Kenosha Unified details first-year rollout of Act 20 reading law, cites progress and strains

Kenosha Unified School District staff on Tuesday reported early progress implementing Wisconsin’s Act 20 — the Science of Reading law — while flagging significant time, staffing and funding challenges.

Mary Hoover, ELA and social studies coordinator for elementary, told the school board the district has changed classroom practice and materials to align with the law and has begun issuing personal reading plans for students who screen at risk. “The purpose of Act 20 was really to take a look at strategies for improving literacy skills across the state,” Hoover said.

The nut of the presentation was procedural and operational: the district removed a previously used three‑cue prompting method, increased primary‑level phonics time from 30 to 50 minutes, added decodable readers and sound walls to classrooms, and began a schedule of structured professional development and coaching tied to new instructional “practice shifts.” Principal Teresa Curley said teachers are applying new training immediately: “The teachers go to the in services, come back, and start implementing the things that they are learning right away.”

District staff described four main implementation areas: curriculum alignment, professional development, screening/diagnostic assessments, and individualized reading plans. The state‑selected universal screener AIMSwebPlus was extended through third grade; any child at or below the 25th percentile on the screener must receive additional diagnostic testing and becomes eligible for a personal reading plan. Per staff, diagnostic testing and reading plans must be administered and communicated on an aggressive timeline (diagnostics within 10 days of the screener, family notification within 15 days).

Kenosha’s reported implementation details and approximate counts included: - more than 16,000 AIMSwebPlus screening administrations completed this year; - roughly 360 teachers trained in the chosen structured literacy coursework and about 380 staff trained to read and use AIMSweb data; - the district created 10 personal reading plan templates (six for general use, four in Spanish for dual‑language students) and reported “a little over 2,000” K‑3 students placed on one of the district reading plans; - tier‑3 interventionists are providing services to 474 students identified for intensive support.

Hoover said the district selected not to adopt an entirely new core curriculum after a cross‑district review; instead it revised existing materials to comply with the state rubric and to emphasize a phonics‑first approach. The district contracted with Cooperative Educational Service Agency 6 (CESA 6) to deliver and customize professional development and used a no‑cost online curriculum vendor (Cox Campus) for asynchronous course content that staff paired with in‑person time to allow teachers to process and apply learning together.

Implementing the assessment requirements proved time‑ and labor‑intensive, staff said. The district reported it had to extract and format AIMSwebPlus materials for classroom use (stimulus books, teacher directions), develop a district “crosswalk” that maps diagnostic choices to screening outcomes, and deliver three rounds of leadership training to principals and coaches so they could pivot the work to schools. Mary Bridal (presentation lead) and Jody Cascio (coordinator of learning systems) described repeated pivots when state guidance changed mid‑implementation; staff said one significant diagnostic requirement changed on the day they were set to train building leaders, forcing a rapid reissue of the crosswalk.

Staff also raised practical limits of AIMSwebPlus as a platform for district‑scale reporting: limited batch printing, constraints on district‑level reports and gaps in guidance for assessing students on alternate curricula. District leaders said they are using Infinite Campus to track required plan entry but hired a personal reading plan lead to reduce clerical burden on teachers.

Funding and timing remain a major concern. Representative Ned Wetzky, a co‑author of Act 20, attended and told the board the bill’s planned funding remained tied up in a separate legal dispute over the governor’s partial veto of budget language; she said that court proceedings have delayed distribution of the $50 million originally intended to support implementation statewide and that districts should expect uncertainty about timing. “The constitutionality of the use of that partial veto is now in court, which is holding up the funding,” Rep. Wetzky said.

Staff recommended additional district investments for next steps: a consolidated data management system that ties screener/diagnostic results to reading plans, more highly trained reading interventionists, continued year‑two professional development, and potential redesign of summer learning and promotion policy work. The district noted a promotion‑policy deadline in the law: districts are expected to adopt a promotion policy by July 1, 2025, with an implementation start date of Sept. 1, 2027; staff said they had begun preliminary work on that policy.

Board members and staff raised equity and practical questions during the session: how special education and nonverbal students would receive adapted instruction and how the screening thresholds map to longer‑term state assessments (the Wisconsin Forward assessment). Several board members and staff said they were concerned about students who score between the 25th and 40th percentiles on the screener and about the burden of rapid timelines on building schedules and teacher time.

No district policy vote on Act 20 implementation occurred at the special meeting; the board recessed into routine agenda items after the presentation and subsequently adjourned by voice vote.

Kenosha Unified leaders said they will continue implementation, reflection and incremental adjustments based on this first year’s experience and will seek state guidance on data and reporting, additional funding, and centralized resources to reduce duplicative district effort.