 Welcome back to the House Committee on Education. We are continuing our discussion on H101. And with us today, we have Chelsea Myers from the Superintendent's Association, as well as Libby Bone Steel, who's the superintendent of schools for the Melphilia Roxbury School District. So welcome, Chelsea. Nice to see you, Chelsea Myers. You as well. Thank you, Chair and committee for having us here to talk about the very important subject of literacy in our state. As Chair Webb mentioned, my name is Chelsea Myers. I'm the Associate Executive Director at the Vermont Superintendent's Association. A little brief background just to indicate my interest in literacy. I started my career in the neuroscience of reading research, was a school teacher, and then studied policy in grad school, education policy in grad school, and then returned back to my home state of Vermont to join you all. Libby is going to kind of provide a perspective from a superintendent from our association, and I'm going to give more of a broad overview in response to the bill. So Libby, do you want to introduce yourself? Sure. So it's good to see many of you again. For those of you I haven't met, I'm Libby Bone Steel. I'm the superintendent for Melphilia Roxbury. As was stated, I have a pretty strong background in literacy development and literacy coaching and all things. And this committee members from last year have heard me on my soapbox before, so I'm happy to be back. I'm at soapbox talking about one of my favorite topics. So Chelsea and I will tag team. She's going to just throw me in whenever she needs me. Put me in, Coach. All right. So first, it is important to state that VSA and its members view the improvement of literacy instruction and subsequently literacy outcomes as critically important. We ask that any policy directive on literacy consider the following. Equity must be at the forefront of this work. Data indicate that students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, BIPOC students, English language learners, and students with disabilities are disproportionately not getting what they need from the system to succeed in learning to read and write at the benchmark set for all students. Accurable access to highly skilled instruction must be a top priority in supporting this work. This can likely not be achieved without additional targeted resources. Two, the recruitment and retention of teachers and administrators that are highly skilled in reading instruction is a challenge and also a non-negotiable in being able to successfully implement any literacy reform. The ability to recruit highly skilled teachers is disparate around the state. Three, accountability through data is not successful without a clear vision of outcomes targeted supports in a growth mindset. Four, set targeted outcomes but allow LEAs to determine the best methods to achieve these outcomes based on the work already taking place in their communities. Effectively known as the Vermont way, I've come to find out. Five, all literacy reform decisions should be informed by skilled literacy experts. And six, to the extent possible, legislation should consider the myriad of initiatives on school districts' plates and create expectations and timelines accordingly. So in response to the proposed bill, I'll walk kind of through our suggestions and recommendations. And then I have some broader policy considerations for you all. So in the findings, we appreciate the reference to Act 173 and ask that due consideration be given to the structures already outlined in that piece of legislation and other state law and policies, such as VTM, TSS, and education quality standards. The law also makes reference to support provided to the field from the Agency of Education to implement the findings from the DMG report. We recommend that reference to disaggregated data that point to the inequities and access in literacy be highlighted in the findings, as it's an important part of the puzzle. So in section three in the Literacy Grant Program, first, thank you for recognizing that to support literacy, we must strongly support our teachers and administrators. A couple of key considerations in the grant process outlined in H101 include. Utilizing the structures already outlined in Act 173 is a useful starting point for this work. Please consider revising the instances where the term learning styles is used. There is no scientific evidence to support the idea that learning styles exist. It unnecessarily categorizes learners and may result in a fixed mindset about learning. Next, splitting funding among supervisory unions might need some additional considerations. We recommend speaking to business managers to determine if and how this would work. The language makes reference to master teachers. It is worth noting that the availability and retention of master teachers is disparate around the state. Our state is grappling with huge challenges in recruitment and retention that must be considered. In general, this grant process is complex and has a lot of requirements, which has made it even more challenging when coordinating amongst supervisory unions. For example, responsibility to grant report through the 2029-2030 school year is a tall task. While monitoring data and supporting students is crucial in literacy work, any grant process requires considerable administrative time and costs. The lengthy requirements might deter systems from pursuing the funds, especially those that operate with fewer resources to begin with. I'm gonna ask Liberty to jump in just to comment on the grant process itself, and then I'll move on to the next section of the bill for feedback. Yeah, when reading your bill, I actually missed that the first time through