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Dive Brief:
Guadalupe Centers Middle School in Kansas City, Missouri, increased reading achievement among students in grades 6-8 through its Aztecs Read initiative, despite not having a school librarian.
The initiative at the Title I charter school where 70% of students identified as English learners helped establish classroom libraries, host author visits and hold reading challenges.
Schools that lack librarians need to get creative to ensure that they’re adequately nurturing young readers. Nearly 30% of public schools operated without even a part-time librarian in 2020-21, up from 25% in the mid-2010s, according to data from a joint report titled “Schools Without Librarians,” published in 2024 by Antioch University Seattle and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Dive Insight:
The need for literacy experts is especially pronounced in charter schools, 70% of which had no librarian in 2020-21, according to the joint report. Of smaller schools with under 200 students, nearly two-thirds lacked librarians, as did about a third of high-poverty schools, the report noted.
Although Guadalupe Centers Middle School lacks a library, in the wake of the school’s recently implemented Aztecs Read initiative, students in 6-8 grades in 2022-23 averaged 3.67 points of Rasch UnIT — or RIT — growth on the NWEA reading assessment, which accelerated to an average of 6.17 RIT points in 2024-25, the school reported.
With about 370 students, Guadalupe Centers aims to serve as a hub for Kansas City’s Hispanic community, said Christopher Leavens, teacher and lead for English/language arts, who led the establishment of Aztecs Read as an initiative to put a library in every classroom along with various related initiatives such as author visits and an online reading log. A multipurpose room had served as a library—but without a staff librarian, possibly for the school’s entire history.
“I’m an English teacher, and I believe so much in students being able to have good literature, and stories that speak to their culture,” said Leavens, who’s been teaching for 14 years and is in his fourth year at Guadalupe Centers. “Independent reading is so valuable in developing their reading and writing, and in developing who they are, as people — communications skills, empathy, connection. I felt it was important for me to build that up.”
The initiative began during Leavens’ first year at the school, solely in his 7th grade classroom. But toward the end of the school year, he decided that the entire school, which has a total of nine classrooms devoted to students in various places along the English-language journey, should have a dedicated classroom library, and his colleagues, school leaders and the district stepped up to help. For those in the early stages of English language development, the books are in Spanish, but as they advance along the continuum, they move to English-language reading.
“We built it out over time,” he said. “Beyond getting books in the kids’ hands, we’ve tried to build up a reading culture. … Our district has been incredibly supportive of us, financially, to invest in the classroom libraries and build it out.”
Beyond the classroom libraries, Aztecs Read has hosted author visits — including with Pedro Martín, who wrote the graphic memoir “Mexikid.”
“He was able to come in, give a presentation, sign books and have lunch with our kids,” Leavens said.
The program has also invested in the online reading log Beanstack, which enables students to track their reading progress. “It can provide more infrastructure, accountability and build out reading to the home and get parents involved,” he said.
That tracking capability led to “Book of the Break” challenges, during which the school provides different tiers of incentives for students to read over school breaks for at least 10 minutes every day, Leavens said. Those who do enter a drawing for the grand prize, a pair of headphones; or the second prize, one of 10 gift cards to AMC Theatres, which were donated after a teacher reached out to the company.
At the very least, students — who typically wear uniforms — get to enjoy a dress-down day, he said.
“Not all kids are in homes where they have books, or reading role models,” Leavens said. “Getting kids to read is not always easy to do. … The team we have, too, is so resourceful and hard-working. We still have a lot of work to do, but we’ve been able to build up the amount these kids are reading for fun, and their enjoyment when they have read.”
When the Independence School District announced it was switching to a four-day week during the 2023-24 school year, it drew questions from local families and statewide officials.
Parents wondered what kind of child care they would have on days without classroom instruction. And lawmakers debated whether the state needed to intervene.
Ultimately, Missouri’s General Assembly passed a law requiring a vote for non–rural school districts to authorize a four-day week.
On Tuesday, the Independence and Hallsville school districts became the first large districts to receive the approval of voters to continue with four-day weeks.
“I knew that the majority of our community supported it,” Hallsville Superintendent Tyler Walker told The Independent. “I was a little bit surprised to see how much support it was.”
In Hallsville, residents had two questions on the ballot related to the school district. One asked about the four-day week and the other was a bond measure previously passed in April but not confirmed by the State Auditor.
