Child literacy Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

FAFSA Issues, College Going Rate And More Presented To LOCEA

A change to a federal financial aid form for college students is having major ripple effects through West Virginia’s higher education system.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) unlocks both federal and state financial aid for students but a recent attempt to simplify the form has caused delays for college applicants across the country.

“At this point this year, we have six million students who have filled out a FAFSA,” said Sarah Tucker, chancellor of the Higher Education Policy Commission. “At this point last year, we had 17 million, this is across the country. So we have a significant deficit right now that we’re trying to make up and trying to figure out exactly what’s going on and how best to help our students.”

Tucker told an interim meeting of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability Sunday the Student Aid Index (SAI), which determines student need, is now being determined by a new interface between the IRS and the federal Department of Education that is not working correctly. Further delays occur because users of the new system are not notified of errors until after the form has been submitted.

Tucker told the commission the faulty SAI formula is causing delays for the state’s educational programs as well.

“I need to know how much money the federal government is going to be giving to all of our students in order to know what our award is going to be for West Virginia Invests,” she said.
“We’re really sort of stuck in limbo until this functionality gets fixed.”

The Higher Education Grant Program, West Virginia Invests and PROMISE Scholarships are all currently delayed.

Nationally, West Virginia is faring slightly better than average with the new FAFSA. As of last month, more than 6,000 seniors across the state have filled out the form, a number Tucker credits to hundreds of FAFSA workshops the HEPC and other organizations have hosted.

“We’re actually ranking 20th in the number of high school seniors who have completed the FAFSA,” she said. “The West Virginia Department of Education has done a lot of work as have all of our institutions in trying to do FAFSA workshops to make sure that our students know how to fill out those forms.”

Tucker said West Virginia Invest and PROMISE may revert to awarding the same amounts as last year without adjustments to ensure students are not further delayed.

“I think that may be where we end up because I don’t want to keep stringing students along,” she said. “I want to do the best we can to make sure that they know that they can go to college. Our college going rate is finally ticking up. We have this great momentum.”

College Going Rate

The oversight commission also heard a report on the state’s college going rate from Zornitsa Georgieva, director of research and analysis for HEPC. She highlighted a one percent increase in post-secondary enrollment from 2022 to 2023, including enrollment in trade programs or other career and technical pathways.

“For the class of 2023, the college going grade is 47.4 percent,” Georgieva said. “We’ve had more than 7,900 high school graduates continue into some kind of post-secondary education this year. I think that really speaks for the hard work of high school staff, high school counselors, teachers, our staff in our secondary system, as well as post-secondary institutions and staff that works around outreach. And providing information about financial aid.”

In 2021 the national immediate college enrollment rate was 62 percent, which puts West Virginia 15 percent below the national average. “Immediate college enrollment” is the metric used by the National Center for Educational Statistics and looks at students who enrolled in a post-secondary institution the fall after graduation.

Georgieva said when looking at the 12 months after graduation, including spring enrollments, West Virginia’s college going rate jumps to 49 percent. Rates differ from county to county, and 36 of 55 of West Virginia’s counties increased their college going rate year over year.

Benchmarks and Screeners

As part of House Bill 3035 – also known as the Third Grade Success Act – that passed last year, screeners or benchmark assessments must be administered at the beginning of the school year and repeated mid-year and at the end of the school year to determine student progression in reading and mathematics kindergarten through third grade.

Sonya White, state deputy superintendent, presented the results of the mid-year screeners to the commission.

“Overall, we were encouraged by the results, we had a decrease in the number of students… who needed that intensive intervention,” she said.

Even accounting for regular academic gains in the first half of the school year, White said the need for intensive intervention decreased from the start of the year to mid-year. She said the screeners are also identifying new students that need intensive interventions and are getting the help they need.

“On the front side are the literacy results,” White said. “We had an average decrease of 5.4 percent of students that needed intervention in grades K through three, and an average of 6 percent of the students in grades four through eight were scoring in the lowest category.”

White presented even higher decreases in intensive intervention for mathematics, “with an average of 6 percent for K through three and an average of 8.1 percent for four through eight.”

Del. Joe Ellington, R-Mercer, expressed concern at some of the numbers that showed an increase in the need for math intervention between first and second grade.

“Do we have schools looking at why there might be that big change from only 17 percent initially in first grade up to almost 40 percent when they get the second?” he said.

White cautioned that the state is still in its first year of collecting the data but theorized that those numbers could be a result of lowered learning opportunities three years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are being proactive,” she said. “We are also looking at getting more detailed data for each section so we know what pieces of mathematics are struggling with.”

Policy 7212

Earlier in the meeting, legislators heard a brief description of changes to Department of Education Policy 7212. The policy applies to the transfer of students, both inside and out of their county of residence.

