Interesting Hearing in Senate Today.  The Senate E-12 Finance and Policy Committee tackled the reading issue today and the key word (or acronym) is LETRS.  LETRS stands for Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling.  LETRS is a nationally-recognized suite of staff development products that has shown to help improve reading scores in states and school districts where it is employed.

The hearing started out with a reports from Dr. Christy Hovanetz, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Excellence in Education, and Dr. Amy Schulting, the Dyslexia Specialist at the Minnesota Department of Education.  The verdict in both reports is that Minnesota's scores are solid for white students, but scores for students of color lag behind national averages, which is the primary contributor to the achievement gap that exists in Minnesota.

Given this background, Senator (and Committee Chair) Carla Nelson has introduced SF 2989 and SF 2990, bills that would direct revenue toward LETRS from the compensatory formula and literacy incentive aid to provide staff development to all teachers of reading in the state.  It is important to note that the portion of the compensatory formula that would be re-directed is currently dedicated toward extended time aid.  As was made clear during the hearing, it is not compensatory revenue in its entirety.  This is different from the literacy incentive aid, all of which would go toward these staff development efforts.  After adopting some clarifying amendments, Senator Nelson combined her two bills into one bill and will move it forward in that fashion.  It is also important to point out that this bill has no price tag as it only changes policy as it relates to a portion of a district's compensatory revenue and it's literacy incentive aid.

The committee also heard Senator Roger Chamberlain's bill--SF 3187--that would appropriate $1,000,000 to be dispensed to districts in the form of grants to provide staff development under LETRS.

It all looks good.  One problem that might occur is that the statutes rarely designate a provider when creating a grant program.  There are creative ways around that problem, but it is doubtful (at least from my experience) that there would be a mandate that spelled out LETRS as the provider.

Here is a link to the LETRS program.  The program is a bit on the pricey side when it comes to cost/teacher, but there is no question that it is highly regarded and is showing results where employed.

LETRS

Constitutional Amendment Introduced in the House.  It seems like just yesterday (Hey! It was just yesterday.) when I wrote that the proposed constitutional amendment promoted by retired Justice Alan Page and Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neil Kashkari had yet to be introduced.  Voila!  It was introduced today as HF 3658, with St. Paul area Representative Rena Moran serving as chief author.  There are 33 authors and 25 are Republicans.  I don't know the calculus on that and it will be interesting to see the mix of Senate authorship.  Stay tuned.