and when I read it through about the third time, I caught the kind of regional aspect of this, and it's interesting. And I have some ideas of how it could work. Anytime it's a multi-district or multi-supervisory union grant, there are problems. I've been involved with a few of them, the homeless, the McKinney-Vento grant when I was homeless liaison up in what was Franklin Northwest at the time, and also the equity grant, which we were part of last year, last year or two years ago with MRPS. Those were all multi-district grants. There are significant challenges in that. The main one is who's the business manager who gets the lucky penny as to doing the grant. So because of all the stipulations that are put from auditors and all of that kind of thing, it's incredibly difficult for one business manager in one district to take it on for other districts. And there's a lot of paperwork involved with just that process. So it's just something to consider. The agency of education and the amount of paperwork that they require as well, and doesn't make this process any easier. So for that reason alone, there are many districts who would not even consider this grant because that's just a major hurdle. I do like the idea of thinking about networks. And perhaps Chelsea knows probably where I'm going with this. So Chelsea, if I should wait on that, I can till later on. But I do have some ideas and like the idea of networks between districts. I just think there's different ways to do it that may not involve one grant between districts. Yeah, we'll continue through the bill and then respond to like other ideas in just a few minutes, if that's all right. Yep. So section five outlines duties of the Supervisor Union Board. We believe this is a useful idea. Schools are already using benchmark literacy assessments to monitor student progress in academic skill areas, including reading. Statewide data from pre-K to grade three should be used to monitor progress in literacy achievement and subsequently to inform professional learning and future policy initiatives. To ensure this connection, the measures collected and reported to the agency of education should be informed by skilled reading experts. We spoke yesterday with the Senate Education Committee which included Lexile scores. I'll have Libby just very briefly talk about Lexile scores as an example, but it is not included in the House Bill Libby. So we don't need to go too far into it. The agency of education should outline what it expects to do with the data collected. Any benchmark literacy assessment should be specifically tied to professional development for instructors on how to use the data collected to inform instruction and support students. Data is only as good as the skills you give people to use that data. We also respectfully request that you check with the Vermont School Boards Association on any issues related to board policy. So Libby, do you want to just briefly touch on how something like Lexile scores could defeat the purpose of reporting benchmark literacy scores? I'll be brief. The Secretary has mentioned that to us. The Secretary has mentioned to us his Lexile and quantile score. The Secretary is a fan of Lexiles. And they are mentioned in the Common Core State Standards. They're not a requirement in the Common Core State Standards. They're mentioned as one way to determine text complexity in those standards. But as I spoke yesterday to the Senate, Ed, when you're thinking about what makes a text and a reader work or what makes reading work, one of them is this idea of the types of sentences, the types of grammar, the types of word length, things that can be quantifiable within a text. So I could put Chelsea's testimony into a Lexile computer base, and I could get a Lexile level based on just what her sentence length is and her number of commas and the length of her words. The other two factors are the idea of what's the content of the book, what's the theme, what's the maturity level, what's the comprehension that's needed in order to truly under-figure the language, all of that kind of thing. And then the third is the reader and the task considerations. And I think I actually spoke to this group about this before. It's why four-year-olds can read really complex dinosaur texts because they bring with them a whole lot of background knowledge on dinosaurs because they're really obsessed with them and they can read words like tyrannosaurus rex, which is not a four-year-old word, right? So what readers bring to the text matters. And so these three kind of form like a Venn diagram. Lexiles only measure the quantifiable. They only measure sentence length and word, number of syllables and a word and number of commas. It's completely disregarding the reader, the task, the maturity level, the theme. And I'll give just one quick example, Night by Ellie Weasel, which is a very popular book about the Holocaust and the horror of the Holocaust. Under the Lexile Band, that's a grade two, three text. I would never give that to a second grader and because Lexiles measure the sentences, it measures the quantifiable amount. So as an administrator looking at programmatic measures, it's not a measure that I would ever think to use to give me any information about what my readers are doing nor is it one that I would stress on my educators because what we really want them to be doing is critically thinking. We want them to be analyzing text. We want them to be doing all the things that we know good readers do and they don't count words. So that's just my bandwidth on Lexiles, which I could probably go on a little bit more about, but I'm very happy this House bill does say about it is that there aren't any Lexiles for kindergarten