With Utah's recent passing of Senate Bill 127, a sweeping piece of literacy legislation, many are turning to the state as a model of what statewide implementation of the Science of Reading can look like. In this episode, Dr. Jennifer Throndsen, Director of Teaching and Learning at Utah State Board of Education, joins Susan to tell the story of how Senate Bill 127 came to be and how they are continuing to make changes to schools across Utah. Together, they discuss what the bill included, the opportunities and challenges the bill provides when it comes to implementation, and advice for other states looking to enact literacy legislation. Throndsen also discusses her experience as a teacher and her journey with the Science of Reading.
Additional resources:
Quotes:
"Our students are the state's greatest asset, and we need to invest in them with all the energy and knowledge we have to do our best to serve them with urgency, compassion, and high expectations." —Jennifer Throndsen
"If kids can't read, that really keeps them from accessing other content areas like science, social studies, and being able to engage in story problems in mathematics." —Jennifer Throndsen
"Being able to read is today's civil right's movement." —Jennifer Throndsen
"With requirements comes resistance. No matter how great the opportunity is." —Jennifer Throndsen
With Utah's recent passing of Senate Bill 127, a sweeping piece of literacy legislation, many are turning to the state as a model of what statewide implementation of the Science of Reading can look like. In this episode, Dr. Jennifer Throndsen, Director of Teaching and Learning at Utah State Board of Education, joins Susan to tell the story of how Senate Bill 127 came to be and how they are continuing to make changes to schools across Utah. Together, they discuss what the bill included, the opportunities and challenges the bill provides when it comes to implementation, and advice for other states looking to enact literacy legislation. Throndsen also discusses her experience as a teacher and her journey with the Science of Reading.
Additional resources:
Quotes:
"Our students are the state's greatest asset, and we need to invest in them with all the energy and knowledge we have to do our best to serve them with urgency, compassion, and high expectations." —Jennifer Throndsen
"If kids can't read, that really keeps them from accessing other content areas like science, social studies, and being able to engage in story problems in mathematics." —Jennifer Throndsen
"Being able to read is today's civil right's movement." —Jennifer Throndsen
"With requirements comes resistance. No matter how great the opportunity is." —Jennifer Throndsen
This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science of Reading: The Podcast. On this sixth season of the show, we've been exploring how different parts of the education system, from the individual classroom up to state government, can do their part to support the Science of Reading. Earlier this season, we brought you the story of a teacher-turned-state senator who has championed literacy legislation in New Mexico. More recently, we highlighted Louisiana's efforts to get more districts to adopt high-quality materials. On this episode, we're spotlighting a piece of legislation out of Utah with a big goal—getting 70% of third graders reading on grade level by July 1, 2027. To reach that big goal, Utah has implemented a number of changes. To unpack this sweeping effort, I'm joined by Jennifer Throndson, Director of Teaching and Learning at the Utah State Board of Education. Dr. Throndson shares the opportunities and challenges that come with pushing for big changes. For listeners living in a state or country where big goals are also needed, I think it will be fascinating to take a closer look at what's now underway in Utah. Here's my conversation with Dr. Jennifer Throndson. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us on today's episode.
Jennifer Throndson:I'm so excited. Thanks for having me.
Susan Lambert:For sure. Well, before we get started too far into this conversation, I would love if you would just tell our listeners, first of all, your current role. What do you do now and how did you sort of end up this way? Where was your Science of Reading journey? Where did that start?
Jennifer Throndson:Absolutely. So currently I'm the Director of Teaching and Learning at the Utah State Board of Education, so I oversee quality instruction in all of the content areas, educator licensing and educator preparation. So a pretty wide job.
Susan Lambert:That's big.
