Spotlight Texas: Literacy thrives in Glen Rose
Discover how real schools are making real progress. In this three-part spotlight series, we’re showcasing how districts like Glen Rose Independent School District are turning evidence-based literacy practices into real results—and transforming reading outcomes for their students.
Snapshot: Glen Rose Elementary
- Location: Small, rural district outside of Fort Worth, Texas
- 499 students in preK3-2
- 37% Black, Hispanic, and Native American
- 48% free and reduced lunch
- 12% English learners
- 13% students with specific learning disabilities
- 39% of students have an IEP, not including speech therapy
- Title 1 school—48% economically disadvantaged
The 86th Texas Legislature passed House Bill 3 (HB 3) in 2019, requiring all kindergarten through third grade teachers and principals to attend and complete Reading Academies aligned with the science of reading that covers teaching the foundational skills of reading. The 87th Texas Legislature extended the completion requirement to the end of the 2022-2023 school year.
We first spoke with Mehgan Schuelke, M.Ed, educational diagnostician, reading specialist, and interventionist at Glen Rose Elementary School in 2022. The school had been seeing a lack of growth in reading skills among students, and they were feeling the pressure of getting all their teachers and principals through the Reading Academies before the looming deadline. They were in the midst of a significant transformation in practice and culture.
To prepare for the shift to phonics in the fall of 2021, reading specialist Mehgan Shuelke and her team selected several products from the 95 Percent Group Ecosystem—95 Percent’s Phonics Core Program™ for whole-class instruction, along with 95 Phonological Awareness Screener for Intervention™, 95 Phonics Screener for Intervention™, and Phonics Lesson Library™ and 95 Phonics Chip Kits™.
They saw significant improvement: At the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, they had 37% of kindergarteners, 25% of first graders, and 30% of second graders identified as at-risk readers. By the end of the year, those numbers had changed dramatically: only 12% of kindergarteners, 11% of first graders, and 15% of second graders were at risk.
Recently we followed up with Mehgan Schuelke to ask about progress in the last two school years.
How has this new requirement in the 2024-2025 school year for all teachers and principals to complete the Reading Academies worked for Glen Rose Elementary School? What effects are you seeing?
All of our teachers and our principal and vice principal have been through the Reading Academy. It is ongoing since we have new teachers this year. I have nine new teachers and they are all going through the Reading Academy. I like it because it gives us a chance to sit down and talk about what they’re learning. The Reading Academy is broken down into 10 modules. For example, one of them is assessment so we discuss the importance of assessment in reading, and what it looks like for our grade. Some great conversations come out of it and better understanding overall.
How have you experienced a difference between the beginning of The Reading Academy in 2021 and now when everyone has been through the modules? How has this impacted students and your school culture?
I can tell that everyone understands the importance of phonics and phonological awareness now. They’re also really embracing what dyslexia looks like versus a different type of learning disability. Intervention looks different now. Our conversations with parents are different. Teachers are not sending home spelling lists this year. They are actually looking forward to the assessments on Fridays that help them to see what they’ve taught students, what students have learned, and not what they’ve memorized. I’ve definitely seen a shift to a focus on the importance of “what I am teaching throughout the day…and what my kids are getting from me.”
When you say intervention looks different, how does it look different?
We are able to break kids down into specific skill groups now where before when a child was struggling with reading, we would just put them in a reading group. Now we are specific and very intentional with what we’re seeing and what we’re able to do. We might have a CVC phonics group (of course we use 95 Percent Group), or it might be that the student is struggling with blends so we will put them in a group specific to practicing blends…we’re more intentional with our interventions.
I pull out the at-risk students. And we keep the students in the classroom who are not quite benchmark, but not quite not at risk, and do small group Interventions with progress monitoring every two weeks. Four of us will pull out of the classroom if we need that many—we try to keep it at four to five students. Then the teachers will keep the other kids and manage small groups in their classroom.
How have 95 Percent Group products contributed to teacher professional learning?
I’ve trained all my new teachers on 95 Phonics Core Program®, and I just especially love the beginning of the manual. It really breaks down the science of teaching reading and the purpose of every component in the program.
95 Percent Group sent me a walkthrough form to help me go into classrooms and check for consistency. My new teachers are doing an amazing job. They really understand the importance of teaching according to the science of reading. I think the manual is a big part of it. I thought it was written very well. It has been making it very easy for teachers to get up and running quickly. It doesn’t require a lot of additional professional development because it’s written so well. And it’s scripted. We love the online piece to it also. It helps a lot.
Our teachers have been transitioning from balanced literacy. They’ve also been transitioning to new grade levels. So, for instance, I have a 4th grade teacher who just came down to 2nd grade. So 4th grade phonics looks very different. Phonological awareness is not in 4th grade. She’s having to teach a lot of new content. But I think that training with them has made them feel more comfortable about doing it. And they look great working with the students.
Can you talk about what you are using today and why?
We use 95 Phonics Core Program for whole group instruction, and we use the 95 Phonemic Awareness Screener for Intervention™ and the 95 Phonics Screener for Intervention™ (now called 95 Phonemic Awareness Suite™) to place students in small groups if they need more work in skills. Then we use the 95 Phonics Lesson Library™and the 95 Phonics Chip Kit™ with students who need more work on specific skills.
For assessments, the state requires us to use DIBELS®. The interventionists and I are the ones who use the assessments from 95 Percent Group to know specifically what skills we need to support students in. And DIBELS identifies letter sounds overall. So your product gives us more specific information for intervention groups.
Let’s talk about the data for the past two years.
In the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, many students were below average on their literacy skills. You used the 95 Phonics Screener for Intervention to monitor students in a consistent way so you could progress as many students as possible from intervention into whole group instruction. You reported that more than 85% of second graders students were in Tier 1, whole group instruction by June of that year.