and first grade. And if we're looking at primary literacy and we wanna report out a Lexile score for something in kindergarten, first grade, it's not gonna be easy to do. You're gonna have to make up your own numbers. Yeah, and just to give folks a kind of a brief overview, benchmark assessments are used widely across the state and many systems use different benchmark assessments, though there are probably a handful of them all said and done that folks use. And I imagined that the secretary was aiming to get a score that was easily reportable from all benchmark assessments currently used in the field. So that is a great intention. I'm not sure how much the data would actually tell us about our young readers though. All right, so I've put together a couple of other policy considerations. They are somewhat tied to what Libby was talking to as well. Early language and literacy development are highly correlated with later school achievement. Children exposed to rich language environments, more enriching experiences and books throughout early development are more likely to succeed academically later in life. Some potential policy and practice suggestions related to the kind of zero to five range is having community resources for reaching out to parents and caregivers to increase language development in the early years, such as seen in the Reach Out and Read program. And I've linked all these programs in my written testimony. Include early childhood education in the review. Oh, I'm sorry, I should have removed that from this piece of testimony. Training and support for examining instruction and curricula in the state's early childhood programs and considering elements of programs like Providence Talks that aims to close the word gap which starts at zero years old. Network improvement communities are a concept already supported by the agency of education and professional learning communities are widely employed by school districts and our associations. Using data to identify those schools and communities that are exhibiting marked growth and addressing literacy and closing up opportunity gaps and sharing the processes those communities have used to get there is a way to optimize the collective knowledge around literacy already in Vermont and your bill gets at that fact in trying to bring supervisory unions together. Funding reading coaches and high needs schools is a strategy used in other states according to a report by the Council of Chief State school officers policy brief on third grade reading laws. The report also notes that there is a strong body of evidence that coaches can effectively improve teacher practices in elementary school literacy. Teachers are the most important factor in schools in impacting student outcomes including literacy. Finding ways to support literacy coaches for Vermont schools could be a high leverage means to improve literacy outcomes for students. Connecting work already underway on anti bias and culturally responsive pedagogy to the work on literacy could be an important means to reduce the barriers the system places on historically underserved students. Some connections between this work include the availability and use of texts that are culturally relevant and representative of historically marginalized voices is critical to ensure that all students have the opportunity to connect their experiences to the texts they are reading. For example, some school libraries have conducted audits to begin to understand and address representation in their offered texts. Though often unintentional implicit biases can impact the expectations for students. Expectations for students impact the way that educators interact with students and ultimately is correlated with student achievement. And I know there's some work being done in the legislature on that. That's it for me. I'm gonna ask Livia if she has any responses to those ideas and then we'll take questions. Yeah, one of the things that Chelsea and I have been kind of playing around with and she's made me think quite a bit about and a question posted to me yesterday by our colleagues in the Senate around what could we do in terms of like what might it look like? And so I've been thinking about that quite a bit. And I think this idea of a measure of accountability by all means, we need accountability. It's not a bad word, right? So figuring out some measure of accountability. And if we're talking about K1, it could be accountability of proficiency in those foundational skills that are laid out very clearly in the Common Core State Standards and would be very easy to report out on as a state. Not having to do with Lexiles, but having to do with a skill that we could actually look at and learn from. And then if you add that though with, you can't have accountability without a really clearly defined articulated vision for like vision of what success looks like. So what does a successful system look like? We have a lot of things on paper from our agency of education as well as from just research and evidence across the state. We don't have any model schools of yes, this is it, right? I know you heard from Makayla and Andrea earlier today and I listened to their testimony as well. They've made a lot of gains particularly in the area of social emotional learning for students with their MTSS model and social emotional learning. They have not made the academic gains, however. And so we wanna be thinking about how to, like let's find a model, let's decide what that model looks like as a state. And it's not, what I'm not saying is cookie cutter. What I'm saying is here are the elements. Here's a clearly defined multi-tiered system of support, right? Here's a clearly defined articulated curriculum. Here