The election drew 25% of registered voters, according to the Boone County Clerk, and 75% of those voted in favor of the four-day school week. The vote authorizes the schedule for the next 10 years, when then the district will have to hold another special election.
Walker didn’t think the margin would be that wide. Earlier surveys from the district’s 2022 adoption of the schedule put approval at around 60%.
He believes that the district’s growing success on standardized tests and other publicly available metrics have given families confidence that the four-day week isn’t such a bad thing.
“Our community has grown to appreciate the four day week more after experiencing it for a few years,” he said.
Todd Fuller, director of communications for the Missouri State Teachers Association, told The Independent that voters in districts who have already been operating in a four-day week like Independence and Hallsville have an idea of how it works for their students. The state law, passed in 2024, will require a vote prior to the schedule’s adoption for those who do not already adopt the abbreviated week.
“Anyone who’s a constituent of the district has had time to digest this process, and they’ve been able to decide over a two-year period whether it’s been beneficial or not beneficial for their kids,” Fuller said. “So if they are expressing that feeling with their vote, then we’re going to have a pretty good understanding of what they really want.”
The association doesn’t have an official stance on the four-day week. But Fuller said the teachers it represents have been pleased with the schedule.
Jorjana Pohlman, president of Independence’s branch of the Missouri National Education Association, told The Independent that the overall sentiment is positive from the district’s educators.
Mondays out of the classroom have become a good time for teachers to have doctor’s appointments, spend time with their families and plan for the week ahead, she said.
“In the beginning, it was fear of the unknown for families as well as teachers,” she said. “A lot of teachers had the attitude of, ‘Let’s try it.’ They, I think overall, felt it was a positive thing.”
A study by Missouri State University researchers looked at recent applicants to teaching positions in Independence, finding that the four-day week was a key part of the district’s recruitment.
In particular, 63% of applicants rated the four-day schedule as a top-three reason for applying, and 27% said it was their top priority.
The study also looked at the value of the four-day week for applicants, asking how much they would sacrifice in salary to work at a district with the schedule. On average, applicants were willing to sacrifice $2267 annually for the four-day week.
Walker said the schedule has also improved recruitment in Hallsville, with a dramatic uptick in veteran teachers applying to positions.
With teachers coming to Independence schools particularly for their schedule, some worried that returning to a five-day week would have large consequences for staffing. But Pohlman said a survey showed that the loss of educators is less than many would think.
“The educators, they care deeply about their students, and they want what’s best for students and for the community, whether it’s four day week or five day week,” she said. “They are still going to be committed.”
Almost a third of Missouri districts have adopted a four-day week, with around 91% of those districts in rural settings. Only districts in cities with at least 30,000 residents, or those located in Jackson, Clay, St. Louis, Jefferson and St. Charles counties, must call for a vote before moving to a four-day week.
Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: [email protected].
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State funding of private-school vouchers is primarily being used for students attending religious institutions, with nearly 98% of funding going toward Catholic, Christian, Jewish and Islamic schools.
This year, state lawmakers passed a budget that included a request from Gov. Mike Kehoe to supply the state-run K-12 scholarship program, MOScholars, with $50 million of general revenue. Previously, the impact to the state’s bottom line was indirect, with 100% tax-deductible donations fueling the program.
Donations are still part of MOScholars’ funding, but the state appropriation has more than doubled the number of scholarships available.
During the 2024-25 school year, MOScholars awarded $15.2 million in scholarships.
In August alone, the State Treasurer’s Office received invoices for scholarships totaling $15.6 million, according to documents obtained by The Independent under Missouri’s open records laws.
The invoice process is unique to the direct state funding of the program. The nonprofits that administer scholarships, called educational assistance organizations, were the sole keepers of scholarship funds. But now, the State Treasurer’s Office holds scholarship money derived from general revenue in an account previously only used for program marketing and administration.
The invoices contained data on which schools MOScholars students are attending and the scholarship amount.
Of the 2,329 scholarships awarded in August, only 59 went to students in nonreligious schools.
This number did not surprise Democratic lawmakers, who for years have warned that state revenue was going to be siphoned into religious schools.
“We are simply subsidizing, with tax dollars, parents who would already choose to send their kids to a private school,” state Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat, told The Independent. “And now we are using public dollars to pay for schools that are not transparent whatsoever in choosing who to educate and who not.”
Some schools have been criticized for admission requirements that push a moral standard.
