Giving students ownership with Reading Progress in the Milton Area School District

Empowering readers, building confidence

Daphne Kirkpatrick, Director of Education for the Milton Area School District, observed firsthand the impact educational disruptions had on reading levels. She highlights the state assessment, (which was not a state requirement in 2020), subsequent lower scores in 2021, and again lower in 2022. “For us,” she explains, “it’s about how do we close the learning gap? Yes, we are required by the state to prepare students to take the state assessment, but it’s so much more than that. We want students to love learning, be engaged in conversations with each other about their world, and succeed in whatever they want to do in life. Reading is a critical part of being able to do all that and more.  It’s up to us to teach at the right level and provide support as students move to be proficient readers wherever they are.”

When Daphne and the extended reading instruction team at Milton learned about Reading Progress, they realized very quickly that it provided the skill-building and empowerment they needed for their students. Daphne recalls: “Our instructional coaches, our library media specialist and our reading specialists said, ‘Reading Progress is a great tool that can help us provide individual support to students.’ I really loved that it met students at their individual skill level, build their level of confidence, and engaged them such that they could feel motivated and successful.”

This sense of accomplishment is critical to motivating students. Jennifer Monaghan, a reading specialist in the District, emphasizes that not only do these sorts of successes help to limit behavioral problems and acting out, but that once students “start seeing their growth and look at the insights and the graphs, they start looking at the words they're missing or the errors that they're making consistently.  Students end up benefiting from their own accountability, as their confidence in their own reading ability improves.”  

Karey Killian, who serves as a school librarian and media specialist at two schools in the Milton Area School District, echoes Jennifer’s assessment: “If we didn’t level where they had confidence of wanting to read and we didn’t build their confidence with Reading Progress, I think we'd still be looking at students that struggle behaviorally and academically.”

Driving results

Jaclyn Haines works as a second-grade teacher in the Milton Area School District. For her, the major advantage of Reading Progress is greater engagement from students, and the subsequent improvements in learning outcomes. The more students take ownership over their own learning, the more they’re engaged and tools like Reading Progress can help to accelerate their learning, improving the ability for educators to successfully teach their students. She says, “Even if I have just a third of my class that apply reading skills and tools on their own, that frees up a third of my time so that I can work with students who don’t see themselves as readers. Having readers at all levels is so common and I am amazed at how Reading Progress allows every student learning to read at their own level—to catch up, keep up, and get ahead.” 

For those students that struggle, or who were more adversely affected by the disruptions of the last few years, Reading Progress’ ability to cater to their skill level has provided direct opportunities for improvement. “There was always something for them to succeed at,” she explains. “Even if they weren't on grade level. If they were reading kindergarten material, but they were getting those 100% accuracies, it made them so excited. I have a little video of a sweet little kid who was in title one reading and was just jumping up and down when he saw his 100% accuracy. Now this 100% accuracy was for the end of kindergarten, beginning of first grade level. But he didn't know that, and he didn't care. He saw that it was at his level. He got excited. He did so well, and then, thanks to that motivation, halfway through the year he tested out of title one.”

Karey continues to push this point as well: “Because they're able to read, they push themselves higher, and discover intrinsic motivation. That sense of ownership, not needing a teacher's help in order to gain skills, is a huge confidence booster. In many ways, that’s the biggest part of this: knowing how to improve. And that’s what Reading Progress does. It scaffolds their learning, so they know how to get better.”

The results that Reading Progress have had on the students at Milton speak for themselves. Jaclyn recalls, “The end of the year data was very telling. I sat down with the reading specialist, and we looked at all seven second grades. There are seven of them across the district, and we looked at all of them. And out of all of them, I think I had a third of the advanced readers. I mean, it was big, it was a noticeable difference.” 

By giving reading improvement tools directly to students, Reading Progress empowers students to do more, to take ownership of their learning, and improves an educator’s ability to provide targeted, optimal instruction. Given the impact of recent disruptions to how these students learn, the ability for them to move forward with help from tools like Reading Progress is nothing short of revolutionary. In the hallway outside her classroom, Jaclyn put up a display, a board that was filled with students and their reading progress. She notes: “It was just filled. I had students reading above grade level and students reading well below grade level, and nobody knew because they all just had their star in that hallway. It was incredible.”