Great Falls Public Schools is looking at a complete overhaul of its English Language Arts, or ELA, curriculum.

The district formed an ELA resource selection committee last fall to look at current research, best practices in reading instruction, discuss classroom challenges and evaluate reading materials available for purchase.

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The committee was lead by Rachel Cutler, the elementary curriculum program coordinator, and Becky Frisbee, the secondary curriculum program coordinator.

Cutler and Frisbee told the school board during their Feb. 14 meeting that “the performance of GFPS students indicates that only some students are acquiring skills at a high level. The current resources have been identified as a barrier to achieving the levels of success desired.”

Curriculum reviews are often prompted by changes in education standards at the state level, but the state has not yet made those updates. Instead, the district identified a shortcoming in ELA learning, which includes reading, writing, listening and speaking, and the goals in the district’s strategic plan and decided to start this curriculum review now.

The last ELA update for elementary was in 2013, Cutler said.

The ELA resource selection committee included classroom teachers, building administrators, community members and school board members.

The 60-member committee developed a list of criteria to determine which resources would best meet the learning needs and materials have been on display at the district office for public preview. The committee was divided into groups to review elementary and secondary materials.

The district goes through the teachers union to get volunteers for their committees and they also made sure that all schools were represented. Members of the public are also able to sign up to serve on committees and there were three for the ELA curriculum review.

About 100 teachers and 25 community members, who were not members of the committee, previewed the materials and provided feedback.

During the Feb. 15 school board meeting, Cutler and Frisbee presented the selected materials to the school board.

The public is still able to review the materials at the district office through Feb. 25 and the school board will make a final decision on purchasing the new materials at a future meeting.

The new materials will be purchased primarily with ESSER funds, which are the federal education COVID relief funds.

Superintendent Tom Moore said purchasing the new materials for the district could cost more than $1 million.

Cutler told the school board that one method of correcting student performance is to upgrade to high quality curriculum and that’s the option they are proposing to try with the new materials.

Cutler said they looked at the current reality, what they’re looking for, the research that exists to guide their selections, recommendations from other entities such as the Montana Office of Public Instruction, Ed Reports and the Institute of Education Sciences to see what resources are proven to increase academic achievement.

Cutler said they found that only three out of five students are reading on grade level and that’s due not just to the materials, but also the learning process.

She said balanced literacy is a method of teaching that most teachers were trained to use, but the understanding of learning to read and understand the English language has changed and they are recommending materials that use a different approach.

She said that students need word recognition, which is phonics, and a broad range of knowledge to be able to comprehend what those words are saying.

She said the English language is one of the most complex and it takes more time to learn and comprehend.

The committee selected Core Knowledge Language Arts for elementary and middle school students and McGraw Hill’s StudySync for 7-12 grades.

Cutler said that the Core Knowledge curriculum has explicit systematic instruction of phonics, a strong knowledge building component and aligned intervention.

She said that 90 percent of the committee voted for the Core Knowledge materials.

Frisbee said the StudySync includes reading, writing, grammar and speaking components in one textbook. She said that in the past and the current curriculum, those are in different books and supplements.

She said StudySync has embedded data driven assessments, built in scaffolding for five different reading levels so it’s not obvious to students who are at different levels, and support for 10 different languages to help English language learners.

Frisbee said that the committee unanimously selected the StudySync curriculum.

Cutler and Frisbee said that these materials weren’t on display at the Great Falls Public Library as had been the practice in past curriculum updates since it’s a different way of teaching and learning so they wanted to be on hand to answer questions for anyone reviewing the materials.

Frisbee said that they are typically available in the afternoons from 3-5 p.m. but if anyone wants to make an appointment to ensure staff is available to answer questions to call her at 406-268-6761.

Cutler said typically they only get five to seven members of the public review materials when they do curriculum review so they were pleased with the community participation in this round.

Cutler said that any time new curriculum is implemented it takes about three years to see the impact, but she anticipates seeing some gains in student engagement quickly.

She said it takes time but they’ll monitor the data and adjust accordingly, as well as work with teachers to see what’s working and what’s not.

The district also has a number of ways to supplement and work with students who aren’t grasping the material to help bring them up to standards, Cutler and Frisbee said.

Jeff Gray, school board chair, said that some years there isn’t funding available to replace textbooks but that the district continually looks at curriculum.

“It’s a continuing process, it never ends, we’ll never get to perfect but we keep striving for it,” he said.

Kim Skornogoski, school board member, served on the committee and said it included about 28 hours of actual meeting time, plus many more reviewing materials and research.

She said it was eye opening to see how the science of reading has changed.

Superintendent Tom Moore said state law and school board policy require review of curricular areas every five years and that the district looks at assessment data and state requirements.

If they aren’t satisfied with assessment data, they look at making changes, Moore said.

“This is not something that we take lightly,” he said.