REGION
SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2022
THE OBSERVER — A3
EDUCATION
Advocates say reading training for Oregon teachers a smart investment
Eastern Oregon University
spreads science of reading
across the state
Federal pandemic relief
money could pay for
phonetic-based training
By MEERAH POWELL
Oregon Public Broadcasting
SALEM — Like many primary
teachers, Coral Walker has worked
closely with students who struggle
to learn how to read.
“I love reading. Reading is
really the reason I became a
teacher,” Walker said. “But I
learned how to read fairly quickly
and easily and I never understood
how to teach it to kids, and I felt
really frustrated knowing that I
had some kids that consistently
struggled.”
According to the most recent
data from the Oregon Depart-
ment of Education, only 46.5% of
third graders were profi cient in
reading in the 2018-19 school year.
That profi ciency rate is even lower
for students from low-income
households.
As the state has received an
infl ux of federal pandemic relief
funding, literacy advocates are
pushing for change. At the same
time, there’s a growing con-
sensus that students could benefi t
signifi cantly if more teachers in
the state went through a training
program focused on the science
of reading.
That’s what Walker is doing.
She is completing the second
half of a two-year training called
LETRS — Language Essential for
Teachers of Reading and Spelling.
It’s primarily online, with videos,
activities and teaching guides.
She said LETRS has helped
her understand the logic behind
language as well as diff erent
strategies to teach students. The
training uses phonics to help chil-
dren decode words, rather than
just exposing them to books and
texts to pick up reading on their
own, which Walker said was the
way she was initially taught to
teach reading.
Walker said she started seeing
major diff erences when using
those new techniques in 2020
when she was still teaching online.
“It clicked. They’re like, ‘Oh,
that’s why you do that.’ Or, ‘Oh,
that’s what that means,’” she said.
“We had a big gap, and it wasn’t
because we didn’t have amazing
teachers; it was because we
weren’t teaching (students) what
they needed.”
Walker has now returned to the
classroom, teaching English and
Spanish to fi rst graders at Lent
K-8 in Southeast Portland.
LETRS has gained popularity
across the country, with some
states pushing to have as many
The Observer, File
Dr. Ronda Fritz, an associate professor at Eastern Oregon University, runs the school’s Reading Clinic for both EOU students
preparing to be teachers and those already in classrooms. The clinic is training teachers across four counties in Eastern Oregon
— Baker, Morrow, Umatilla and Union — on the science of reading.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff /Oregon Public Broadcasting
Coral Walker works on reading skills in her fi rst grade class at Lent Elementary
in Southeast Portland, March 29, 2022. Walker uses teaching strategies she’s
learned in a two-year training called LETRS — Language Essential for Teachers
of Reading and Spelling, which she says has helped her understand the logic
behind the language.
early elementary educators take
the training as possible.
Although some Oregon dis-
tricts have funded the training on
their own, state leaders have not
invested in LETRS more broadly
even though educators, advocates
and a state lawmaker have pushed
for it — especially as Oregon has
received more than $1 billion in
federal COVID-19 aid funding
specifi cally aimed at K-12 schools.
Most of that money, known as Ele-
mentary and Secondary School
Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds,
has been allocated to individual
school districts, and much of it has
not been spent yet.
The state department of edu-
cation says it has not allocated
any of its ESSER funds toward a
single literacy training program
for teachers, like LETRS, but that
individual districts can invest their
ESSER funds in those types of
programs if they so choose.
Wolf killed in Eastern Oregon,
offi cials seek public’s help
Baker City Herald
RICHLAND — Oregon State Police’s Fish and Wild-
life Division is asking the public for information about the
killing of a wolf near Richland last month.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife employees
reported to OSP on Friday, March 25, that a wolf wearing a
tracking collar was likely dead.
The collars have a feature that sends a signal if they hav-
en’t moved for a signifi cant period of time, suggesting the
wolf is dead.
OSP troopers found the dead wolf about 1-1/2 miles east
of New Bridge and 2 miles north of Richland.
The wolf, a year-old male, died around March 12-13,
according to a press release from OSP.
The release did not say how the wolf died and OSP’s public
information offi ce said the agency will not be releasing the
manner of death. During the past couple years, OSP has investi-
gated cases where wolves were either shot or poisoned.
The Oregon Wildlife Coalition, a group of wildlife con-
servation groups, is off ering a $11,500 reward for information
that leads to an arrest or citation in connection with the most
recent wolf killing.
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The statewide push
Oregon Rep. Barbara Smith
Warner, D-Portland, asked Oregon
lawmakers this past legislative ses-
sion to dedicate more than $20 mil-
lion to train teachers on the sci-
ence of reading. She proposed the
money for the teacher training
eff ort could come from the fed-
eral ESSER funds — and some of
it could go to Eastern Oregon Uni-
versity to expand its partnerships
off ering college credit to teachers
who do the LETRS training.
