Michigan reveals vetted literacy programs for school districts tied to law

The Michigan Department of Education met its Jan. 1 deadline to publish lists of materials that align with the state's new literacy laws, providing school districts with vetted tools to help students who struggle in learning to read.

In late December, the state published two lists as required by the state's dyslexia and science of reading laws. One is a list of screeners, or assessments, to test young children and struggling readers for dyslexia. The other is a list of curricula for districts to use to teach literacy to all students in grades K-5.

Some of those programs focus more on the foundational skills for early readers, such as phonemic awareness, or the sounds letters make. Others are more comprehensive and have phases for all stages of elementary school reading, such as building vocabulary and comprehension of what students are reading.

The materials align with what's known as the science of reading, the science behind how the brain learns to read, in compliance with two laws passed in 2024 that take full effect in the 2027-28 school year. The laws are Michigan's biggest recent effort toward pushing districts to improve reading scores, while still maintaining local control. Michigan currently ranks 44th in fourth-grade reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation's Report Card.

By the fall of 2027, districts will have to use at least one of the approved dyslexia screeners to test all children and provide additional screening for students who show signs of struggling to read.

The law does not strictly require districts to use one of the vetted general literacy programs, although the state strongly encourages it and is using financial grants to give districts an incentive to use a program from the list.

The state education department was required by Jan. 1 to produce the lists of materials that comply with the law.

What the state approved

The state approved two programs for screening students for dyslexia. It approved 14 literacy curriculum programs. Of those, 11 had previously been vetted and approved for districts to use state grant money to purchase. DeNesha Rawls-Smith, the literacy unit manager at the Michigan Department of Education, said for future rounds of grant money, all 14 will be options for districts to purchase using those state funds.

The list of endorsed curriculum includes foundational skills programs like 95 Phonics Core Program, IMSE Orton-Gillingham Plus and UFLI Foundations, and comprehensive learning programs Savvas Learning Company LLC's myView Literacy, Amplify's CKLA, Imagine Learning's EL Education, Wit & Wisdom and MHM Into Reading.

Rawls-Smith said the department put out an open call for curriculum publishers to submit their programs for review to be added to the state-approved list. At least three people vetted each program across a rubric that included providing evidence that programs work to move students forward, she said.

"Not only did the vendors tell us what their product can do, they provided the research and the evidence," Rawls-Smith said. "They provided studies, so I didn't have to take their word for it."

Rawls-Smith said the districts either need to pick a program from the list or notify parents why they have made a different choice. In some cases, she said, there may be programs that comply with the spirit of the law, and teach reading according to science, but have yet to qualify for the state's list of vetted programs. It also may be they are choosing to go a different direction, she said, a right they still have under the law.

But Rawls-Smith noted the districts are still prohibited from using certain techniques in teaching reading, including guessing, looking at pictures to determine meaning or skipping over words that are hard.

"If they're using anything other than teaching children how to decode using the letter-sound relationship, they shouldn't be using that to teach children to read," she said.

Expert sees issue

Still, because the law does not mandate the use of a specific curriculum, it could create gaps where districts adopt only a foundational skills program for early readers and call it a day, said Karen Vaites, the founder of the Curriculum Insight Project.

Vaites, a national expert who reviewed Michigan's lists, pointed to literacy growth in the Detroit Public Schools Community District as an example of why adopting science of reading programs across the full K-5 spectrum is important. Detroit uses "EL Education," one of the programs that made the state's new list.

"Its outcomes have grown since selecting a comprehensive program, NOT since selecting a new foundational skills-only program," Vaites said in an email. "My primary fear is that Michigan's effort is overfocusing on only one quality variable: the phonics part of the equation. Foundational skills are really important, but so is reading comprehension, and Michigan's overall list and process seem to overfocus there."

Of the 14 programs on the list, seven teach foundational skills only.

Because the process was an open call for vendors to submit programs, Rawls-Smith said, the department was limited in its selection by which vendors submitted their programs for review.

Two controversial programs that have long been in use in Michigan and across the country, by authors Fountas and Pinnell and Lucy Calkins, were not submitted for review, Rawls-Smith said.

The lists of the screening programs and the K-5 curriculum will grow, she said. The state will be putting out additional calls to vendors for submissions in the new year, and the list will continue to update as more programs are vetted.

"We have to have more submissions in order to have the type of robust list that we desire," Rawls-Smith said. "We want more options for districts. We want more vendors to be able to meet the criteria, because then we know that they're putting out a product that's going to help children learn to read."

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