Literacy Achievement/Act 20

Act 20 Requirement
All K-3 teachers, principals where there are grades K-3, and reading specialists must begin training on science-based literacy instruction by July 1, 2025. This must be from an approved list.


HHASD Approach
Our elementary principal, reading specialist, literacy coach, and educators have engaged in the “Early Literacy Academy” provided by CESA 6 over the 23-24 and 24-25 school years.   This institute was approved to meet the requirements of ACT 20.  All K-8 literacy and special education teachers will utilize Cox Campus Structured Literacy Training Modules beginning in the spring of 2024.  Cox Campus is an approved training vendor as defined within the ACT 20 guidelines.

Act 20 Requirement
What type of early literacy instruction and intervention do schools need to provide?
Act 20 states that all Wisconsin schools are required to provide science-based early literacy instruction in both universal and intervention settings. Science-based early literacy instruction is defined as the following.

Instruction that is systematic and explicit and consists of all the following:

• Phonological awareness
• Phonemic awareness
• Phonics
• Building background knowledge
• Oral language development
• Vocabulary building
• Instruction in writing
• Instruction in comprehension
• Reading fluency

See the Wisconsin Reads website for more information

*School boards retain the independent authority to select the early literacy instructional materials they will adopt and implement. Those instructional materials are required to meet the definition of “science-based early literacy instruction” found in Act 20.

HHASD Approach
HHASD continues to align all literacy curriculum to the WI Model Academic Standards.  In order for students to demonstrate proficiency in the areas emphasized within those standards, HHASD continues to utilize core instructional resources that embed the principles of the science of reading body of research.  In the fall of 2024, our 5K-3rd grade classrooms adopted From Phonics to Reading as our core instructional resource for systematic and explicit foundational literacy instruction.  The District is also currently evaluating two core instructional programs for grades 5K-5th grade: Collaborative Classroom and CKLA.  Both resources are in alignment with ACT 20 requirements.  Our 6th -8th grade teachers are also currently evaluating two core instructional programs: CommonLit 360 and CKLA. All programs include explicit and systematic evidence-based instructional strategies. These curriculum programs will be piloted in the fall of 2025 with a final recommendation to the Board of Education during the spring of 2026.

Act 20 Requirement

4K Assessment
Students are to be assessed twice during the school year using a fundamental skills screening assessment selected by the DPI. 

• Fall: Before the 45th day of the school year
• Spring: Prior to 45 days left in the school year.

5K-3 Assessment
At least 3 universal screenings happen during the school year.

• Fall: Before the 45th day of the school year.
• Winter: During the middle of the school year.
• Spring: Prior to 45 days left in the school year.

Universal screenings must include phonemic awareness, decoding, alphabet knowledge, letter-sound knowledge, oral vocabulary

A diagnostic assessment must be used when a universal screening assessment indicates a pupil is at-risk (below 25th percentile). This occurs no later than the second Friday of November for the Fall assessment or within 10 days after the 2nd universal screening.  Diagnostic assessments must also be given within 20 days when a teacher or parent suspects a student has characteristics of dyslexia and submits a request.

HHASD Approach
Reading Readiness Screener (Grades 4K-3)
Parents and caregivers can expect to receive a letter, email, or within 15 days of the scoring of the statewide early literacy screener.

• 4K-3: Reporting will be delivered in the Fall, Winter, and Spring

Please notify the district of your preferred language if other than English.

Diagnostic Assessments (Grades 5K-3)
HHASD will be administering aimswebPLUS subskill assessments to students who score below the 25th percentile on the reading readiness screener within 10 days of receiving screener results.  When needed, we have additional diagnostic assessments that can give us deeper and more focused information about specific literacy skills.

For more information regarding the specific diagnostic process used, please see the HHASD Diagnostic Assessment Workbook.

During assessment, we are evaluating student skills in a variety of reading areas.  There are five skills that are the building blocks of reading.  They help a child recognize, understand, and pronounce words correctly, which is essential for becoming a proficient reader.  Without these foundational skills, it is difficult for children to read fluently with appropriate comprehension. 