Christian Fellowship School in Columbia, which received scholarships for 63 MOScholars students in August, requires “at least one parent of enrolled students professes faith in Christ and agrees with the admission policies and the philosophy and doctrinal statements of the school,” according to its handbook.
These statements include disapproval of homosexuality.
“The school reserves the right, within its sole discretion, to refuse admission of an applicant or to discontinue enrollment of a student,” the handbook continues.
With around 430 K-12 students enrolled at Christian Fellowship School, according to National Center for Educational Statistics survey data, MOScholars makes up a sizable portion of its funding. But it is not the only school with a large number of scholarship recipients.
Torah Prep School in St. Louis had 229 K-12 students during the 2023-24 school year. And in August, 197 MOScholars students received funding to attend the school. Torah Prep did not respond to a request for comment.
The high number of students attending religious schools with MOScholars funding is somewhat incidental, somewhat by design.
The MOScholars program allows its six educational assistance organizations to choose what scholarships they are willing to support.
Religious organizations stepped into the role to help connect congregants with affiliated schools. Only two of the six educational assistance organizations partner with schools unaffiliated with religion.
The Catholic dioceses of Kansas City-St. Joseph and Springfield-Cape Girardeau run the educational assistance organization Bright Futures Fund, which administered nearly half of the scholarships awarded in August.
The educational assistance organization Agudath Israel of Missouri focuses on Jewish education, partnering with four Jewish day schools.
The organization’s director Hillel Anton told The Independent that students are attracted to the program for more than just religious reasons.
“(Parents’) first and foremost concern is where their child is going to be able to be in the best learning environment,” Anton said. “And you may have a faith-based school that is fantastic and is able to provide that.”
The demand for the program has long exceeded funding availability. Going into August, organizations had waitlists of students eligible for a scholarship but without funding secured.
Agudath Israel of Missouri couldn’t guarantee scholarships for all of the returning students, Anton said, until the state funding was official.
“Because a lot of the funding is done towards the end of the year… we had everyone on a wait list,” he said. “Because we didn’t know necessarily how much funding we were going to have, we weren’t awarding anyone (the funding).”
Because the program was previously powered by 100% tax-deductible donations, the majority of funds poured in around December. But families need the money months sooner, with tuition due at the start of the school year.
Some educational assistance organizations prefunded scholarships, dipping into their savings to front expenses in the fall. Others had schools that would accept students and wait for payment.
The funding from the state, though, has resolved the backlog and allowed organizations to give scholarships to everyone on their wait list.
“Everyone who qualified for a scholarship this year received one,” Ashlie Hand, Bright Futures Fund’s director of communications, told The Independent.
Bright Futures Fund nearly doubled the number of students it serves, from 1,050 to 1,909.
Agudath Israel of Missouri is growing, too. The new funding helped the organization expand from 175 scholarships last year to 277 this year.
Some expect the state funding to continue next year to support this year’s windfall of scholarships. State Treasurer Vivek Malek told The Independent in May that if donations fall short, he will request state funds to support the new students through graduation.
Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: [email protected].
University of Missouri president Mun Choi is pressing local officials about crime rates near the Columbia campus after a student from neighboring Stephens College died Sunday following a downtown shooting, KCUR and the Columbia Missourian reported.
The president’s demand to address the city’s “rampant crime rate” has gathered some support, but critics say that his characterization of the local climate is overexaggerated, pointing to data from the local police department.
The shooting, which also resulted in serious injuries to two others, took place early Saturday morning on the college town’s main street. One individual, not from the city, got into a verbal dispute and then opened fire toward the people he was confronting. The three individuals he hit, however, were bystanders.
In a letter sent the same day as the shooting, Choi called on city and county leaders to bolster the police presence and prosecute crimes to the fullest extent of the law. He also urged them to take down encampments of unhoused individuals, pass a loitering notice and repeal policies that “attract criminals to the region.”
But when asked during a press conference Monday what policies and practices he believes “attract criminals,” the MU president said he had none to cite. Neither the shooter in the Saturday incident nor any of the victims have been identified as unhoused, according to local reporting.
“That is why I am asking [local leaders] to evaluate the processes that we have and the practices,” he explained. “Are we giving the impression to potential criminals that this is a region that doesn’t take crime enforcement as well as the punishment that comes with it seriously?”
Choi later added that students and local business owners have been raising safety concerns about the city’s unhoused population. According to university data, the number of arrests and trespassing violations issued to the unhoused has “gone up dramatically” since 2019, he said.