Jennifer Throndson:Yeah, with about 80 staff. So it's a big team trying to do great things for Utah's educators and Utah's kids. But I started in the classroom. I was a first-grade teacher for several years to start my career. And that is where my journey for the Science of Reading began. I entered that classroom mid-year, a teacher left to have a baby, I took over that position in January and realized very quickly I was ill-prepared for this job to teach kids how to read. I didn't know the sounds of the letters. I had been trained more primarily on not the Science of Reading, like, 'Oh, let's take picture walks' and 'Let's use the pictures to help us read' and not so much what the sounds of letters made. And so I would put a letter on the board, and luckily it was the middle of the year, and so some of my kids knew the sounds and I could point to it and say, 'What sound?' And they would tell me, and then I would be like, 'Oh, good. E makes the S sound. Perfect. Mental note made. I'll use that tomorrow.' And luckily I had a phonic space program, Open Court, back in the day at the time. And so it was very helpful for a teacher who hadn't been prepared to teach phonemic awareness and phonics and some of the things we know now are critical to setting that foundation. And so that was how I decided I didn't know enough to kind of do this work, and spent the next few years just trying to develop my skills. Went out and found DIBELS back in the early 2000s and that really started my journey down figuring out what kids needed to advance their reading. And then I became an English language learner coordinator in Alaska, and that was—
Susan Lambert:Wow!
Jennifer Throndson:Eye-opening. I had gotten my ESL endorsement in my first years of teaching. And they're like, 'Oh, great, you have ESL, we'll hire you to be the EL coordinator for our district.' And I was 25 at the time. And so that was its own journey of like, 'Ooh, I'm, again, ill-prepared for this job.' But luckily the district I've worked in partnered with the Consortium on Reading Excellence at the time, which is now CORE, and others, and I got to meet Kevin Feldman and Dr. Kinsella and others that really helped to advance my knowledge and then was able to help our English learner staff advance there . So I just was kind of in the right places at the right time and had a lot of great learning experiences, served as an instructional coach, I've been a district literacy specialist, and then moved to the state as the English language arts coordinator, and then ultimately moved into the director position after five years as the literacy person for the state. So that's been my journey. My master's and doctorate degrees are in math education, but my work has been in reading because that's just where my heart is. That's where I've believed that we can help students really be successful in wherever they want to go and be life ready if they can do the basics of being able to read.
Susan Lambert:That's an amazing journey. Wow . You've done a lot of things in your career, and I know our listeners are gonna say the same thing, is that my heart is happy to hear that somebody at the state level started their journey by sounds and letters. You know, you've done the work and you've been there and you've seen what it's taken to actually get kids to learn to read.
Jennifer Throndson:Yeah, absolutely. What a difference when you actually knew how to teach them those things. Kids, you know, my first year, they were somewhat successful, but as I continued to grow by the end, you know, I had 90% of kids being proficient. And so it was like, okay, there's something here.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. You know, it's a really good point that sometimes it takes you, it takes a teacher or an educator to see the outcome, 'Wow, this really does work when I do it this way.' To get really motivated to sort of keep learning more and more and more about that craft.
Jennifer Throndson:Absolutely.
Susan Lambert:So, when you first started in this role then , at the state level, which—well, first of all, when you were a first-grade teacher halfway through the year, did you ever believe you would be doing what you're doing now?
Jennifer Throndson:No, I didn't even know the state office existed. As a teacher, you're just in your classroom and in your school and you're just happy to be there with your students. So definitely not, it was not my dream to be where I am now. I truly love it, but it was not ever in the cards of planning it, planning forward.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. That's really interesting. So, when you first started in that state-level role, what was it that you found out about teacher knowledge relative to evidence-based practices? And I think it kinda motivated you to do something, right?
