 Welcome back. This is the Education Committee in the Vermont House of Representatives and we are continuing our conversation on H101, a literacy bill related to Act 173. And with us, I'm so delighted to have Blanche Podaiski, the president and founder of the Stone Center for Language and Learning in Williston. And you have been involved in literacy for a long time, Dr. Podaiski. So welcome. Thank you very much. And it has been a joyous journey and I'm delighted to be culminating it with this visit with this committee so that we can figure out a way to do systems change for sustainable literacy in our schools. We know so very much. And the study of language and reading has been my life's work. I began my career in Vermont before I know many people on this committee were born in 1968 at the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont where we had a wonderful program called the Center for Disorders of Communication. I was a language specialist and then became its director. We were seeing children who had difficulties with listening and speaking and did a marvelous job at fixing their problems. And then we'd see these same children come back three or four years later and now they had reading and writing problems. So it truly begged the question of what is going on in these children's brains that makes it so challenging for them to manipulate language. In 1971, I was appointed to the Department of Neurology at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. And that was really quite an example of forward thinking. I'm so proud of Vermont. I truly am. There were no other educational leaders in a program that was teaching future physicians about neurodiversity in children's brains when they learn and how we can help them if they're different. And it was really at the beginning of our really adventure into the neuroscience of reading. And then in 1983, I founded the Stern Center and I founded it so that there would be a place where educators and families could come to learn more about how the neuroscience discoveries within research can help children who struggle to learn and, more importantly, how to help them learn. So it's been a remarkable 52 years. But I'm really here to share with you what we've learned from the neuroscience and how it can impact this bill. I understand you cannot govern curriculum, determine curriculum, recommend curriculum. But when we talk about structured literacy, it's really an approach of programs like letters, which is a, I believe it was representative Brian who was asking about what other organizations or programs are out there. Letters is an acronym for language essentials for the teaching of reading and spelling. It was developed by Dr. Louisa Motz, who's a Vermonter part-time. She has a place in Thetford, but she lives full-time in Idaho. She's an expert in the field of reading and spelling and that's a program that's out there. There are other, the Reading Institute, Williamstown Mass might be another one where they frequently work with folks in Manchester and Bennington and our Southern colleagues. We'll know about that. But it's structured literacy is an effort to teach children how our English language works. And when we know that 50% of our language is phonetically regular and another 36% is only off by one sound, okay? That makes 86% of the language predictable, really, if you understand how the language works. I would be thrilled if the Stern Center students coming to us had 86% of language mastered. They do not. We are seeing eighth graders, tenth graders and usually nine-year-olds who are not reading and they're very frustrated. We see about 700 children a year. But what concerns me about when we ask schools to develop action plans for a bill like H101 is that we need to be sure those action plans are informed. And the science has been very powerful in giving us some knowledge to use. And so what do we know? We know that 95% of children are cognitively capable of learning how to read if we give them the fundamentals of what reading is all about. We also know that the biggest impediment, the number one barrier to equity in literacy is a lack of teacher knowledge or teaching ineffectiveness, not through any mal intent, but just through either a lack of preparation or exposure. And the last one that there are many, but the last one that's critical, I think, for us to know throughout Vermont and the nation is that FMRI studies unequivocably show that there is brain activity that shifts so that youngsters who struggle to read look more neuro anatomically like children who are having an easy time reading if they are taught with a structured approach. What a structured approach means is it's explicit, it's systematic, and it's sequential. So I want to make sure I keep my notes here because I know I have a limited time and I have to give you everything. So in section 3.5b1 in the literacy grant program section, it states that we want to differentiate between students' different learning styles and abilities. Now that makes me a little anxious because while we always want to use data. I'm sorry, Dr. Podewski, can you just say where you are again? Okay, what I have was it's page 6 section 3.5 little b1. I don't know what the best way. Program creation and grant authorization. It's yes, when it says to differentiate between students' different learning styles and abilities. And I can point this out for you exactly. Learning styles, huh? Right. Learning styles is a neuro myth and I really want to talk more about that. We all have preferences in how we learn. I mean, when you get a new iPhone, you probably benefit from some kinesthetic demonstration of what you should be doing in addition to looking at the manual. Okay. That's different than saying that there are right brain learners and left brain learners and auditory learners and visual learners. And I think one of the biggest mistakes we make in education is trying to match learning styles to curricula when we know that there is demonstrable neuro scientific evidence that a structured approach to teaching reading is what yields successful outcomes for all learners. Now, this is when we also get into the question of the dyslexia identification and instruction. Dyslexia is a, again, a neurologically based condition that makes it very challenging for students to map speech to print. Okay. It is probably occurring in 15% of the population, 10 to 15% depending on which researcher you cite. We're seeing examples of children. 