letters, based on taking context clues such as other words in a sentence or pictures as a way to recognize and remember the word.
What the change looks like
A visit to Bryden Elementary in Beachwood, and there’s a level of success immediately noticed when you walk in the door.
Beachwood is one of 30 districts in Northeast Ohio to receive a 5-star overall rating on its report card from the state last year.
"We're small but mighty," Dr. Linda LoGalbo, director of curriculum and instruction, explained.
However, Beachwood is one of many districts across the state that is finishing phasing out old curriculums in favor of newly approved state ones that focus heavily on phonics for reading.
"The phonics is the part that we're refocusing our efforts on," LoGalbo said. "In the past, our focus was solely on comprehension and not those decoding skills. So this is kind of re-centered or re-balanced us to have that focus on first being able to decode the words."
The problem with this is the students are relying on pictures to decode the words," she said.
Similar to Beachwood, the top-performing district Solon is also in the midst of transitioning away from its previously successful approach to reading comprehension.
"Our district is in the process of implementing the changes as required by law," a spokesperson with the Solon City School District said. "Our staff is engaging in professional development and implementation over the course of the year."
News 5 spoke with several school districts who expressed their frustrations with the rollout of this initially unfunded mandate. They called it an unusual mandate not typically seen by the state, with just months to learn if their curriculum was approved and adapt accordingly. Districts can be reimbursed by the state after changes are made to their reading curriculum.
In Cleveland, CMSD CEO Dr. Warren Morgan told a crowd at Mayor Justin Bibb's "Science of Reading Summit" that they’ve revamped their reading curriculum this year to match from school to school.
"I'm really excited that this year we have for the very first time, a single curriculum that is grounded in the science of reading," he said. "There were some schools that were using it, but we also had so many other curriculums implemented in our schools and when we talk about supporting teachers and supporting learning, you don’t know what’s working and what’s not."
For some, the shift wasn’t as drastic. Euclid schools started the transition to the science of reading back in 2020.
"With balanced literacy, we thought we were doing what was best for kids," executive director of curriculum instruction Becky Mamich said. “We realized this wasn’t effective."
"It was me doing all the reading and the kids listening for the most part," she said. "They would take books but they really didn't know what to do with them. It was a lot of memorization."
One year ago, the Governor visited Euclid's Early Learning Village to highlight the differences in teaching reading.
RELATED: Gov. DeWine touts ReadOhio initiative, new teaching methods at visit to Euclid school
As principal Mary Thomas points out, she’s already seen 84% of her kindergarten students making gains with incorrect letter sounds and 63% of kindergarten students making above-average or well above-average gains.
"We’re closing the gap," she said. "When we made the decision to purchase a curriculum that supported the science of reading, that was big. That was big because I think everyone was still on the fence of how real is this?"
Districts are required to complete the transition to phonics and the science of reading by the end of this school year.
According to Education Week, Ohio is one of 39 states, and the District of Columbia has passed laws or new policies tied to the science of reading.
Clay LePard is a special projects reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow him on Twitter @ClayLePard or on Facebook Clay LePard News 5.
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