From learning to doing: How Davidson County Schools is putting the science of reading into practice

Something wasn’t adding up in Davidson County Schools. Students were making strong gains in reading in kindergarten and first grade. They were developing foundational skills and, for the most part, reading accurately. But as students moved across second and third grades, growth became stagnant and the end-of-grade reading proficiency began to decline.

After taking a deep dive into the data, district leaders discovered that the challenge wasn’t necessarily whether students could read the words in front of them. In fact, many could. The concern was fluency and automaticity. Students weren’t reading at a pace and with the ease needed to devote their attention to understanding what they were reading.

For April Willard, Davidson County Schools’ director of elementary education and federal programs, the data pointed to a disconnect. The teachers had participated in LETRS training to deepen their understanding of how children learn to read, and the district had a core foundational curriculum with aligned support. But Davidson County did not have a comprehensive core reading program that pulled together vocabulary, syntax, knowledge building, fluency, and comprehension.

And the deeper they looked, the more the question shifted from: What are students missing, to what do teachers need to help students get there?

From knowing to doing

Davidson County educators had already invested considerable time in learning about the science of reading. Willard described LETRS as “some of the best professional learning” she had experienced. Instructional coaches studied “The Reading Comprehension Blueprint” by Nancy Lewis Hennessy. Principals, assistant principals, and coaches examined research together. And most recently, more than 200 teachers were invited to learn from Natalie Wexler about the role knowledge plays in reading comprehension.

There were plenty of moments when educators could see the connections between what they were learning and what students needed. But seeing those connections was one thing. Translating them into daily instruction was another.

Without a comprehensive curriculum, teachers still had to find and evaluate quality texts, determine how those texts could build knowledge across a topic, plan explicit vocabulary and syntax instruction, incorporate comprehension routines, and connect it all to grade-level standards.

Amber Fitts, an early literacy specialist with the Department of Public Instruction’s Office of Early Learning, saw that challenge as she worked alongside instructional coaches. They were developing a deeper understanding of what effective comprehension instruction should include. The harder part was envisioning what all of it looked like when a teacher stood in front of students on Monday morning.

“There are wonderful things” in LETRS, Fitts said. “We know what to do, but teachers don’t always know how to make it happen in the classroom.”

It wasn’t that teachers didn’t want to do the work. They needed a way to make all the pieces fit together. 

The more Davidson County learned, the clearer the gap became. Educators were building the knowledge. What they needed was a way to turn that knowledge into practice, and the district had to decide how to help them do it.

What if we build it ourselves?

One option was to purchase a comprehensive core reading program. But for Davidson County, Willard estimated that could cost close to $1 million. District leaders also felt they didn’t have time to wait for someone else to solve the problem.

“We couldn’t wait on money to come for an adoption,” Willard said. “We had to do the work ourselves.”

There was urgency behind that decision. Third grade reading proficiency had fallen below the state average, something Willard said was unheard of in a district accustomed to performing at or above the state average in its elementary subjects. 

“We knew there was a disconnect,” she said. “And we had to figure out where that disconnect was.”

So, they did.

Willard approached Fitts with an idea: What if Davidson County Schools created their own knowledge-building units?

The goal wasn’t simply to create another collection of lessons. They wanted something that could bring together what teachers had learned through LETRS with vocabulary, syntax, fluency, comprehension, and knowledge building, while also giving teachers the texts and instructional structure to make all of it manageable in the classroom. And if teachers were going to be expected to use the units, Willard believed teachers needed to help build them.

The district invited educators to apply for a design team and began with third grade, where the data suggested the need was greatest. Teachers worked through the summer and continued throughout the school year, creating units designed, as Willard described them, “for teachers by teachers.”

The team also made an intentional decision to connect the units to science and social studies standards, two subjects that can get squeezed out of the elementary school day when time is limited. Yet those subjects offer something essential to literacy development: opportunities for students to build the background knowledge they need to understand increasingly complex texts. Instead of asking teachers to choose between literacy and content, the team began looking for ways to build both at the same time.

Changing more than the curriculum

Creating the units was one thing. Using them required teachers to rethink some familiar approaches to reading instruction.

A teacher might traditionally spend time teaching main idea with one text, pull another text for more practice, and then move on to the next standard. The new units asked teachers and students to stay with texts longer. Students reread. They examined vocabulary and sentence structure. They built knowledge around a topic. And they encountered multiple reading standards within the same text rather than approaching comprehension as a series of isolated skills.

For Willard, that shift was particularly important because fluency had been part of what the district saw in its third grade data. Students didn’t necessarily need an endless supply of new passages. They needed opportunities to go deeper into the text already in front of them.

The texts themselves presented another shift. They were intentionally more challenging to stretch learning growth.

The team considered both quantitative and qualitative measures of text complexity, sometimes selecting texts with Lexile measures one or two grade levels above third grade. The expectation wasn’t that every child should be able to pick up those texts and read them independently. Teachers would provide the scaffolding, particularly early in the year, so students could engage with complex ideas and language while continuing to receive foundational reading instruction based on their individual needs during another part of the school day. Still, teachers noticed.

