Iowa school districts to choose from board's curriculum list

DES MOINES - Iowa school districts would have to choose from a pre-approved list of early reading programs or be subject to state sanctions under rules proposed by the Iowa Department of Education Wednesday.

Curriculum choice “will still be a local decision” said Dave Tilly, a deputy director with the Iowa Department of Education, but the department would have to sign off on any curriculum on the list for districts to use.

“The interest of the department and the interest of the state is ensuring the schools are supporting the kids with effective practices,” Tilly said. “The area of early literacy, probably more so than in any other area in education, we have a pretty good evidence base on what works … We aren't going so far as telling districts, ‘Here's the specific publisher you need to use,' but we are sort of setting up a standard of quality.”

Tilly introduced the rules at a state Board of Education meeting, the same day the Iowa Reading Research Center released a report that found reading curriculum across the state is “inconsistent” across early grades.

It suggests these inconsistencies are a factor in test scores showing that nearly a quarter of the state's third-graders are not reading at grade level.

The rules also are tied to $8 million in state funding being made available to schools as part of the early reading initiative in the 2013 education reform law. That money will be available to schools in December, department spokeswoman Staci Hupp said.

“This will be part of what gets looked at as part of the school accreditation visit,” Tilly said.

A public hearing on the rules is scheduled for Jan. 3, and they could be in effect in as early as 110 days.

“There wasn't significant debate on reading in the ed reform bill last year. A lot of that had happened before, so for a lot of folks this may be a surprise,” Tilly said. “So we're going to send (a copy of the rules) out to superintendents, so they have as much opportunity as possible before the public comment period.”

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