Stewartville district details REED Act rollout, K–12 standards-based grading and behavior pilot

Stewartville Public School District administrators on Monday described the district’s first-year implementation of the state REED Act, plans to expand dyslexia screening and interventions, and a multi-year shift to standards-based grading and reporting across kindergarten through 12th grade.

The presentation, led by Maggie Mayne, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction, and principals and assistant principals from elementary through high school, said 83 educators completed the REED Act’s Phase 1 training this year and the district finished five of the act’s nine core OLA modules. "I just want to say thank you very much for the five days that we added to the calendar for this," Mayne said, referring to professional development days that gave teachers time to collaborate on the new training.

Why it matters: The REED Act requires districts to provide screening, teacher training and interventions tied to early literacy. The district’s presentations showed how the new requirements are shaping classroom screening, family notification and plans for intervention and for reporting student progress to parents.

What administrators presented - Screening and screening tools: The district used FastBridge benchmark testing for universal screening in grades K–3 this year and applied a gated approach to dyslexia indicators (nonsense-word subtests) so that not every student received the dyslexia instrument unless indicated by earlier benchmarks. Administrators said the state will require screening for dyslexia characteristics in grades 4–12 next year; the district has not yet finalized which screener it will use for those…