In December 2023, the Connecticut State Department of Education (SDE) announced the results of the waiver application process for school districts in Connecticut, and the results were met with surprise by some school districts and officials.

The waivers submitted by districts pertained to Connecticut’s Right to Read legislation that was passed in 2021 as part of the budget implementer. Under the provisions of the law, which mirrors other such efforts in states like Colorado and New York, the SDE established a Center for Literacy Research and Success and a Reading Implementation Leadership Council made up of volunteers appointed by elected officials. Their goal was to establish set K-3 reading curriculums for schools based on the Science of Reading (SOR).

The Science of Reading is an “interdisciplinary body of scientifically-based research about reading and issues related to reading and science,” according to The Reading League. The legislation mandates that school curriculums incorporate phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary development, fluency, reading fluency, oral skills and reading comprehension. The goal of the legislation was to lessen the education achievement gap in Connecticut, particularly following the shutdown of schools during COVID-19, which had a marked negative effect on education. 

According to the SDE, more than 19,000 K-3 students in Connecticut are not reading at grade level and that can severely impact their educational future. Under the bill, the Literacy Center, through their consultant, Public Consulting Group (PCG) out of Massachusetts, was to analyze and select five reading curricula that met evidence-based and scientifically based reading requirements and districts were to adhere to those selected curricula.

However, districts, including charter schools, could apply for a waiver, essentially submitting all their reading curriculum documentation to argue that they were already using evidence-based and science-based reading materials for their K-3 teaching. Previously, the selection of school curricula had been left to local school district boards, so the legislation marked a new shift in how education curriculum at the local level was determined.

Although nearly everyone agrees that the intent of the bill was good, there was some pushback during public hearing on the bill, which was raised in the Education Committee with strong backing from the General Assembly’s majority Democrats.

The bill was supported by a number of education nonprofits, professors from the University of Connecticut, the Connecticut Alliance of Boards of Education and several school officials who argued that a set of evidence-based reading curricula across the state would create better results with a more structured approach to teaching literacy.

“The COVID-19 crisis and the Connecticut literacy crisis are converging at this moment, giving us the chance to do something lasting for Connecticut students,” wrote Amy Dowell, Connecticut state director of Education Reform Now. “If we establish this statewide strategy, it will position us to overcome the enormous toll that the pandemic has taken on Connecticut children, close opportunity gaps, better prepare students, apply for federal funding, and reap long-term rewards.”

However, there was some pushback from others, including superintendents, who were concerned the mandated curriculum would affect districts that already had high achievement from their students through years of developing their own curricula.

“Keep in mind that many of Connecticut’s school districts have attained, and continue to attain, outstanding student reading achievement without such oversight. Indeed, with strong local leadership and existing collaborative efforts, many of our districts have developed curricula that work well in the contexts of their communities,” wrote Woodbridge Superintendent Jonathan S. Budd, who added that allowing schools to apply for waivers misses the point because mandating compliance by every district diverts resources from the districts who really need the assistance of State-level leaders.”

While the bill never received a vote in the General Assembly, it was included in the budget implementer that passed with a bi-partisan vote in 2021, and it took a couple of years for the process to ramp up: the Literacy Center had to be established, the Reading Implementation Council appointed, the curricula evaluated and approved, and school districts had to evaluate their own curricula to see if they could or would apply for a waiver.

Even before the waivers were announced, however, there was some controversy. The Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS) issued a letter to the SDE in November of 2022 arguing the SDE was violating Connecticut law by mandating “off-the-shelf” instructional materials and that the curriculum mandate could cost upwards of $100 million across the state. 

The SDE clapped back with a letter from SDE Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker outlining that under the approved bill the department was given the authority to set K-3 reading curricula for school districts.

Eighty-five school districts applied for waivers leading up to the December 2023 determination. The waiver materials submitted by districts were analyzed by Public Consulting Group and the ultimate determination was made by Commissioner Russell-Tucker and Melissa Hickey, director of the Literacy Center.

“The Department worked painstakingly to create a truly iterative process by which the Director and PCG systematically reviewed all waiver applications, many of which contained a compendium of curriculum models and programs,”Russell-Tucker said in a press release. “It is our goal that working together we will increase the effectiveness of literacy teaching and learning so that all Connecticut students are reading at or above grade level independently and proficiently by the end of the third grade.” 