are clearly defined collaborative practices and collective efficacy among staff. Here is clearly defined high quality instruction that is put out and then have schools work towards those ends. And once we find those model schools, that's when the networking comes in, right? That's when a school system could go visit another school and say, my data shows me I'm really struggling in multi-tiered systems of support and literacy. What are you doing? What assessments are you doing? How do you respond to those assessments? How does your EST planning look? So that we're not just talking to people who are doing similar things with similar outcomes. We need to be talking across this, I need this, you're really good at it, right? We don't have evidence of that because we don't have the clearly articulated vision for it. We have a lot of things on paper. And then where's the support for growth? So if my school systems data is truly showing that kids are not coming in with knowing the letters of their name in kindergarten, which is a key indicator of success later on, then what can my community do? Like what's the support that my kindergarten teachers can get around that? What's my support that I can develop for parents? Then it's really articulated and intentional. So that equals sustainable outcomes. One thing I'm a little bit concerned about with a two-year grant process is that as an administrator, I wouldn't be using that money to hire a reading coach because it's not sustainable because I'd have to eventually put it into my local budget if it worked, right? I would be, I am very concerned about one-shot professional development ideas because they don't work and we use way too much money already there. So we really wanna think about what's the sustainable practices that actually change instruction and how do we support schools doing that? But we can't do it without that clear vision for what the mountaintop looks like. What are we working towards? So how that looks in policy, it's kind of your band of wheelhouse, but I'd love to keep talking about those kind of ideas that we're looking longer than two years. We're taking our time to develop that vision and clear that articulated. And once we've clearly articulated it, then we're putting a process together probably at the agency of education of how schools can become these model schools and then a process together of how we get into each other's buildings quite a bit. And Chelsea will tell you that there is a desire, a high desire for school districts for us to be visiting each other much more often outside of our district so we can learn from each other. Yeah, to give you an indication for the second year we are running something called the Instructional Leadership Academy, which empowers principals and superintendents and district leaders to give targeted feedback through a walkthrough process in schools that's really of the growth mindset, not of a punitive response in any way. And this is the second year holding it and within 48 hours, I had double booked the enrollment capacity. Luckily, the University of Washington who we work with allowed us to extend to two cohorts. So people are hungry for this kind of cross supervisory union sharing. And so ways to support that is definitely wanted and needed. Excuse me, so you're saying that what's missing is a vision for literacy in the state of, literacy in the state of Vermont. That is usually not something that legislators decide without listening to a whole bunch of experts. That usually requires getting the think tank of some pretty smart folks to make recommendations on that account. So I would be uncomfortable, even though I have a reading background, writing that vision right now. I would see that that would need, so are you suggesting that perhaps in here that there needs to be a group to pull together what that vision is? Yeah, I'd say if you're gonna go for it, go for it, right? So write the law to give the state time, because I would agree with you, as a state we do not have an articulated vision for what a literate individual is, or what outcomes we want for our kindergarten, first grade, beyond grade level proficiency, right? That's kind of the no-brainer that we can fall back on and everybody defines that differently. I also spoke to a number of other superintendents and if I will quote them, we need a template of non-negotiables of early reading instructional practices. We need to also articulate tier one responsibilities and then make sure that we employ literacy specialists in the fields to implement those visions. Representative Collin. Thank you. I'm hearing basically over time a lot of conflicting messages that are sort of about local control and then are very much not about local control are about working together, but are not about working together, which is kind of rendering our task here nearly impossible. So just some examples, Libby, you were sort of down on the idea of regional approaches or regional trainings together or regional grants, I guess, to be more technical about it. You're very specifically regional grants. Yet it seems like regional grants lead to regional collaboration and you're very much touting how much school districts want to work together and visit each other's buildings and see what's working. You also use the idea of needing what we really need is a clearly articulated curriculum. And I don't see how that's gonna get, how we're gonna reach any sort of agreement on a clearly articulated curriculum when it comes to literacy training. And then Chelsea, you just mentioned what we need is a template for non-negotiables in literacy, yet that feels very top-down. And I'm just wondering if it is intended to sound like that