Smith Warner’s ask was backed
by advocacy groups like Oregon
Kids Read, but ultimately it was
not included in the budget.
“People are nervous about
change,” she said, and she says
she understands that hesitation but
argued, “this is an opportunity to
make a really foundational shift in
our ability to teach our kids to read.”
Smith Warner had hoped the
state would cover the costs of
LETRS training for Oregon’s high-
est-need schools and districts.
“Teacher training is one of
the most ideal uses of one-time
funding because once you train
that teacher they’re always going to
have that,” Smith Warner said.
She said Oregon school districts
could take this into their own hands
and fund training for LETRS, but
that’s probably just not a priority
right now, with schools still in what
she calls “survival mode.”
So, Smith Warner says it makes
sense for the state to step up.
“It is something that the state
can and should do because it is our
job to kind of take that burden off
of (school districts) and look a little
further,” she said.
But the Oregon Department
of Education is not ready to leap
into LETRS. In an email to OPB,
ODE pointed to a 2009 study that
showed LETRS increased teacher
knowledge but did not increase the
reading test scores of students.
The department noted that
Massachusetts, the state with the
highest reading scores according
to the National Assessment of Edu-
cational Progress, does not use
LETRS statewide.
Even though ODE has not
allocated ESSER funds toward
LETRS, it says it is dedicating
$4 million in ESSER funds to a
“K-5 literacy investment,” which
includes revision of Oregon’s K-5
literacy framework, professional
development for educators and sup-
port for school libraries.
Other states such as Utah and
Kansas have dedicated ESSER
funds for LETRS training and
those states have higher reading
scores than Oregon does.
If Oregon were to make
a bigger move toward a pho-
nics-based approach to reading
instruction, Eastern Oregon Uni-
versity would likely be a big part
of that.
Just recently, EOU’s Col-
lege of Education announced a
new partnership with the non-
profi t Ignite! Reading, which
will off er training on the science
of reading to EOU students and
work with them to tutor K-5 stu-
dents. Morrow County School
District is partnering with that
new program, according to EOU,
to create a pipeline of teachers
trained from EOU who can tutor
young students.
Ronda Fritz is an EOU asso-
ciate professor who runs the uni-
versity’s Reading Clinic for both
EOU students preparing to be
teachers and those already in
classrooms. The clinic is training
teachers across four counties
in Eastern Oregon — Baker,
Morrow, Umatilla and Union —
on the science of reading.
“My fi rst cohort of training
teachers was four, and I just fi n-
ished with them (a few months
ago), and now my second cohort
is 16,” Fritz said. “For summer,
I have 17 lined up, and I haven’t
even started advertising.”
Each teacher who participates
in the training receives a $2,000
stipend, funded by a grant from
the state, to cover the time it takes
outside of the classroom.
Due to funding limitations,
Fritz said only 20 teachers can get
trained at a time.
“In some ways we’ve underes-
timated how hungry teachers are
for this information. They want to
be able to make a diff erence with
the kids,” Fritz said. “I think they
also have that heightened sense of
urgency because of the pandemic.
Their kids have basically lost two
years of instruction.”
But funding isn’t the only lim-
itation to scaling up Fritz’s work
— it has multiple facets including
instruction over Zoom, and pairing
up teachers with mentors — all of
which she’s been doing herself.
What might be less onerous
to expand is the online LETRS
training that Eastern Oregon
University off ers to districts
like Portland and more recently
Reynolds, with teachers gaining
college credit.
“The beauty of LETRS is that
we can get that knowledge into
teachers’ hands effi ciently and
scale up very quickly,” Fritz said,
noting that from a content stand-
point what she teaches in the
reading clinic is basically “iden-
tical” to what LETRS provides.
Baker County commissioners approve drought disaster declaration
Baker City Herald
BAKER CITY — Baker
County commissioners
on Wednesday, April 6,
approved a resolution
declaring a drought disaster
in the county and asking
Gov. Kate Brown and fed-
eral offi cials to follow suit.
Commissioners passed
the resolution one day
shy of one year since they
approved a nearly identical
document, on April 7, 2021.
State and federal
drought declarations could
make county property
owners eligible for fi nan-
cial aid and other assis-
tance, and give state water
regulators more fl exibility
in allocating water.
According to the U.S.
Drought Monitor, 84% of
Baker County is in extreme
drought, the second most
severe in a four-level rating
system, behind only excep-
tional drought.
Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald, File
Phillips Reservoir still had a thin ice layer on Friday, March 25, 2022.
The ice has since melted, but the reservoir remains severely depleted
by drought, holding just 10% of its capacity in early April 2022.
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