LET'S TALK EARLY LITERACY
The state of Minnesota, under the leadership of Governor Walz has enacted a new law effective for the 2020-21 school year that is asking MPS to screen and identify struggling readers K-12 for "characteristics of dyslexia", communicate those issues to families, develop a plan to address student's literacy problems and report to the state the efforts and numbers of students identified.
A letter, signed by over sixty parents and community members, requesting specific information on MPS’ response to the new law, 20 testimonials sharing children’s literacy struggles in MPS, and an additional information packet bringing together a collection of articles and podcasts on literacy, current test scores, and a FastBridge breakdown of test subcomponents was sent to MPS Superintendent Graff, the MPS Cabinet as well the MPS School Board.
Private testimonials and additional signers of letter were not included in this public website.
If you would like to share a public testimonial to be published on this site, have a literacy advocacy question or observation you would like to share, please submit on the Contact page.
MPS Board will be discussing early literacy at their December 2020 Committee of the whole meeting. Access our letter for this meeting here.
View MPS December 15th 2020, Committee of the Whole Meeting on Literacy.
Below are three posts sharing our letter, MPS Assessment Data and MPS' response to our letter.
The Additional Resources tab has articles on this law and a selection of research articles and podcasts on early literacy.
Join us on Facebook to discuss these issues further.
-Sara Spafford Freeman & David Weingartner, MPS Parents