50% of home are not reading. These children can't all be dyslexic. So if you think of reading on a continuum, okay, and on the far left, maybe our most severe youngsters are dyslexic youngsters. And on the far right are the kids who just get it intuitively. They pick it up. They don't even need us. They don't need to go to school. They've got it so fast. A teacher helps them get better at it. But the bulk of them are just children who have not been taught to read. And this is, again, not because of a lack of opportunity. We have an achievement gap, which is apparent in our NAPE data. We certainly have an opportunity gap because we know that children of poverty are more vulnerable. And that is an equity issue that we must adjust. And now we're looking at a potential COVID gap because we know that children who struggle to learn are the ones who are most impacted by the educational consequences of the pandemic. So we have got to look at these gaps and say, how do we make our best effort to improve literacy instruction? And again, it's going to lie in the teacher. I loved what Makayla said this morning that the teacher is the reading manual. She is, in her head, we have to place that knowledge about how the language works, how you teach literacy, how you are structured, sequential, and systematic. And then we can see greater changes in our outcomes. But coaching, coaching and measuring outcomes are only going to be as good as the content you're coaching teachers about and the outcomes that you're measuring. So again, there are places, there are Addison Central, I believe, right now is working with the Stern Center to look at assessment measures which drive instructional practice. There are many of them. But it's all about structured literacy teaching. We've been working with schools now for the past three years in a systems change initiative. Makayla is a beautiful example of one of our first success stories. But I'm not here as a commercial for the Stern Center. I'm here as a commercial for the science. And I make no apologies about that. Okay. So I'm excited. We've been working with Castleton University for the last dozen years. They grant credit to teachers to improve their knowledge, extend their knowledge. But I'm also delighted that we've opened conversations with the University of Vermont. Because we need to start thinking about the undergraduate personnel preparation. That's where the rubber hits the road in all honesty. Because right now what we're doing is trying to make up for what teachers have not left their higher ed programs with. So while obviously learning is a lifelong adventure, we have to prepare teachers as best we can from the get go. So I hope that this little brief trip through some of the neuroscience helps this bill to incorporate the neuroscience. We don't have to mandate curriculum. But I think we do have to attend to what we've learned over the past 50 years. Any questions? Do you think we're then we're on the right track in doing that? Are there changes that you would make to the bill that we've drafted at this point? Well, I think if there is some way in which we can explicate that there are neuroscientific discoveries that should influence our decision making. As we go about systems change and Michael is absolutely right. This is not going to happen in one to two years. This is going to take time and you need teacher buy in badly. But we can't be teaching teachers information that has not been evidence validated. And that's happening now. That's again not to say right now we're a nation concerned about unity. And I think it's very important. It's time to get rid of this reading war stuff. There's there's too much concrete data to say we know what to do about how to teach reading. But we have to come together that there are very good practices and how you teach comprehension, how you teach vocabulary, how you teach inference building, all those wonderful things. But when it comes to the fundamentals of reading, those foundation tools that children need, we have to give them those in the way the evidence has proven works. Representative Brady. Thank you, Madam Chair. Are those approaches being taught in our teacher ed programs in Vermont? UVM, St. Mike's, Vermont State Colleges? Not to my knowledge, although we did again have an invitation from the University of Vermont. We just had a meeting last week with them because they are interested in expanding their curricula to incorporate these methods. It's just been very challenging to break down some philosophical walls that have existed for too many years. And I think we're finally hearing people from different perspectives saying we can't not do this anymore. We can't not do this anymore. So anything that this legislation can do to make us feel more unified to incorporate it, I don't whatever I want to respect whatever teachers bring to the equation. But many times structured literacy is not in their wheelhouse. Other questions? Do you have something else? Representative Brady, please. I just wanted to follow up a note for the committee. I guess I'm hopeful. I'm new to learning a bit about the literacy bill, but I'm hopeful as we work through this. This may not be legislative action, but that we get to a place where our state colleges and where our institutions of higher ed in Vermont are part of the training and the solution. As we're also talking about this crisis in higher ed and a need to grow our higher ed institutions and their influence, this becomes a win-win opportunity, not an either or between training at one place versus at a Vermont institution of higher ed. I don't know enough of the backstory to know some of those challenges beyond the reading words that exist, but I hope as a committee we kind of have our eyes out for that. I really am optimistic. I don't want to be a Pollyanna about this, but after 52 years, we have to embrace each other's knowledge and talents and bring it all together. This truly is an extension of what we're trying as a nation to do with unity. This is critical for our children and that UBM is entertaining. It thrills me. Rick Reardon at Castleton has always been a champion, but it's always been at the graduate level because at the undergraduate level the faculty have been in a challenged place. I do see in the Senate bill there is a section of the bill that would task the agency of education to review teacher preparation programs and report back to the general assembly on to what extent these programs are to use science-based literacy materials and programs. When we do markup, we can look at whether we want to bring that into our document and maybe Erin, you could remind me. That would be great. Thank you. Wonderful. Other questions? Let's go to Janet Osmond, who I've also known for quite some time. Well, Blanche is a tough act to follow. When I spoke to Kate about testifying today, I said, if you want gold, you have to have Blanche. I'm really glad that we got to hear her first. I'm the Vice President for Advanced Learning at the Stern Center and I've been there for 11 years. Prior to that, I was the learning disabilities consultant at what was then the Department of Education. I've been a practitioner and I also taught at St. Mike's as a practicum coordinator for many years working with graduate students getting their master's in education. I'm