Student transfers became a point of contention this past fall after legislation passed during the 2023 regular session changed eligibility rules for student athletes after transfer. Gov. Jim Justice and others urged the legislature to revisit the issue during this year’s legislative session, but no action was taken by the legislature.

The proposed changes to Policy 7212 include significant clarifications of the requirement for county boards of education to implement an open enrollment policy for nonresident students, including a new allowance for boards to revoke applicants for chronic absenteeism or behavioral infractions. There is no mention of athletics in the proposed changes.

The changes to 7212, as well as other policies, are open to public comment until May 13.

Vaccines, Bus Drivers And Pumpkins, This West Virginia Week

On this West Virginia Week, we heard about education in the state – from the bus driver shortage, to how a new West Virginia law is helping child literacy. We heard from author Jayne Anne Phillips about her latest novel. We talked to health officials in the state and learned how and where to get vaccines. And we visited the Kenova Pumpkin House as it gets ready for its five night Halloween celebration.

On this West Virginia Week, we heard about education in the state – from the bus driver shortage, to how a new West Virginia law is helping child literacy. We heard from author Jayne Anne Phillips about her latest novel.

We talked to health officials in the state and learned how and where to get vaccines. And we visited the Kenova Pumpkin House as it gets ready for its five night Halloween celebration.

Briana Heaney is our host this week. Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert.

West Virginia Week is a web-only podcast that explores the week’s biggest news in the Mountain State. It’s produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Caroline MacGregor, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Liz McCormick, and Randy Yohe.

Learn more about West Virginia Week.

State Educators Hope To Transform Students’ Reading Ability Early

Studies show that if children aren’t up to speed by the third grade it can indicate future difficulties in and out of the classroom. A new law is now in effect across West Virginia to implement more effective reading education.

Reading is a fundamental life skill. Studies show that if children aren’t up to speed by the third grade it can indicate future difficulties in and out of the classroom. A new law is now in effect across West Virginia to implement more effective reading education.

At the Bruceton School in Preston County, Robin Hagedorn’s first graders are preparing to break up into small groups for the day’s reading lesson.

“It takes me a whole month to train my kids in their stations, so that they know what to do,” Hagedorn said. “I was nervous, and I worried, and I wanted to make sure I had all of my ducks in a row for Miss Vicky and myself.”

Miss Vicky is Vicky Nieman, a paraprofessional that joined Hagedorn’s classroom this year. Hagedorn says she is so grateful to have the extra help because individualized learning in small, student-led groups by six-year-olds is made much easier by having another adult in the classroom. Nieman agrees.

“Having that second person you can just jump in, if you see somebody getting off task or needing a page turned, and you don’t have to disrupt the whole entire class. I feel like it’s going smoothly,” she said.

Nieman is in a first-grade classroom this fall thanks to House Bill 3035, also known as the Third Grade Success Act. Passed earlier this year by the state legislature, the law aims to address low reading and math test scores across the state.

“I think the legislature understood the need to close the achievement gap as it pertains to literacy in our state,” said Jonah Adkins, director of the office of pre-K through 12 academic support for the West Virginia Department of Education. “They saw the need in general to do something, to address our deficits. There was a sense of urgency there.”

The most recent results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress published October 2022 showed that West Virginia students had some of the lowest reading scores in the nation and were at least 10 percent behind the national average.

Adkins says bringing extra help into the classroom will be one of the most visible changes of many implemented by the law. But he points out the name Third Grade Success Act only hints at the scope of the undertaking. The work to ensure that students are reading on level by the third grade starts much earlier.

“That would actually be kindergarten through third grade that are actually getting this instruction,” Adkins said. “Now, the first-grade classrooms, they are the ones that were introduced to our EL-CATs, early classroom childhood assistant teachers were introduced to first grade this year. Next year, they will be introduced in second grade and the year following, they will be introduced in third grade.”

The state’s educators aim to achieve results through several changes including regularly screening and assessing students’ development, continuous contact with parents and guardians and focusing instruction on what is called the “science of reading.”

Mindy Allenger, associate professor of literacy instruction for pre-service and in-service teachers at Marshall University, said phonemic awareness is the foundation of how children learn to read. Phonemes are the distinct sounds that make up a word.

“We’re segmenting a word by sounds like cat C-A-T and we’re manipulating; if I take off the C and add a M, that’s Matt. So that’s manipulating,” Allenger said. “All of those are features of phonemic awareness.”

West Virginia is following the lead of other states like Mississippi and Tennessee that focus on evidence-based fundamentals like phonemic awareness to produce repeatable results across classrooms. Before, most counties tended to choose one curriculum and stick to it. Now, teachers are welcome to draw from multiple sources as long as what they implement is aligned with the science of reading. Allenger likens it to medical care: what worked in the past shouldn’t trump cutting edge research.

