MPS Makes Progress on Science of Reading

Books. (Creative Commons Zero – CC0)

Last spring, Milwaukee School Board director James Ferguson was perplexed as to why Milwaukee Public Schools‘ efforts to implement the science of reading (SOR) in the district were so difficult. “It seemed that we could not get a grip on the science of reading training. I was not satisfied that we didn’t have anybody trained. I really wanted to understand what the training consisted of and why it was so difficult to turn the page.”

Ferguson turned to the one person he knew in MPS who had a good understanding of SOR, the district’s own board clerk, Tina Owen-Moore, who has been recognized as a leader in implementing the science of reading in Wisconsin as the superintendent in Cudahy. As it turns out, Owen-Moore was Ferguson’s eighth grade English teacher.

“We talk all the time,” said Ferguson.

Owen-Moore knew people in Whitewater who were successfully implementing SOR. Meanwhile, school board director Henry Leonard also was talking to Owen-Moore, and when he heard of the possibility of visiting the Whitewater district in March, with only weeks before he would leave the board, he jumped at it.

“Ferguson and I went with Dr. Owen-Moore. It was eye-opening,” Leonard says. “They let us ask any questions. Their WEAC representative was there. Administrators. I know some of the questions I asked: ‘Did you have any difficulty in getting your staff to take the extra training?’ To a person, perhaps 12 people in the room representing different groups, they all said, ‘We have to have success.’ Large immigrant population in Whitewater. ‘We had people who were interested in making people learn how to read, but we were not getting any traction. We were not going anywhere. So, we decided the best route to go was to get some of these more formative processes in the science of reading.’” Over 80% of the staff agreed to it.

The district highlighted its first-year success in May 2024 with a report that noted, “Spring outcomes data shows that the district moved from 31.6% of students K-5 performing at or above grade level in the Fall before implementation to now 53.6% of students performing at or above grade level in the Spring.”

“I got to sit in classes and watch it being used to teach students,” said Ferguson. “That is what I wanted to see. I wanted to see if it was just that difficult to implement or if it were red tape at Milwaukee Public Schools that was preventing it from going forward. I was expecting it to be extremely complicated, next to impossible to implement. I discovered, going to Lincoln Elementary School [in Whitewater], a whole school learning it, and a whole staff of teachers implementing it. I learned that it is not that hard at all. We just have to pull back this red tape.”

Part of the difficulty of the slow start in MPS is directly related to turnover in the district, going from the resignation of a superintendent, to an interim superintendent, to the hiring of Brenda Cassellius as the new superintendent. She came on board with no one in her district with the training to implement SOR. So, she hired Academic Superintendent Gabriela Jiménez from the Madison schools to spearhead its efforts.

But a careful analysis of the success at Whitewater and cautious observations by Owen-Moore concerning Cudahy point to some half-truths about what SOR is and what the early successes really mean.

Much of the emphasis on SOR has zeroed in on the return to phonics-based instruction. Note that Whitewater is highlighting the success of K-5 students. But Owen-Moore herself has stated that phonics is only a starting point in the science of reading.

“Sometimes people simplify what research is telling us on the science of reading to only one part of the equation. And we are overgeneralizing for word recognition,” says Jiménez. “We need to explicitly teach for word recognition, but we must be strategically attentive to language comprehension. In order to make SOR effective, we must bring writing into the equation early. We are always thinking of these two capabilities to be able to read with comprehension: word recognition and language comprehension, background knowledge, language structure.”
“It is not sufficient for students to finish 3^rd grade being phonemic decoders if we are not attending to the language comprehension components,” says Jiménez. Students must understand similes, metaphors, inferences, background knowledge, facts and concepts, and ensuring writing is a strong component to SOR will help make these skills a reality.

But the problem Jiménez faced, and that teachers recognized, was that the existing MPS SOR did not have some of these necessary components in place. And so, she was adding “on the fly,” sometimes with over a dozen modifications each day. Teachers expressed frustration that they were being overwhelmed.

On Nov. 24-25, teachers took a break for additional training. An additional session for principals followed.

Survey results from the sessions were generally positive. Comments selected were also generally positive: “We were able to collaborate with colleagues on strategies relevant to our work.” But the survey did not shy away from negative comments: “Directions were confusing and not communicated in a single place.”

While the vast majority found the workshops valuable, 15% to 30% or more were not satisfied. The district must win those educators over.

Mavis Snelson is a vice president for MGT, a consulting firm that Cassellius brought in to help with the implementation of SoR. MGT also did the academic audit of the district. Says Snelson, “We work across the country. Districts across the country are struggling.”