“This text, it’s too hard,” Willard remembers hearing repeatedly during the first quarter.

For veteran third grade teacher Jill Hunt, the adjustment wasn’t only about the texts. After years in the classroom, she had accumulated favorite books, lessons, and activities. Now she was being asked to use lessons that were much more scripted than what she was accustomed to. There was some hesitation. But there was also a willingness to give it a try and to do it well.

Repeated reading began giving students another way into difficult text. A child who couldn’t initially read a grade-level passage independently could listen to it, discuss it, build knowledge around it, encounter its vocabulary, and then return to it again. After several readings, that same student might begin reading portions with a partner or more independently.

The text hadn’t gotten easier. The students’ access to it had changed.

Teacher perspectives and practices were changing, too. Rather than introducing multiple instructional strategies in quick succession, the units purposefully slowed the process down.

Teachers might concentrate on sentence parsing throughout one quarter before moving to sentence anagrams during the next. That repetition gave teachers time to become comfortable with a practice and students time to internalize the routine.

Instructional coach Tina Hampton saw that shift among teachers who had completed LETRS. Initially, she heard comments like, “I already do this.” But as teachers began using the units, they started to see the difference between incorporating a practice and going deeply enough with it to change what students could do.

Leveling the playing field for teachers, too

As the units moved into classrooms, Davidson County began seeing another effect it hadn’t necessarily set out to create. Teacher experience across the district varied considerably. Some classrooms were led by veteran teachers like Hunt, who had taught third grade for years. Others were led by beginning teachers, teachers new to the grade level, or educators entering classrooms through alternative licensure pathways. That variation mattered.

A veteran teacher might have years of instructional knowledge and materials to draw upon. A teacher hired in October who had never taught a tested grade might be trying to figure out what strong comprehension instruction looked like while simultaneously learning how to run a classroom. The units provided both teachers with a common foundation.

At Davis-Townsend Elementary School, Principal Jennifer Beasley could walk from one third grade classroom into another and recognize the same explicit vocabulary routines and instructional structures. The teachers weren’t identical. Their experience wasn’t identical. But students were encountering common language, routines, and expectations. Beasley saw that as a way to create more equitable instruction for students. 

Willard began seeing something else in it, too.

“We talk about leveling the playing field for kids,” she said, “but we forget teachers.”

For newer teachers, the detailed lessons could serve as a scaffold. One newly hired third grade teacher used the units almost as a script, Willard recalled, and the instructional results surprised her. Veteran teachers didn’t always need the same level of support. But they, too, had access to the common routines, texts, and instructional expectations. 

The district had started by trying to address a student learning problem. Along the way, it was also confronting a systems question: How do you make strong instruction less dependent on the experience level of the individual teacher?

Building the plane while flying it

Davidson County Schools didn’t have a polished curriculum waiting at the end of the process. The district was creating the units while teachers were using them. Willard and Fitts continuously reminded stakeholders that they were “building the plane as they were flying it.” 

Each quarter, teachers used the materials and provided feedback. The design team listened, revised, and released the next round.

At the end of the school year, teachers were asked to look back across the entire experience and provide feedback again. The team reconvened during the summer and made more changes.

That feedback loop became important to teacher buy-in. Teachers weren’t simply asked what they thought. They could see their feedback reflected in what came next.

School leaders were part of the process, too. Willard had been clear from the beginning that the third grade units weren’t optional. The data, she believed, showed that the district could not continue doing what it had always done and expect a different result. But a mandate alone wasn’t going to change classroom practice.

Principals spent time examining the data and understanding why the district was making the shift. They carried that understanding back into their schools, into PLCs (professional learning communities), classroom observations, and conversations with teachers.

And then something began happening that the district hadn’t mandated. Fourth grade teachers started asking for the units.

“Why can’t we have something like that?” Willard remembers them asking.

The work began expanding into fourth grade. At Davis-Townsend, fifth grade teachers wanted in, too.

What had started as a required response to a third grade reading problem was beginning to spread because teachers were asking to be part of it.

And within one year, third grade reading proficiency increased 10 percentage points.

“We are proud of the progress our third grade students have made,” Willard said. “This growth reflects the hard work of our students, the dedication of our teachers, and the continued support of our families.”

But she was quick to add that the gains are not the finish line.  

“While we are pleased with these gains, we know our work is not done,” Willard said. “We remain committed to strengthening literacy instruction through expanding our ELA Knowledge Building Units into other grade levels, providing targeted support, and ensuring that every student develops the reading skills and knowledge needed for continued success.”

Davidson County School’s story started with declining third grade reading scores. But somewhere along the way, the problem the district was trying to solve became bigger than a test score.

North Carolina has invested heavily in helping teachers understand the science of reading. This district’s experience raises the question of what comes next: What does it take to move that knowledge from professional learning into daily classroom practice consistently, across teachers, classrooms, and schools?

Davidson County School leaders didn’t answer that question with another training or wait for a finished solution. They started with the data and brought teachers into the work. They tried something, listened, changed it, and tried again. The plane is still being built. But now, more teachers are asking to get on.