speaking today to support H-101 to provide grant funding, to build systems-driven, sustainable literacy support for all students with measurable outcomes. And that is what is in, as it reads now, what is in the legislation. First and foremost, for this bill to be effective, it's going to need to adhere to the science or the neuroscience as it relates to best practices in reading to include evidence-based literacy instruction, as demonstrated by research. And as Blanche just talked about, and Michaela and Andrea Wasson, to be most effective and necessary for building an effective system for learning. So I want to focus on the system piece. H-101 requires that in order to be eligible for a grant from the AOE, schools have to be transitioning to best practices in the area of K-3 literacy with attention to the essential foundation skills in reading in order for there to be success, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, or the big five. So I see this bill as an opportunity to build a sustaining system with integrity that's reinforced by the principles necessary to assure a culture of continuous improvement within a multi-tiered system of support. The system is there. With evidence-based literacy at its center, teachers can enhance their knowledge so that students can benefit from high quality instruction with improved outcomes, importantly, evidenced by data. And that working in concert with the intersection, intersecting components of a multi-tiered system of support and the foundation skills critical to reading success, the stage is set for the equity and opportunity that literacy affords, the equity and opportunity that literacy affords. So greater explicitness, I believe in this bill, in the connection between MTSS and the need to adhere to the research that comprises evidence based literacy instruction needs to be made to build literacy instructional leadership. We need to build literacy instructional leadership. And Michaela talked about that. Michaela called me right after her testimony, by the way, because I worked with them for many, many years and feel a part of their great success. Employing evidence-based structured literacy instruction, including for students at risk for dyslexia is on page 11, line 4G of the bill. And you talk about it, you know, it must include a common assessment approach for dyslexia screening. It's really important that I think you flush that out more so that we're really looking at understanding what are the characteristics that comprise a student who has dyslexia or who is a struggling literacy learner because we need to ensure that robust instruction is provided to mitigate the prevalence of high numbers of students identified as eligible in a need of special education in the upper elementary grades. This is not just K-3, this trickles up and you'll see that in a minute. And in the middle school, there are too many casualties of inappropriate intervention, of failure to intervene when, as we've been hearing, when 90 to 95 percent of struggling readers can learn to read with appropriate research-based instruction early on. Now, before I continue, I didn't know if you had my written documentation because in it, I have a graph which isn't going to help you, but you'll see generally that what this graph does is show you the high numbers of students identified as having a specific learning disability in reading. Why don't we bring that graph up? I have it up to share, Natalie, if you'd like. Yes, please do. Thank you. Great. So, if we look at this, what we see here is that when we look at the numbers of students identified as in need, we see that because we still have a wait-to-fail model employed in many schools because within our multi-tiered system of support or what was before that responsiveness to instruction, we were not meeting the needs of students. We were relying on a discrepancy model and students in the lower grades hadn't failed long enough and hard enough to show that they met that discrepancy. So, by the time we get to fourth, fifth, sixth grade, the numbers skyrocket. When we say that 95 percent of students, children, can learn to read, then what's happening in K1 and 2? We're waiting for children to fail before we begin to provide support. And as Michaela reported or Andrea did, in the last number of years at their elementary level, they've had maybe one student identified as eligible in need of special education and reading. So, not only does this expand the numbers of students who are eligible and in need, it skyrockets the cost for special education. So, I just want to point to what happens if we were to continue this chart, we would see that by the time we got to 11th grade, the numbers would be going down and it wasn't because we were being successful, it would be because students were dropping out of school. When I was at the Department of Education, we had a Learning Disabilities Lab and I was told by Dennis Kane at the time that my job was to take these high graph bars and push them down. Well, you can't just, we did, we provided tremendous instruction for students at that level. We had a student who was a senior retaining himself in Bellows Falls because he was learning to read for the first time. This is a crime against our children. How can we do that? So, you get the picture. So, we have the opportunity to pass H102. Well, first I was going to say that we have the numbers and you know those numbers that the NAIC, the National Assessment of Educational Progress tells the story of performance that's been virtually unchanged for 10 years. If we have 63% of Vermont's fourth grade students performing below proficiency in reading and 60% of Vermont's eighth grade students scoring below proficiency in reading, then think of the inequity when students on free and reduced lunch are performing below that level. So, given this information, we have the opportunity to pass H101 and the impact of not passing the bill has implications throughout our entire K-12 systems and for college and career readiness. Just for example, children who get off to a poor start in reading rarely catch up. By the fourth grade, most students struggling to read have missed the window to learn to read fluently. Every year nationally over 1.2 million students drop out of high school. One student every 26 seconds or 7,000 a day. 82% of sixth graders who failed English did not graduate from high school. The research is clear. We know what we need to do to build a strong system necessary to develop students' readings across the K-12 continuum. We need systematic change by advancing teacher knowledge, using evidence-based literacy instruction and engaging in database decision-making that's promulgated throughout all Vermont schools and will make lasting children change. For now, H101 begins to address these issues K-3, but it must be passed so that we can build for tomorrow or across the entire