is very top-down. And how do we agree on what that non-negotiable list of, or that template of non-negotiables is? We talked about this a little bit yesterday too. We're a system that values proficiency-based learning. And just proficiency-based in general. When you're talking about foundational skills, there aren't too many of them. And so from a perspective, the vision statement is not a curriculum, it's not a standardized curriculum, but it's all first graders will have this knowledge and it's in foundational skills, right? Or this knowledge within foundational skills. So all first graders upon the end of their first grade year will be proficient because we already have that language and we already value it in letter sound correspondence, in phonemic awareness, in a high level of high-frequency words, in common reselling of text, of simple text, right, or grade level text. You put those measures in place in terms of proficiency-based pieces, then that's a no-brainer I feel like. That's an expectation that gets at the accountability, so if my system doesn't have or has a high percentage of students who don't have letter sound correspondence from our seven-year-olds at a certain time in a seven-year-old, then I know that my system needs help in developing pedagogical practices to increase that proficiency rate. And it's very targeted and very intentional. Those are the kind of things that I think we can be looking at. In terms of the grant process, I'm not down on the grant idea. I'm down on the regional grant idea because of the logistics and the paperwork behind it. I like the grant idea if it's based in something, so we'll go back to the example. And I'll use an example from people who spoke to you earlier from the Stern Center. So they were really jazzed up about Orton-Gillingham kind of things, right? So if I make the decision in my school district that we don't have highly capable and highly trained reading interventionist and or a special educator, which I would agree for students with learning disabilities, particularly those who are named as dyslexic, Orton-Gillingham is a process that could work for those kids, for those particular kids. I could write a grant. It's expensive to get somebody certified in Orton-Gillingham. I heard somebody else talk about, oh no, that was yesterday, reading recovery. That's an expensive program, which has results for it, so for a certain child. So if I wanted to access grant money to be that specific, to increase my pedagogical effectiveness of my interventionist and or a special educator, I'm all for that. I don't wanna have to do it with Barry, because they may have a completely different way they're approaching this work than I do. So that would be my piece, is that I would much rather go to a place that has a highly effective intervention system, rock and enroll in and saying, what are you doing? Well, and then compare it to my own system and then be able to access grant money to get that training for highly trained interventionists. Does that make sense? Yeah, it absolutely makes sense. And I want to follow up on that. I guess we're feeling a little bit more of a rush to sort of get some literacy, highly skilled literacy training going in the field, whereas, as you mentioned, there really isn't that model school right now to go and visit and learn from. And it just seems like we're talking about a, I know it's a multi-year process anyway to bring literacy instruction up to where we need it to be, but it seems like that's an even slower process where there seems to be a much greater sense of urgency. I would argue it's also a more sustainable process. I would agree, yeah. So if you want sustainable growth, then we're gonna have to go with a slower process. If you want immediate kind of push, I don't know what that might look like. You can send teachers to professional development sessions and what was the term that was used earlier, structured literacy, and they will go to their professional learning, they will take one or two aspects of it and maybe change 5% of their practice. That's not going to get us anywhere. In terms of increasing our literacy scores, we might get a slight bump, but we don't. So when we're taking on literacy from a policy perspective, you're taking on a monster. I always say that literacy isn't something on the plate, it is the plate. Everything else is on top of it. And so I am not opposed in taking on policy and pieces on that. I understand the urgency quite a bit. I have it in my system who has pretty darn good literacy scores, but I'm looking at them and saying, talk to me about the 30% who aren't getting proficient in third grade on aspect, because we're up at 70% right now. So I understand that urgency. However, changing this boat and doing it in a sustainable way for growth is not a quick process. So I have, if you don't mind, I'll respond as well. There's also this question too, is we have some structures in Act 173 that through studies we have shown as a state we need to work on. And yet there's not been a whole lot of focus on implementing that with fidelity. And I appreciate the reference to 173 in this grant that was, that's something that I think is really highly needed is thinking about, we have a lot of structures that we've put in place through policy in the last decade. And the principles outlined in something like Act 173 should in theory, based on that study, impact the literacy of our youngest students by putting highly skilled teachers in front of our most vulnerable students or our students that are struggling the most. One of the challenges with that is, it's not always equitable, right? We have schools that will put a position out for a reading specialist and get