However, the results came as a bit of a shock for some school districts. Roughly 75 percent of the waivers submitted by districts and charter schools were rejected either fully or partially, including high performing school districts in wealthy towns, while school systems that were considered alliance districts because of poor historical education performance were granted full waivers.

Towns like Westport, Wilton and Woodbridge were denied waivers while Hartford and Waterbury were given full waivers. The seeming disconnect between performance and waiver approval elicited shock and concern for some local school officials, with the Westport Superintendent telling CT Examiner the SDE had “moved the goal posts,” in changing their evaluations.

Cheshire Public Schools were also denied their waiver request, prompting Cheshire Superintendent Jefferey S. Solan to send out an email and survey to parents on January 3, 2024, noting the district has the “7^th highest reading scores in the State of Connecticut.”

“The State Department of Education recently evaluated all Connecticut school systems for their adherence to teaching reading following the Science of Reading. In short, whether districts were approved was predicated on whether or not they utilized one of a handful of prescribed reading programs,” Solan wrote. “We created our own reading program (over the course of the last 10 years and grounded in the Science of Reading after being unable to find a program that we felt adequately addressed the standards) and were therefore rejected.”

“There is a narrative being circulated that the reason that Cheshire students (and those of other relatively affluent communities) have higher reading achievement is because our families hire private tutors to compensate for what isn’t provided in school,” Solan wrote before asking parents to complete a survey to determine whether this was the case.

Also caught unaware, was the Reading Leadership Implementation Council, according to several members, who say they had no idea the department would be issuing partial and transitional waivers. The announcement reportedly sparked an emergency meeting of the Council, according to Lisa Thomas, a former educator and current Councilmember appointed by Sen. Martin Looney, D-New Haven.

“Things happened that we didn’t know were going to happen like these partial waivers, transitional waivers, but I don’t know that the center staff knew they were going to happen until they started getting into the waivers,” Thomas said. “We actually aren’t sure exactly what happened which is part of the problem.”

“We weren’t even told there was going to be these partial options. We were told this was going to be a yes or no, so this partial waiver came in without any oversight by anybody,” said Kim Healy, a member of the Readership Council appointed by Rep. Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford.

---

In granting the waivers, applying districts were separated into four categories: meets expectations, meaning they were given a full waiver; partial waiver, meaning the school had to substitute some materials; transitional, meaning the school had a lot more work to do; and limited meaning they were rejected.

But, as indicated before, many school districts were shocked and confused about the results and are now pushing back on the SDE to have their waivers reconsidered as they believe the findings are inaccurate, according to Frances Rabinowitz, Reading Council member and Executive Director of CAPSS who, likewise, says she was never made aware of changes to the waiver process.

“The state is being asked by many districts to reconsider the results of the waiver, to look at their waivers again because they felt that there were some inaccuracies and they also felt they weren’t given reasons by particular resources were rejected,” Rabinowitz said. “You want something that is scientifically researched, evidence-based, many of them feel they have evidence-based materials that were not approved.”

Another problem for town officials who submitted waivers was that some of them had already begun the process of adopting the state-approved curriculum before finding out that they already had some programmatic material in place that would meet the state’s guidelines, according to Thomas. They essentially spent money on something they didn’t necessarily need to because they were never told there would be partial or transitional waivers.

“Towns that put in waivers way back when and were told that wouldn’t pass muster, moved forward with looking into some of the originally adopted curricula programs and invested money,” Thomas said. “And now they’re seeing the things they submitted and were told wouldn’t pass muster, they’re seeing them in these collections. So that’s a little frustrating, right?”

“This waiver process probably should have happened before anything was adopted,” Thomas continued.

One of the towns pushing back is Wilton, where Healy serves on the Board of Selectmen and says the cost to the town, which received a limited waiver meaning their waiver was rejected, will be between $750,000 and $1 million to change curriculum and get teachers and staff trained.

Rep. Keith Denning, D-Wilton, says the waiver process and the guidelines for a scientific and evidence-based curriculum have been “vague” since the beginning resulting in “hundreds and man hours” and a lot of money being spent by schools in his district, which include not only Wilton but New Canaan and Ridgefield, which both received transitional waivers.