system. Thank you. Thank you. Questions? You include, this is one that always throws us, the approach for dyslexia screening and wanting us to put that into statute. You're not saying put into statute because it exists in common assessment. My understanding, at least that's what we will have some teachers coming later, but I'm quite sure that you're already required. I don't think specifically that dyslexia screening is in statute. We need screening, let's call it screening for struggling readers or screening for children who may have dyslexia, but we need to look at what are those features that we can identify early on and provide good instruction, really solid tier one instruction. I want classroom teachers to be able to differentiate their instruction to provide tier one and tier one plus. Let's deal with this at the universal level of education so that we're not looking at the casualties that we saw later on. Yes, there should be early screening, but unless we can do an analysis of errors in a student's reading profile to be able to identify what needs to happen, we won't know what to do and we will continue this same trend, but I don't believe there are common assessment schools need to have common assessments. People seem to be afraid of the word dyslexia and we shouldn't be. I felt that people are afraid of that word so much as they want to make sure that it doesn't dominate everything there is in reading. I think it's more of what we heard. No, I appreciate that. Yeah, I would not say that we're hearing any people that we at least last year heard that. What we heard is don't forget there are other other challenges. Let me go to Representative Brown and then Austin. Thank you. I was just curious, do we have an estimate of what percentage of Vermont schools are currently not using structured evidence-based literacy instruction? I mean, do we have a sense of how widespread this problem or this issue is? I think we could gather that information. Excuse me. Yes, Jim Osmond. No, I mean unless Blanche wants to answer that question, I would say the majority of schools do not utilize structured literacy instruction. I think it's an excellent question. I don't know the answer to it. We certainly have been doing as much professional learning as possible to schools that request it and we've been receiving some funding to help augment their dollars. For schools that have invested, I'm sorry. We can certainly ask for more. Go ahead. For schools that have invested in other programs in working with us, we try to, we say we'll work with you no matter what your program, but we're going to teach you to advance your knowledge so that you can expand what it is that you're able to offer within your program so that you're paying attention to the foundation skills with the level of intensity that's required for students to gain effective literacy skills. So Representative Brown, will you remind me on that one? Yeah. Representative Austin. Yes. Hi, thank you. Blanche, when I was working on the bill, I called the Stern Center to speak with you to go over it with you, but are you on the staff there now? I couldn't find your name. You are okay. I must have missed it or something, but I did leave a message for you. No, I will still have my email. Even after I retire, I will maintain my email. So for purposes like that, I'd be delighted to answer any questions. So I just want to ask this on page, I'll read it to you on page 11, section F. It says, employ universal design for literacy learning, which is a framework to improve teaching and learning for all students based on scientific research on how people learn. Would you replace universal design for literacy learning to a structured literacy, structured literacy instruction? I'm trying to find that. It's right at the top of page 11. Top of page 11. I just have it. I have that star, as a matter of fact. It's F. It's F. I was starring G, where G says employ evidence-based structured literacy instruction, including for students at risk. When they get those two put in the same sentence, it dilutes the importance, I think, of employing evidence-based structured literacy instruction for all students. I agree with that. I agree. Yeah. And just just one more ask is, is there a definition that you can give us that I can, that can be referred to in the bill that defines structured literacy instruction? Okay. It is explicit, systematic, and sequential teaching about how the language works. Perhaps, Representative Austin, you could follow up with that. Sure. With Dr. Podasky, and then we can just go ahead. I would be delighted, because as a matter of fact, I'm doing a, one of my doing, it's a webinar or a video or something for boon philanthropy on structured language, because people get confused too with structured language. Structured literacy is teaching structured language. It's teaching the, again, components of language, and how children can learn the rules, and again, apply them in a way that makes reading fun, and obviously pleasurable for text. I'll give you a call. Thank you. Great. That'd be lovely. And when Blanche talks about sequential, it's based on a hierarchy of skills acquisition, so that our teachers need to be familiar with the scope and sequence required in order to attend to all of those dimensions. I've only got about four more minutes, so I'm going to take us out of this little rabbit hole. We're about to go down. I'm going to pull us back out, and I'd like to get to Representative Williams, since we only have about four minutes. Sure. Just a quick question, and you may have already answered it, but I'm looking for clarification. In all the years that we have been studying and getting data, is there a time in the last hundred years that there was a shift to bring us to where we are today? Has it always been this bad? Well, I think we've had some very noble efforts. I think in the year 2000, the National Reading Panel came out and identified the five elements of effective instruction for reading, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. And that was wonderful, and we were doing, Janet and I were doing many seminars for higher education for school districts throughout the state. So what do all these elements mean? What happened was that the elements were identified, but people chose to teach to the elements, however they chose, and they didn't look to what was considered evidence-based practice, or people would call it evidence-based practice when in fact it wasn't. Is that fair, Jeanne? Yes, yes. Thank you. Representative James, just a couple minutes. Thank you, Chair Webb. Yep, I know we're running out of time. So just to ensure that I'm understanding, this is an approach or a strategy to teaching children how to read that has particular components and a sequencing. Correct, correct. And within that definition, I assume there are a bunch of different curriculum