Join Us! Vermont Action for Structured Literacy! 

By Brittany Lovejoy, IDA-NNEA Board Member

Vermonters are ramping up to organize and promote recommendations for structured literacy and dyslexia screening at the local and state levels. Momentum for positive change has skyrocketed since the October 2023 publication of Alison Novak’s article in Seven Days, “Reading Reckoning: Too Many Vermont Kids Struggle to Read. What Went Wrong — and Can Educators Reverse a Yearslong Slide in Literacy?”

Since Novak’s article, IDA-NNEA members have met weekly to draft recommendations to address her call to significantly improve student reading proficiency in Vermont and strategize ways to advocate for the introduction of recommendations into the Vermont State Legislature for passage by June 2024. The drafted bill includes five major components: 

I. State leadership and accountability

II. Systematic assessment of reading proficiency: student screening and progress monitoring, including response to instruction

III. Curriculum and instruction

IV. Educator training

V. Preservice training

We need your help! This is the time to make a real difference! Here’s how you can get involved! 

Take Action Now!

• Share your own experience highlighting the need for improved literacy in Vermont by emailing Vermont State Representative Tesha Buss, a strong advocate for passing a bill that will lead to thousands more children learning to read! Her email address is: tbuss@leg.state.vt.us
• Contact teach.VT2read@gmail.com to receive email updates on the bill’s progress and next action steps, to get support with advocacy, or to join our planning meetings.
• Discover and share resources:
• Alison Novak’s Seven Days article Reading Reckoning
• Sarah Carr’s powerful new report in Scientific American that features a Vermont story, A Flawed Way of Diagnosing Dyslexia Leaves Thousands of Kids without Help
• Emily Hanford’s podcast, Sold a Story or an abridged version on Reveal
• Write or call your state senators and representatives to express your support for the bill, and, if you choose, offer to testify and share your perspective on the reading crisis and how we can teach nearly every Vermont student to read. 
• Contact your local school board representatives and superintendent’s office to ask about literacy curriculum, instruction, and assessment and teacher training in your district.
• Write letters to the editor of local and state papers and other media outlets and post your support on social media sites. 
• Educate family, friends, and neighbors about how children learn to read and what our state needs to improve.

Over the years I have supported many parents with children who have dyslexia. Without a screening or structured-language law, parents have found themselves needing to heavily advocate for their children to be tested and remediated. At times they search for support blindly – their children’s schools refuse to acknowledge the problem or don’t know how to remediate dyslexia. Their stories can break your heart and financial costs can be enormous. Some students have fallen so far behind their peers, that they experience low self-esteem and social anxiety. 

When schools do not provide early, effective instruction, and wait for students to fail, parents find themselves desperate. I am frequently contacted by parents looking for tutors, seeking support in their request for an educational evaluation, or help navigating the special-education system. I find that I need to teach them, not only about the evaluation and special-education eligibility process and politics within the process, but also the learning needs of children with dyslexia and the importance of a well-trained literacy specialist to provide that instruction. 

Thank you so much for your support. We need a strong structured literacy bill to protect educators and the children and families of Vermont. The vitality of our state’s future depends on it.