Jennifer Throndson:Yeah. So as the literacy coordinator, it quickly became evident I was not the only one who had not experienced the Science of Reading and been taught how to do that. And so, looking at our educator data, we had, you know, a large percentage of teachers who had been trained a decade or more ago. And obviously had not been trained in the Science of Reading. Even some of our programs today are still kind of developing their Science of Reading expertise. So we knew we had a knowledge problem, but it was insufficient to say, like, the assumption of that. So we went out and surveyed our K–3 educators, coaches, and building principles to seek to understand their level of confidence in teaching the Science of Reading. And that data was very telling across the board. Our educators expressed being ill-equipped to teach basic foundational literacy skills such as phonological awareness and phonics. They felt much better with comprehension and writing. But when it came to those early foundational skills , really a deep recognition like self-recognition, this is self-reported, low percentage of confidence, like 40% or less of our teachers were feeling confident in teaching those early foundational skills. And that data, our student data, mirrored that lack of confidence. In Utah, we only have about one in two students reading at grade level by the end of third grade. And our data's pretty static. We've been here for over a decade. If they come in ready, we keep them ready. If they came in not ready, we keep them not ready. And so we really needed to be able to advance our practice to serve students better. And that's where, we were lucky enough with the ESSER funds from COVID relief, to be able to address this knowledge gap for our educators. And so in coordination with our board , our board appropriated 11 million to deepen the knowledge and skills of our educators in the Science of Reading for about half of our school districts. They appropriated 11 million, which was enough to cover half of our school districts and charters to provide all of their K–3 teachers with the opportunity to participate in deep professional learning so that they could impact students with greater capacity.
Susan Lambert:And I'm guessing that teachers embraced this, given the fact that you said this self-reported data showed that they didn't feel like they were prepared. And so was this an opt-in for them? Could they choose to do this?
Jennifer Throndson:Nope!
Susan Lambert:Ahhh.
Jennifer Throndson:That is—so, as with anything that is not opt-in, this was required. This was mandatory.
Susan Lambert:Okay.
Jennifer Throndson:We identified our school districts and and charters that had a number of student groups that were underperforming and said, 'Obviously there's some need in these communities.' Because we had limited dollars, we couldn't serve everyone. We prioritized where the most student need was, and those were the teachers that were required to attend. And with requirements comes resistance. No matter how great the opportunity is, you're gonna have some folks that are like, 'I've got other things to do. This is not my priority right now. Why are you making me do this?' And keep in mind a lot of that resistance came, this was during the second year of COVID that we put teachers through over 75 hours of professional learning. That's a lot of professional learning in a year. And they were just exhausted. There was anger, frustration, outright resistance, like, 'I'm not gonna do that.' Where people had to say, 'This is part of your employment, you will participate in this professional learning and growth opportunity.' But we had other teachers that were very excited, like , 'Great! I'd love to learn more.' But just because you don't feel confident doesn't always say, 'Let me go do things that I don't feel confident in.' That creates its own kind of angst. But by the second session of their professional learning, their hearts were changing. They were loving what they were learning and wondered why they hadn't learned this before, which we all think like, ''Why didn't I get this in school? Why haven't I learned this up until this point?' And so that anger turned to hope. Teachers finally had a stronger toolkit to meet the needs of their students. And we received numerous testimonials of how life-changing this experience had been. We went out and interviewed one of our teachers and she was one of the most angry, resistant at the beginning. And when I interviewed her, she cried because she was so angry. And then going through the professional learning that we offered, she realized how much better she could serve her students. She saw changes in the outcomes for her kids. And those anger tears turned to, like, joy. So that's been pretty consistent when people get to see what happens when they take what they have learned and apply it in the classroom with their students, they just see this difference. We all have those that have been teaching more than a few years that are like, 'Well, what I'm doing is working,' but is it working as well as it could? And that's where our teachers have been consistently great to say, 'What can I do differently to see if this can impact my kids at a higher level?' So we're in the second year of implementation, so it's kind of early to tell how well it's working, but we are essentially back at pre-pandemic levels for literacy achievement in our state. And so that's super exciting, and expect to move from 46% of students being proficient or on benchmark to 70% in the next five years. That's our goal. So we'll see if we can really advance through teacher knowledge, but also the implementation of that knowledge in classrooms to impact our students.
Susan Lambert:Hmm . That's an exciting story of support and investment in teachers for teachers to be better prepared to then make that investment for students.