packets. Correct, correct. Yeah, you may have heard of Orton Gillingham, yeah, Orton Gillingham, that's the grandfather of them. I remember that from last year. That's right. So if you're doing it this particular way in this order and using this or that curriculum, that meets the definition. I need to see what that scope and sequence was. I would need to see that scope and sequence because you can call something a scope and sequence and what confills the boxes may not be the science. The scope and sequence is defined by the science. So if you were looking at a Wilson reading program or the Orton Gillingham approach or a letters approach, you would find that that scope and sequence would generally match almost one to one. Great, thank you. Thank you. I also want to remind us that we are the legislature up here and we want to be really careful that we're not getting too granular in what we're doing, what our approach is to try to get highly trained people who have these concepts in place in the schools. If we can get highly trained leadership in the schools, we won't have to be even thinking about all of those little things because they'll already know. They will have the experience to look at a chat and go, I'm going to watch this one and try this approach. I have to say I rejoiced in watching the teachers in Williamstown learn and turn around where there was such resistance, all of a sudden the evidence was showing them that I've never seen anything like this. Then they went into Barry and the Barry teacher said to these teachers from Williamstown, how can your students do this? They said, our students can't do this. We said, well, you need to employ this approach. And so then they began to do that work. There's a level of contagibility when teachers see success and the joy of children learning to read. That's why this is trying to take a more regional approach. That's great. Did you have something else? Representative Williams? Thank you. What a pleasure. Thank you. We are going to move on. We have some other folks here with us in the room. And really, please to have Anne Flodeker here from Castleton University, who I don't know if you were with us last year to talk about teacher, you're going to talk to us about teacher training, teacher programs, I believe, correct? Yes. Thank you. And Jana and Blanche, you're more than welcome to stay with us, if you'd like. I'm sure that you know, Professor Flodeker. Yes. Thank you very much for inviting me back this year to talk about teacher preparation at Castleton. It was one year to today when I testified last year and spent the night in Barry because the weather wasn't great, but I'm testifying from the comfort of my home as our classes are remote this semester, and most of us are working from home. So I have a testimony that I sent to Jesse, and so you probably have it, but I will read from my testimony so that you can hear our perspective towards how we prepare teachers. I am sorry to say that our special educator, not sorry, because our special educator is out on family leave because she had a baby boy December 27th, but she would love to be here in support of reading education across all of our learners. So I'm going to begin reading now. In preparation for my testimony, I have reviewed the draft of the Literacy Bill Vermont H-101 that is being created in support of Act 173, the DMG's 2017 report, Expanding and Strengthening Best Practice Supports for Students Who Struggle, and the AOE's Blueprint for Early Literacy Comprehensive System of Services Pre-K through Grade 3. Castleton strives to prepare teachers who are able to support the five opportunities for improving services and support from the DMG report, which mainly looks to have expert teaching at Tier 1 and reduced needs for students to leave the general ed classroom. So we want to create, I think all of us want to create expert teachers in general ed classrooms in reading. Well, what I shared today about how we prepare teachers is focused on our K-3 reading preparation. It's important to note that we have created a parallel literacy special education course structure at the secondary level for those planning to teach discipline-specific courses. At Castleton, our students major in the liberal arts and license at either the elementary or secondary level. At either level, our students may endorse in special education. Our licensure programs are 42 credits, 12 of which are dedicated to student teaching. From the remaining 30 credits we have allotted to our elementary licensure program, we have carved out six dedicated reading, writing, and special ed credits, which at the elementary level are facilitated through a reading course and through an elementary special education course that before COVID, we stacked together on a Tuesday, Thursday schedule from 9.30 to 12.15. The reading writing courses build on the principles of those theories of learning that span an introduction to the science of reading, two theories of socially mediated knowledge. We've worked through the ranges of instructional practices associated with the traditional components of reading, phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Both courses are built on the principles of universal design for learning, UDL, which provides a framework by which to prepare our future elementary teachers to think through and break down barriers to learning by carefully designing learning opportunities that support multiple pathways toward supporting successful reading behaviors. Our courses share a combined capstone case study requirement that provides our students with practice and data collection, consultation, and analysis in regard to reading behaviors across a heterogeneous group of four students over the course of a semester. We have built a synergetic relationship with five principle recommended teachers of reading in a community school who, while facilitating their K-6 students' reading programs, are simultaneously mentoring our pre-surface teachers in their classrooms. Because our students attend their placements during class time, both course instructors are able to be in the field as well. Our course slash field model is designed to cycle through instruction and assessment of reading behaviors both in small groups and with individuals in order to keep a close eye on progress monitoring, instructional goals, and possible interventions needed for each student. The K-6 students in each class are grouped across ability levels and paired with a pre-surface teacher from Castleton. Additionally, our students have the benefit of consulting with a special educator who is assigned to each classroom in order to better be supported in their understandings of how their studies of reading difficulties transfer into practice. Our students design and implement individualized learning experiences by utilizing the principles of universal design for learning in order to provide for all of the