That is different, however, from what some local police department data shows.
In a Facebook post Monday, the city’s mayor, Barbara Buffaloe, said there have been 58 gunshot incidents since the beginning of the year. That’s down from 105 in the first nine months of 2024.
Columbia Police Department chief Jill Schlude did note in a separate letter, however, that since 2019 more crimes have been concentrated downtown, occurring between midnight and 3 a.m.
“The connection between late-night social activity and violence is clear, and that is where we continue to focus our efforts,” Schlude said.
Regardless of any disputes over the data, multiple government officials—including Gov. Mike Kehoe, several members of the Columbia City Council and Mayor Buffaloe—have voiced support for Choi’s general call to improve safety. Buffaloe has also committed to forming a task force on the matter, and the CPD has outlined plans to increase the police presence downtown.
“Statistics cannot be used solely as a reason for us to move away from what needs to be done in the city of Columbia,” Choi said.
In a recent statement and a series of fireside chats, Education Secretary Linda McMahon repeatedly drew attention to her efforts to move all career, technical and adult education programs from the Department of Education to the Department of Labor and consolidate some as part of the Trump administration’s quest to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.
“I can’t think of a more inefficient system than to have duplication and just one side not knowing what the other is doing,” she said at one conservative policy summit last week. “So let’s consolidate them all in the Department of Labor, where I think they should be. And if we show that this is an incredibly efficient and effective way to manage these programs, it is my hope that Congress will look at that and approve these moves.”
According to ED, many staff members from the Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education are already working under the supervision of the DOL, though the funding for the programs they oversee is still managed by McMahon. Moving that money, which was appropriated by Congress to the Education Department, would require legislative approval. But symbolically, the integration process is under way.
The Trump administration is not the first government body to propose or execute such a merger, however. A handful of states have combined their departments of higher education and workforce development agencies in the hopes of better aligning state budgets, curriculum and grant allocation with the needs of local employers. Missouri, for example, has been working since 2018 to integrate what was the Department of Higher Education and the Division of Workforce Development into a new Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development.
Inside Higher Ed spoke with the newly fused department’s commissioner, Bennett Boggs, and deputy commissioner, Leroy Wade, to understand how it came to be, what challenges they faced in the process and the benefits they’ve seen as a result.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Take me back and tell me a little bit about what sparked this merger for Missouri.
Wade: There was a realization that we weren’t being as effective as we could be as a state in terms of our economic development. And so Governor Parson, at that point, put together a group called Talent for Tomorrow that looked at what direction do we need to go and what kinds of things do we need to focus on? And then there was an ancillary piece called Best in the Midwest that looked around at our surrounding states to decide, from an economic development, from a workforce perspective, how are we doing?
Unfortunately, what we found was that we weren’t doing really very well. We were toward the bottom in almost everything that we looked at. And so out of that process and a listening tour all around the state to hear what folks wanted and what their perspective was, came two things. One was to try and streamline our Department of Economic Development. The other piece was to look at, how do we change our pipeline system? And that’s what brought the Division of Workforce Development to merge with the Department of Higher Education
Q: How did the process of merging these two institutions work? Was it all led by the governor and the state executive branch, or did it require any legislative backing?
Wade: The governor has the authority to reorganize state government, if you will, at least to a certain extent. So the process started with an executive order laying out what that reorganization would look like. Now, the Legislature has a role in that process. They can’t make changes to it, but they can either vote to accept it or not. But it went through; there was no legislative opposition.
There was some existing statutory language that talked about the Department of Higher Ed, and so there had to be some language changes to adopt the new name of the organization and to reflect some of the structural changes that took place. But it was really all driven by that executive order.
Q: One of the core justifications we’ve heard from the Trump administration for merging the CTE operations at a federal level is to eliminate what they say are duplicate programs. When Missouri combined its agencies, was that one of your motivations as well, and did you find any duplicates to consolidate?
Boggs: What we have found here in Missouri is not so much duplication as an opportunity for coordination. A large part of it was about combining functions that have similar end goals but are not exactly the same program. It’s about asking, how can they be coordinated to be more effective together?
Commissioner Bennett Boggs
One of the answers to that is leveraging broader expertise. If you bring people and programs together and help broaden the perspective of the work that they’re doing, it allows the organization to move from silos to strategic partnerships.
