Wisconsin Act 20 requires “science-based early reading instruction” in grades K-3. WRPS plans to implement changes through fifth grade for the 2024-25 school year.

WISCONSIN RAPIDS − Last summer, the Wisconsin State Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers reached a compromise on sweeping literacy reform for Wisconsin students.

The reform, known as The Right to Read Act or 2023 Wisconsin Act 20, requires “science-based early reading instruction in both universal and intervention settings” and specifically prohibits reading instruction using “three-cueing instruction,” according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction website.

Wisconsin has ranked at or below average among other states in student reading performance measures since the 2000s, a large shift from its top 10 status in the 1990s.

Wisconsin is one of over three dozen states to enact similar reading reform bills in recent years. Here’s what readers need to know about the changes and how the Wisconsin Rapids Public School District is working to implement a new reading curriculum.

What is ‘science-based’ reading instruction?

DPI defines science-based reading instruction as “systematic and explicit and consists of all the following: phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, building background knowledge, oral language development, vocabulary building, instruction in writing, instruction in comprehension, and reading fluency.”

“In a science of reading framework, teachers start by teaching beginning readers the foundations of language in a structured progression − like how individual letters represent sounds, and how those sounds combine to make words,” Sarah Schwartz of EdWeek wrote in 2022. “At the same time, teachers are helping students build their vocabulary and their knowledge about the world through read-alouds and conversations. Eventually, teachers help students weave these skills together like strands in a rope, allowing them to read more and more complex texts.”

What is ‘three-cueing instruction’ and why is it prohibited?

DPI defines three-cueing as “any model, including the model referred to as meaning, structure, and visual cues, or MSV, of teaching a pupil to read based on meaning, structure and syntax, and visual cues or memory.”

This model of instruction rose to popularity, despite scientific pushback, over the last several decades for a range of political, economic and social reasons. American Public Media reporter Emily Hanford explores this history in detail on the Edward R. Murrow award-winning podcast, Sold a Story.

The DPI website clarifies that the “prohibition applies when the instructional goal is for the learner to solve unknown words.”

Reform creates Office of Literacy and adds literacy coaches

Besides adopting new curriculum standards and prohibiting a misguided method for early reading instruction, the legislation also creates an Office of Literacy within DPI, mandates new teacher and administration training, provides grants to districts that need to choose a new curriculum, creates new reading assessments for students and establishes 64 full-time literacy coaches to help carry out the reforms across the state.

The Office of Literacy and the literacy coaches are set to expire on July 1, 2028.

How is Wisconsin Rapids Public Schools impacted?

Director of Curriculum and Instruction Roxanne Filtz said Wisconsin Rapids Public Schools has been trying early reading curriculum resources in the district since December in anticipation of the new state standards. WRPS is eight years into a regular 10-year cycle for evaluating its reading curriculum resources and piloting resources is a regular part of that process. The district’s current reading-related pilots are for both classroom materials and for teacher and staff training materials.

The new state law bumped the district’s process forward about a year but due diligence is still being performed by district staff in order to make an informed choice, Filtz said.

A team of district staff have been meeting monthly to discuss the pilot programs. They began late last year with a list of five science-based curriculum materials they put together based on materials nearby states use but have since eliminated three of those and shifted to solely evaluating materials approved by the Wisconsin legislature’s Joint Finance Committee in March. Materials on the legislature’s approved list are eligible for partial reimbursement from the state.

The curriculum department intends to have a recommendation ready to present to the School Board in June and to be ready to implement the new program with the 2024-25 school year.

Filtz said the district will rework its literacy program all the way to fifth grade even though Act 20 only requires changes for kindergarten to third grade. She said the district is being proactive and has had a positive process so far.

WRPS previously was using curriculum resources designed by Lucy Calkins, who is primarily featured and interviewed in the Sold a Story podcast and is known for promoting a “balanced reading” approach to literacy education. “Balanced reading” often includes “three-cueing” strategies.

How have WRPS students fared on reading assessments?

In 2022, the National Assessment of Education Progress test found about a third of Wisconsin’s fourth and eighth graders are proficient in reading. Wisconsin’s two other main measures of student literacy are the annual Forward exams, given in grades 3-8, and the ACT exam, typically taken by students in 11th grade. Forward exam data only goes back to 2018-19.

• In the 2022-23 school year, 39.2% of Wisconsin students and 33.2% of Wisconsin Rapids students in grades 3-8 scored proficient or advanced on the Wisconsin Forward Exam for English Language Arts. In the 2018-19 school year, these numbers were 40.9% and 39.2%, respectively.
• In 2018-19, 43.3% of fourth-graders statewide scored proficient or advanced compared to 44.8% in 2022-23. In Wisconsin Rapids these numbers were 36.1% and 38.3%, respectively.
• In 2018-19, 36.5% of eighth-graders statewide scored proficient or advanced compared to 36.2% in 2022-23. In Wisconsin Rapids these numbers were 34.2% and 23.1%, respectively.
• In 2022-23, 37.7% of Wisconsin students in grade 11 scored proficient or advanced, while 25.9% scored below basic on the ACT exam for English Language Arts. In Wisconsin Rapids those numbers are 35.8% and 29.5%, respectively.
• In 2018-19, 36.8% of Wisconsin students scored proficient or advanced in English Language Arts on the ACT while 35.8% of Wisconsin Rapids students scored at the same level.

