(The Center Square) – Educators from Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition and Teach Plus PA sat down Wednesday with state legislators to discuss the improved literacy practices implemented in the Middletown Area School District and lobby for increased funding to address Pennsylvania’s reading crisis.
Today, Pennsylvania schools report that only 33% of fourth grade students are reading proficiently; a statistic that has remained essentially unchanged for the past 20 years despite yearly increased funding from the state.
Although early literacy is one of the strongest predictors of a student’s later academic and economic success, many legislators, feeling the pressure of an already $5 billion structural deficit, feel wary of increasing school funding for no visible returns.
“What we hear as legislators is, we need more money, we need more money every year.” said Democratic Sen. Patty Kim of Dauphin County to educators. “You need to talk more in detail versus just the number because it just goes over our heads.”
Kim confessed the “smack” she hears in the capitol concerning public education, as many legislators feel they are asking to shuck out “more money” for “no results”.
Dauphin County Republican Rep. Thomas Mehaffie, agreed, “Results are everything,” he said. “If you show results, I can get you money.”
However, details and results were just what teachers and specialists at Lyall J. Fink Elementary School were ready to provide. Despite the district’s high levels of poverty, the school boasts a 51.3% literacy rate among fourth graders due to several key changes they have implemented since 2022.
Shelly LeHew, an intervention specialist in the Middletown Area School District, highlighted one of these while admitting that these changes meant hard work and “unlearning bad habits.”
“We had to shift from balanced literacy to structured literacy, and that was such a heavy lift because we were changing mindsets.” Lehew said.
Structured literacy is an approach that focuses on ensuring that the core instruction students receive every day in their regular classrooms is integrated and comprehensive.
Rather than the balanced literacy approach, which outsourced reading intervention to specialists, structured literacy provides all Middletown teachers with comprehensive literacy training. Using reading specialists to coach elementary teachers, the school saw a waterfall effect among staff who now knew how to instruct their colleagues and make literacy a priority.
Kim also recognized that teachers are not the only ones who will need to undertake some relearning.
“There is too wide of a space between the capitol building and our school district.” she said. “What I just learned today is that I didn’t know you have to learn how to teach somebody how to read.”
While most lawmakers might be open to bridging this gap and being educated on the realities of literacy in public schools, getting legislators in the capitol to turn $10 million into $15 million this June, might not be so easy. As Mehaffie said “You’ve got to be a pit bull in that building to make sure you get what you want.”
The principal of the school, Jodi Jackson, recognized that this change is, and will be, hard.
“It’s easier to do something else. It’s easier to do what the adults want and not what the kids need,” she said.
While what adults want in this scenario depends, Jackson called on legislators to put the kids first and support schools to improve literacy all over the commonwealth.
“Everybody wants Pennsylvania to be successful, and trust is a two-way street,” Jackson said. “We want to trust the government, and we want to trust PDE. And we want PDE, and the government to trust us. That we’re going to take money and use it in the way that is best for our kids and our teachers.”
