By Kyle Roberts
Expect literacy proficiency rates to climb in Lincoln Parish to reach even higher than they already are in the coming months.
That’s the vision laid out by Lincoln Parish School Board Chief Academic Officer Dana Talley from the Tuesday meeting of the Lincoln Parish School Board for the month of September, where a specific academic effort in partnership with Louisiana Tech’s College of Education and Human Sciences to increase literacy proficiency was the primary focus of the day.
Talley began by referencing a recent study in the United States that found that most students — particularly students of color, students from low-income households, students with mild to moderate disabilities, and students that are English language learners — are missing out of the following resources for learning:
- Grade-appropriate assignments
- Strong instruction
- Deep engagement
- Teachers with high expectations
“This is the foundation of what we know is true,” Talley said. “For students to be successful, those four critical resources must be in place in every school, in every classroom, for every kid, every single day.”
Talley then discussed the beliefs and expectations of the LPSB, which she believes matches these four resources, and the importance of evaluations that learning implementations are successful for students.
Talley then said the top priority for the 2024-25 school year is Kindergarten through Second Grade literacy with the goal that students will be reading on grade-level by the end of the second grade.
“A lot of change and attention has been focused on literacy at both the national and state level,” K-2 Literacy Coordinator Michelle Thrower said. “Last year, the Louisiana Department of Education adopted DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) as the universal screener for Louisiana (regarding literacy). This was the first time that all districts were required to give the full battery of recommended literacy screening instruments three times (for K-2) at the beginning, middle and end of the year.
“While I am proud to report that the proficiency rate for all grade levels increased from beginning of the year to end of year (in 2023-24), our end of year overall literacy proficiency rate was a disappointing 55 percent. This placed Lincoln Parish in line with the state averaged and ranked 34th among all districts in Louisiana. I’m definitely not satisfied with these results.”
To raise these literacy rates, the LPSB and Louisiana Tech College of Education and Human Sciences have partnered together to implement a new skills curriculum to enhance students’ decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) abilities.
The team from Tech consists of Dr. Dustin Whitlock, Dr. Don Schillinger, Dr. Kimberly Kimbell-Lopez, Dr. Libby Manning, and Dr. Julie Cappo.
“We are just a tad passionate about this,” Manning said. “We are seeing such great results — we know the “science of reading” movement has been in effect for probably the last two or three years. The Louisiana Department of Education was awarded a $4 million this last year to provide modules to be able to do professional development for our teachers across the state, Kindergarten through third grade. Louisiana Tech was awarded that grant, which was very exciting.
Utilizing curriculum from the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI), Manning was selected to write the phonics module, while Lopez wrote the vocabulary module.
A.E. Phillips implemented the curriculum last year and reported eye-popping results.
“All of their student scores — we couldn’t believe it — moved up,” Manning said. “Dr. Whitlock said that he had to go back and look twice because every child moved up.”
LPSB President Gregg Phillips expressed his excitement after the meeting for the partnership with the COEHS at Tech.
“This is something we’ve been looking forward to for a while,” Phillips said. “We are super excited to work with Dr. Manning and her team to implement the UFLI curriculum, which we’ve heard great things about. We’re excited to see the progress over the next months and school year to see those scores come up.”
David Ferguson from District 2 also expressed his excitement for the curriculum’s promise of increasing literacy rates.
“This is the first presentation I’ve heard that has sparked my interest knowing that these (reading) scores are going to go up,” Ferguson said. “I want to say to the superintendent (Ricky Durrett) that you all have done a wonderful job.”
Phillips expects to get four literacy proficiency updates throughout the course of the school year, beginning in October.
Read more about the Lincoln Parish School Board’s September meeting later this week in the LPJ.
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