Jennifer Throndson:Absolutely. And it's not just our teachers. We are taking all our instructional coaches in those schools and districts, their principals as well as school psychologists through this professional learning to ensure that the system has the knowledge and skills, that it is not just dependent on one, but that they have job-embedded coaching support from their coaches, that school psychologists can lean on this knowledge ,and that principals—many of our principals come from secondary settings. The Science of Reading is not in their toolkit. And so they've been able to get advanced knowledge so that when they go in and watch a phonics lesson, they can give feedback that's helpful to continue to improve practice. So it's a systems approach, which has been terrific. And I really think our teachers do feel supported. They have the knowledge, they have the— the time is the challenge. I mean, when you're asking people to do 150-plus hours of professional learning in two years, finding the time for that is hard. But our teachers are taking their weekends and their evenings, and they're doing as much as they can, and sometimes their professional learning community time, to do this learning. And it's been a huge lift on our educators, but they've really risen to the occasion and showed such dedication to their students.
Susan Lambert:That's amazing. So shout out to the Utah educators who are going through this journey together. We see you and thank you for the work that you're investing in this. So Utah made that initial investment in this professional development, but there seemed to be then some urgency at the state level to actually go beyond that. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Jennifer Throndson:Yeah. I honestly, being able to read is today's civil rights movement. So the concern over learning loss due to COVID became this significant driver that created larger conditions of stakeholders to listen to a message we've been sending for several years. I've been at the state office for eight and a half, the story has not changed in the percentage of students who are reading at grade level in that time. And we've gone to the Hill and gotten pieces of bills every year that I've been here and, 'Okay, we'll get some more instructional coaching.' 'Oh, we'll get some more professional learning.' 'We'll get a state benchmark assessment.' All of those things have happened, but they've been parts of the puzzle instead of a comprehensive look. And so now that our data indicated need that we had before COVID, but people were paying attention, it gave that extra push to answer the call of this urgency of, if kids can't read, that really keeps them from accessing other content areas like science and social studies, being able to engage in story problems in mathematics. And so there was this kind of collective energy across the nation that also came here. And that helped. We had a particular legislator, Senator Ann Millner , she's been our early reading champion for several years. And she was one that we often went to with these bills. And she was like, 'It's time to do it all, it's time to stop piece-mealling and let's work together. Let's talk about what we know is working in our community. Let's bring in some experts. Let's learn from Mississippi and let's take that and do here in Utah in our own kind of local context way.'
Susan Lambert:Hmm . That's interesting because when we look across the country, we see states sort of stepping into Science of Reading in different kinds of ways, whether it's, you know, higher ed teacher training, whether it's universal screening, whether it's dyslexia legislation. But Utah decided, 'Okay, we're gonna go in and do it all'? What does it mean, do it all?
Jennifer Throndson:Yes. So the bill that we passed last session in March of 2022 had 27 projects in it. It isn't just about teacher knowledge, it has to be, 'What does the system need to do? What does higher education and preparation programs need to do? How do we support families at home?' So first we had significant instructional implications we put into place that you needed to have evidence-based intervention or supplemental instruction programs and evidence-informed core programs. We had not had that regulation before. We don't have a big Lucy Calkins effort here. We've been kind of kicking that out for several years. It's not , a consistent error in our place, but we definitely still have programs with the three-queuing and some of those red flags, as the Reading League would call it . And so that's been a huge challenge that we'll talk about. Progress monitoring, we require it now that kids have to be progress monitored if they're below or well below benchmark so that you can see if the instruction you're providing is working and you can make adjustments along the way to have more impact. We're also requiring diagnostic assessments . So benchmark tells you they have a fever, but it doesn't necessarily tell you what's wrong. And so requiring, for students that are below and well below, that teachers conduct a diagnostic assessment and say, 'What do I need to work on specifically with you to get your needs met?' Then the professional learning. W,e were able to go to all our K–3 educators, principals, coaches, and school psychologists instead of just half the state. All of our teachers are engaged this year, which is a lot of professional learning happening. But which is awesome, that in two or three years every teacher in the K–3 setting will be professionally developed in the Science of Reading. In our state, we've chosen LETRS as our professional learning pathway, and that's been great. I went through it three times myself as an educator, and so I'm like, 'Oh, you all are gonna learn so much.' And then we also have a requirement for our principals around change management, and it's the principals, their supervisors, an LEA leadership person such as an assistant superintendent over instruction, as well as the literacy director for that entity. And they're having to come together to go through change management training with a focus on literacy. 'What are the things you have to do in the system to create the conditions for successful reading instruction?' And so that's been a huge piece.
