.jpg)
With the 2023-2024 school year now well underway, area school divisions are looking ahead to the start of next year, when the Virginia Literacy Act will go into effect.
Passed by the General Assembly in 2022 and updated in 2023, the Virginia Literacy Act is a state-level program aimed at improving student reading outcomes.
According to the Virginia Department of Education, “The VLA requires that each local school board shall provide a program of literacy instruction that is aligned with science-based reading research and provides evidenced-based literacy instruction to students in kindergarten through grade eight.”
The topic has come up at several local school board meetings recently as school officials plan for the act’s implementation.
In Lexington
For Lexington schools, improving reading instruction was a priority before this act.
“Even before the VLA was announced, our school district was working to make sure all of our K-2 teachers were formally trained in evidencebased literacy programs,” Superintendent Rebecca Walters told The News-Gazette.
“During the past two years, we have had all K-3 teachers, special education teachers, intervention teachers, and reading specialists trained in Orton-Gillingham instructional programming.”
Orton-Gillingham is an approach to teaching reading developed in the mid-1900s, alongside research on teaching students with dyslexia.
According to its “core principles,” this approach emphasizes instruction that is “diagnostic in that the instructor continuously monitors the verbal, nonverbal, and written responses of the learner,” and “individualized to meet the differing needs of learners who may be similar, but not exactly alike.”
The district’s reading specialists will be participating in statewide training this year ahead of the VLA’s implementation.
The schools are also preparing interventions for at-risk students, to keep them from falling behind.
“As we look to full implementation of VLA next school year, we are following state guidance on the development of individual student reading plans for any of our students performing below level,” said Walters.
“We will also plan to review the state-approved core curriculum programs with plans to adopt a new textbook series and core curriculum for 20242025.”
In Rockbridge
Rockbridge County Public Schools is also updating its curriculum in anticipation of the new standards.
At its most recent meeting, the Rockbridge County School Board heard a presentation on the University of Florida Literacy Institute, whose curriculum will soon be taught in county elementary schools.
“When we started our work with UFLI, we were thinking about our students’ needs, we were thinking about how we would respond to the Virginia Literacy Act, and we were thinking about how we could promote reading and literacy since it’s so important to success, both in school and in life,” Lauren Fauber, principal at Fairfield Elementary, told the Board.
For Rockbridge, this program will be important for the VLA’s requirements of research and evidence-based reading curriculum.
“UFLI is very helpful in meeting the criteria of being research based,” said Fauber. “It does align with the science of reading, which takes into account psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and education, and it also is evidence based.”
The program provides lesson plans for teachers, which follow an eight-step learning routine, including phonemic awareness, visual and auditory drills, and connections with other words.
“This is very helpful is meeting the criteria for the Virginia Literacy Act, but above that and beyond that, it’s explicit and systematic,” said Fauber, noting that the pre-made lesson plans will be helpful for teachers, especially new teachers.
“The scope and sequence is very helpful because it looks from more simple skills to more complex skills, and it gives that opportunity for growth,” she said.
This new program will be challenging at first, Tim Martino, assistant superintendent of instruction and administration, acknowledged.
“This is a heavy lift. This is probably one of the biggest instructional lifts, at least in the seven years that I’ve been here,” he told the Board. “This is complicated. The challenge of reading is that you have to have all of the prerequisites. You have to have everything in that rope to move forward to the next step.”
However, he believes that the long-term benefit to students will be worth the upfront challenge to schools.
“We have a team dedicated to this. It’s a good group, they don’t sleep very much. It’s like everything, as we roll it out right now, it’s a little bit messy, but as long as we’re falling forward, we’re doing better by our kids,” he said at the meeting.
“We have to reprogram ourselves a little bit. For any of us who have been at this for about 20 years, weren’t taught anything like this. We’re growing into this. But it’ll be a fun journey,” he said.
In Buena Vista
Buena Vista Public Schools officials are looking ahead to some changes, but are, for the moment, waiting on more concrete direction for the state.
The Department of Education is still reviewing materials, and has not yet put out a complete list off all the curriculums which will be accepted under the new law.
“Right now we’re holding until the list comes out for full K-8,” Dr. Gennifer Miller, assistant superintendent of Buena Vista schools, explained to The News-Gazette.
“We want a curriculum that will span all through those grade levels, so we’re holding until the spring when the final list comes out,” she said.
When the time does come for new materials, money has already been set aside through a state grant.
While the VLA will bring changes in curriculum and in student evaluations, most of the teaching in Buena Vista will stay the same, according to Miller.
“Most of our teachers here in Buena Vista are already using the science of reading in their classrooms, so it won’t be too big a shift,” she said.
“We’ll have new curriculum and new materials, but a lot of the teaching is already there,” she said.