zero to two applicants that are maybe like have no experience are just coming out of college. They try to train them up and then they leave for another system. And then we have districts and school supervisory unions that have 20 literacy specialists. And that might be an exaggeration, but I don't think it's much of one. So the comparison is pretty stark. And what impacts the needle most, like Libby was talking about is coaching our instructors on how to teach literacy. Well, if I am in the Northeast Kingdom somewhere and can't find a literacy specialist to coach my teachers, then we gotta find another route and it's inherently inequitable. So it's all things to consider and very complex puzzle. It is a complex puzzle. There's no question about that. And yet we have Act 173 that has some clear goals to it. And I think that there's pretty general agreement that the ensuring core instruction time outside of core instruction to get to those ensuring that they receive it from highly skilled teachers that the five pieces out of Act 173. We also have a moment in time where we have an unbelievable amount of federal funds flowing into the state. What is it that we can do now that's actually going to, we know that, we certainly know that that programs that work well include leadership that are willing to sustain something that we all know that you could go do one class on trauma and so what, but if you're a trauma informed school, it's a completely different situation. How do we be a fully literacy informed school knowing that right now we have one time money but we also have a waiting study that's looking at changing the way that we do our weights where areas of poverty are more likely to be getting more access to be able to weight their students differently. How do we use this one time funds right now in the work before this committee to put in place to move us toward 173 and following up from COVID. I didn't express that very well, but I think somewhere in there I think you can follow my thread. I think you need to know a little bit more about it. Like it's a one time funds that if you don't use it in a year you're gonna lose it. Well, there's also a lot going we have a new administration in there there's more funds there. We know that we've got one time funds right now we've got 127 million dollars flowing for schools. Yep. The agency of education is gonna have 10% of those. You schools are gonna have the rest. Yeah. I wonder, I do wonder and I'm speaking more from my experience as a curriculum director up in Swanton more than a superintendent in Montpelier-Roxbury and it's not particular to literacy although you could make it. So when I think about the biggest challenges I had up there as the director of curriculum and instruction and we were doing fabulous work is that I used to joke my colleagues in the Champlain Valley and Chittenden County that they should pay me a consultancy fee because I trained those teachers so well for them and got them their three to five years of really high quality experiences and they left for a bigger paycheck. So I wonder if there's anything that lawmakers could think about in terms of grant forgiveness for a certain number of years in schools with higher poverty. I wonder about bonuses for teachers who work in schools that have higher population of EL kids or kids in poverty. I wonder about those teacher retention is a major, major challenge for many of our school districts across Vermont and literacy is not gonna get any better if teachers keep turning over, right? I don't have teacher turnover in Montpelier-Roxbury so I can get a very divine and we have one we just did a literacy audit with the folks over at PLL this year and got a massive amount of really fantastic data about our system through their literacy audit with Mary Grace and Ellen Thompson. It's amazing the information we just got and I know because I don't have any turnover that I'm gonna be able to act on it starting next year and we're gonna have massive improvements in about one or two years because that's where my teachers are. They've been their veteran teachers and they're ready to go and they're ready to work but I also know that places like the Northeast Kingdom and like Franklin Northwest who are right up there on the border with Canada have a really hard time getting teachers to get them to stay. Yeah, to add to Libby, I think it was in my Senate Ed testimony yesterday. We also need to think about supporting interested teachers or students that are interested in going into literacy expertise and thinking about what that means to support a pipeline fully in this state. The more experts that we are able to foster and facilitate their growth for, the better off our state will be in literacy. Because like Libby said, she was an expert in literacy and was able to coach countless number of people and being also gifted at literacy instruction. The more people we have in that kind of train and the trainer model, the more the better off our state's gonna be in literacy in the future. Representative Austin. Thank you. There's two things that I wanna just find out about when I read the DMG report before I was even in the legislature. You know, when it used highly skilled teachers, you know that these kids should be taught by highly skilled teachers. I'm thinking all teachers should be highly skilled teachers. You know, so it was like confusing to me, you know, when I read that, but my understanding of Act 73 is that it is a classroom teacher that is the expert. So it's not the grant isn't to get, it may be to get a coach or some kind of way of professional development that trains classroom teachers, but it's a classroom teacher. So all children in the class have