Building literacy skills is crucial in helping ensure lifelong success for every student. Dallas ISD is taking a future-focused comprehensive approach to ensure students have the foundational skills they need.
Across all grade levels, the number of students who passed the Reading portion of the STAAR exam dropped by 5.8 percentage points from 2019 to 2021.
As part of the It’s L.I.T. (Literacy is Transforming) initiative, Dallas ISD is embracing four strategies as part of a comprehensive effort to get students reading and writing at grade level. Visit www.dallasisd.org/lit to learn more about the initiative.
“We must embrace innovation and research-based practices to do what we can to build our students’ literary skills,” Chief Academic Officer Shannon Trejo said. “And with the pandemic providing additional challenges to students for the past year, we are ready to accelerate student learning when everyone returns to campus for in-person learning in August.”
These are the four strategies Dallas ISD is using to get students reading and writing at grade level:
Project R.E.A.D
Dallas ISD is in the initial stages of an exciting initiative that will invest quite heavily in our libraries over the coming months and years. As part of a partnership with Apple, this library redesign initiative, titled Project R.E.A.D., will see libraries evolved into exciting learning laboratories for students to engage in research, exploration, application, and design.
Reading Academies
Dallas ISD is optimizing the implementation of the Texas Reading Academies, a state legislative requirement, to drive long-term growth and target closing the achievement gap for its Black and Latino students. The Reading Academies equip teachers and administrators with the evidence-based methods that best support the science of teaching reading.
Summer Breeze
The district’s summer school programming, Summer Breeze, has been redesigned with a strong focus on literacy instruction. Through Novel Engineering, students are reading a book where they will work with peers to create a solution for the problem the character is experiencing in the book.
Disciplinary literacy
Dallas ISD will build in foundational and critical reading and writing skills across all content areas, including math and science. This will teach students how to read, write, think and discuss in ways that are particularly to those different content areas.
Other strategies
In addition to these targeted ways to boost student literacy skills, Dallas ISD is committed to investing up to $100 million over two years to mitigate learning loss in all subject areas.
