Lehigh Junior High teachers credit schoolwide "literacy movement" with 14% reading-score gain in first year

Lehigh Junior High School teachers and students described a multi-year "literacy movement" at a school presentation, saying the program exceeded its initial goal by boosting reading scores 14% in its first year.

School leaders said the initiative, launched five years ago, created a cross-content literacy team, regular professional development and classroom routines that make reading and comprehension part of daily practice for every subject. The effort also includes a student-run writing lab where peer tutors work one-on-one with classmates.

"Five years ago, we formed a literacy team here at our school, and we involved teachers from all content areas. We have a teacher from every content area on our team," said Jen Broderick, a language arts teacher at Lehigh Junior High School. Broderick said the team initially set a goal of improving reading scores by 5% and that "our first year that we did it ended up improving by 14%."

Matt Baugh, a professional learning community coach at Lehigh Junior High School, described the program as a series of small, repeatable practices rather than a wholesale overhaul. "It's little actionable items that teachers could do. It was not a huge you gotta change everything. It was here's some little things that you can do," Baugh said, adding that the work is reinforced in regular team meetings and twice-yearly checkpoints.

Students also participate directly. "Students will just come in, like, usually requested by their teachers or they can make appointments online on the website. They're assigned to like a tutor, so like, students like me, and we'll typically we'll just like go over their essay and ask like what concerns they may have about what they're doing," said Ben Allred, a ninth grader and tutor in the school's writing lab. Allred said he enjoys "engag[ing] in discussion with these students" and seeing creativity surface in their work.

Staff emphasized that culture and routine—vocabulary use, explicit background knowledge work and structured opportunities to articulate understanding—are central to the initiative's gains. "They're very interested in their scores and and how they've improved," Baugh said of students' engagement with the program.

Details about district support, specific funding sources or plans to expand the model beyond Lehigh Junior High School were not specified during the presentation.