What did you see in the 2022-23 school year?
37% of our kindergartners were at risk in the beginning of the year. By the end of the year, only 15% were at risk, with 7% of those students at-risk for dyslexia.
In first grade, 13% of students were at-risk at the beginning of year. At the end of the year, 4% of 1st grade students were at-risk.
In grade 2, 33% of students were found to be at-risk at the beginning of year for reading. At the end of year, only 6% of students were at-risk. These same students were part of our first implementation of DIBELS and 95 Percent Group. They entered kindergarten with 45% of them being at-risk for reading—these students were the year after the Covid pandemic and many of them did not attend pre-K or a daycare setting.
And what did you see for the 2023-2024 year?
We were at 84% overall students in Tier 1 at the end of 2023-24 so we’re staying pretty steady. And actually, of that 84%, 2% of them were identified as SPED, but still Tier 1 for us, because of the progress. This is what we’re seeing. Our students that end up being dyslexic, or have a reading disability, and go into special education—they’re not very far behind. Whereas a long time ago they still might not know their letters and sounds. Now that is not the case at all. The gap closes much quicker and we get them back out of special education much faster.
Here’s the breakdown by grade for 2023-24: In kindergarten, 31% of students were at risk BOY, and 13% of them were at-risk EOY.
In first grade, 17% of students were at risk BOY and 14% were at-risk EOY. We had a few growing pains with this grade during the 23-24 school year. 95 Percent Group was not being implemented with integrity. We decided as a campus to do a refresher training and set a goal for 90% of students to be at Tier 1.
In second grade, 29% of students were at risk BOY. That was down to 6% at EOY.
What has been the district focus for the 2024-2025 school year?
Our goal is to see 90% of our students in Tier 1. So far this year, first grade has already hit that mark. 90% of students in Tier 1 is a campus-wide goal for us because we feel like it is definitely possible. So we are beefing up Tier 1 instruction. In the last few years, we’ve had a lot of turnover. If you look at our data, the average teacher has been here for over 20 years. So now, having many new and younger teachers, we’re definitely focusing back on Tier 1 instruction. We are making sure that 95 Percent Group is implemented with integrit—keeping to the format, routines and language, but always with the focus on the students—and we’re really, really looking at our data because we know that it’s possible to hit 90% in Tier 1.
The 95 Percent Group implementation check that I was sent has been helping us make sure we’re all on the same page. The other interventionist and I, and then our two principals will go in and out of the classrooms, and do quick checks just to make sure that they’re definitely following the scripts. Right now we do that a few times a week with everybody. I know when walking into a room if it’s been done or not. And the kids where it’s not being done didn’t progress like the kids where it is.
I think that says a lot about the product itself. We know that the program works for us. So we’re just making sure it’s done correctly so we can reach our campus goal of 90% in Tier 1.
My principal took Reading Academy with me when we first started, and then so did our vice principal. Our vice principal is a kindergarten teacher, so she very much understands our age level, and what a classroom should be like.
I do see that teachers are taking ownership within their grades. I don’t show data by teacher. I’m showing everything by grade. They are taking ownership of that data and wanting it to be better. And you know that’s what we want. We want them to understand why we’re doing it.
Now that we have them progress monitoring every few weeks—they really, really like that. Our campus has been known to not want to do things that mean more work, but they’ve seen the benefits of seeing that progress and learning how to change and adapt interventions to help those kids’ lines go up. And so that’s been a big change for them. We implemented that last year, and they love it now.
What is your strategy to get to your 90% in Tier 1 goal across K-2?
We’re doing a lot more coaching this year. As I mentioned, I have nine new teachers that I’m mentoring. I have four coaching sessions with each of them. So that’s going to help, I think. And then for other teachers, our principals are going in to do some coaching as well. We created a new walkthrough observation form looking for specific things that will help us reach that 90%, especially in Tier 1. So, we did create a couple of new things that we think will help us. For example, if they’re not doing explicit feedback, or if there’s something else they’re not doing, we’re able to note that. Then we know what we need to do in our next PLC, or in our next instruction for the teachers.
Everybody typically hates the beginning of the year with all the things they have to sit through. This year we all had a great time. We had lots of fun. We talked about 95 Percent Group. We talked about all these different things that we’re going to do and everyone was super responsive. So I’m excited about the school year overall, and the new teachers and the old teachers that we have, and just how they’re all coming together and changing their minds.
What advice do you have for other educators just starting on the journey?
We’ve had many teachers who taught balanced literacy for years, and at first, it was hard.
But now they’ve seen the progress, and they’ve understood that it’s worth it. It’s all about the progress. We used to have half our classes that couldn’t read at all, or didn’t know letters, and now it’s rare to have one student in a class. It’s rare to have two in a grade level. So we’re making so many strides. That’s what I would say—stick with it, because it will pay off.
Any closing thoughts?
I think my biggest thing is this—we love the hand motions and all of the routines—they follow them all the way to 3rd grade. Even my dyslexia therapist has said that if students have been doing 95 Phonics Core Program but then start seeing her, the language and routines transfer smoothly. So she is not teaching something completely different from us. The kids will say to her, “Oh, I’ve learned this.” They know it, and they’re remembering it. Our therapists definitely like it a lot.
Conclusion
After we spoke with Mehgan Schuelke about Glen Rose Elementary K3-2, she set up a meeting for us with literacy educator and curriculum coordinator Tiffinie Pounds, and Debbie Morris, principal of preK3-2 who gave us her perspective on the progress made since they first implemented the program in the 2021-2022 school year. It’s a great conversation. Check out part 3 of the Spotlight Texas series, Literacy transformation in Glen Rose, here. And if you missed part 1, you can read it here.