access to excellent literacy instruction. So that's kind of one thing. That's how I'm seeing it. And Libby, I'm really glad to hear about your data in terms of 70, 30. Like I'm trying to think, I don't wanna tell schools how to do stuff, but I just wanna see that when kids leave third grade in literacy, I would say, you know, I'm kind of grabbing out of a hat that that's 70% of kids of proficient and 30% that aren't are being, you know, follow, you know, being addressed through, you know, fourth, fifth, sixth grade to get, you know, to give them the support they need. So what, do you have a percentage that you would think in terms of outcome, you know, to look at is this working and what could the expectations be when kids leave third grade in reading? For me, it's all kids all the time. I know. Any one of my teachers, and they'll tell you that. She says that all the time to us. So to your first point, what DMG was referring to when it said kids should be taught by highly qualified teachers is because in Vermont, they're taught by instructional assistants. Oh, okay. That's why. I don't know as paraeducators. Yeah, that's what it's referring to. Kids who struggle are tied to an instructional assistant. The instructional assistant does the vast majority of the work for them on a daily basis and that's not effective and that's not right and we shouldn't be doing that. I think the impetus of that way back when was that when we became a state that really valued inclusion, we named our practices inclusion and never changed or did any professional learning around that. And so teachers said, I can't do this. I need more people. And so we hired instructional assistants to follow kids around and to a great disservice to our students. So that's what that's referring to. And when we're talking about the first instruction piece we are but we're not incredibly clear about that in terms of the literature that's out there around MTSS systems. So when we're thinking about first instruction that's like second grade level work, right? The classroom teacher most definitely should be the expert in second grade level work and that's first instruction. I would argue that the second tier of intervention is good teaching and needs to be done by the most expert person in grade level standards and that also is the second grade teacher. And then when we're thinking about tier three what we're thinking about is universal skills, right? So if I'm still on second grade if a kid doesn't have letter sound correspondent that's a universal skill. They need to be successful in second grade. It's not a second grade level standard. So then we need the experts to come in who are experts in teaching universal skills for that kid and that kid also needs to master the grade level standard, right? So I heard the gentleman Rob Schultz from UVM speak earlier about needing, yeah you need to make a year's growth or you need to make a year and a half's growth, right? And that's what he was referring to there and I really appreciated his testimony around that. And then the second, so then when you're talking about what should the, excuse me, expectations be I think they're clear in terms of foundational skills they're clearly laid out in the Common Core and our K2, right? It's clear, it's right there. There isn't really any arguing to how the Common Core has laid them out in the foundational skills piece of that document. The challenges and I believe I've talked to this committee before about it is that when the Common Core came in we didn't focus on that as school systems. We focused on text complexity and the informational reading and fiction reading and that kind of thing, which is the more fun stuff. We need to put more emphasis on the foundational skills. There's no doubt there. We need to have dedicated curriculum to that and we need to have dedicated best practice to that. We just have, we have not put the effort in there. I would also, oh sorry. Thank you. Just want to make sure, Representative Conlon. I also want to make sure we don't get too deeply into weeds. Yeah, I would just warn also about hanging our, all of our, or putting all of our eggs in the basket of the SPEC score at grade three. There's a lot more, a bigger picture about reading than just that one score. Not saying it has no utility, but just thinking about it from that one score. We should probably stay away from. Representative Conlon. Thanks. I'm going to pull us back a little bit, talk about what the administration has been, their sort of strategy toward addressing literacy, which I think is reflected in the bill that's currently in front of the Senate. My read on it is that it's basically almost putting the responsibility of addressing literacy in the hands of a school board that needs to adopt a policy and then evaluate the superintendent based on that policy. In a way it seems like a simple approach that leaves a lot of sort of freedom. But on the other hand, I'm a school board member. I've been through the superintendent evaluation process. I don't find it highly effective in solving one problem or another. And then you obviously don't evaluate a superintendent on one thing. So I guess I'd like a little feedback on that approach. And maybe is there sort of a middle ground between what we're talking about and that approach that might work. Thank you. Yeah, we talked about the accountability piece of reporting every one of us, every one of us superintendents should be reporting to our school boards about how our kids are learning and where they are. And we should be demanded to get those show growth every year. We should be answering some really hard questions around that from our school boards. So I applaud that piece of it. I