Two Tennessee school districts may be paving the way for improved literacy

The Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) released a report this month that found two school districts may offer important lessons for how leaders can strengthen efforts to improve literacy and make assistance more accessible to students that need it the most.SCORE says both have adopted an “instructional coherence” approach to literacy.“Rather than offering students something different in an academic support setting, it adheres to a principle that students who are academically behind should receive additional time and support with the foundational literacy skills, texts, and tasks that align to core instruction,” wrote SCORE.According to the SCORE report, Knox County Schools (KCS) and Bristol Tennessee City Schools (BTCS) have both seen success implementing important steps in this process that other districts can learn from.

Knox County Schools Pilot Program

Knox County Schools considers tutoring to be the most effective support it can provide to struggling students.The district sought support from SCORE for strategies to better utilize its recently implemented high-dosage tutoring programs, which is intensive tutoring that occurs two to three times a week to help students accelerate their learning, and to sustain and integrate the program into their overall academic vision for early literacy.Last year, Knox County Schools launched a small pilot program utilizing an instructional coherence approach in the spring to better address this and the students that needed more help.The district started by using data gathered from its universal screener to place students in high-dosage tutoring or other tiers of intervention. It used a “pull-out” model which focuses on smaller groups and used certified staff for its tiered intervention and uncertified staff for high-dosage tutoring.“I think it’s important to point out that at a high level, our educators were working to place students correctly. They were looking at universal screening data, structures, materials, assessments, and now high-dosage tutoring, but we knew something just wasn’t quite right,” said KCS Curriculum Specialist, Christine Pope.The pilot program started in Spring 2023.During the pilot, the district quickly realized how important communication and collaboration between teachers and tutors was for the success of the instructional coherence model.“We know that we should be molding our intervention to fit the student and not the other way around. It requires working together and not separately. We know that one size does not fit all. It never has and it never will and so it’s so critical that we are thinking about what we’re using and being very intentional in how we’re using it,” said Pope.

Bristol Tennessee City Schools Pilot Program

Like Knox County, Bristol Tennessee City Schools leaders wanted to better utilize high-dosage tutoring to help struggling students and find a sustainable path forward for supporting them.In Fall 2022, the district started thinking about instructional coherence. With the support of SCORE and The New Teacher Project, BTCS applied instructional coherence to create a pilot tutoring program in Spring 2023.The district looked at the existing intervention model which also included tiered interventions and high-dosage tutoring and used data gathered from the universal screener to place students in the necessary tutoring groups. School leaders then began applying the model in first and second-grade classrooms to support students who are below grade level.The district also adjusted schedules to allow teachers to support core block small groups and started teaching two foundational skills lessons per day.District leaders say they saw important improvements under the instructional coherent model and are implementing the pilot program in each of the district’s five elementary schools this school year.Collaboration served a major role in both Knox County and Bristol along with establishing a clear vision and thinking about things differently. Both districts believe the programs produced better utilization of materials and provided students with an accessible path to catch up.“We did recognize and realize, in the fall, that we had to begin looking at collaboration because as Chrstine spoke before, we were really working in ‘silos’ between the tiers and the tutoring. So, we recognized that we definitely needed to shift,” said BTCS Curriculum & Instruction Supervisor, Rachel Walk.KCS and BTCS are two of four districts in a case study hosted by SCORE that examines how instructional coherence models can address academically struggling students who have yet to bounce back from the pandemic.This research began following data that found efforts to improve early literacy statewide have not been effective for students who are still behind.“When looking at just third-graders over time, the most recent TCAP (Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program) results from spring 2023 are consistent with this trend — revealing a higher percentage of students in the state’s lowest performance category compared to pre-pandemic trends from 2018 and 2019,” wrote SCORE. “The reality is, in many situations, following current Tennessee guidance around RTI2 (Response to Instruction and Intervention) and HDT results in the state’s most academically behind students not receiving deep, small-group support with the high-quality literacy materials adopted by districts.”Proficiency rates in English language arts (ELA) dropped by nearly six percent over the pandemic. While Tennessee worked to recover the learning loss with intervention supports and legislation such as the Tennessee Literacy Success Act, which requires all educators qualified to teach K-5 complete a foundational literacy skills course, the number of students who scored the lowest have not yet recovered from the effects of the pandemic.The SCORE report revealed that this is because many of the students who are most academically behind are not receiving the full extent of the help they need.KCS and BTCS allowed SCORE to analyze the outcomes of their instructional coherence model and how it could be applied to other districts to help the students furthest behind catch up.SCORE provided three recommendations for the state.The first recommendation is to expand the vision for research-aligned literacy instructions and use of more diverse high-quality instruction materials.The second recommendation is to revise the framework for student support and the state’s investment in high-quality instructional materials and high-dosage tutoring.The third recommendation is to align the support the state offers to districts, schools, educators, and families to ensure high-quality implementation and improve student outcomes.“Tennessee schools have an opportunity to imagine and create a world where every adult in a building who supports students with grade-level reading has a deep knowledge of the same high-quality instructional materials and assessments. In this new paradigm, all staff — certified general and special educators, interventionists, paraprofessionals, and tutors — are on the same page about how to help and monitor the progress of each student. For students, they experience coherent support from a team of adults who know exactly which foundational skills, topics, texts, and tasks students need to master to work toward grade-level literacy success,” wrote SCORE.