• Phonemic Awareness: This skill involves recognizing and manipulating the individual sounds in words. Tasks might include identifying the first or last sounds in a word or blending sounds together to make a word (ex: /c/ + /a/ + /t/ = cat).
• Oral Vocabulary: Refers to knowing the meanings of words when heard or spoken.  Tasks might include learning new words through conversations, storytelling, shared reading, and understanding these new words in a variety of contexts.
• Alphabet Knowledge: This involves recognizing and naming letters, both uppercase and lowercase. Tasks include matching letters with pictures, playing games, that involve letter recognition.
• Letter Sounds Knowledge: This skill is about knowing the sounds that each letter or combination of letters makes.  Tasks may include saying the sound when a letter is shown, identifying beginning sounds or matching letters to their sounds.
• Decoding Skills: Decoding is the ability to slide sounds together to read words by connecting letters to their sounds.  Tasks might include reading simple words, sounding out new words, and practicing reading short sentences. 

Educator teams will monitor the results of screening assessments.  Students who perform below the 25th percentile will be assessed using diagnostic assessments to gather further information about the next steps for learning.  A diagnostic assessment evaluates a student’s skill relative to grade level expectations in the areas below: 

• Phonological Awareness
• Phonemic Awareness
• Letter Sound Knowledge
• Alphabet Knowledge
• Rapid Naming
• Word Recognition
• Oral Vocabulary
• Spelling/Encoding
• Listening Comprehension
• Oral Reading Fluency
• Reading Comprehension

Diagnostic assessment includes an opportunity for a student’s parent/guardian to complete a family history survey to provide additional information about learning difficulties in the student’s family.  HHASD elicits this information from families of students in 5K-3rd grade who require additional diagnostics annually as a part of our assessment notification process occurring fall, winter, spring every school year.  

In addition to diagnostic assessments, HHASD utilizes common formative assessments to determine student performance, proficiency and needs.

A legal guardian has the right to submit a request for diagnostic assessment at any time, including the right to request an evaluation for special education.  To make this request, please reach out to the building principal. 

Act 20 Requirement
Beginning in the 2024-2025 school year, provide parents and families with the results of the reading readiness screener (aimswebPLUS) no later than 15 days after the assessment is scored in an understandable format that includes all of the following:

• The pupil's score on the reading readiness screener.
• The pupil's score in each early literacy skill category is assessed by the reading readiness screener.
• The pupil's percentile rank score on the reading readiness assessment, if available.
• The definition of “at-risk” and the score on the reading readiness assessment that would indicate that a pupil is at-risk.
• A plain language description of the literacy skills the reading readiness assessment is designed to measure.

If a child is promoted to 4th grade without completing their personal reading plan, parents must be notified in writing along with a description of the reading interventions that child will continue to receive.

HHASD Approach
Families will receive notification and information throughout the assessment process.  Families are notified of assessment results, shared within 15 days of assessment score availability.  When diagnostic assessments are utilized, additional information specific to those results and subsequent instructional support (personal reading plans (PRP)) will also be shared.

Personal Reading Plans

Act 20 Requirement
If students are identified as at-risk (below the 25th percentile) on a universal screening assessment or diagnostic assessment, a personal reading plan must be created that includes:

• The specific early literacy skill deficiencies
• Goals and benchmarks for the pupil's progress toward grade-level literacy skills
• How progress will be monitored, a description of interventions and additional instructional services being provided
• The science-based reading programming the teacher will use
• Strategies for the parent to support grade-level literacy skills, and any additional services available and appropriate
• Schools will provide a copy of the personal reading plan to parents as well as provide progress updates after 10 weeks.
  
  

HHASD Approach
Personal Reading Plans (PRPs) will be developed for students who score below the 25th percentile on the screener. The Reading Specialist along with the classroom teacher and/or interventionist and classroom teachers will develop and implement Personal Reading Plans to support students to grow in the skills necessary to be on track to meet grade level benchmarks. This plan will be created in NextPath, our student learning data platform, and will include all required information. Plans will be shared with families via email or through the NextPath platform. All plans will be monitored frequently and progress updates will be shared with families every 8-10 weeks. For students whose diagnostics show that the original screener was not accurate, Personal Reading Plans will note how progress will be monitored on a consistent basis to ensure student success.

Exit Criteria & Summer Reading Support

Act 20 Requirement
In 5K through grade 2, students can exit personal reading plans by demonstrating adequate progress on grade-level skills and assessments.  The District will utilize aimsweb Plus screeners and progress monitoring measures to determine adequate progress and proficiency on grade-level assessments.

• Kindergarten will use the measures of Nonsense Word Fluency and Phoneme Segmentation.
• Grades 1 -2 will use the measure of Oral Reading Fluency.

Educators must discuss the exit process and the details about what sorts of support and monitoring may need to stay in place temporarily after exiting a personal reading plan with families.

