Buffalo schools implementing 'science of reading' training for teachers, mentors

With Superintendent Tonja M. Williams' goal of having every student know how to read by the end of third grade, the district is taking steps toward equipping teachers to adopt a science-backed English language arts curriculum. Led by Chief Academic Officer Anne Botticelli and fueled largely by government funds from the pandemic, Buffalo schools have invested close to $1 million in Orton-Gillingham training programs to not only curb learning loss but serve as a building block for the future.

And there's a local parallel – albeit on a smaller scale – that dovetails with the district's direction and reinforces research that backs the value of one-to-one mentoring and tutoring. In late November, the district approved $150,000 over three years to continue working with Read to Succeed Buffalo's Experience Corps, a high-impact mentorship and tutoring program that pairs senior citizens 50 and older with elementary students struggling to read at grade level. 

The emphasis on and resources committed to reading instruction come against the backdrop of a sharp decline in English language arts state test results for third-graders last spring. In 2022, 24.3% of third-graders were proficient at grade level in ELA, a drop from 32.2% of third-graders in 2018 and 2019. Buffalo's elementary students will soon take a midyear DIBELS assessment that's an even more accurate indicator of reading proficiency than the state tests.

Botticelli described Orton-Gillingham as a research-backed approach that shows how students best learn to read and equips teachers to facilitate that learning. In short, Orton-Gillingham is part of "structured literacy," in which students begin by learning both letters and the sounds they make, then advance through a step-by-step program to where they can decode full words. 

The district introduced science of reading programming before the pandemic, Botticelli stressed, but full adoption of Orton-Gillingham as the districtwide standard for kindergarten and first grade is new. Originally intended for struggling students and those with dyslexia when it debuted in BPS before the 2021 school year, Orton-Gillingham's value extends to teaching any child to read, Botticelli said. 

"As a district, because we believe in the science of reading, we need to explicitly and sequentially teach our students to learn to decode so they can read grade-level text and beyond," Botticelli told the Buffalo School Board at a December meeting.

The first step is well underway toward full Orton-Gillingham implementation: professional development for teachers.

Buffalo has already spent $825,000 on five-day, intensive training by the Michigan-based Institute for Multi-Sensory Education (IMSE) for 300 teachers, with the eventual goal of training all kindergarten teachers, reading teachers, literacy coaches, special education teachers (K-8) and English as a new language teachers (K-12), a rough total of 800.

The School Board on Dec. 21 approved an additional $95,000 for upgraded materials and to train two cohorts in January, with more 48-person groups expected receive training in the spring, June and August. The goal is to begin next year with the 800 teachers all trained in Orton-Gillingham, Botticelli said.

BPS is working with IMSE to instruct teachers in morphology, essentially a building block – still using Orton-Gillingham methodology – for students in third grade and above to recognize Greek and Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes and root words. 

"We know that will impact comprehension, impact their writing ability – impact everything they'll do in their lives," Botticelli said.

Read to Succeed Buffalo began its Experience Corps program in 2016, with a small group of senior citizens working with students struggling to read at three Buffalo schools. The endeavor has grown immensely: in the fall, RTSB boasted 66 volunteer tutors, guided by three literacy coaches, and supported elementary students at eight schools, seven in the BPS system. The goal through the three-year contract with BPS is to expand into more schools.

Anne Ryan, executive director of Read to Succeed, said Tuesday that extra efforts on top of in-class instruction can be necessary due to the difficulty of the task. "Learning to read is rocket science," Ryan said. "It's not a natural process."

RTSB's format is straightforward: Volunteer seniors, after 16 hours of training under literacy coaches, work with students in one-on-one, half-hour sessions two to three times each week in the classroom through the school year, focusing on reading practice, correcting mistakes, expanding vocabulary and more. Students in grades one through three have received RTSB tutoring so far, with pre-K students piloted this year and kindergarten students likely to be included soon.

Ryan shared data to show the "incredible outcomes" achieved by her literacy coaches and senior volunteers: 92% of students tutored by RTSB showed improvement in the oral reading fluency section of their DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) assessment, a long-standing evaluating tool for early literacy. The director added that there's social-emotional value to the biweekly meetings, too, with a mentor-like bond formed in many cases over time.