“We’re not looking at anecdotes, where I say, ‘Oh, well, my little one learn to read like this,’ or ‘I like to teach like this,’ or ‘This is how I learned.’” she said. “Instead, this is all based on research. And so it’s quantitative, meaning we have numbers, it’s reliable. And reliable just means ‘Can the results be reproduced, no matter who’s testing, no matter what conditions, and it’s valid, meaning that it’s really testing what it says it’s gonna test.”

Allenger and other educational trainers say the science of reading already underpinned most literacy instruction nationwide, so teaching programs have not had to change their curriculums. Before this year, the level of awareness of the science of reading and its application have varied greatly from county to county in West Virginia. That led the Department of Education to launch a teacher training initiative.

“As you can only imagine we’re on all different levels across the state,” said Kelly Griffith, coordinator for the office of pre-K through 12 academic support of the West Virginia Department of Education. “We have some people that they’re just learning about the signs of reading, they’ve never heard it before. But then we also have some really great high fliers that have been using it in their classroom, and that we are highlighting as model examples in the classroom.”

She says the state office has been hosting trainings all summer and into the fall, as well as creating a library of resources online.

“We’ve been doing regional rollouts for the county level. We’re taking the county level admin, the LEA’s of each county, and we are training them on all of the resources that we have developed to date,” Griffith said. “They have everything that we’ve developed for educators. Our plan is to build the capacity in the districts and support them because they know best the needs of their individual counties and where their teachers are.”

One of the next steps for the implementation of the Third Grade Success act will be a focus on numeracy and math education, another subject where state test scores have lagged after the COVID-19 pandemic. But in these early months the focus for Allenger and other educators remains on reading.

“The inspiration and the hope that if I can make sure that all my little first graders leave, knowing how to read, what other gifts could you give to someone’s life, then teaching them how to read?” Allenger said.

Clearing Up Respiratory Health Confusion And Improving Early Childhood Literacy This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, health experts work to clear up confusion as we enter the respiratory illness season, and a new law is now in effect across West Virginia to implement more effective reading education.

On this West Virginia Morning, Emily Rice reports on health experts working to clear up confusion around vaccine scheduling and access as we enter the respiratory illness season.

And studies show that if children aren’t up to speed by the third grade it can indicate future difficulties in and out of the classroom. As Chris Schulz reports, a new law is now in effect across West Virginia to implement more effective reading education.

Also, Randy Yohe reports that West Virginia’s Senate Finance Committee Chair expects to bring more indictments like the one last week involving a DHHR manager and COVID-19 testing, a look at the latest State of West Virginia University address, a new solar energy project and a reminder to look out for a check in the mail.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.

Caroline MacGregor produced this episode.

Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning

Justice Highlights Literacy Awareness Day Friday

Gov. Jim Justice is encouraging all West Virginians to reflect on the importance of early childhood literacy Friday.

In July, the governor declared Oct. 20 as National Early Childhood Literacy Awareness Day in West Virginia.

During his regular briefing Thursday, Justice called childhood literacy “absolutely essential.”

“The more you have the opportunity to read to a child at a very, very young age, do that because it will only make them better and better readers as we go forward,” Justice said. “Those folks that are great readers seem to excel in every way.”

The proclamation Justice signed cites the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results that were published in October 2022. That test showed 78 percent of West Virginia’s public school fourth graders performed below the NAEP Proficient level in reading, compared to 68 percent nationally.

The recently implemented Third Grade Success Act hopes to address early childhood literacy shortfalls.

“Research tells us that a child’s vocabulary at the age of three is a strong predictor of their reading proficiency in the third grade,” Justice said. “The more that we’re able to teach them to read, and read to them, the more their performance is off the chart.”

Justice also took a moment to acknowledge the work of his wife, Cathy Justice, and the Communities in Schools initiative for helping students.

Literacy Program Unintentionally Pulling Resources From Special Education

As a side-effect of legislation passed earlier this year, 41 percent of special education aides in the state have moved into first grade literacy aide positions.

State Superintendent Michele Blatt told legislators during Monday’s meeting of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Educational Accountability that the shift is an unintended consequence of House Bill 3035.

The Third Grade Success Act is meant to address literacy and numeracy in early education by bringing more aides and specialists into first, second and third grade classrooms across the state. Implementation has begun this fall in first grade classrooms, with second and third grades to follow in the coming years.

Blatt said the data is based on a survey of 48 counties, and represents some 249 aides that have transferred out of special education.

Sen. Amy Grady, R-Mason, said legislation often creates unforeseen issues, but keeping special education aides needs to be addressed.

“We need to find a way that we can entice them to stay in those harder positions,” Grady said.

Del. Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell, asked how the special education aides were being replaced.

“Many of them have been replaced with people, new positions, people trying to get into the system,” Blatt said. “We can follow up and see how many of those are actually still shortages, but I do know, we still have some shortages and some day to day subs in those classrooms.”