Governor to ask for $30M for literacy institute after seeing small gains in reading proficiency

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham plans to ask state legislators for $30 million to build a literacy institute during the coming legislative session, in a move aimed at building on momentum in turning around New Mexico’s lagging reading proficiency scores.

In the 2021-2022 school year, New Mexico third through eighth graders were about 34% proficient in English language arts. According to preliminary results from last school year, which have yet to be released, those students are around 38.4% proficient in reading, a state Public Education Department spokeswoman said.

Wednesday’s announcement comes a month and a half after the governor visited a literacy institute in Kansas to learn more about what their program looked like and possibly inform what such a literacy institute in New Mexico may look like.

“I want the science of reading, which we’ve been doing, but now I want it everywhere. That means institutes like this to help with intensive (support) for kids and adults,” Lujan Grisham said at the time. “We want to make sure that the universities are doing the higher education piece. We’re retraining educators in the science of reading. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, who was part of Lujan Grisham’s team for the trip, said at the time that she envisioned a literacy institute, possibly embedded within state universities, that would engrain how to teach students to read in budding and current teachers.

The apparent improvements in reading proficiency scores are more or less on schedule for New Mexico, which in 2019 passed legislation mandating all elementary school teachers be trained in structured literacy.

According to the PED’s structured literacy roadmap, the department expects to begin seeing the first fruits of its labor this school year in first graders.

Structured literacy arms teachers with the skills to teach reading, including phonics and vocabulary, while also informing them about the brain science behind it.

As of mid-June, about 6,500 educators were enrolled in the state’s flagship structured literacy training, known as Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, or LETRS. Almost 1,300 had completed the training.

During the most recent legislative session, lawmakers made appropriations for literacy that included a total of $13.5 million for early literacy and reading support as well as $8 million for structured literacy efforts in districts and charter schools.