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Erik Pfantz covers local government and education in central Wisconsin for USA-TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin and values his background as a rural Wisconsinite. Reach him at epfantz@gannett.com or connect with him on X (formerly Twitter) @ErikPfantz.

EAU CLAIRE COUNTY, Wis. (WEAU) – A grass fire just south of Eau Claire is one of several that fire crews responded to in recent days.

“7 fires over the course of a week is a pretty busy week. Historically for how often our agency responds to fires,” said Andrew Sorenson.

He is a team leader with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Forestry Division. Sorenson said the dry conditions have kept him and others responding to fire busy this year.

“We actually started our year really early. Our first fire in Augusta here was actually February 2nd. Which is very odd. We’re normally under snow cover,” said Sorenson.

The 7 fires he mentioned were for areas considered east of Eau Claire, which include: Augusta, Neillsville, Black River Falls and slightly up north Jim Falls.

He said there is a range of causes he knows of when it comes to the fires, and they include stray ambers and cigarette butts among other things.

“The last 7 days, our number cause has been down power lines. That’s a function of these high wind speeds that we’ve had,” said Sorenson.

“They spread really fast and can be much larger with the wind driven and the dry conditions we have currently,” said Altoona Fire Department Chief Mark Renderman.

He communicates with area fire departments through his role as president of the Eau Claire County Fire Chiefs Association.

“We’re responding to more grass fires, and even grass fires that are in your backyard, has been an increase this year than in years past,” said Renderman. “I would say we’re probably seeing about a 30% increase in wild land fires this year than last year.”

There are chances for precipitation in the coming days, but officials say that probably won’t be enough.

“We can have rain one day, and if we have a nice warm, blue, beautiful, sunshine day the next day, those grasses will be ready to burn,” said Sorenson.

He and Chief Renderman said things should ease up as the grass, and landscapes in general, become greener.

Sorenson said in the past 7 days there have been 87 wild land fires that burned 100 acres state-wide.

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WAUNAKEE — On the shore of Lake Mendota at the state park named for the holiday’s founder, Gov. Tony Evers on Earth Day signed an executive order pledging that the state will plant 100 million trees by the end of 2030 — an increase from the state’s initial commitment of 75 million.

Wisconsin first joined the global Trillion Trees Initiative, led by the World Economic Forum and American Forests, with an Evers executive order in 2021. The order also included a pledge to conserve 125,000 acres of forestland by 2030.

The governor told cabinet members and state employees gathered at Governor Nelson State Park on Monday that he was a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970 — a result of Wisconsin’s former governor and senator Gaylord Nelson’s advocacy.

“We actually, at the UW-Madison campus, had a full day of Earth Day, and professors and others had teach-ins, and it was really extraordinary,” Evers told reporters after planting a tree with a group. “It’s something I still remember to this day.”

Here’s what to know about Earth Day and the governor’s tree-planting pledge.

How many trees have been planted since the 2021 pledge?

The state has planted more than 32 million trees since Evers issued his 2021 executive order.

According to an annual report from the state Department of Natural Resources, more than 9.8 million trees were planted and more than 3,000 acres of forestland were conserved last year. More than two-thirds of seedlings were provided by the DNR. About 22% were planted on private lands. and about 19% were planted on DNR, federal, tribal and other public lands. About 100,000 were planted in county forests, 31,000 in school forests and more than 37,000 were given to elementary school students last Arbor Day.

Since the early 1900s, the DNR’s reforestation program has supplied landowners in the state with more than 1.6 billion seedlings.

Private nurseries partnering with the DNR supplied more than 3 million tree for conservation purposes, in addition to trees supplied by private nurseries for landscaping.

What will 100 million trees do for the environment?

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a mature tree can store and exchange about 48 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in one year. That means 100 million mature trees could store and exchange an expected 4.8 billion pounds of carbon dioxide per year.

The state’s updated goal will also contribute to the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers’ bipartisan pledge to plant 250 million trees by 2033.

How many trees did Wisconsin plant in a normal year?

In the years before Wisconsin joined the Trillion Trees Initiative, the DNR nursery had distributed about 2.5 million to 3 million seedlings per year.

Why do we celebrate Earth Day?

While in the Senate, Nelson was frustrated by the lack of federal action on pressing environmental issues during. He advocated for “environmental teach-ins” at schools to prompt change, and on April 22, 1970, 20 million people, showed up at events across the country in support of a cleaner environment.

In the following years, Congress passed the Clean Water Acts, Clean Air Act, the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Federal Pesticides Act, the Environmental Education Act, the National Hiking Trails and the National Scenic Trails Acts. Under President Richard Nixon, the federal government also created the Environmental Protection Agency.

Earth Day has since become an international event celebrated in more than 180 countries.

What does Evers hope will come from the tree-planting effort?

“Certainly all the stuff that the trees do is right on target. They take carbon dioxide and release oxygen to the air and sequester the carbon into the ground. So they are doing their part,” Evers said when asked about his hopes for the new tree-planting commitment. “I think we as human beings can do a little bit better. We’re working on it. We have (electric vehicle charing stations) going now, and as people participate in purchasing those vehicles, that’s going to make a difference as well as, obviously, our big, big issues around making sure that we’re getting enough solar energy in our system and making that happen. So, we’re on the right track, but we have a long, long way to go.”

Laura Schulte of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed.

Jessie Opoien can be reached at jessie.opoien@jrn.com.