For example, Missouri is very strong in registered apprenticeships. But it’s not just in the trades. We’ve also developed some really effective programs in education and health care and some other professional industries. Part of that is because we’ve been able now to coordinate with local workforce boards, local regional employers and then the two- and four-year institutions, particularly regional ones. Before, these three groups may have been unintentionally competing because they weren’t that aware of each other, but now by working together they can be a funding stream. They can bring resources together to help strengthen and accelerate workforce development that would not have happened if they kept operating separately.
It also just strengthens our communications and helps us as a department talk about higher education in terms of, how does this make life better for Missourians? And that’s a better, healthier conversation to be having.
Q: Despite the shared end goal, there had to be times where there was internal conflict in trying to streamline things. For example, if both an apprenticeship program and a health-care school are training hospital technicians, I can imagine they’re each trying to fill their own seats. So what were some of the challenges you faced in the merger process and how did you overcome them?
Boggs: We know in Missouri, 65 percent of all jobs currently require education or training past high school, and that number is only expected to grow. Of that, 35 percent would be an associate degree or some certification, and 30 percent would be a bachelor’s degree and above. So this is a statewide effort to create pathways for all Missourians—so this is not either-or, it’s yes-and.
Why can’t a student have an internship or a work-based learning experience while in a postsecondary institution? And so part of those regional partnerships is that they help us think about things like that. They’re not only preparing students for the current job but asking, how do we get them on a pathway to be ready for the next one?
One of the challenges in this is understanding that different sections of our department work in different time frames. For example, we run 21 job centers in the state, and when folks come in the door there, they need a job to pay the rent next week. We also have different parts of the department that are approving academic programs in a way that might not really take off for three to five years. It’s not only a difference in pace but also culture and lingo. We just have to be aware of each other and learn.
The other challenge is potential for misalignment related to policies, data and physical infrastructure. This really hits home in terms of our planning and budget folks. We now have an array of state and federal programs that support Missourians in paying for education, whether that’s state-funded financial aid or federal [Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act] funds. These separate funding streams have different requirements, different reporting structures and eligibility criteria, so our staff then has to be able to think quickly, know about and pivot between multiple particular funding streams.
Q: We’ve also heard critics of the merger at the federal level suggest that there may be barriers in statute that make it difficult to merge or consolidate various programs and grants. Did you experience any difficulties legally when merging your two agencies?
Boggs: We didn’t encounter any legal hurdles, but as I was mentioning earlier, understanding the differences in the federal and state funding streams and the requirements and the structures and the eligibility requirements, those kinds of things had to get worked through.
Q: So would you say it was less about trying to change the existing rules and regulations for various programs and more trying to understand those stipulations in order to use the funding in a more strategic, collaborative way?
Boggs: I think that’s pretty accurate. It’s about keeping the similar end goal in mind, and then asking, what funds can be used to help advance to that shared goal?
Q: All challenges aside, over all, has this merger positively affected Missouri’s higher ed and workforce development landscape? And, if so, how?
Boggs: Absolutely. It’s changed the tone and the conversation statewide in terms of postsecondary education being part of economic and community development. It has pulled in strategic partners, from job centers, regional workforce boards, chambers of commerce and regional universities to have really interesting gatherings and talk about where they need to grow. And it makes for a better conversation about the cutting-edge research our flagship institution does. Over all, it helps us as a state have a better, more comprehensive conversation about learning and workforce development.
Q: Has the Trump administration reached out to you in an effort to learn from Missouri’s experiences in merging these two departments?
Boggs: No, but if they wanted to contact us, we’d be happy to assist however we could.
Q: Do you think there’s an opportunity for the federal government to learn from both the challenges and the successes that you have experienced at the state level?
Boggs: You know there’s a famous quote from Louis Brandeis that says, “States are the laboratories of democracy.”
I wouldn’t pretend to know what the federal government can take away from Missouri. They are operating at a much more complicated level, with many more components in play. But certainly in Missouri, we’ve had a good experience doing this, and we’re still discovering new areas for improvement all the time.
In fact, we’ve got a technical cleanup bill we’re proposing this upcoming legislative session of just small bits and pieces in the state statutes from before the merger that still need to be addressed. Part of what helped us out, though, is data—the integrating of some of the disparate data systems into now a more comprehensive data group, and that’s helping us statewide with better policymaking.