For grade 3, Wis. Stat. §§ 118.016 states that a 3rd grade student who has a personal reading plan is considered to have completed the personal reading plan if parents/caregivers and the school agree the student has met the goals in the personal reading plan and the student scores at or above grade-level on the reading portion of the Wisconsin Forward Exam in grade 3 (118.016(5)(d)); the Forward Exam requirement will go into effect on September 1, 2027.  This is the only place Wis. Stat. §§ 118.016 details the completion of a personal reading plan.

HHASD Approach
Exiting a Personal Reading Plan - Grades 5K-2
Proficiency is defined as a student achieving four grade-level progress monitoring scores above their personal goal line (at or above the 25%).  If/when this occurs, a student may be eligible to exit their personal reading plan.

Educators will provide a recommendation to families when a student meets the exit criteria.  Families are encouraged to meet with the team if they are not in agreement with the district's recommendation. 

Exiting a Personal Reading Plan - Grade 3
For any student who has not exited their personal reading plan by the end of the student’s third grade year, the district/school will engage in a process to determine whether to promote that student to the fourth grade. This process will carefully consider all relevant factors that contributed to the student not completing their personal reading plan and alternatives to retention that can help support the student to achieve reading proficiency.

Additional details about the determination process can be found in Board of Education Policy 5410 Promotion, Retention, and Acceleration. 

Summer Reading Support
Students who qualify for additional reading support will be referred to Literacy Intervention and/or Literacy Adventures for additional support and intervention.

Act 20 Requirement
Schools must have a policy for promotion from 3rd to 4th grade, based on a DPI model policy, by July 1, 2025.  This plan would go into effect Sept 1, 2027.

HHASD Approach
The Promotion policy will be revised in the spring of 2025 to include requirements included in WI ACT 20. Beginning in July 2027, any student this is promoted to fourth grade without exiting their personal reading plan will be provided with the following supports during elementary school:

1. Targeted, tiered instructional interventions, progress monitoring, and supports to remediate the identified areas of deficiency;
2. Notification to the student’s parent or guardian, in writing, that the student pupil did not complete the personal reading plan that and includes a description of the intensive instructional services and supports that will be provided to the student pupil to remediate the identified areas of reading deficiency; and
3. An intensive summer reading program each summer until the student scores at grade-level in reading on the state assessment.

Act 20 Requirement
Act 20 requires each school district to articulate and post an early literacy remediation plan that includes all of the following: 

• The name of the diagnostic reading assessment the school district uses
• A description of the reading interventions the school district uses to address characteristics of dyslexia
• A description of how the school district monitors pupil progress during interventions, including the tools used and their frequency;
• A description of how the school district uses early literacy assessment results to evaluate early literacy instruction
• A description of the parent notification policy that complies with Act 20.  

School districts are still required to publicly post the academic standards that they use and to provide a link to Wisconsin’s Informational Guidebook on Dyslexia and Related Conditions on their school district website.

HHASD Approach
All of the aforementioned components comprise our Early Literacy Remediation Plan. In line with state requirements, Holy Hill Area School District uses a variety of assessments to identify students who need help with reading, including those with symptoms of dyslexia. Teachers use these assessments to understand each student's needs and plan the best way to support them. Support plans include different interventions and/or instructional strategies such as teaching how to recognize sounds and patterns, practicing reading skills, and providing direct instruction on language and spelling. All students receive regular practice with reading and are given feedback to help them improve. To monitor progress, students are assessed multiple times throughout the school year, and caregivers are notified of student progress following assessments. For students receiving personal reading plans, progress is reviewed more frequently to inform any necessary instructional changes to ensure student growth.

Holy Hill Area School District values continuous improvement in literacy practice. The district will provide training from an accredited teacher training program as well as internal coaching and support to all 4K-4th grade teachers, special education teachers, reading specialists, and administrators as required.

Each year the district as a whole will also review early literacy assessment results, including universal screening data, Wisconsin Forward data, and summative classroom assessments to evaluate early literacy instruction and develop plans for continued improvement. 

The role of the district reading specialist includes:

• Providing intensive interventions
• Overseeing the Literacy Curriculum
• Supporting the curriculum review process
• Being part of the continuous improvement process
• Providing professional development aligned to high leverage literacy practices
• Providing district leadership around continuous improvement
• Coaching teachers and teams around best practices in literacy
• Providing parent/family communication
• Providing guidance and input around hiring and onboarding staff

For further information or concerns, please contact:
Cori Michalowski, Reading Specialist, michalowski@hhasd.org
Jen Shattuck, FLES Principal, shattuck@hhasd.org