KU researchers conducting statewide assessment to inform literacy improvement among Kansas students

LAWRENCE — About 1 in 3 Kansas students doesn’t meet fundamental levels of reading. But without data about school and educator needs and readiness to expand their literacy instruction and resources, it’s difficult to fully understand what would help resolve the issue.

To help define needs across the state, a University of Kansas research team is visiting schools in all corners of Kansas to observe classrooms and conduct focus groups with educators, families and students. Information from the visits will be compiled and aggregated to create a picture of statewide needs.

Research professors Suzanne Myers and Jocelyn Washburn, both associate directors of the Center for Research on Learning (CRL) at the KU Life Span Institute, together with Haiying Long, director of the Center for Research Methods Consultation at the Achievement & Assessment Institute, have fanned out across the state in April and May as part of the state’s Blueprint for Literacy, approved by the Kansas Legislature and signed by Gov. Laura Kelly in 2024.

“We want to gather data from as many different school communities as possible to ensure we are able to determine what needs are being communicated by families, educators and kids across the entire state versus just a few areas,” Myers said.  

Selected school sites cover broad geographic regions of the state as well as varied size and demographic categories. The KU team is conducting the Blueprint for Literacy Needs Assessment in partnership with the following schools or districts across the state, listed with their county: Chanute USD 413 (Neosho), St. John Elementary (Stafford), Anthony Elementary (Harper), Harper Elementary (Harper), Kennedy Elementary (Dickinson), Oakley Elementary and Oakley Middle School (Logan), Wallace County High School (Wallace), Oskaloosa Elementary (Jefferson), Ottawa Middle School (Franklin), Pittsburg USD 250 (Crawford) and Lawrence USD 497 (Douglas).

The goal of the Blueprint for Literacy is to have 90% of third through eighth grade students reading at or above grade level. Washburn noted that most states have recently passed legislation to improve reading and literacy in public education.

“But what I think is unique about what Kansas is doing is that we're listening to what the districts, their staff and their families are saying their needs are to inform decisions about professional learning that will reach all students,” she said.

The assessment will help legislators, schools and the Kansas Board of Regents better understand what's going on in schools, informing a "state of the state in terms of literacy instruction," Myers said.

The researchers are developing and validating a tool to help school leaders assess literacy needs, which will be available for others to use throughout the state and beyond.

Long, professor in the Department of Educational Psychology, said that one of the tools, the infrastructure readiness scale, “measures how ready schools or school districts are in terms of implementing new practices such as structured literacy.”

Literacy is a potentially complicated term that can have a range of definitions, Myers said. One narrow understanding of the word looks at the foundational elements of reading such as phonics and phonological awareness.

“We know that’s not the whole story of being a good reader and being able to comprehend,” Myers said. "It is reading, writing, speaking, listening, and it can also include critical thinking.”

Further complicating the goal of improving student literacy is how it can be influenced by external factors — economics, bilingualism, disabilities, residual impacts from the pandemic — as well as what happens within the classroom.

The complex nature of literacy is why teacher input is so important, Washburn added. She pointed to the infrastructure profile tool, which is designed to help school and district teams focus on the needs of teachers and their students within classrooms when planning for professional learning.

Additionally, as part of the Blueprint for Literacy, some teachers are required to earn a seal of literacy through the Kansas Department of Education. There are several ways that they can do that, including through two professional development courses that were developed with representatives of seven state universities and Washburn University, which is piloting the courses. For teachers who enroll in the Washburn University course, the KU Center for Research on Learning is providing support for instructional coaching as well as data collection and analysis for the pilot.