Susan Lambert:That's interesting.
Jennifer Throndson:Yeah. And we've got optional training on collective efficacy as we know, When teachers work together, the power of that. Then there's parts for our community. Books into our low-income homes. We also are coordinating community resources to provide training and supports for community engagement, parent engagement, and just developing this kind of community schools approach in a lot of our low-income schools. And then we're hiring professional learning consultants to be supporting all of our LEAs and how to design high-quality professional learning based on the Science of Reading. And so that's been a piece that we'll be able to support all our LEAs as they move out of getting LETRS, there's still gonna be a need for professional learning and ongoing growth and support. And so how do we help build the capacity at the local level to provide that quality content aligned with the Science of Reading, but based on the principles of adult learning theory and how you successfully execute professional learning. And then we also have a Science of Reading panel of experts in the Science of Reading. We were able to get Dr . Angela Rutherford from Mississippi to serve on that. She helped with their initiative, so she helps on that as well as some local faculty. And Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, she's on that panel just to help as a consultancy for the state staff to say, 'Here's what we're working on, what things should we be thinking about, here's the struggles we're having in implementation, what would you recommend?' And then of course we've had to address the teacher preparation pipeline. So a couple of years ago we had put into place that they had to pass a foundations of reading assessment to really be able to hold our preparation programs accountable for preparing teachers adequately to have that foundational knowledge. And so to support them, we've been able to fund some positions for Science of Reading faculty in each of our local universities to provide them with expertise or at least additional expertise in their communities to be able to make those robust programs, as well as requiring our higher education faculty to continue to support educators who maybe don't pass the assessment the first time. It's not on the educator alone, but the higher education preparation institution has to continue to support them until their third attempt of that test, if it takes them that many. And there is no funding, that is just an accountability piece of preparation programs. And finally, we've placed instructional coaches in our lowest performing schools to provide additional expertise in local communities and are developing a digital repository of evidence-based practices and resources to support teachers and families. That is a lot of what is happening right now. Right? Like deep breath.
Susan Lambert:I know, I know. Oh my gosh. There's so much in that bill and I just can't imagine what the planning looked like for bringing all of that built together. How did you accomplish that?
Jennifer Throndson:This was the masterful work of Senator Milner . She is great at convening cross-sector groups to come together and work on complex problems. So she brought in higher education faculty experts. She brought in superintendents from LEA, she brought in researchers, she brought in our United Way partners. She brought in the state office and said, 'We need to solve this problem. We cannot continue on this pathway. We need to see a change. What is it gonna take?' And so we worked for several months leading up to session, drafting this bill, going out and getting feedback, looking at the data to say, 'Where in our system do we have pockets of success? What can we learn from those pockets to spread that success across the state?' And so, working together, those folks spent time looking at the impressive work from Mississippi. We connected with them. Dr. Carey Wright, asked them questions to understand their journey, and we really wanted to close the gap. Our data has been static since the early 2000s, and so we knew we had to do something different. And she was masterful on the Hill, compelling her colleagues , with her great fervor, to persuade them that we needed to invest more in our teachers and, ultimately, our students to change these outcomes. So we were able to achieve 20 million more dollars infused into K–3 reading. We already had about 45 million going into K–3 reading. So this was a pretty substantial additional piece that really allowed us to attack this system-wide instead of parts at a time.
