Spotlight California: When every secondary teacher becomes a reading teacher

Snapshot

Demographics for Shandon High School

• Black or African American 1.2%
• Hispanic or Latino 88%
• White  10.8%
• English Learners 34.9%
• Unhoused 8.4%
• Socioeconomically Disadvantaged 74.7%
• Students with Disabilities 21.7%

Registered students

• Shandon High School: 63
• Shandon Elementary: 151 total students
• 7th and 8th grade students: 24
• Parkfield Elementary: 12

Implementing the District Literacy Program for grades 7–12

Shandon Joint Unified School District is a small district in San Luis Obispo County, serving the towns of Shandon (2020 census population: 1,168) and Parkfield, a very small town 29 miles north in neighboring Monterey County. The town of Shandon covers an area of 3 square miles. Parkfield sits directly on the San Andreas Fault, giving it the nickname “Earthquake capital of the world.” The area’s economy is agriculture-based, with ranches and several large vineyards employing many residents.

The district has three schools—Shandon Elementary School (TK-8), Shandon High School, and Parkfield Elementary School (K-6, one-room schoolhouse). In the 2024-2025 school year, after lots of honest discussions, they formally acknowledged the serious challenge they’d been struggling with for a few years. Every teacher in grades 7 through 12 was finding across all subjects that their students were not reading at or near grade level.

At the 2026 Plain Talk About Literacy and Learning Conference in March, the 95 Percent Group team had an opportunity to speak with four key members of the team: Superintendent Dr. Kristina Benson, special education teacher Diane Bryson, social sciences teacher Dayna Sciocchetti, and Deanna Morton, a teacher in the agricultural science department. They shared their work designing and implementing their innovative District Literacy Program in response to the serious reading challenges of their middle and high school students.

Using data to shed light on the problem

When instructors said they had a literacy problem, Superintendent Dr. Kristina Benson listened. She described what happened next: “We started by doing a pretty deep data dive to determine approximately what our average reading scores were.” The data showed high school students’ reading scores were not even at 8th grade level.

The response

They got to work on a solution immediately. Dr. Benson describes how they looked at scores from their universal screener and then administered diagnostic progress monitoring using 95 Phonics Screener for Intervention™ to help them group students for literacy intervention.

Next, in 2025-2026, they reviewed and changed the master schedule to support a common period across middle and high school to provide intervention to all students at the same time each day. Benson explained, “Because we have shared staff between Shandon High School and Shandon Elementary School which includes our 7th and 8th grades, and the classrooms are on the same campus, we were easily able to include the seventh and eighth grade students in with the high school students in our District Literacy Program.”

Every teacher was assigned a literacy level. They placed teachers with the most knowledge in the science of reading where the need was greatest. They grouped students with teachers who they felt were compatible and capable of providing the instruction needed.

Special education teacher Diane Bryson explains how all teachers became reading teachers: ”…the math teacher, the science teacher, PE teachers—they all became reading literacy teachers teaching either foundational skills, grade level skills, or enrichment skills, depending on the groups of students they had.”

The teachers’ experience

Deanna Morton is a teacher in the agriculture science department. She spoke candidly: “Honestly, I think I could speak for most of the teachers that we all felt a little overwhelmed by this process. But at the same time I think we recognized we’re all kind of running, working very hard because we’re passionate and we were getting nowhere.

“The bottom line was this: our students couldn’t accept or comprehend any context of our subject matter. Our textbooks were way too advanced. The students were lacking in many skills. In essence, we were working against one another by not coming together…

“…And in just a matter of a quarter, I’ve already seen the difference with my science students saying ‘Ms. Morton, that’s what we learned in 4th period reading group!’

“Exactly. That’s a prefix, that’s a suffix. They’re naming the parts of speech. They’re putting it together. They are now taking on the challenge of reading a difficult paragraph because it’s maybe not as scary to them anymore to try.

“And so that seems like a really little hurdle. But in my world, that’s a huge hurdle because now we’re talking about it. We’re not afraid to say I don’t know what that is. So it’s really opened up a lot of doors.”

Every teacher a reading teacher

Superintendent Benson explained how they addressed the all too common notion that elementary school teachers should have done this work in the earlier grades, or that those elementary teachers were doing something wrong.

“First of all, I was super fortunate that my teachers saw the disconnect in their individual classes and in their disciplines and wanted to do something to make their subject matter come alive for their students. And so they wanted to do it to bring that clarity to their classrooms.

“But they were also willing to take the plunge and say, ‘OK, I’ll teach reading. I do math, but I’ll teach reading, or I do science or history, but I’ll try reading.’ Because they saw that in their disciplines, reading was a big barrier to their students.”

This led to all the teachers understanding and accepting that they’re part of this responsibility.

Successes across school

Superintendent Benson shared the growth they are seeing in the six or seven months since they began: “For me, I’m looking at the data of all the students and I’m seeing increases in data across all students, whether they be our EL students, our General Ed, our Special Ed. We’re seeing growth for all of those groups and for me it is very reassuring that we really stepped out there and it worked.

“And we’re not done. We know that we have a lot more to do, but what we are doing is working and moving and changing the master schedule. That was a big undertaking, but the teachers were willing to try. And I think that was a big part of it—everyone was willing to try. And now we have seen the success of our students and I think that’s really helped a lot of us.”

Success in social sciences

Dayna Sciocchetti teaches 4th period comprehension strategies in her class. She recounts what it was like in the beginning, “…it was very difficult for my students to even read a paragraph and understand what was being said.”

She explains how their efforts in the reading groups “helped develop their critical thinking skills. It helped them to ask questions. It has made me think about all the things that I assumed that they knew and then didn’t realize, OK, they don’t know these things. These are basics that I thought they would already know at some level. So I’m seeing a lot of success just within my own class. And then in the fourth period reading class, as we shuffled the classes, I’ve seen the kids grow and develop leaps and bounds in that short period of time.”

