TRAVERSE CITY — Michigan did not do well on the Nation’s Report Card.
The fact that Michigan students ranked 44th in the nation for early literacy, in a continuing trend of stagnation as measured by the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress — also called the Nation’s Report Card — has prompted action locally.
Districts are implementing curriculum changes — and moving away from the decade-long whole language model approach, which prioritizes “sight words” (word memorization) and contextual meaning over phonics.
Traverse City Area Public Schools, Kalkaska and Benzie county schools are among districts focusing on bringing proficiency numbers up. All three have invested in literacy programs based on the science of reading, and a return to phonics. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s state budget proposal for fiscal year 2027, which was released Feb. 11, includes $625 million to improve student literacy by investing in science of reading curricula and teacher training on the methodology.
“I think just more recently with the studies and what we’ve seen in other states, that many have now shifted to solidly in the belief that the phonics-based instruction is the thing that we should have stayed with and been going with,” TCAPS Superintendent Dr. John VanWagoner said.
TCAPS had a whole language curriculum for a decade prior to this year’s switch, which was made in response to dropping literacy rates across the district.
According to the Annual Education Report for the 2024-25 school year, put out by the state, 48.8 percent of third-graders in the district were proficient in English, above the state average of 38.9 percent.
About one in five third-graders in Benzie County Central Schools is proficient, based on the district’s Annual Education Report, one of the lowest rates in the region.
“Literacy instruction matters,” Superintendent Amiee Erfourth said. “Supporting all learners with access to high-quality reading materials and instruction rooted in the science of reading are factors that have shown growth.”
Benzie has made investments into supporting teachers with learning around the science of reading over the past two years and also included our preschool instructors in the training as well, she said.
The district utilized both state early literacy funding and general funds dollars to purchase the same science of reading curriculum as TCAPS — Amplify CKLA — this year for use in their elementary schools. They also set up tutoring options at the middle and high schools and used at–risk funding to hire interventionists and parapros to perform small-group activities, Danielle Banasiak, director of finance, said.
“This investment is starting to show positive outcomes in the early grades and we are seeing strong growth of early reading concepts, including phonological awareness, phonics, and vocabulary for the past two years of student cohorts,” Erfourth said.
Kalkaska Public Schools has been using a science of reading curriculum for several years, Superintendent Rick Heitmeyer said.
“We’ve got veteran teachers, we’ve got veteran principals who’ve done a lot of great work over the years,” Heitmeyer said.
But the curriculum is ongoing work, the material is constantly evolving, and “we’re always learning more,” he said.
The results have been positive, he said. The district still falls below the state average with 26.7 percent of third-graders at or above proficiency.
Lower proficiency levels at Benzie County Central Schools and Kalkaska Public Schools could be influenced by another important metric: more than half of the students enrolled in these districts are considered economically disadvantaged.
13th in poverty
A 2022 Census report released in 2024 showed that Michigan had the 13th highest poverty rate in the country, with more than 13 percent of the population living in poverty.
Although the percentage of students living in poverty across the region has decreased over the last 10 years, in 2023 more than 1,600 kids lived in poverty in Grand Traverse County, according to the 36th Annual KIDS COUNT Data Book released last year. By those numbers, the official poverty level in 2023 was $30,900 for a family of two adults and two children.
Schools measure this a bit differently and use an “economically disadvantaged” category, meaning the students qualified for free or reduced-priced meals.
The data showed that third-graders in this category were less likely to meet literacy standards in these districts and less likely to receive high scores.
At TCAPS, 36 percent of economically disadvantaged third-graders scored at a level determined “not proficient” (the lowest rating) on the M-STEP test last year, while only 16.5 percent of students outside of the at-risk group did. Those numbers flip when looking at the advanced scores where less than 14 percent of economically disadvantaged students and 33 percent of other students placed.
About 28.5 percent of TCAPS students fell into the “economically disadvantaged” category last year. While fewer kids live in poverty and/or are considered economically disadvantaged in the two other districts, they make up a greater overall percentage of enrolled students.
Kalkaska County had more than 20 percent of all children living in poverty, according to the data book, the highest in the region. And almost 57 percent of the students attending Kalkaska Public Schools last year were considered economically disadvantaged, about the same as Benzie County Central Schools.
Heitmeyer said his district is working to increase proficiency results, regardless of poverty rates.
Students coming from these homes struggle in ways financially secure students don’t. VanWagoner said that these children are not as ready for early kindergarten, are read to less frequently, since families might not be able to afford books, and come from households where a smaller vocabulary is used.
Districts need to work harder to provide more resources and interventions to financially disadvantaged students to get them to the same level as children coming from a more financially stable home.
“I think people go, wait a minute, you have more money than you’ve had before. Our state budget is bigger than it’s ever been,” VanWagoner said.
He said that districts are spending more on security and mental health in recent years to address the realities of poverty and the trauma that can go along with it.
VanWagoner and Heitmeyer both said that district scores would increase dramatically if they could support children struggling with economic insecurities at home and shrink the proficiency gap.
“But again, what are the resources it’s going to really take to do that compared to what it might have taken when we weren’t as poor of a state?” VanWagoner said.
Whitmer’s proposed budget
Heitmeyer and VanWagoner called Whitmer’s budget proposal a step in the right direction but neither believe what the budget provides would solve the literacy problem.
Heitmeyer said what districts need now is stability in teacher employment and training as well as in legislative direction and funding — and the budget would supply a lot of that.
“We’ve got a governor and a state superintendent who have a literacy vision and a way to implement it through the state,” he said.
Compared to the vague guidance of the No Child Left Behind policy, which he said left districts on their own in many ways, and various other standards (such as the school grading plan and third-grade reading law) that were later dropped, the budget proposal offers more explicit structure, financial support, academic benchmarks and training, Heitmeyer said.
“The state is going to say, “This is what we expect you to do and this is how we expect you to do it.’ In Michigan, we’ve never done that from the state,” he said.
This will save districts time and resources, in addition to providing more stable expectations for students and families..
But he does acknowledge that there is something lost in the top-down approach — local control — which he supports, but he believes schools have reached a point where the state should intervene.
“It’s a double-edged sword because school districts love local control, but I think local control is why we’re where we are with several years of stagnant data that doesn’t show a lot of growth,” Heitmeyer said.
The state should stick with the proposed plan long-term, he said. Mississippi went from last in the nation for early literacy in 2013 to a top-10 state in recent years, often referred to as the “Mississippi Miracle.”
That so-called “miracle” was years of “hard, hard work” and not an overnight success, Heitmeyer said.
“It was consistent practice for years before, before they broke through and all of a sudden looked like they were better than everybody else … and it won’t be an overnight fix here,” he said.
More to do
VanWagoner pointed to Mississippi as an inspiration as well.
Michigan is still “tinkering on the edges” of really addressing the problem, he said, adding that a serious option would be to consider resources for more hours of instruction per year.
“I do think (for) our younger kids, that it’s an idea with merit. Our kids that are juniors and seniors, I actually don’t know that we need what we have now, and maybe get them into more job shadowing and career opportunities that I think would be more valuable,” he said.
VanWagoner would also like to see the state adopt a Mississippi-style testing schedule, so that teachers can take corrective action. Third-graders can take the state proficiency test up to three times throughout the year in that state. In Michigan, they take it once.
“Our test we take in the spring,” he said. “We don’t get the results back until the summer and it’s too late … it’s an autopsy. It’s too late to do anything about it with those kids.”