Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) plans to address a lack of growth in students’ literary skills through the consistent implementation of a new curriculum and using data-backed strategies, according to officials.
The results of several literacy tests during the 2023-2024 school year showed little growth and the persistent impact of demographic disparities, according to testing data presented by MCPS staff Thursday to the school board. Some test results also showed decreases in reading skills among third graders while kindergarteners, middle and high schoolers made small strides in literacy.
With only marginal increases, MCPS staff told the school board that literacy plans for the 2024-2025 school year are focused on implementing curriculum with data-backed strategies and consistency among schools.
“A huge part of this implementation is around limiting variance,” said Melaika Brown, MCPS supervisor of elementary literacy. “What we provided around planning is a structure that all teachers are looking at a curriculum in a very intentional way.”
MCPS uses several tests to track student achievement and skills across multiple subjects. For reading, this includes the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program (MCAP), DIBELS and Measures of Academic Progress-Reading (MAP-R).
MCAP tests students’ proficiency in reading. MCPS uses DIBELS to test early literacy skills for kindergarten through third grade. According to MCPS, MAP-R “provides an assessment of a student’s skill level in the different reading achievement areas” for third through eighth grades.
According to the presentation, kindergarten DIBELS scores increased by 3.9 percentage points over the last two school years, from 70.3% in 2022-2023 to 74.2% in 2023-2024.
MCAP data showed that third grade proficiency percentages decreased by 2.7 percentage points over the past two school years, while proficiency levels for sixth grade and 10th grade students increased, according to the presentation.
MCPS students only made marginal increases in English Language Arts/Literacy MCAP testing, according to state data scores across all grades.
According to MAP-R scores included in school board documents, the percentage of students that met end-of-year measures in grades three through eight between fall 2023 and spring 2024 either stayed the same or increased by only a few percentage points.
Disparities among races persist in all testing, according to the presentation. In DIBELS testing, roughly 88% of white and Asian kindergarten students were proficient in literacy skills, according to the presentation. Only 76.6% of Black kindergarten students and 56.3% of Hispanic/Latino kindergarten students were proficient.
MCAP test results showed larger disparities between proficiency rates based on race. In third and sixth grade, white and Asian students reached proficiency percentages in the high 70s. Black and Hispanic/Latino students demonstrated proficiency percentages in the mid-40s and low 30s, respectively. The results for 10th grade students showed higher proficiency percentages, but with similar disparities.
Multiple board members and some community leaders raised concerns about the data and what was being done to improve literacy rates.
Board member Julie Yang said she was concerned that MAP-R scores for students in grades three to eight were stagnant from fall to spring. “Students have expected growth, but I don’t see that here,” she said.
Byron Johns, co-founder of the Black and Brown Coalition for Educational Equity and Excellence, said in a statement that structural barriers prevent Black and brown students from reading at grade level.
“Unless and until MCPS moves quickly to tear down these barriers and give students the tools and resources necessary to succeed, too many families in Montgomery County will continue to be left behind,” Johns said.
For the 2024-2025 school year, MCPS staff members said the district is prioritizing the use of a new elementary English language arts curriculum, implementing literacy strategies across all content areas in middle and high schools and analyzing data.
In March, the school board adopted a new elementary English language arts curriculum focused on the science of reading. MCPS staff members said using the new curriculum will create consistency among elementary English language arts teachers.
MCPS staff members also said the district is implementing literacy education across all content areas because students in middle school and high school struggle with reading educational texts. This is due to the complex sentence structure and vocabulary of the texts, on top of students being unfamiliar with their content.
“It helps students take the skills that they might have previously only learned in [English language arts] and generalize them across their day,” said Jaclynn Lightsey, MCPS supervisor of secondary English language arts. “They hear the same language from their teachers and apply the same routine to those challenging texts.”
Several board members also asked what was being done to address students who didn’t achieve proficiency and are falling behind.
Brown said students in grades three through five take the MAP-R test, and depending on their score, they then must take the DIBELS test as well, which helps provide additional information on interventions for students. The students are monitored for progress every two to four weeks to determine if changes need to be made to support and intervention efforts.
