Many NC kids aren't reading well. How teacher colleges are racing to fix the problem

But a key part of the K-12 effort is the state’s colleges, which prepare those educators to teach reading — and a new report finds what most of them are doing hasn’t been enough so far.

The state’s colleges of education will spend the next few months addressing the recommendations of a reviewer that found most of them had not fully integrated North Carolina’s new reading requirements.

The effort is one many in place over the next few years to overhaul how North Carolina’s public schoolchildren learn to read, with most effort focused at the K-12 level. A recent report, presented to the University of North Carolina System Board of Governors, found that the effort — the only one required at the collegiate level — is off to a rocky start at some colleges.

Board Chairman Randall C. Ramsey, during a meeting in January, said children can only succeed when their teachers are prepared with the best strategies and practices to help them. The report found some of that preparation is lacking.

“We will not tolerate it any longer,” he said.

“Frankly, this number should scare and appall everyone in this room,” Ramsey said during the meeting.

The colleges do not select curricula for K-12 schools nor play a policy-making role in the state’s K-12 schools. But the colleges, as trainers of the state’s prospective teachers, play a crucial role in preparing future educators to help children learn to read.

Board Vice Chairwoman Wendy Floyd Murphy noted the board spends significant time talking about building renovations, salaries, fees and parking but also faces concerns about enrollment and ensuring students are prepared to attend a UNC System university.

Most fourth-graders can’t read proficiently, she said, “and rarely do we spend the appropriate amount of time on this topic that affects so many.”

In 2021, the North Carolina General Assembly passed reforms that shifted the state toward the more phonics-based approach.

Lawmakers later appropriated more than $50 million in federal pandemic stimulus funds to train the state’s pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade teachers, other teachers and some administrators on the new approach. They’ve also provided funding to hire 123 literacy coaches throughout the state to help districts implement the phonics-based program, and many are still being hired. Schools must have curriculum and instruction plans in place aligned with the program no later than the 2024-25 school year.

Lawmakers additionally required the state’s teacher colleges to make sure their coursework is aligned with the phonics-based approach by the fall 2022 semester. Unlike for K-12 schools, that mandate hasn’t included funding, staffing or other initiatives to make it happen.

So the UNC System secured private fundraising to provide the same training to a handful of faculty members at each university’s college of education.

Faculty with the system additionally worked together on a framework of common ideas to help schools implement changes.

TPI-US reviewed 73 courses across all 15 UNC system universities just before the fall 2022 semester, after the development of the framework.

Reviewers said just six of the 15 universities were consistently practicing the new reading approach in all or most courses. The other nine, they wrote, need “significant course content and/or faculty teaching improvements.”

Schools that were rated unsatisfactorily often weren’t weaving in all of the elements of the science of reading into every applicable course, didn’t have consistent approaches in each class, or weren’t teaching reading to meet the needs of more diverse learners, such as those with dyslexia.

Reviewers urged the schools to adopt frameworks for teaching reading and writing that would incorporating the science of reading into every relevant course.

Just one school earned an “inadequate” rating — North Carolina’s biggest education college, at East Carolina University.

At ECU, the required elementary reading instruction courses are designed to teach a different method of teaching children to read, rejecting the science of reading.

The university, which enrolls nearly 3,000 education students by itself, upon request, didn’t agree to an interview with WRAL News. The university’s spokeswoman Jeannine Manning Hutson said in an email that East Carolina “welcomes” the report as an opportunity to align its courses and programs with the resolution and the 2021 legislation.

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, which enrolls more than 1,500 education students, received the only “strong” rating. The “good” ratings went to: North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Fayetteville State University and North Carolina A&T State University. Combined, during the 2020-21 school year, those schools enroll about 3,700 first-time education students.

The remaining schools — those that need improvement — enrolled about 6,700 first-time education students during the 2020-21 school year.

TPI-US also reviewed the 15 private colleges that have education programs, enrolling comparatively few students, and found just three of them were “good” or “strong” and the other 12 needed work.

In the past year, faculty across UNC System universities have been doing “self-studies” of their reading instruction programs, said Jill Grifenhagen, an associate professor of literacy education at N.C. State University. While N.C. State scored well on the report, Grifenhagen said the university is looking at the latest research and reviewing whether its curriculum incorporates everything it needs to.

“Obviously, we have a sense of urgency,” Grifenhagen said.

She added: “There’s been a drift from research-based practices to incorporate practices with less of a research base.”

That drift is easy to do over time, she said, but preventing that drift is something universities and researchers can do.

NC State, specifically, has been practicing a more phonics-based approach to reading for years now, Grifenhagen said, as research has made it clear what needs to be taught.

That’s also how UNC-Charlotte attained the “strong” score, Dean Malcolm B. Butler told WRAL News. Faculty have been re-evaluating and moving toward what the research says for a while, he said.

Surveys and test score data show NC State graduates feel prepared to teach and do comparatively well teaching reading, said Erin Horne, assistant dean for professional education at NC State.

NC, nation see significant drops in 4th- and 8th-grade reading and math

TPI-US researchers suggested the UNC System universities take a more uniform approach to their teaching, no matter the university or the grade level of the teacher. That could include using common terms or defining concepts in the same way.

Researchers wrote that schools need to revise their course syllabi and materials and make sure they are using resources that connect what they know with what they’re teaching. They suggested the education students would learn from faculty demonstrating literacy instruction.

Researchers found that education students need more instruction on the relationship between writing and reading to assist with teaching writing.

Schools need to ensure faculty have a better foundational knowledge of the phonics-based approach, researchers wrote. Right now, many schools are teaching phonics but are doing do under the umbrella of “balanced literacy” — a practice that can mean many things but often indicates a reading program that using the “cueing” method of learning words, doesn’t include writing instruction, fails to account for spelling difficulty in choosing children’s literature, and has children learn to read on their own.

Even at UNC-Charlotte, Butler expects more changes.

The university’s writing instruction for students with disabilities excelled the reviewers’ eyes, he said. They suggested it be expanded to elementary education and early childhood programs.