“We have three school districts and all of them are in the top schools in our state, some of them in the country and we’re being told that our reading program is failing our third graders and whatever we’re using is insufficient for the Department of Education in Connecticut,” Denning said in an interview. “To me, there is a disconnect or cognitive dissonance of saying to schools who are already performing well above average and have the means of mediation for those children that may need particular attention, that they need to revamp, at probably a cost of a million dollars or more, an entire reading program that fundamentally affects every other course they perform in the school.”

Denning says that Wilton had already submitted their materials before the SDE updated the requirements indicating that curriculum could also match the standards set by Colorado, Curriculum Ratings by Teachers (CURATE) designed by Massachusetts, or EdReports, and the waiver process did not allow them to go back and amend their application.

“This is not in the legislation and in theory they shouldn’t have been able to do that, and in theory if you’re going to change the waiver you should allow people adjust the application for the waiver,” Denning said.

“That waiver process, I think for a lot of districts, wasn’t really clear,” Thomas said, adding, however, that Public Consulting Group was brought on to not only assist in reviewing the waivers but also to assist districts in applying for the waivers. “That was important, that was a good step.”

Reached for comment, Jeffrey Solan, superintendent of Cheshire, said he applauds the legislature and SDE for focusing on the Science of Reading and that the teachers in his district are supportive of it. However, he has major concerns about the process, including how Cheshire’s waiver was analyzed and then rejected.

“I am concerned that the strategy employed will not have the important consequences intended,” Solan said in an email. “SDE appears to have identified a handful of programs that they believe meet the criteria outlined in statute and only those districts using these programs in whole or in substantial part will be deemed in compliance. No consideration was given to districts who create an evidence-based and scientifically based program that focuses on competency in the SOR.”

Solan says he understands the state’s need to address the “staggering” number of children not proficient in reading throughout Connecticut, but says that Cheshire has only 4.7 percent, or thirteen, third graders “identified as substantially deficient in reading in the prior year,” and that number includes students who are in special education or are just learning English. Nevertheless, their waiver was rejected.

“The SDE waiver review tool simply vetted curricula against programs created by major publishers that were deemed effective by third party databases,” Solan said. “In the ‘meeting’ we had to review Cheshire’s curriculum we were strictly limited to 25 minutes and were given rigid guidance about what we were permitted to discuss. One of the two consultants in the ‘meeting’ didn’t turn on her camera amplifying our concern that the energy poured into completing our 60-page waiver was wasted.”

Solan said that many of the parents in his district do hire tutors over the summer, often teachers who are on summer break, however, he says this highlights an “opportunity gap” that won’t be fixed in other districts through the implementation of a statewide curriculum or program. Essentially, such interventions like tutoring are a matter of money, with parents in wealthier districts able to commit the time and money to aid their child in reading development. 

And, of course, applying for the waiver, reviewing the materials, and potentially revamping a school’s curriculum all take time and money for the school districts, something they tend to be short of. 

“Things in education can be time consuming and we want to take the time to do things right, but we also want to work efficiently because we have really limited resources in education, both human and financial,” Thomas said.

Rabinowitz says that prior to the waiver process, CAPSS reached out to districts to determine approximate costs. They heard back from 60 districts – less than half of Connecticut’s total education districts – with the total cost coming to $24 million to implement new reading curriculums. That cost may have changed since districts are now allowed partial waivers.

The SDE has received $20 million in funding through the American Rescue Plan to distribute grants to education districts to implement the new curriculum with an additional $5 million for districts with less than 1,000 students, but Rabinowitz and others feel it won’t be enough and requires administrative resources to apply for the grants.

“It’s simply not going to be enough,” Rabinowitz said. “But frankly, it isn’t about funding for me, it’s about belief in what’s going to work, and I just feel that we have an opportunity here that we’re squandering. I don’t know of a superintendent in this state right now that has not bought into the science of reading, they all believe in the science of reading, and I think we should be capitalizing on that.”

“My preference would have been for the legislature or the Literacy Center, somebody other than the districts, to put together their formula and just get those dollars into the hands of the school district, because there isn’t the staff time to do these things,” Thomas said. “I don’t think it should have been you have to apply for a grant, I think it should have been here’s money to help you out.”