Susan Lambert:Yeah, that makes sense. I have one more question on that, too. You must be looking at this as a long game, right? Continuing to come back, I mean, I think it's one of the things that we see no matter what level of the system that you're at, that starting is easier than continuing, and keeping the focus, or keeping your foot on the pedal. How are you looking at that, in terms of the long game?
Jennifer Throndson:The urgency of getting this bill out and getting things going was great, focused on, 'Okay, we'll help you with curriculum. We'll get some tools you can use to vet the materials that you're buying.' But ultimately what we're most challenged by, and I think we'll continue to be challenged by, is it's one thing to be getting the knowledge and the skills. It's another to apply those in the classroom. So when we're asking, 'How's implementation going,' a lot of the response is, 'Well, our teachers are getting trained.' And what I'm actually working with our curriculum directors across the state today is, training's insufficient for change. We know that teachers can go to professional learning and 5% of them are gonna translate that into practice without follow-up job-embedded coaching and support. And so talking about implementation science, how do we move the dial beyond, the teacher knows it, but are they using what they know in the classroom?
Susan Lambert:Yeah .
Jennifer Throndson:And that's what we'll be focusing on for the next five years, is really implementation of the knowledge and skills they have now and ensuring that they're using that in classrooms. I was just in a classroom , I just spent a day in the classrooms on Tuesday down in Juab School district with our teachers at Mona Elementary. And I , the first classroom I went into was, their kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Drake. And she was masterfully intertwining what she'd learned in LETRS with her core materials. And it was a beautiful thing to watch. And I just had to say to her after, like, 'That was beautiful.' To see the learning that she's taken, and applying it to teach kids? It was just phenomenal. And if we can have more Mrs. Drakes of the world, our kids will be in a very wonderful place in five years, we will have 70% of kids reading at grade level by the end of grade three, which is ultimately not the full goal, but we have to go somewhere. And since we've been hovering around 50 for over a decade, 70 percent's pretty ambitious. But if our teachers take on that challenge and not only take the learning, but apply that learning—but that requires our coaches and our district leaders supporting them and inspecting what we expect, trust yet verify, we have to get in there and make sure it's happening for the sake of our kids and to support our teachers as they advance their practice. So that's where our intense energies will be going for the next several years, is really just implementation. You know now, you know better, let's do better. And how can we support you in doing so?
Susan Lambert:I love that you reference implementation science, it's just been one of those things we've been trying to highlight more and more and more, that there are stages of this, right? So training, like you said, is the very first stage, and that's really, really important. But then how do you translate, and then how do you modify, and how do you sustain? And it's exciting work that you're doing there, but it's hard work, isn't it?
Jennifer Throndson:Absolutely. And you had Doug Reeves on your podcast a little while back, and I think one of our parts in implementation is deimplementation. What do we help tell teachers, 'You can drop this off your plate, you can let this go.' And that is something that I expect over the next couple of years that we're really gonna try and help our literacy directors and curriculum directors and others say, 'What are you taking off teacher's plates? What are you removing even from practice in schools?' We still have some leveled libraries hanging around. How do you repurpose those books and materials to align with the Science of Reading? The Science of Reading does not say, 'Teach kids at grade-level texts. ' The research is strong that you need to teach kids more rigorous texts than they're ready for with appropriate scaffolding and they grow at better rates. How do we help to support that within the constraints and structures within our schools? And so de-implementation for me is almost as important as implementation.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. We've heard a lot of feedback on that episode, too, just with that topic o de-implementation. And you could just dig into that forever and think about how it relates probably both to what you are doing, what you're expecting your districts to do, what you're expecting schools to do, and then what you're expecting teachers to do. But it is a revolutionary concept for sure.
Jennifer Throndson:Absolutely. I was so excited for that episode. Like, we're reaching out to Doug and his team to be like, 'Can you come train us?' So, thank you.
Susan Lambert:That's awesome. When you're thinking about—so, for our listeners that are listening right now, and number one, are just in awe of the comprehensive package that you were able to get through, what would you, in retrospect, what are some of those barriers that you encountered that if you could go back in time, you might do something a little bit differently?
