Why focus on structured literacy systems?
Well, first of all, if you are reading this and not my mom or some other ostensibly close family member or friend, thank you very much. (I mean if you are a family member or friend, thank you as well, but I probably begged you to read it.)
Below is long, but after 30 years in education, I often feel it is the only thing I have left to say.
We need to build complete systems around structured literacy to understand what the full-scale impact can really be. I’m thinking 300 to 500 would suffice.
If you don’t know much about Structured Literacy or the Science of Reading, I’m not going to go into great detail here, but check out these Top 10 Initial Resources if you want to ponder a bit and return later.
For this site, I used Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows as the main driver for my thought process, but systems thinking is prominent in the Structured Literacy world right now and definitely should be. I was responsible for building the analytical backbone of a program called Universal Literacy in the 2000s that looked to nurture approximately 95% of all students systematically to literacy proficiency. Built in alignment with the National Reading Panel and Reading First, due to high costs, political winds, some missing components and other factors, that program was drifting away almost as soon as it started. But the patented platform we created was used to drive intervention systems and was something I was always excited to be a part of and spent over 20 years as a singular focus of helping districts optimize their assessment and intervention practices as part of a broader literacy system.
However, I always noticed the lack of a full system being created to lead to the type of results that science indicates is possible. Cracks, gaps or giant hollows in either Collaboration, Instruction, Professional Learning or Assessment tended to exist in almost every system I have ever coordinated with and really prevented much more than incremental, site-based or small group improvements. I was discouraged and left to work in higher education for a few years. Meh….I like the K-12 world more. Lifelong learning is excruciatingly important but if you can’t read proficiently, so many more doors are shut to you than open.
With the sea change of events in support of structured literacy from state profiles, podcasts, state laws and emerging district profiles of FULL SYSTEMS(!!!), now is different. SLSG exists to focus on and assist districts build and advance their SoR/SL systems. So, what do we mean by systems? Meadows (Meadows, 2008) sees systems as a “set of things - people, cells, molecules, whatever - interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern or behavior over time.” In LETRS for Administrators (Ilk, Whitney, Moats, 2022), the authors see system thinking in direct contrast to linear thinking, looking to deal with singular issues along a line of A to B. With the literacy proficiency scores flat since the time of my entering of the education force, there seems no real evidence that we can change things simply by trying hard and doing an infinitely different set of actions for hoping to get results.
Systems thinking is prevalent in the structured literacy community with similar structures being discussed by The Reading League, Amplify, 95% Group, Lexia and others. They all take slightly different views on how to organize a system and any of which are probably fine to start with. The key is to allow for time in your work life to dedicate to systems thinking and provide continuous review of the coordination of the system with urgency around the results, not simply work on individual problems or initiatives and hope they will fall in place to make large scale change.
Systems can start simple, but will need to be comprehensive to solve complex situations
Nicole Patten Terry from FCRR lays out beautifully some conditions to deliver on the promise of the Science of Reading. One of which is to realize complex problems require comprehensive solutions. Systems can start out simple and in Meadows book, she often describes systems around redistributing water. So, if you were looking to move 10,000 gallons of water into the ocean, a simple system for that may be to have a river that is connected to the ocean distribute water in the river to the ocean. However, if the 10,000 gallons of water you wanted to distribute to the ocean was in a pond 1000 miles from the ocean, disconnected from any rivers, you will have the need to create, monitor and nurture a whole system to get the water where it needs to be. Likewise in education, it would be easiest to get 95% of a set of fourth graders to read if we gathered a group of 3rd graders reading where 95% at one year or more above grade level. There still is a lot of work to do, but easier than if say 35% of third grade students are reading proficiently.
So there is a need for comprehensive systems. “Thinking in Systems” can be a bit text bookish as a read, but the concepts I’ll use to drive thinking are stocks (referred to as elements from here on out), flows and feedback loops.
System Elements - the physical and non-physical elements of the system that cause change.
Flow - the material or information flowing through the system elements. Ie - Student’s literacy proficiency.
Feedback Loops - if a behavior persists over time, it is due to the existence of a feedback loop, replicating the intended outcome for the flow.
Simple View of a Structured Literacy System
So the simplest view of a very comprehensive system, using Donna Meadows faucet handles to enable system elements to create a good flow with possible feedback loops, we can envision the very highest view being:
System Components and Sub-Components
For the organization of this site, we will use four primary components: Collaboration, Educator Empowerment, Instruction and Assessment. However, within each, we will also look at some sub-components in the chart below to help draw out specific problems and pathways to solve those problems.
Systems thinking can be scary, seem overwhelming and impossible. There is not a singular drawing of a school’s literacy system flow that can encompass what happens at different schools, different grade levels, within different needs of students. With 33 to 35% of our students reading proficiently on a scientifically established goal of 95%, the task seems daunting. We shouldn’t put pressure on ourselves as a community to fix it all overnight as it won’t happen. But if we do work within a systems mindset and urgency on outcomes, we can start to make results we have yet to achieve to date.
We will be monitoring effective systems here with results and commonalities. If there are systems of success you would like us to highlight or review, please contact us here and we love to spread information about emerging best practice and results. Otherwise, we hope you share the passion for structured literacy systems and please let us help in any way.
FYI - Thanks mom for reading this all the way to the end!