WCCUSD district leaders provide frank assessment of literacy progress, “We still have a long way to go.”
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At the October 22 WCCUSD board meeting, district leaders provided a detailed look at recent student achievement data. The presentation, rated “strong” on our strategic use of data rubric, highlighted both areas of progress and significant challenges, particularly in reading and literacy. Leaders also shared initial results from the Reading Difficulties Risk Screener (RDRS), a key new effort to identify and support struggling readers early.
Literacy Results- SBAC, i-Ready, and mCLASS
State SBAC results
This year’s SBAC (CAASPP) results showed stronger gains in math than in English Language Arts (ELA). The percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards in ELA rose slightly– by 0.86 percentage points to about one in three students on grade level (33.39%).
Associate Superintendent Katherine Acosta-Verprauskus explained “While this movement is in the right direction, it’s not really considered to be statistically significant, so we would describe it as having ‘maintained’ performance.” ELA results have remained largely flat for nearly a decade.
Because SBAC results come out after the school year ends, the district also uses i-Ready and mCLASS assessments throughout the year to monitor progress in real time.
i-Ready results
At the start of the 2024-25 school year, 24% of students were reading on or above grade level on the i-Ready diagnostic.
Although many students improved from fall to spring last year, this fall’s results look very similar to last year’s, suggesting that those gains may not have been sustained over time.
mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura: Reading Screener in Action
This fall, WCCUSD launched the mCLASS assessments (DIBELS in English and Lectura in Spanish) as its new districtwide reading screener for students in grades K-2. This fulfills a new state requirement for early screening of reading difficulties.
A screener is a short assessment that helps identify students who may need extra reading support. It measures foundational reading skills such as knowing letter sounds and names, blending and breaking apart sounds in words, decoding words accurately, and reading fluently with basic comprehension.
Scores fall into four ranges: well below benchmark (at risk), below benchmark (some risk), at benchmark, or above benchmark. Among kindergartners, 41% began the year at or above benchmark, while 16% were “at some risk” and 43% were “at risk” of reading difficulties. First-grade results looked similar, and while second-grade results were slightly stronger, fewer than half of students were reading on level.
In bilingual Spanish/English (Dual-Language Immersion) programs, students will take the mCLASS Lectura in Spanish, in addition to DIBELS in English. Lectura testing was still ongoing, but preliminary results showed that over half of kindergarteners met beginning-of-year benchmarks for the start of the year, while 68% of first graders were below or far below benchmark.
New Resource from GO: Understanding Reading Screeners
To help families and educators better understand this new tool, GO Public Schools has released two new bilingual resources that explain the Reading Difficulties Risk Screener (RDRS) and how results can be used to support early reading growth.
A Family Guide to Reading Screeners: English | Spanish
An Educator Guide to Reading Screeners: English | Spanish
These short guides outline what the mCLASS DIBELS and Lectura assessments measure, what the risk levels mean, and how families and educators can use the information to strengthen literacy foundations together.
Risk Screener Implementation Progress
Last spring, GO’s Community-Led Committee (CLC) on Literacy advocated for a risk-screener plan that meaningfully involves families and ensures that results are used to guide real support for students. We’re encouraged to see many of the CLC’s recommendations in action:
- Over 4,600 K-2 students (84%) were assessed this fall, a very strong completion rate for the first administration of this one-on-one screener.
- 200+ teachers were trained in administering the assessment with additional sessions offered on interpreting and using the data. However, some teachers report that the follow-up sessions were hard to attend due to short notice. Reading teacher leads have been identified at most elementary schools to help build site-level capacity around reading instruction.
- Families received notification letters beforehand and were invited to a workshop about the screener.
One area needing improvement is timely communication of individual results to families. The district’s implementation plan called for results to be shared within 30 days and before parent-teacher conferences. Some families received results, but this process wasn’t yet consistent across schools and district-wide sharing hadn’t occurred before conferences began November 3. We ask WCCUSD to prioritize this element in upcoming testing windows so parents can understand their child’s results and next steps for support.
What the Results Tell Us
Taken together, the SBAC, i-Ready, and mCLASS results show that too many students are still reading below grade level. Families can and should ask their schools for their child’s results and talk with teachers about how to support literacy growth at home and what interventions or supports will be provided by the school.
At the same time, the data makes clear that the district must strengthen Tier 1 instruction, the core reading instruction that every student receives. This means ensuring that all teachers have access to high-quality, evidence based materials and professional learning.
District Leadership Reflections and Next Steps
We were encouraged to hear district leaders acknowledge these challenges openly and commit to change.
Superintendent Cheryl Cotton shared:
We have some schools sadly that are in single digits of students meeting and exceeding standards . . . I don’t want you walking away thinking we’re fine, because we’re not. There’s a lot of work to do.
Leaders pointed to foundational skills as a key area in need of additional support, including the need for evidence-based instructional materials and greater alignment across the district. Associate Superintendent Acosta-Verprauskus noted:
Right now, we don’t have a consistent curriculum that’s being used [across the district] that is high quality and aligned to the latest of research . . . [we] likely need to in the future look to adopt a curriculum that is aligned to evidence-based research.
Both leaders also emphasized that curriculum alone will not solve the issue and that a key step that can be taken in the meantime is to “build the capacity of our teachers around evidence-based research practice around literacy . . . . we can begin that work now” (Associate Superintendent Acosta-Verprauskus).
This kind of honesty, paired with a commitment to ground changes in research-based practices, is a positive sign of strong leadership and transparency.
District leaders also connected their data and plans to the goals outlined in the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP), helping the community to see where progress is on track and where it’s falling short. This is a key element of the strategic use of data rubric and a strength of this presentation.
Key next steps identified in the presentation include:
- Data sessions with school leaders and teachers;
- A strategic focus on African American students as a “focal group”;
- Family workshops;
- Expanded support for targeted interventions;
- Strengthening Tier 1 instruction to ensure all students experience engaging grade-level learning.
We look forward to tracking these efforts and their impact on students’ reading outcomes in the months ahead.