“When I went to the regional superintendents’ breakfast, all of them are upset, I mean everybody is upset,” Denning said. “My point to them was unless the superintendents go back and raise a big mighty fuss to both the legislature and the school board there’s going to be little we can do about it because legislation is legislation.”

“So now it’s a matter of, how do we implement that legislation fairly in a way that doesn’t cost schools more money and actually promotes the science of reading in schools that are failing?” Denning continued.

---

The role of the Reading Leadership Implementation Council is, according to the legislation, an advisory role. The Center works “in consultation with” the Council. However, Thomas said she feels “there’s some ambiguity about the role of the Council.”

Healy was more forceful in her criticism, saying she signed on for this role because she wanted to help, but now feels their influence has been limited. “We are supposed to be oversight. They were very clever with the wording,” Healy said. “We never really voiced our opposition, but nobody has ever asked us for approval. We’re just there for optics. I hate to be so negative.”

Melissa Hickey, director of the Center for Literacy Research and Success, says the Council “is very much considered a valuable resource for SDE and the Center,” but does admit the Council was not informed the waivers would be separated into different categories. 

“The council’s role is to advise and inform but the responsibility of making determinations such as the waiver classifications is invested by law in the SDE,” Hickey said, noting that she has been meeting with the Council since September of 2022, and met with them on December 1, 2023, before the waiver determination letters were sent out informing them of the new additions to the curriculum and program options.

“At that time, we did not discuss the various designations of the waiver, but we have throughout the whole process met and had conversations about and we did discuss many times that we were going to be adding to the menu as a result of this process,” Hickey continued.

Deputy Commissioner of SDE Charles Hewes, the former superintendent of Colchester who testified in support of the underlying legislation, says the SDE, the Center and the consultant group have gone above and beyond what was outlined in the legislation, offering more curriculum than required by law and adding compendiums of programs to meet the needs of superintendents and offer more pathways to approval as the process played out.

“The superintendents from the onset tried to explain that it wasn’t just one comprehensive program they were using, they were using these compendiums,” Hewes said in an interview. “So, this opportunity to provide a degree of alignment and illustrate that in the outcome of the waiver process supported really what they had been asking for to be recognized, so when we informed districts of their waiver results, we were honoring their pieces of program that was in alignment even if their full waiver did not meet their expectation of alignment with the legislation.”

“The waiver process is just that, it was a review of the evidence, all the artifacts, some districts submitted hundreds of documents, videos, pictures,” Hewes said. Following the submission of a district or charter school’s evidence, the superintendents were given feedback and one-on-one review time with PCG consultants. “The artifact review and the one-on-one time with PCG, our reviewers, was used by PCG to make a determination as to whether what the district submitted for a waiver was in line with the legislation.”

As indicated before, some high-performing districts like Cheshire, Wilton and New Canaan, were rejected either partially or fully, while some Alliance Districts, school systems deemed in trouble by the state, were granted full waivers, adding to some of the confusion.

“How do you expect us to sell that Hartford is better than Darien to anybody?” Healy asked.

But the reason Hartford received a full waiver, according to Hewes and an email received by Inside Investigator, is that Hartford Public Schools used the waiver process to completely switch to a new reading curriculum model under the advisement of PCG and SDE, but that a school’s performance is not part of the evaluation criteria.

“Hartford in particular chose to use this process to evaluate its programs, what it intended to use,” Hewes said. “We always want to celebrate high performance certainly, but the level of student performance is not part of the criteria that was used.”

“We were tasked through legislation, to determine if a district’s curriculum is aligned to the research and therefore that legislation,” Hewes said. “There are over 19,000 students in our state only at grade three who are not yet proficient, and they exist in every single one of our districts. So, I want to emphasize, high performance is great, we celebrate that, but the legislation through the waiver process was specifically asking for districts to be implementing comprehensive curriculum or programs that align to the research as outlined in the legislation.”

Hewes and Hickey both indicate that districts were not allowed to amend their waiver applications, but some districts, upset that their waivers were rejected, are pushing for reconsideration and a more thorough review.

“With respect to the districts like Cheshire which were identified as ‘limited’, I would recommend that consideration be given to a more intensive review of the curriculum and observation of instruction within those districts,” Solan said. “Connecticut educators are deeply committed to the SOR and achievement for all and welcome specific feedback grounded in an authentic review where we may be falling short.”

