Future of Iowa’s summer reading program uncertain

DES MOINES - A state-mandated summer reading program for Iowa's struggling third-graders that already has been moved back to 2018 may see further delays or a new approach altogether once Gov. Terry Branstad and the new GOP legislative majority set their funding priorities, Iowa's education chief said Tuesday.

Ryan Wise, director of the state Department of Education, presented a fiscal 2018 budget request to boost his agency's existing state funding by $13.96 million and, while there was new money to fund the Iowa Reading Research Center and a literacy early warning system, the request did not address implementation of a new intensive statewide literacy law slated to take effect in mid-2018.

'I think that will certainly be a point of conversation in the Legislature of when is the right time to have that requirement in there and then how are schools supported in that effort,” Wise told reporters after spelling out specifics of his department's strategic plans to Gov. Terry Branstad. 'I think we would certainly look for next year as potentially the year to ask for an additional request.”

Last session the Legislature agreed to push back the reading program requirement from its 2017 scheduled launch to the summer of 2018 because the roughly $14 million needed to properly support its implementation was not available in a tight budget year.

Branstad, who did not include funding for the reading program in his previous budget plan, has indicated he expects another challenging budget year again during the 2017 legislative session due to sluggish farm prices that are negatively impacting revenue growth.

During a fall tour of a reading program in Urbandale, Branstad said he was concerned current state revenue growth may not be strong enough to support a statewide summer reading initiative designed to make sure third-graders meet proficiency standards that are a key educational building block. The governor also said he wanted to review results from a pilot project this past summer that studied best practices.

At Tuesday's budget hearing, Wise pointed to progress in implementing a universal screening and literacy progress monitoring program that assessed more that 235,000 students in the pre-kindergarten through sixth grade range.

More than 80 percent of kindergarten through third-grade students were receiving weekly progress monitoring, he added, noting that about 68 percent of students in the K-3 group performed above literacy benchmarks compared to 64 percent earlier in the school year - an increase of 6,000 more children.

'I would say a 4 percent growth in the course of a year is progress. Certainly, we can always improve and strive for more,” said Wise, who conceded the 32 percent who did not perform above benchmark represented about 48,000 students.

'Clearly, we know that there is a lot of work ahead and we're focused on ensuring that every single student in Iowa does read well, particularly by the end of third grade so that they're able to access the more rigorous course work ahead of them and opportunities beyond high school,” the DOE chief said. 'We know there is a tremendous sense of urgency, both in terms of the percentage of students who aren't reading proficiently and the gaps that exist between groups of students.”

At the same time, Wise said it is 'impossible to predict” if implementation of the intensive summer reading program would be pushed back again.

Last month, the Iowa Department of Education released a report that showed an overall decline in scores for students in grades three through eight and high school juniors on the Iowa Assessments. On average, 23.5 percent of all students did not meet state standards in reading, while about 20.6 percent failed to meet math standards – a decline of about 1 percent from the previous year.