Iowa education spending shows focus on early reading

DES MOINES - Programs to identify and help young, struggling readers are among the most expensive contracts the Iowa Department of Education signed for the last fiscal year.

The state recently has placed an emphasis on early literacy - and that focus is underscored in the department's spending. Of the five most pricey contracts for 2015-2016, three were for early readership programs.

In that fiscal year, the state education department contracted with Minnesota-based Technology and Information Educational Services for $3.5 million in software designed to help collect and analyze data on young readers.

The department also contracted with the University of Iowa for $1.2 million for the school's Reading Research Center, which studies and determines strategies for assisting struggling young readers.

And the department contracted with Minnesota-based FastBridge Learning for $743,000 for a program that monitors reading proficiency and progress in kindergarten through sixth grade.

Research shows early reading proficiency is an indicator of future educational success.

The Iowa education department has taken that research to heart, pouring millions into programs designed to help ensure more young students are reading at sufficient levels.

'The importance of early literacy couldn't be overstated,” said Ryan Wise, director of the state education department. 'Ensuring that all Iowa students are reading proficiently by the end of third grade is critical to ensuring that they have the skills that they need to access more rigorous coursework and opportunities as they progress through school and beyond school.

'We know that the easiest way to prevent reading problems is to catch them before they start,” he added. 'That's why our focus has been on this screening and early intervention, to ensure that we identify these problems early on, and that teachers in schools are equipped to address these challenges.”

The UI also received another $634,000 to develop programs to help the department track and report student progress.

The state launched a focus on early reading with a new law in 2012, which the department has spent the past five years implementing.

While the programs have not yielded dramatic improvement on a statewide level, Wise said there is evidence of localized improvements.

'It depends on how you look at the challenge. From a statewide, aggregate test score lens, we haven't seen growth yet in terms of our statewide proficiency rates,” Wise said, noting 1 in 4 young Iowa students are not proficient in reading by the end of third grade. 'That number maybe has shifted a percentage point or two over time, but we haven't moved the needle on that number statewide yet.”

Other big-money state education contracts for 2015-16 included:

' $952,000 to New York-based NYC Leadership Academy for coaching administrators and others to implement the state's teacher leadership program, which uses veteran teachers to mentor younger and new teachers.

' $850,000 to the Grant Wood Area Education Agency in Cedar Rapids to be used by all nine of the state's AEAs to help districts implement the Iowa Core.

Education is a big business in the United States: total spending by public schools surpassed $620 billion in 2012-2013, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The biggest spending at the local level in the 2015-2016 fiscal year most often went to local vendors for construction projects, transportation and food services, according to a review of the top contracts at a handful of big school districts - including Cedar Rapids - across the state.

The Davenport school district, for example, had a busy construction schedule in 2015 and 2016, with six contracts worth more than $1,000,000 going toward construction projects.

Feeding students can be an expensive proposition also. Each of the five large districts examined for this article had food service contracts among its top 10 most expensive for the fiscal year.

One regional food service company appears to be a favorite - and financial beneficiary - of Iowa schools.

Reinhart Foodservice, based in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, Ill., in 2015-2016 had contracts with three of the districts surveyed for this article.

The Cedar Rapids district contracted with it for nearly $2.3 million, records show