Success in agriculture science

Deanna Morton teaches in the agriculture science department. Her students tell her that they feel less stressed and anxious. “These are really powerful words, in my opinion, [for] them being able to be learners. When we heard that, we knew we were on the right track.”

Taking the data to the school board

Superintendent Benson tells the story of her teachers going to the school board with their data:

“These are the leaders on campus. They work hard. They’re passionate. They looked at the data and waited. They knew their students were not reading successfully in their classes, but they waited until we had the data to be able to go to the school board and say ‘We know we need to make a change and try something new. What we’ve been doing is not working for our students. The 95 Percent Group resources we’ve identified fit our situation and give us the tools we need to assist us in graduating students who are proficient in reading and have literacy skills to successfully carry them into their futures.”

That approach with the school board was successful.

The students’ reactions

Superintendent Benson shared the student reaction to all the changes: “We do the work of getting the hard data first and then we use that data when we move kids from one reading group to another. They were not necessarily thrilled. They weren’t in classes with their friends. They weren’t necessarily even by grade level. So you might have a junior and a freshman in the same class…No one seems to even notice that anymore. We hear, ‘Which group are you in? Oh, this one.’ And it’s not about their reading levels. They’re more interested in ‘What book are you reading?’ or ‘What are you doing in that class?’”

Benson is clear: “I have heard no student comments about rank—no ‘You’re in the upper group, You’re in the lower group’ because we just don’t treat it that way. You’re in comprehension group or you’re in the vocabulary group or whatever it happens to be.”

She shares the good news: “Students really haven’t pigeonholed themselves into believing they’re in a group. That just happens to be their reading group. And it might change in eight weeks and they may stay the same.”

Social studies teacher Dayna Sciocchetti adds: “Initially, I think they thought, ‘Well, this is another class. It’s going to be more task-oriented and I’m going to have homework.’ But then once they got in there and understood that we were dealing with those situations in the here and now, and it wasn’t just something extra for them and that it was helping them with their other classes, I think that is what they became encouraged about it and why they like it and why, like I said to you earlier, our student Katie said ‘I love to read.’ That’s huge!”

Assessments became more accurate

Superintendent Benson mentioned an important change in how students related to benchmark testing and diagnostics. She explained that when they started the transition, their benchmark testing wasn’t a true good measure. It became clear that not all students were serious in taking the tests…they were just filling in answers. “When we moved from a whole room of people taking a test to kids being accountable to one person in the one-on-one diagnostics, I think we got much better data.” She continued, “When you base decisions on where students are going to go in the master schedule, knowing that you have solid data is important. Tests began to mean something to the kids rather than just filling in bubbles because now it mattered what reading group you were going to. It really has brought a lot of our assessments closer to a true assessment of what they’re doing in their classes and what their abilities are.”

Accreditation success

Another positive outcome was in the state WASC accreditation process. WASC (Western Association of Schools and Colleges) is a regional accrediting association. It is one of four regional accrediting agencies in the United States, and works closely with the Office of Overseas Schools under the U.S. Department of State.

Deanna Morton (agriculture science teacher) explained: “The head of our WASC committee really complimented the school and all of us for being willing to take that step and leap of faith to make the changes and also said how he wished he would see more of this at the high school level because of what it’s doing for our students. That was a great affirmation for us as a group.”

Special education teacher Diane Bryson added, “I do attribute the reading program to one of the number one reasons why our accreditation went so well.”

Advice for other districts and conference organizers

Benson has one especially urgent message: “This is not just a literacy conference topic. This topic needs to be at my admin conference, this topic needs to be at places where the administrators are challenged to listen to the people in the trenches and take the information. Yes, they need to do the data because it’s the business of school from an administrative point of view but this information needs to transcend into different conferences and different places so that administrators can see the importance of this grassroots idea.”

Benson doubled down on grassroots as a keyword. “This was a grassroots idea at Shandon. We started it at Shandon High School and then we brought in 7th and 8th grade and now we’re going to move into the elementary school. We did it backwards. But we started with the people that were very passionate about it. And we started with the data that we had and we moved forward from there.

“I think we’re seeing really positive outcomes. But it started with people listening to each other and people knowing what was important to our graduating seniors.”

Deanna Morton shared her perspective on challenges ahead. She emphasized how secondary programs need to be an important contributor to the evolving conversation about the science of learning, especially reading and writing. “We’re an essential part of our curriculum. Our secondary programs need to be part of this conversation. Why are we not mandated to be reading teachers too? We are reading teachers.

“It’s just that we’ve had an assumption of how teachers come with this skill set so we can impart our knowledge of our subject matter and grow on that. But that’s not the case anymore. And I think we need to be willing to look at that. That’s the challenge.”

Looking ahead

Diane Bryson wrapped up the conversation with what’s next for the team: “I would say one important piece that we’ll add into what we’re already doing is the morphology piece. So we knew it would be messy in the beginning, but I think we did a pretty good job figuring out what we needed to accomplish and where we needed to go.

“We’re currently using 95 Vocabulary Surge, 95 Comprehension, 95 Multisyllable Routine Cards, 95 Readables, and Spellography. We will be adding Morpheme Magic. Then I think we will have a pretty good bundle of resources to provide our students. It is validating to come to a conference of this magnitude and hear the speakers because it definitely validates what we’re doing regardless of the fact that we’re at the middle school and high school level.

“And it’s always refreshing to see all the representatives from 95 Percent Group help guide us through this process…I think that in the following years, we will have a pretty good system down. And I hope to see a lot of success from our students, and like we’ve all reiterated, graduating students who are at least reading at an eighth grade level, if not beyond.”

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