By Blaise Mesa
Kristin Ridgway knows the feeling all too well. The former middle and high school English teacher has been in classrooms as a 16-year-old student stumbles through words when reading out loud.
“As a teacher, your heart just breaks,” she said, “because as a secondary-level English teacher, you have no idea how to help that kid.”
Middle and high school teachers assume children can already read. When they can’t, Ridgway said, they might offer the student more books or easier books to read. Maybe they just don’t call on the student again.
More practice seems like the right approach, but it isn’t the best approach. Teachers should instead encourage students to break down the word and sound it out — at least, that’s what the Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling program, or LETRS, tells them to do.
LETRS is an online course that uses science-backed methods to teach the teachers.
One example from Edina Public Schools in Minnesota shows a teacher breaking down the word “ship.” She encourages students to sound out the “sh” then the “i” and then the “p.” That teacher also points out how “fell” and “well” have similar constructions, but changing the first letter creates a new word.
“Enforcing the notion that sounding out words is not for babies,” said Ridgway, now a secondary curriculum coordinator with the Shawnee Mission School District. “I encounter words all the time in my world that I don’t know, and I sound it out even as an adult.”
The COVID-19 pandemic rocked Kansas schools and throttled educational advancement. So the federal government gave states millions of dollars to combat learning loss. Kansas used that money on a variety of programs, including LETRS. But the Trump administration is now clawing that funding back.
For Kansas, that means $22.6 million in cuts to funding that was meant to bridge the learning gap.
Federal Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told the state in a letter that Kansas ran the risk of losing this money when it didn’t spend the funds before the Sept. 30, 2024, deadline. The agency wants to use the funds until March 28, 2026. McMahon said the federal government previously approved an extended deadline, but that approval doesn’t matter.
“Extending deadlines for COVID-related grants, which are in fact taxpayer funds, years after the COVID pandemic ended is not consistent with the department’s priorities and thus not a worthwhile exercise of its discretion,” McMahon said.
The largest cuts include:
- $7.6 million for LETRS and the Kansas math program.
- $6.6 million for a data-tracking program that monitors students’ progress so teachers can help those who are falling behind. State assessments don’t start until third grade, so it can be difficult for schools to track progress until then.
- $3.6 million for teachers to find “high-quality instructional materials” so students who fell behind have the best resources to catch back up.
The pandemic is still affecting students even though disaster declarations ended years ago, advocates said.
The Education Recovery Scorecard, a partnership between Harvard and Stanford universities, said 98% of Kansas students are in districts with average reading skills below 2019 levels. The scorecard also ranks Kansas 36th in reading recovery.
More students fell behind during the pandemic. Remote learning meant less instructional time and fewer students staying focused in class, the Annie E. Casey Foundation found. It also said that 30% of students in 2021-2022 were chronically absent. That’s almost double pre-pandemic numbers.
David Hurford, executive director of Center for Reading at Pittsburg State University, said 40% of fourth graders are below the basic reading level.
“Forty percent of children below the basic level is terrible with a capital T,” Hurford said. “No doubt whatsoever.”
That’s why cutting LETRS funding is a bad idea, education advocates say.
Hurford said schools haven’t been using the science of reading to teach students. Teachers taught students “based on ideas that we just created.”
Some teaching methods assume students who are less intelligent would read poorly and need assistance, but that’s not always true. Other methods have students read a word then look at a picture of that word, like flashing a photo of a fox when reading it. That’s not as effective.
The science of reading has advanced, Hurford said. And LETRS brought standardized, science-backed education into the classroom.
The state can request the funding be returned from the federal government, and it already has. As of early April, 15,000 Kansas educators have taken or are enrolled in the program. Teachers currently enrolled in LETRS can finish their lessons, but the state won’t fund new spots until it is told whether federal funds will be reinstated.
The money was supposed to identify children who were falling behind and connect them to the best resources available to catch up. That effort is now $22 million short.
“Our part of it is to spread literacy as much as possible, at any age, as early as possible and (to as) many as possible,” Hurford said. “If you cannot read in our society today, you are at a marked disadvantage to realize the American dream.”
Blaise Mesa is The Beacon’s Kansas Statehouse reporter. He has covered the Kansas Statehouse for The Beacon since Nov. 2023 after reporting on social services for the Kansas News Service and crime and local government for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He has a bachelor’s degree in multimedia journalism with a concentration in radio from Columbia College Chicago.
