Roughly half of Texas students read below grade level, but when teachers craft lessons to help them, they often rely on instructional materials that aren’t rigorous enough.
Many teachers use search engines to help them build their lessons — and if you Google for “grade five reading materials,” one story that comes up is called Tuttle the Turtle. That passage is more reflective of a third-grade reading level than that of a fifth grader, Texas’ top education official said.
Students need to be exposed to grade-level lessons, filled with new ideas and vocabulary, to grow into strong readers, Education Commissioner Mike Morath emphasized.
The Texas Education Agency spent roughly three years piloting a state-specific set of instructional materials for reading, which it made public Wednesday. The lessons are highly structured, aligned with state standards and accessible for all teachers to download — for free, Morath said.
“This was built from the ground up for Texas,” he said.
Temple ISD Superintendent Bobby Ott, whose schools piloted the instructional materials, said the lessons “led to double-digit gains in the percentage of our students reading on grade-level.”
The teaching materials “represent a major step forward in giving our students access to rich reading lessons that integrate history, literature, science, and the arts, while ensuring students receive instruction grounded in phonics and the science of teaching reading,” Ott said in a statement.
The State Board of Education will likely vote on the lessons in November, along with textbooks from several other publishers. If members give their seal of approval, it will enable districts to tap into extra state funding meant to encourage schools to use proven high-quality instructional materials.
Texas schools have wide latitude in selecting lesson plans and can source their materials from a range of publishers. Local districts would not be required to use the state’s product.
The materials are dubbed the Open Education Resources textbooks. The public can read them and offer comments at the agency’s website through August. Teams of teachers and instructional experts will also review them as part of the state’s process.
“The ‘open’ means that it’s owned by the taxpayers. It’s free for people to use and, as a state, we can edit it over time,” Morath said.
The commissioner added that the instructional materials are intended to reflect Texas’ values. In a sampling of the pages reviewed by The Dallas Morning News, religious information was weaved into several lessons.
Too often, Morath said, the instructional materials used by teachers aren’t aligned with what the state officials have decided students should be learning. An agency study of 27 school districts found that only 19% of elementary reading assignments were at grade level or higher.
The Open Education Resources — OER — was built to hit those standards, Morath said.
For example, instead of Tuttle the Turtle, he said fifth graders should be reading complex passages about the Italian Renaissance — something that introduces them to fresh ideas and complex vocabulary words.
“It’s not beyond a fifth grader. It’s not beneath a fifth grader,” he said. “It’s appropriate grade-level text.”
What could Texas students learn?
In the youngest grades, the new lesson plans are explicit about how students must be taught to read. Morath said they are based on what’s known as the Science of Reading, which focuses on the core sounds that make up words based on research about the way the brain decodes language.
Texas has emphasized this approach in recent years, requiring all kindergarten through third grade teachers to complete a “Reading Academy” focused on science-backed strategies. After pandemic setbacks, reading scores rebounded.
The new instructional materials are also designed to build layers of knowledge. In kindergarten, students will do a unit on the five senses. Then, in second grade, they’ll read about the human body and nutrition. The next year, they’ll go deeper on reading about the body’s systems.
The reading lessons are designed to spiral in other subject areas: The passages about nutrition tap into science. The units about the Italian Renaissance tie into social studies.
Like all Texas teaching materials, they must adhere to what’s known as the state’s “anti-critical race theory” law.
The law prohibits teaching certain concepts about race. It urges educators to teach only that slavery and racism are “deviations” from the founding principles of the United States though several Founding Fathers owned slaves.
It also states that teachers can’t “require an understanding of The 1619 Project,” an award-winning initiative of The New York Times that sought to reframe American history around slavery’s consequences and the contributions of Black people.
“We want to ensure that it’s a good reflection of Texas values — totally built for Texas and our legal environment and our standards,” Morath said.
The News has not reviewed the many thousands of pages of instructional materials. The agency did provide The News with a snapshot of some lesson plans.
A preview of second grade reading units shows lessons titled, “The Problem of Slavery,” “The Great Awakenings and the Founders” and “The Abolitionists.”
Some religious values are woven into the lessons, such as a kindergarten unit on “The Golden Rule.”
“Jesus said that the Golden Rule sums up, or combines, all of the other rules described throughout the Bible into one, ‘So in everything, do unto others as you would have done unto you,’” reads one lesson.
Officials said religious context can give students the ability to more deeply understand literary references and historical events.
For example, students learn about the biblical allusions in Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
Lessons are accompanied by a stock letter that can be sent home to families to alert them about what students are learning in class. The units are available for parents to review online, in compliance with state standards.
Based on feedback from the pilot stage, state officials bolstered reading lessons focused on World War II and the Holocaust.
Structured learning
The lessons in the state’s new resource may feel familiar to Dallas teachers.
This year, the district rolled out new district-wide instructional materials called Amplify that includes structured plans for how teachers move through class.
It provides detailed outlines for class discussions, vocabulary word review and readings in allotted time chunks.
Amplify provided the Texas Education Agency with a framework for its new materials, but state officials revamped much of the content and readings. Morath said the Open Education Resources are a product of Texas, not Amplify.
In Dallas, Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde said that prior to implementing this type of instruction districtwide, the quality of the lessons students received varied across Dallas ISD. Teachers used different lesson plans and moved at different paces, something that was particularly challenging for children who switched schools midyear.
The structured nature of the lessons “can benefit both new and experienced teachers,” said Ott, the Temple superintendent.
“For new-to-the-profession teachers, having a roadmap can be invaluable, on what to teach and how to teach content,” he said.
A new state law provides districts with a stipend — $40 per-student — to support the use of high-quality lessons.
The State Board of Education will vote not just on the Open Education Resources, but also on a broad range of submitted instructional materials.
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.
