Media outlets across the state report that school districts and teachers are struggling with the implementation of Reading Academies, a requirement of the state legislature through House Bill 3 in 2019, to improve Texas students’ literacy rates. All teachers in grades K-3 must be trained through the Reading Academies by 2023.
Copperas Cove ISD implemented the required legislation in 2020 through Deputy Superintendent of Instruction Amanda Crawley.
“We have completed two full years and are embarking on our third year. All teachers in the district in grades pre-kindergarten through third have been trained. We are training anyone new to the district so that we will have 100 percent trained staff,” Crawley said. “We also trained all special education and Dyslexia, English-As-A-Second-Language, and intervention teachers. We have seen tremendous impacts with our students.”
The success Crawley refers to is verified through the Texas Education Agency’s STAAR test scores that were made available to parents on July 1.
CCISD elementary students outscored the state and the region in reading with Cove students scoring 83 percent as ready for the next grade level as compared to 79 percent in the region and 80 percent in the state.
The district surpassed the region by nearly 10 percentage points of students who exceeded the reading test requirements with a percentage of 61 as compared to only 53 percent at the regional level and 57 percent at the state. The same performance gap continued by the percentage of Cove students who mastered the literacy requirements with 40 percent in the district as compared to 32 percent in the region and 37 percent in the state.
“Our teachers have embraced these new methodologies and changed their instructional practices,” Crawley said. “This year, we are adding all of our fourth and fifth grade reading teachers (to the Reading Academies training) because we have seen so much success with pre-kindergarten through third grades. We are well exceeding the state requirement of House Bill 3.”
CCISD junior high students also outscored the region and state in reading at the sixth, seventh and eighth grade levels.
As reading is required with almost every subject, Cove ISD elementary students also outpaced their region and state peers by nearly 10 percentage points in math with 83 percent ready for the next grade level as compared to 74 percent at the regional level and 75 percent at state. More than half of Cove students exceeded the math test requirements with 54 percent as compared to 41 percent at region and 46 percent at the state level. Cove students demonstrated mastery of the subject with more than one-fourth, 28 percent of students, as compared to the region with 19 percent and the state with 23 percent.
CCISD fifth graders continued their dominance also in the subject of science with 68 percent ready for the next grade level as compared to 63 percent at the region and 65 percent at state. Forty percent of Cove students exceeded the science test requirements in comparison to 33 percent at the region and 37 percent at the state level. In mastering the math content, Cove students tied the state score both at 17 percent and outscored the region score of 14 percent.