learners in their small groups. Our goal is to prepare analytical teachers who closely observe data sets and learn how to scaffold support where young readers struggle and enrichment opportunities to feed their curiosities. Our pre-service teachers learn to collect data of the observations they make during the sessions they facilitate through either a planned literacy activity or assessment. They utilize this data, their course readings, and mentor input to produce a comprehensive case study as their final outcome with a deeper concentration on one student who is typically identified as a struggling reader. We work to promote, excuse me, we work to provide our pre-service teachers with practice in working with children with complex reading struggles while they learn alongside of their more able peers. In these courses, our students plan for individualized instruction and practiced individualized reading and writing assessments. These opportunities are described, analyzed, and reflected upon in their case study where our pre-service teachers must demonstrate complex thinking about reading across their semester long interactions with their small heterogeneous groups. Our recent COVID induced approach has taught us to adapt to accommodating our pre-service teachers who are learning remotely and are who most often are in their hometowns. Our instruction has shifted to an inquiry-based approach that is supported through weekly Zoom meetings where we lay out the agenda for the week and share our crowdsourced research across the five traditional components of reading instruction, assessment, and universal design for learning. Our capstone project for this approach has been to scaffold our pre-service reading teachers' universal design and implementation of a reading walk, which is based off the increasingly popular StoryWalk project created by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier that she developed with the Kellogg Hubbard Library. I've included an example StoryWalk in my notes as an example and it's shared by permission from a student who has animated this example. In our courses, we do not teach specific programs. We do teach our pre-service teachers to be consumers of knowledge as well as producers. We work toward preparing our pre-service teachers to work from the individual instruction needs of each student. Learning to read is a complicated endeavor that is impacted by both individual and cultural factors. For this reason, we prepare our future reading teachers to be flexible in their instructional approaches and are supported from the Handbook of Learning Disabilities that says the environment, language, and reading disorders reflect the complexities of individual differences, the impact of early atypicalities upon subsequent brain development, and the role of both critical periods and cultural factors as they impact the growing organism. Much as a log jam alters the flow of the river and causes collateral damage, the collateral pathways and pools, each brain's unique development forces us to respect that there will never be a singular cause or treatment for dyslexia. That's from 2014. The Universal Design Framework provides conceptual guidelines across its unifying principles to provide strategies, assistive technologies, and interventions in support of each learner's development, which helps our pre-service teachers to learn to design more inclusive and differentiated instruction. The AOE's 2019 blueprint for early literacy comprehensive system of services pre-K3 third grade recognizes our approach to reading instruction as an inner relationship between what they call code-based skills and meaning-based skills. The report states, to become readers, children must develop two broad sets of skills, code-based, meaning-based skills, and code-based skills include the ability to map letters to their respective sounds and in combination to read words. Meaning-based skills provide an understanding of the meaning of text, or comprehension, and includes oral language and use of vocabulary. To be a competent reader, code-based skills are necessary but not independently sufficient. Castleton strives to prepare pre-service teachers who design and implement universally designed instruction and assessment across both code-based and content-based reading skill sets so that they enter the field with a foundational set of understandings about reading instruction and assessment that is ready to be deepened through systematic and sustained professional development. Thank you. That's respectfully submitted by me in our notes. Thank you so, so much. Nice to hear. Nice to hear from Castleton and it's nice to hear what you're doing. Are there any questions? So how many, how many are you graduating at this point that are, how many are you graduating through your program? This semester we have in the field 22 student teachers who are right now all face-to-face. Of those 22, I would say we have 13 at the elementary level and we have, of those 13, I think we have seven who are also endorsing in special education. Great, thank you. You're getting us at the after a long day. This is our first week of classes. Oh it is. A very late start, yes. And you're healthy? Yes, we have been very fortunate. I think we have a workable protocol right now that all of our students were required to quarantine and test and they've seemed to have been very responsive. That's wonderful. Well I'm glad to hear that you are providing this instruction. There is potential, there's some language that would require the, I think it's required the agency to take a look at teacher programs in licensing. So you would recommend them. I support this bill and a comprehensive look across K-12 and I, we are looking right at the moment at a second special educator to support our faculty. So you know it's upward and onward. Thank you. So thank you for your time. Appreciate it. I don't think Dr. Podatsky is going to be prepared to do it. You would have loved it. Retiring, yeah. Yes, yes. All right, thank you very much and happy Friday. Okay, thank you. Bye bye. We have about five minutes before Professor Schultz is coming. Just any thoughts from committee so far? Look at the silver the weekend. We talked about a few things that I've sort of downloaded. One on to Aaron, one on to Dana. Other thoughts going forward in relation to this bill? I just wanted to make, I'm sorry. I just noticed that that our next guest is ready to come in. So I think we will do that. But yes, go ahead, Dr. Podatsky. I just wanted to clarify when we were talking about our partnership with Castleton, it's at the graduate level. At the graduate level, yeah. Yes, thank you. And to be a teacher in Vermont, you need a bachelor's. Okay, I think that I will welcome Dr. Robert Schultz. Yes, great. Thank you so much for joining us on our journey at looking at literacy instruction and our Vermont students in our Vermont