The Wittenberg-Birnamwood School District will not need to abruptly change its reading curriculum to comply with Wisconsin Act 20 asx originally thought.
The district’s reading curriculum was originally scheduled to be reviewed during the 2025-26 school year, according to Nikki Steigerwald, a district literacy coach, and information announced by the Wisconsin State Reading Association shows that the district can keep that schedule.
The WSRA reported that the four curricula identified by the state’s Early Literacy Curriculum Council only need to be adopted by school districts if they’re applying for grant money made available through Act 20. Local control will continue to be respected for school districts.
Steigerwald wrote in a report to the Wittenberg-Birnamwood School District that no curriculum meets the need of all students, and that reviews by districts identify areas for improvement. The purchased programs are only resources.
Act 20 outlaws a system called three cueing, but according to the WSRA, it’s not a model of reading instruction and that misinformation has been proliferated about the term.
“We shouldn’t rush into something just to get a reimbursement,” Steigerwald said at the April 22 school board meeting. “Really, we would be out that money because our contract takes us through two more years. If we were reimbursed for a new curriculum, it wouldn’t help us.”
Steigerwald said the district uses the HMH Into Reading curriculum, and that the district will do a “crosswalk” this summer to see if the curriculum is doing what it needs to in order to teach reading to young children. She noted that it meets the Science of the Mind requirement in Act 20 already.
The district also uses Tools of the Mind for its regular and 4-year-old kindergarten students, which is not endorsed as one of the four curricula outline in Act 20, according to Steigerwald. However, the company that provides Tools of the Mind is doing its own crosswalk, she said, which will help to align to the reading recommendations from the law.
“That’s a huge win for us to be able to do that,” Steigerwald said.
She added that the crosswalk examinations are then forwarded to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
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