Rep. Denning says he’s reviewed the data submitted by the districts he represents and believes there’s ample evidence to support their curricula as “science-based.”

“This is why I’m going to go back to the board and talk to the independent evaluators and find out specifically why they denied these particular schools,” Denning said. “I’m just trying to help my school district not spend a million dollars of my money to do something they are already doing. It makes no sense. If a law like this was meant to help, it’s not helping.”

Hewes, however, says the determinations were made based on the documents and evidence submitted by the districts based on the legislation, and the waiver process was simply that: determining if a district was in alignment with state requirements.

“Nearly half a century of research really informs us as to how students learn to read, the intent of this legislation is to ensure our districts are using a comprehensive curriculum model or programs that reflect and align to that research,” Hewes said. “That was really the function of the waiver process: what you submit as a district through this waiver — give us everything that you do — we’re going to have our reviewers our experts review it and determine whether it’s in alignment.”

“Some of the districts that submitted these waivers have some of these programs in place, so the path is shorter, they just have to build upon some of the pieces they have which makes the cost a little bit less,” Hewes said. “I know that some members of the legislature certainly recognize the cost and have talked publicly about allocating additional funds, but we are certainly not in control of that here at the SDE.”

---

There is largely agreement that the intent of the law is good and, according to Rabinowitz, superintendents across the state have bought into the science of reading as a practice, something much different from earlier decades and the so-called “Reading Wars” of the late 1990s and early 2000s which resulted in teachers pushing back against academics on the best way to teach literacy. Instead, today, it appears everyone is on board, but it is the mandate and the process which has school districts and superintendents back on their heels. 

“You accomplish so much more when you have buy-in from the practitioners and the administrators. When you get full buy-in you’re going to do whatever it takes to make sure that students are successful because they believe in everything they’re putting forward,” Rabinowitz said. “When you have a pushback like we’re experiencing right now, if they are forced into those programs, it will just be that – forced.”

“I understand why the SDE, and the legislature passed this bill wanting to have all school districts teaching a science-based education for reading. It’s important. Everyone needs to read,” Denning said. “But I’m not sure we’re doing ourselves any good by forcing people who already showing they have the data and the science for how they’re teaching their children and are successful at it and still not getting waivers because of some small technicality that an independent group decided and is now going to cost them millions of dollars to implement.”

However, Denning remains very skeptical of the legislation regardless of intent.

“Something has gone wrong, this right to read has great intent but is having a bad outcome, which I believe, means it’s a bad law,” Denning said. “We have to figure out how can the department of education implement in districts that need science-based or don’t have science-based education and not necessarily penalize because of some draconian codes or measurements that were not put in the legislation.”

A 2019 assessment of Connecticut’s reading scores for Grade 4 published by the National Center for Education Statistics found that Connecticut’s reading scores were on average higher than the national average but had also shown a marked decline between 2017 and 2019 following two decades of remaining relatively flat. And that was before the pandemic.

NCES’s 2022 assessment of 8^th grade reading in Connecticut found that a steep decline continued between 2019 and 2022. While the drop-off mirrored the rest of the nation, Connecticut still had higher average reading scores. Standardized test scores for Connecticut in 2023 still remained below pre-pandemic scores and English scores continued to decline, baffling state officials, according to CT Insider.

But Rabinowitz, who has worked in education for decades and has seen new reading efforts come and go says she has yet to see a “magic bullet,” that has completely revamped reading scores. She believes a greater emphasis should be placed on well-trained teachers, leaders and early intervention for a student who is struggling – things that are in the legislation, but she’s heard nothing about thus far.

“Reading by end of grade one and reading independently by end of grade three is the greatest equity strategy we have. It’s incredibly important, and we have to do whatever it takes to get there,” Rabinowitz said. “There are excellent pieces in [the legislation] about intervention and I’ve heard nothing about that. I’ve only heard about these programs being magic bullets, and frankly, I haven’t seen that happen in my career.” 

“The simple adoption of a program is not a panacea that will change the trajectory of reading for Connecticut children,” Solan said. “Teaching children of various strengths and needs is very sophisticated work and a program could never address the multitude of challenges that our teachers encounter.”

**This article was corrected to indicate that Healy is on the Wilton Board of Selectmen, not the Board of Finance**

Republish This Story

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.