Advancing early literacy outcomes is a top priority in Missouri, and state leaders are seeking clear, actionable evidence of student progress, especially for young readers who need additional support. To meet this need, REL Central and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) are partnering to conduct the Building Missouri’s Capacity to Monitor Student Reading Growth project. Through this partnership, REL Central will examine reading growth data for Missouri students in grades K–3, including those who receive targeted interventions through Reading Success Plans (RSPs). The goal is to translate these data into timely, accessible insights that help DESE communicate progress on literacy initiatives to key stakeholders, particularly state legislators. REL Central and DESE will work together to shape analytic approaches and develop clear, compelling ways to present findings, tools, and resources, while also building DESE’s capacity to monitor student reading growth.
This new project is spurred by landmark Missouri legislation in 2022 that elevated reading as a top statewide education priority and created new reading initiatives in the state. This legislation, Senate Bill 681, requires districts to select and administer foundational reading assessments to students in grades K–3 at the start and end of each school year. Local education agencies use the assessment results to understand their students’ reading progress and identify students who need more support through RSPs. DESE hopes data from the assessments can help them to monitor statewide progress in improving student reading outcomes.
While DESE already examines reading assessment data statewide, it is working to strengthen how it communicates results to inform state leaders and to deepen analysis of reading growth for students with RSPs, clarifying both the supports these students receive and the progress they are making.
Communicating results to stakeholders
To help DESE achieve these goals, REL Central is providing technical support to co-determine approaches for analyzing and communicating reading assessment data and RSP outcomes. Through this project, REL Central and DESE will co-develop legislative district profiles that summarize and effectively communicate student reading growth data for state legislators. REL Central and DESE will also identify learning priorities for examining how much reading growth students demonstrate after being placed on RSPs and lead those analyses together.
Increasing capacity for continued analyses
REL Central will develop programming code for analyses to share with DESE and will provide additional resources, training, and support to DESE staff for conducting analyses. This way the project will build DESE’s capacity to conduct similar analyses in the future and continue to monitor reading growth after the project ends.