Missouri has passed a law protecting the right of students to gather and speak on campuses across the state. On Wednesday, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed into law SB 160, which defends the freedom of student organizations to set leadership and membership requirements that are consistent with their beliefs.
Although the bill was later amended to include provisions unrelated to the student organization protections for which we advocated, the final law still marks a meaningful victory for students at Missouri’s public colleges and universities.
The First Amendment guarantees the right to freely associate with others who share their beliefs — or not associate with those who don’t. FIRE has consistentlyopposedpolicies that force student groups to eliminate belief-based membership rules to gain official college recognition. As we said in March when Utah signed similar protections into law, it makes little sense, for example, “to force a Muslim student group to let atheists become voting members or for an environmentalist student group that raises awareness about the threats of climate change to allow climate change skeptics to hold office.”
In a letter to Missouri’s legislature supporting SB 160, we explained that the right to associate freely extends to students at public universities and to the student organizations they form. The Supreme Court agrees, and has repeatedly upheld this principle, affirming in Healy v. James that public colleges cannot deny official recognition to student organizations solely based on their beliefs or associations. Similarly, in Widmar v. Vincent, the Court ruled that a public university violated the First Amendment by denying a religious student group access to campus facilities because of its religious beliefs.
However, the Court’s decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez upheld the constitutionality of “all-comers” policies — requiring student organizations to accept any student as a member or leader, even those who oppose the group’s core beliefs. But the ruling applies only when such policies are enforced uniformly. In practice, universities often apply these policies selectively. For example, some religious organizations have been forced to accept members and leaders who do not share their faith, while secular groups have been allowed to set their own membership and leadership requirements without administrative intervention.
This selective enforcement results in viewpoint discrimination. SB 160 is meant to correct that imbalance. It states that schools cannot take any action against a student association or potential student association:
(a) Because such association is political, ideological, or religious;
(b) On the basis of such association’s viewpoint or expression of the viewpoint by the association or the association’s members; or
(c) Based on such association’s requirement that the association’s leaders be committed to furthering the association’s mission or that the association’s leaders adhere to the association’s sincerely held beliefs, practice requirements, or standards of conduct.
With the enactment of this bill, Missouri joinsa growingnumberof states strengthening protections for the First Amendment rights of student organizations on campus.
FIRE thanks Missouri lawmakers and Gov. Kehoe for affirming that students don’t shed their constitutional rights at the campus gates.
Tuesday Willaredt knew her older daughter, Vivienne, struggled to read.
She tentatively accepted teachers’ reassurances and the obvious explanations: Remote learning during the COVID pandemic was disruptive. Returning to school was chaotic. All students were behind.
Annie Watson was concerned about her son Henry’s performance in kindergarten and first grade.
But his teachers weren’t. There was a pandemic, they said. He was a boy. Henry wasn’t really lagging behind his classmates.
So Willaredt and Watson kept asking questions. So did Tricia McGhee, Abbey and Aaron Dunbar, Lisa Salazar Tingey, Kelly Reardon and T.C. — all parents who spoke to The Beacon about getting support for their kids’ reading struggles. (The Beacon is identifying T.C. by her initials because she works for a school district.)
After schools gave reassurances or rationalizations or denied services, the parents kept raising concerns, seeking advice from teachers and fellow parents and pursuing formal evaluations.
Eventually, they all reached the same conclusion. Their children had dyslexia, a disability that makes it more difficult to learn to read and write well.
They also realized something else. Schools — whether private, public, charter or homeschool — aren’t always equipped to immediately catch the problem and provide enough support, even though some estimates suggest up to 20% of students have dyslexia symptoms.
Instead, the parents took matters into their own hands, seeking diagnoses, advocating for extra help and accommodations, moving to another district or paying for tutoring or private school.
“You get a diagnosis from a medical professional,” Salazar Tingey said. “Then you go to the school and you’re like, ‘This is what they say is best practice for this diagnosis.’ And they’re like, ‘That’s not our policy.’”
Recognizing dyslexia
It wasn’t until Vivienne, now 12, was in sixth grade and struggling to keep up at Lincoln College Preparatory Academy Middle School that a teacher said the word “dyslexic” to Willaredt.
After the Kansas City Public Schools teacher mentioned dyslexia, Willaredt made an appointment at Children’s Mercy Hospital, waited months for an opening and ultimately confirmed that Vivienne had dyslexia. Her younger daughter Harlow, age 9, was diagnosed even more recently.