Jennifer Throndson:Yeah. There's two that come to mind. One, when we said, 'Do you need evidence-based and evidence-informed curriculum,' that meant no longer relying on Teachers Pay Teachers and Pinterest. Those are the number two most, when we ask teachers, 'Where do you go to teach reading?' Those are the top two. And we cannot support using such practices when we're teaching such a critical skill. And that was a lot of pushback. Luckily our LEA leaders have really supported that change and are helping their educators, and we're helping them to know, if you need another reading passage, that's an opportunity. You just need more text. You need another decodable that might be appropriate. The practice of how we use that decodable and what we do within that is the science. And so we're trying to help them understand that. But if that's your primary source, where is the vertical alignment? Where is the scope and sequence? Where is the systematic review? It doesn't happen when we use random websites to build our curriculum, so that's been a barrier. Teachers want to hold on to what they've done and being able to set that aside and say, 'I need to use my core program with some modifications.' Use that phonics lesson plan template we have from LETRS and things like that, and pull those pieces together to have an effective literacy instruction routine. The second barrier, honestly, has been enacting our evidence-based expectations on our software program. So in Utah, we have about 12.6 million that's dedicated to providing schools with early reading software products. And in order to comply with changes in policy and the state-approved vendors, we're required to submit evidence of student learning impact of at least a 0.4 effect size in order for the software to be used for students who were struggling. If you were well below or below, you needed to have a product that had demonstrated impact. And so, as you can imagine, this created some turmoil within our software provider community. So much so that there's been a bill on the Hill that passed to remove the evidence-based requirement from software. So there was some misunderstanding of when we used instructional materials and curriculum in the bill that that included software. Even the sponsor of the bill didn't realize that's what instructional materials was. It includes textbooks and software. And so, she's taken the moment to say, 'Oh, I didn't understand that's what that meant. That's not my intention.' And so software will no longer have to be evidence-based. And so that's a hard point in terms of what's best for kids and thinking about, 'Don't we wanna use products that we know work for students, especially struggling students?' And so we'll see how that evolves, but ultimately, you know, our core programs and our supplemental instruction that's not software-based still falls under that evidence-based, evidence informed . So we kind of have to take the wins where we can get 'em and we'll have to release that expectation for software.
Susan Lambert:And then when you're thinking sort of, at the more local level , with districts and with schools, what do you think were some of their barriers that they're encountering outside of the, obviously, translating your training to practice? Were there other barriers that were common?
Jennifer Throndson:Yeah, I mean, the organization of getting all of your teachers signed up and in place to do all of this letters training—or professional learning, we like to call it, this is not training—was a lift. Coordinating substitutes, stipends, time for teachers to go do the learning part that's on their own and getting them to professional learning sessions as well. It's been a huge lift forour community. They've done a wonderful job organizing thousands and thousands of teachers to get what we know they need with that knowledge and skill development. But that's been a heavy lift on our LEAs and they've been great. They've had to figure out ways to work with their unions to support that. They've redone their calendars to take virtual learning days so that their teachers can go to professional learning while the kids have a virtual learning day. And they've had to do a lot of systematic structural changes to just set up structure to get that professional learning in. In our state, we used to have four professional learning days a year that used to be paid for. And that kind of got turned around in about 2010. And so this has had to bring some of those old practices back, but with virtual learning, one of the benefits of COVID, we know how to do that now! So they've been really innovative finding ways to provide that professional learning time for their educators while still keeping kids engaged through those virtual learning days. So that's been, just, kudos to them. They've worked really hard. Our teachers are working really hard and learning that information and trying to keep up with doing the online learning part, their application expectation in the classrooms, as well as attending those sessions. So it has taken everyone. This is all hands on deck.
Susan Lambert:For sure. And , the old phrase, the devil is in the details, logistics are really complicated , and really important for the success of rollout, for things like this.
Jennifer Throndson:Yeah. Like substitutes are hard to find. And so to have all your K–3 teachers trying to go do professional learning, that's why some of them went to virtual learning days. It was just impossible to find. We need to cover every K teacher this particular day. And that's just really hard to do with the substitute situation.