don't know if it needs to be policy or not. Chelsea will talk to that. I'd recommend talking to the VSBA about that before anything goes into statute. The superintendent piece goes back to the teacher piece for me that we talked about yesterday. That it is a much different process for me to hire a teacher at Montpelier Roxbury than it is for Highgate Elementary to hire a teacher. It is a completely and utterly different process. I will get at least 25 applicants for a first grade teacher opening at Union Elementary School, most of which have five years experience at least. Highgate Elementary will probably have five applicants and probably three out of the five will be right out of college. And my teachers want to stay with me, right? They will stay in my school district and I will be able to train them up and we have high quality professional learning going on. So does Highgate Elementary. I can say that for a fact. And Highgate's teachers will come to me or go to Essex or go to South Burlington within three years because what they're doing is they're notching their belts and then they're gonna go someplace that they can get paid higher and paid more. The other piece is a recruitment piece. I recruit, I just picture an hour around Montpelier and all the people where I can recruit from whereas Highgate has a Canadian border and then a lake. So they're recruiting from not even 180. They're recruiting from a much smaller territory than I am. And so we know that teachers matter. And if teachers aren't staying and principals aren't staying either by the way, but Highgate has an excellent brand spanking new principal who I trained myself in Yeshua Pastina but he's brand spanking new. And so he's feeling his oats out there as well. And so when you tie all of those things and then say, and if your literacy growth doesn't improve superintendent, you're gonna be evaluated out. Now you're gonna have superintendent turnover. None of that works to support growth. None of it does. So I think the superintendent piece and obviously being a superintendent I'm slightly biased in this, but I would say this if I weren't a superintendent is an unfair measure and it reeks of no child left behind which was a failed effort. So I think there are other ways to do that. Other ways to hold schools accountable and support growth at the same time. And I don't truly believe that putting the superintendent as the sole responsibility on this is what needs to happen. Chelsea, you wanna add on to that? Yeah, I'll point you to my Senate Ed testimony from yesterday where we respond point by point to their bill. But I think to answer the broader question there is a place to sit in between. And I think it comes into a couple of buckets. One is like kind of that visioning like standards type like what is our outcome that we wanna get to? Not telling people how to get there but just what do we want from people? There's that. And then there's the data piece that I think you both have in your bills that maybe could use a little tweaking but is completely I think a reasonable expectation. And then the last piece is kind of that support piece which your bill does a really good job of understanding the concept that teachers, administrators need the support to be able to use that data in an effective way to implement or to influence literacy. And I think that gets at a really nice synergy between the two bills. Like there is some accountability but it's not all stick accountability because it doesn't work. And then there's the support to back up the accountability piece. So I think that's kind of where the two are married. Excellent. Sarita, is that a new question? No. Well, I think that our heads are full at the moment. It's hard to go on Friday. It's hard to go on Friday afternoon. After a full day, you guys are rock stars. I was listening to most of the day. Good for you. Is there really a difference between days? I know. Yeah. Well, this is great. I'm going to check in with Chelsea a little later and see just we can figure out what to do here. And I appreciate the committee's time. I appreciate Libby. We always love hearing from you. And I do know having been a teacher that started in St. Alvin's and went down to Burlington, I do understand that the Chittenden County, the Montpelier area always has the teachers with five or six years experience. And there is a problem with that. And I think the waiting study might help to address some of that going forward. Lord, wait to change some of the weights moving forward. It is always a pleasure to be with you all and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Now, you might have just spending at the moment and trying to figure out what to do at this point. I don't think I'm alone. We'll make it. We'll make it. Yeah. Thank you, Chelsea and Libby. Thanks again. Can I ask a quick favor? Yeah. And that would be of Libby. And I remember you talking about this last year and it struck a chord with me and then I sort of went out of my head. Could you send a link or point us in the direction of where the Common Core speaks to young people? Great. Thank you. Great. Yeah, actually, if you just Google Common Core ELA, you'll have it all. The talks of Lexiles and Appendix A, I believe, or Appendix C. And if there's literally, you'll be able to see foundational skills, right? It's pretty, it's right there. Okay. Because we, you know, people have forgotten about the Common Core, yet it was really, I think, one of the best things that we did in education in Vermont. I would agree. It's a great standard. I mean, there's always challenges with any standards document, but this one's a good one. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We can go offline.