Willaredt now wonders if any of Vivienne’s other teachers suspected the truth. A reading specialist at Vivienne’s former charter school had said her primary problem was focus.
“There’s this whole bureaucracy within the school,” she said. “They don’t want to call it what it is, necessarily, because then the school’s on the hook” to provide services.
Missouri law requires that students in grades K-3 be screened for possible dyslexia, said Shain Bergan, public relations coordinator for Kansas City Public Schools. If they’re flagged, the school notifies their parents and makes a reading success plan.
Schools don’t formally diagnose students, though. That’s something families can pursue — and pay for — on their own by consulting a health professional.
“Missouri teachers, by and large, aren’t specially trained to identify or address dyslexia in particular,” Bergan wrote in an email. “They identify and address specific reading issues students are having, whether it’s because the student has a specific condition or not.”
Bergan later added that KCPS early elementary and reading-specific teachers complete state-mandated dyslexia training through LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling), an intensive teacher education program that emphasizes scientific research about how students learn to read.
In an emailed statement, the North Kansas City School District said staff members “receive training on dyslexia and classroom strategies,” and the district uses a screening “to help identify students who may need additional reading support.”
Public school students with dyslexia or another disability might be eligible for an individualized education program, or IEP, a formal plan for providing special education services which comes with federal civil rights protections.
But a diagnosis isn’t enough to prove eligibility, and developing an IEP can be a lengthy process that requires strong advocacy from parents. Students who don’t qualify might be eligible for accommodations through a 504 plan.
A spokesperson for Olathe Public Schools said in an email that the district’s teachers participate in state-mandated dyslexia training but don’t diagnose dyslexia.
The district takes outside diagnoses into consideration, but “if a student is making progress in the general education curriculum and able to access it, then the diagnosis alone would not necessarily demonstrate the need for support and services.”
Why dyslexia gets missed
Some families find that teachers dismiss valid concerns, delaying diagnoses that parents see as key to getting proper support.
Salazar Tingey alerted teachers that her son, Cal, was struggling with reading compared to his older siblings. Each year, starting in an Iowa preschool and continuing after the family moved to the North Kansas City School District, she heard his issues were common and unconcerning.
She felt validated when a Sunday school teacher suggested dyslexia and recommended talking to a pediatrician.
After Cal was diagnosed, Salazar Tingey asked his second grade teacher about the methods she used to teach dyslexic kids. She didn’t expect to hear, “That’s not really my specialty.”
“I guess I thought that if you’re a K-3 teacher, that would be pretty standard,” she said. “I don’t think (dyslexia is) that uncommon.”
Louise Spear-Swerling, a professor emerita in the Department of Special Education at Southern Connecticut State University, said estimates of the prevalence of dyslexia range from as high as 20% to as low as 3 to 5%. She thinks 5 to 10% is reasonable.
“That means that the typical general education teacher, if you have a class of, say, 20 students, will see at least one child with dyslexia every year — year after year after year,” she said.
Early intervention is key, Spear-Swerling said, but it doesn’t always happen.
To receive services for dyslexia under federal special education guidelines, students must have difficulty reading that isn’t primarily caused by something like poor instruction, another disability, economic disadvantage or being an English language learner, she said. And schools sometimes misidentify the primary cause.
Tricia McGhee, director of communications at Revolucion Educativa, a nonprofit that offers advocacy and support for Latinx families, has had that experience.
She said her daughter’s charter school flagged her issues with reading but said it was “typical that all bilingual or bicultural children were behind,” McGhee said. That didn’t sound right because her older child was grade levels ahead in reading.
“The first thing they told me is, ‘You just need to make sure to be reading to her every night,’” McGhee said. “I was like, ‘Thanks. I’ve done that every day since she was born.’”
McGhee is now a member of the KCPS school board. But she spoke to The Beacon before being elected, in her capacity as a parent and RevEd staff member.
Dyslexia also may not stand out among classmates who are struggling for various reasons.
Annie Watson, whose professional expertise is in early childhood education planning, strategy and advocacy, said some of Henry’s peers lacked access to high-quality early education and weren’t prepared for kindergarten.
“His handwriting is so poor,” she remembers telling his teacher.
The teacher assured her that Henry’s handwriting was among the best in the class.
“Let’s not compare against his peers,” Watson said. “Let’s compare against grade level standards.”