schools. And Robert Schultz, you're an associate professor in special education in the education department at NVU. Is that, did I get that right? That is correct at NVU, Johnson. Thank you. So we are looking at a bill and we'd be most interested in your thoughts going forward and any feedback you have on the bill. So I will read my thing that I've written here. So hello. My name is Dr. Rob Schultz. I'm the professor of special education at Northern Vermont University, Johnson. I'm pleased to speak on behalf of NVU in regard to literacy education at the college and the proposed literacy bill. So I did testify on a previous version of this bill one year ago, and I discussed in great detail how NVU trains teachers in K3 literacy. I won't do that again, but I will summarize. In terms of how NVU prepares K3 to teach literacy, we have a multi-year approach. We don't do separate elementary and special education training programs, but rather one inclusive childhood education degree where all students graduate with both regular and special education endorsements. As such, there are multiple courses that focus only on literacy and several others where it is reinforced. Literacy instruction begins in the sophomore year and continues to graduation. There are three courses which have literacy as the primary focus. One is on the foundation of text skills, such as reading level and text complexity analysis. Another is a primary literacy instruction course with practicum hours in a public school, and the third is specifically a literacy intervention course for teaching struggling readers. In addition, there are several other courses where literacy, both in regular and special education setting and methods are taught and referenced. In the senior year, students do a full year in public schools with time divided among regular and special education, much of the time devoted to hands-on learning for reading instruction. This is a summary. The last time I was here, I had three typed pages just on this, but I hope that it gets you the idea, and I'd be happy to answer more specific questions afterwards if you'd like. Things which have changed since last year when I testified before you are that the university is currently searching for a new faculty member to be based on the Linden campus who will have a dual specialty in special education and literacy instruction. This will enable us to increase our effectiveness in this specific area, and our faculty have also made a conscious effort to address both technical literacy approaches and critical socio-cultural literacy, both of which are required to build competent and engaged readers. In terms of the bill being proposed, I expressed support for it last year, and I still support it this year. However, some of the emphases have changed for me. When I read the bill last year, it seemed to me to be largely preventative in nature. What I mean is that it would provide enhancements to make sure that reading instruction was improved so that problems either would not develop or would be corrected before they became severe. This I felt was a great strength of the bill. It is far better to focus on struggling students early and work with them right away than to wait until they are far behind and eligible for special education and then kind of make up the gaps. The coronavirus has changed some of this calculus, however. As referenced in the text of the bill, achievement gaps as a result of remote learning and other educational interruptions are becoming more and more clear. I believe that the full depth of the deficits and gaps that the current students will have in their education will not be fully known until the pandemic ends and students are back in schools full time whenever that is. As a result of this, when I read over the bill this week, it spoke to me most about the incredible need we will have for remediation. I simply believe that schools do not have the current capacity to work with a sheer number of students who will need additional instruction. There are not enough literacy interventionists to work with a typical number of struggling students, let alone the upcoming wave. If students who are behind in second grade now aren't remediated, then our high school special education numbers in seven years will have exploded. In reading the bill last year, I was struck by increasing leadership capacity for literacy and by increasing the number of literacy coaches to help spread evidence-based literacy instruction throughout the schools. This year, in my reading of the bill, I'm most grateful to see the stipulation about using grant money for additional staff. I think that both approaches will be needed. Schools will need to use this money to simultaneously increase their staffs and train them to a high level and it will be a daunting task. I'm honestly not sure that a two-year period will be enough or that a K-3 focus is broad enough. Students who have spent their third grade not progressing in remote instruction will be fourth and fifth and sixth graders who still need remediation. I understand the limits of the bill and the clear evidence behind the importance of early elementary literacy and I support the bill as written. However, I would not be surprised if your committee is considering middle-grade reading intervention in the coming years. Education gaps created in one year may need multiple years to close. So to sum up, I support the bill and I believe it is truly needed. However, whereas last year I thought it was a way to improve education going forward, today I see it as a way to stop some of the bleeding and I hope it's not the last initiative that comes through this committee. And so thank you for your time and I'm happy to answer questions. Thank you. Questions? Representative James? Thanks Dr. Schultz for being here. I remember your testimony last year. Just a really basic question. When you look at the way that literacy instruction is described in this bill and you think about the way you teach your students at NVU to teach students how to read, do you think, yep, that's what we're doing? Or do you think, you know, boy, we would need to do a few things differently? Or how close does your instruction line up with what we're describing in this bill? I think it holds up very closely. I think that we do evidence-based literacy instruction and I think that we focus on that. I think that what we don't do, that public schools do, is we don't teach specific programs. So for instance, we teach reading strategies and we teach evidence-based reading and we teach database reading, but we don't teach the Wilson reading program or the Orton-Gillingham program or any brand X reading program. That's what our students need to learn when they're mentored in a public school. Because if we taught everybody Wilson reading, then they'd go to a district that uses a different program and they'd have to learn a whole new