Susan Lambert:Yeah, for sure. Well, from your purview, at the state level, what's next for you as it relates to improvement of literacy? You talked about a few things, but anything else that you all are thinking about or hoping to do?
Jennifer Throndson:Yeah. What's next? Well, as our data's shown, knowing better doesn't necessarily mean doing better. We're increasing our focus on ensuring that schools are finding ways to inspect what they expect. We need our principals and coaches getting into classrooms, supporting our teachers, and applying what they've learned with their students and holding them accountable, but with the support needed to bring them to executing what they've learned into their practice. Implementation doesn't start and end with us getting our teachers trained. It really is about providing that ongoing sustained focus that's relentless in the pursuit of every child reading on grade level by the end of third grade. And to do that, we must support teachers in taking that newly gained knowledge and using it in classrooms to impact change. And then, and only then, we'll be able to achieve our goal of, we want every student reading at grade level by the end of third grade. And so it has to be around supporting our teachers. That is the number one what's-next, is making sure where our teachers need support and, as they implement, where they might need touch points. There is gonna be professional learning that, going through eight days of professional learning with some professional learning independent work on the side and classroom application is not gonna be sufficient for everyone. Just like in the classroom, we provide everyone tier one instruction. Some students are gonna need more support and more professional learning and more coaching, and being able to adjust ours to be more intense for those teachers that need that increased intensity of support. And that will be kind of our big focus, is making sure teachers are getting what they need so that they can be at the top of their game to support student learning.
Susan Lambert:Hmm , that makes sense. We can't wait to check in with you in a couple of years to find out how well that has gone and then, what's next?
Jennifer Throndson:That'll be awesome.
Susan Lambert:Because you probably can't even think about what's next after this until you get through this thing.
Jennifer Throndson:Yes, absolutely.
Susan Lambert:Well , not to shout out to Doug Reeves again, but Doug Reeves would be very happy with where your focus is on making sure the depth of implementation is sustained. So thanks so much for that work that you're doing. So this season of the podcast is all about building infrastructure and support to really help our students. Knowing that we have to do that at multiple different levels. You've talked so much about that, but the heart of the work is really with the students. So if I say the phrase, it's all about the students, what does that mean to you and to your work?
Jennifer Throndson:For me, it is all about the students, but also all about the adults supporting those students, from our teachers to our principals and coaches to parents and families. If we want our students to achieve at the highest levels of success, we have to work together. Our students are our state's greatest asset, and we need to invest in them with all the energy and knowledge we have to do our best to serve them with urgency, compassion, and high expectations. My team will tell you, I'm always saying the reason we do what we do is to impact student learning, and that means impacting our students to give them the greatest advantage of being life ready , which includes being able to read. And so as we look at this effort, this, to me, helps to build access to future experiences, to work, to life , and our kids deserve it and we have to keep them at the forefront, but we can't forget that our educators also have to be supported so that they can get their best to students.
Susan Lambert:Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for the work that you're doing impacting that system there in Utah. And thank you so much for joining us.
Jennifer Throndson:Thank you. It has been wonderful and I look forward to connecting with you and sharing our story as this thing evolves and we see tremendous gains and hopefully can help others grow in their practice.
Susan Lambert:Absolutely. We're looking forward to catching up soon. Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Jennifer Throndson, Director of Teaching and Learning at the Utah State Board of Education. Check out the show notes for more information on Utah and Senate Bill 127. We'd love to know what you thought of this episode and Utah's ambitious plans. If you haven't already, join our Facebook discussion group, Science of Reading: The Community. Next time on the show, we're turning our focus to another key part of the education system: Higher ed.
Next week's speaker:I was so upset because not only was I spending $1,100 every semester, I wasn't learning anything that I could use. I just knew this was not going to be effective for kids.
Susan Lambert:That's next time on Science of Reading the podcast. Thanks so much for listening.