Receiving services for dyslexia
Watson cried during a Park Hill parent teacher conference when a reading interventionist said she was certified in Orton-Gillingham, an instruction method designed for students with dyslexia.
In an ideal world, Watson said, the mere mention of a teaching approach wouldn’t be so fraught.
Annie Watson with her son Henry, 11, before track practice. Henry went through intensive tutoring to help him learn to read well after his original school didn’t provide the services he needed. (Vaughn Wheat/The Beacon)
“I would love to know less about this,” she said. “My goal is to read books with my kids every night, right? I would love for that to just be my role, and that hasn’t been it.”
By that point, Watson’s family had spent tens of thousands of dollars on Orton-Gillingham tutoring for Henry through Horizon Academy, a private school focused on students with dyslexia and similar disabilities.
They had ultimately moved to the Park Hill district, not convinced that charter schools or KCPS had enough resources to provide support.
“I felt so guilty in his charter school,” Watson said. “There were so many kids who needed so many things, and so it was hard to advocate for my kid who was writing better than a lot of the kids.”
So the idea that Henry’s little sister — who doesn’t have dyslexia — could get a bit of expert attention seamlessly, during the school day and without any special advocacy, made Watson emotional.
“Henry will never get that,” she said.
While Watson wonders if public schools in Park Hill could have been enough for Henry had he started there earlier, some families sought help outside of the public school system entirely.
The Reardon and Dunbar families, who eventually received some services from their respective schools, each enrolled a child full-time in Horizon Academy after deciding the services weren’t enough.
Kelly Reardon said her daughter originally went to a private Catholic school.
“With one teacher and 26 kids, there’s just no way that she would have gotten the individualized intervention that she needed,” she said.
The Dunbars’ son, Henry, had been homeschooled and attended an Olathe public school part-time.
Abbey Dunbar said Henry didn’t qualify for services from the Olathe district in kindergarten, but did when the family asked again in second grade. Henry has a diagnosed severe auditory processing disorder, and his family considers him to have dyslexia based on testing at school.
She said the school accommodated the family’s part-time schedule and the special education services they gave to Henry genuinely helped.
“I never want to undercut what they gave and what they did for him, because we did see progress,” Dunbar said. “But we need eight hours a day (of support), and I don’t think that’s something they could even begin to give in public school. There’s so many kids.”
T.C., whose daughters attended KCPS when they were diagnosed, also decided she couldn’t rely on services provided by the school alone. One daughter didn’t qualify for an IEP because the school said she was already achieving as expected for her IQ level.
In the end, T.C. said, her daughters did get the support they needed “because I paid for it.”
She found a tutor who was relatively inexpensive because she was finishing her degree. But at $55 per child, per session once or twice a week, tutoring still ate into the family’s budget and her children’s free time.
“If they were learning what they needed to learn at school… we wouldn’t have had that financial burden,” she said. Tutoring also meant “our kids couldn’t participate in other activities outside of school.”
Support and accommodations
Tuesday Willaredt is still figuring out exactly what support Vivienne needs.
Options include a KCPS neighborhood school, a charter school that extends through eighth grade or moving to another district. Outside tutoring will likely be part of the picture regardless.
Willaredt is worried that her kids aren’t being set up to love learning.
Vivienne, 12 (left), and Harlow, 9, were both diagnosed with dyslexia earlier this year. (Vaughn Wheat/The Beacon)
“That’s where I get frustrated,” she said. “If interventions were put in earlier — meaning the tutoring that I would have had to seek — these frustrations and sadness that is their experience around learning wouldn’t have happened.”
When Lisa Salazar Tingey brought Cal’s dyslexia diagnosis to his school, he didn’t qualify for an IEP. But his classroom teacher offered extra support that seemed to catch him up.
In following years, though, Salazar Tingey has worried about Cal’s performance stagnating and considered formalizing his accommodations through a 504 plan.
She wants Cal, now 10, to be able to use things like voice to text or audiobooks if his dyslexia is limiting his intellectual exploration.
Before his diagnosis, she and her husband noticed that every school writing assignment Cal brought home was about volcanoes, even though “it wasn’t like he was a kid who was always talking about volcanoes.”
When he was diagnosed, they learned that sticking to familiar topics can be a side effect of dyslexia.
“He knows how to spell magma and lava and volcano, and so that’s all he ever wrote about,” Salazar Tingey said. “That’s sad to me. I want him to feel that the world is wide open, that he can read about anything.”