one. And so I'd say that what we teach aligns very well with this. But again, you know, what we're doing is we're a teacher preparation program. So our teachers are prepared to start. And then once they start, they need to be mentored and inducted and get that professional experience. So I think that what we're doing does meet what this bill is looking for in terms of evidence-based instruction. But I do also think that the public schools need to do what this bill says as well. You know, it can't just be you graduate from college and you go to teach. You know, you need to get more of this as you go through your career. Thank you. Can we send it to Austin? Yes. Thank you, Dr. Schultz. I read your testimony and thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to write that for us. I also agree about the COVID co-morbidity, but just, you know, that these kids were struggling before COVID, COVID even set them back or has set them back further. And do you have any way to kind of tease out or thoughts about how to tease out what could be just COVID related kind of regression or what is a real problem that needs to be addressed? To me, I'm not sure that's a critically important distinction, whether they would have had, if they would not have had reading problems, if there had been no COVID, COVID happened and they have the reading problems. I mean, whether it's due to a lack of good instruction online, whether it's due to lack of family support or whether it's due to internet issues or just to the fact that learning online at home at your kitchen table will not work for lots of kids, they have the deficits. And the strategies that you would use to remedial those deficits would be very similar to ones that you would use if they did have a diagnosed reading disability. So for me, that's not the most important distinction. I mean, what's most important to me is that they have the opportunity to get that remediation, which I think is going to be, it's going to be a big ask. I mean, the schools had, at least the schools that I'm most familiar with had barely enough staff to do remediation on students who were already suffering, were already behind. With another wave of students who maybe wouldn't have been behind in full-time instruction, the capacity issue was very worrying. Thank you. Your background is also special education. I think we know that a sense of failure and mental health are connected. Do we have any data on mental health and reading and movement through success in reading? If I explain and express that well, but I think what I'm just trying to get at is we know that we're going to have a lot of mental health issues coming forward. We know that. We have children in trauma, but we also know that a feeling of success can do wonders for one's mental health. I wonder if you haven't thought on that. Yeah, well, success and failure are both, they both spiral. I mean, usually we talk about spiral, we talk about a spiral down, but the cycle is very similar. Having success leads to a good feeling, leads you to work harder for more success. It's an upward spiral. Failure leads to feeling bad about yourself, leads to perhaps lack of effort, leads to more failure, etc. Both of those things are contagious. When we're talking about things like reading and literacy, especially, there's a term called the Matthew effect with this. Maybe people can tell me you've heard about that, but it's from the Bible about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. What happens with that with reading is that students who are naturally good readers or who are already good at that, read more. Good readers read more. They get better at reading. They increase their proficiency. Readers who are poor readers read less reading. Over time, their progress is even slower. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Good readers get even better and poor readers get even worse. The worse that they get, the less they feel motivated or validated or emotionally available to do more reading instruction. This is something that I'm really afraid of when we come back to in-person instruction is that for someone who's a good reader to maintain that, they need to make one year's progress in a year because they just need to maintain. For somebody who is behind in reading to close that gap, they need to make one year's progress and then more in a year. They need to learn. They need to make more progress in a year than somebody who's already good at reading needs to do. They need to experience some of that success that you're mentioning, Representative Webb. They need to feel that achievement and they need teachers who can get them to that place. I think that that's going to be something that the schools are really going to have. It's going to be a struggle, even with the best conditions. This bill is designed to really put some power into our K3 programs but you're reminding us that there are some kids that are sort of missed out on some of the K3 programs this year. Is there something you would say for say the fourth and fifth graders? I would say that K3 instruction is critical and I don't want to take that as a knock on this bill because K3 instruction is critical. There are kindergartners who did not get their phonemic awareness this year that they should have. My own children are third and sixth grade now but looking back on it, I can't imagine doing kindergarten on an iPad. Those students are going to need this but I would just say that these remediation resources are going to be needed throughout the system. Fourth graders, fifth graders, sixth graders, I mean there were already students who needed remediation but students who had their third grade the year be this year and fell six months, eight months behind, they might not be able to close that gap until sixth or seventh grade if they get to close it. So I would just be aware that focusing on K3 literacy is incredibly important and I don't want to deny that impact but the COVID effects are going to last for several years and we'll have eighth grade teachers saying why are all my students in English class in the year 2025 so far behind and I think that that might be something that this committee and other ones like it will need to consider. The schools are going to be getting have access to a lot of money and I would certainly hope that they're going to be looking at some really solid summer programs using that money. So Representative Boston, is that a new hand? No, I'm sorry. Okay. So I thank you very much. This has been very helpful. We're going to take a break now. We have a superintendent's association coming in with the superintendent of the Montpelier-Roxbury Public Schools who also has a significant background in literacy as I remember who will give us a little bit of report from the field as well. So we can break here and I think since it's 45 minutes, we can end here and start a new stream.