CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia has been growing its early childhood literacy by up to nearly five-percent over the past three years, experts say.
Recently, the state was identified in a national report as one of four states and 260 school districts that are showing steady annual gains in 3rd grade literacy by Upswing Lab’s analysis. Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina were the other states that were recognized in the analysis.
State Schools Superintendent Michele Blatt said during the West Virginia Department of Education’s most recent regular meetings that the analysis also looked at several of the individual districts and the progress they are making in early literacy scores, and a few counties stood out to them.
“Looking at their poverty index and their diversity index and things, and so they recognize Cabell County, Kanawha, Logan, Marion, Mercer, Monongalia, Ohio, Putnam, and Raleigh as school districts that over the past three years have made significant improvements in their literacy scores,” Blatt said.
She said they are excited to get the final data for this past school year to add to that and see how much more those scores have improved since that analysis was conducted.
This literacy score improvement analysis goes against a trend of stagnant achievement from school districts across the country since the COVID-19 Pandemic ended.
Blatt said one portion that typically brings their English Language Arts (ELA) scores down is writing.
However, she said educators are saying that writing scores are also seeing an improvement.
“Vanessa Hayes is one of our literacy specialists that focuses a lot on the writing and has seen great success in the counties that she has worked with this past year on the writing and the impact it’s making in third, fourth, and fifth grade,” she said.
Blatt said WVDE has partnered with Mountain State Educational Services Cooperative to offer a year-long virtual writing training course with cohorts of ELA teachers.
She said the training will focus on several areas of writing skill building.
“It will really start them focusing on the different forms of writing, it will be in PLC format with live sessions they can attend, classroom instructional videos, and collaborative instruction to kind of replicate what has been done in those other states,” Blatt said.
She said the writing training course will be kicking off August 5.
WVDE has been actively working to improve ELA scores through initiatives like Ready, Read, Write, West Virginia, the Sparking Early Literacy Growth program, and the Third Grade Success Act. All of these initiatives aim to increase literacy proficiency for early learning in various ways.
The Third Grade Success Act, or House Bill 3035 passed in the Legislature in March 2023. Specifically, its aim is to address achievement gaps and provide students with more reading support, particularly in rural and underserved areas.
The legislation helps ensure students are reading on grade level by the end of third grade.