INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — The Indian River County School District is continuing its partnership with the Learning Alliance's Moonshot initiative, an effort focused on improving literacy and ensuring students are reading at grade level by third grade.
District officials say early reading proficiency plays a key role in a student's long-term academic success, making literacy a major focus of the district's educational strategy.
Dr. David Moore, superintendent of the Indian River County School District, said the Learning Alliance has helped build community support around the importance of reading instruction and early literacy.
"What they have done to help is A, create advocacy and awareness around how important it is to ensure students can read by third grade. That is a data point that helps influence and improve all other data points," Moore said.
"So if we are able to create proficient readers in third grade, ultimately, the experience of children are exposed to in fourth through 12th drastically changes. Rather than doing remediation or being exposed to things that haven't been successful in the past over and over, you can provide rich, deep curriculum at the appropriate levels to engage and connect and grow kids."
Moore said partnerships with organizations outside the school district can provide additional resources that help schools address challenges more effectively.
"You have to leverage your resources. From a superintendent's perspective, you're coming in and yes, you're responsible for the school system, you balance those budgets which are provided through the state based on local taxes that we all pay, but that's not nearly enough to transform a system," he said.
"So, looking at the community, knowing that there are folks out there who are like-minded on doing this work, it was an easy connection to say, hey, if we can solve this problem, if we can put the appropriate resources in the right spaces above and beyond the state's allocation and have the level of expertise and rely on that and connect with that, we can change the experience."
While the Learning Alliance provides support and resources, Moore said classroom instruction remains the responsibility of district educators.
"We drive everything from a school district perspective. There isn't a program that's implemented inside the classroom. That's our teachers doing that specific work," he said.
"Now, they support in terms of helping or accelerating our understanding around the science of reading. They fund a significant number of instructional coaches which are hired by the district, employed by the district. Their work is driven by the district through our systems."
Moore pointed to student achievement data as evidence that the approach is producing results.
"We are number two in third grade reading. So, that rate of growth is significant. I don't think there's another district that has grown as fast in that specific level," he said.
"You see that immediate result when you look at our other results, because now we've been doing this for so long. You look at our middle school students. I think they improved five percentage points overall in proficiency last year and another 5% points of proficiency this year. That's significant growth over the course of just two years."
As literacy gains continue, Moore said educators and policymakers from outside the county have begun paying attention to the district's efforts.
"But seeing this momentum continue to build both across the state of Florida and really nationally says that there's something, there's a recipe here that we can replicate across the state and ultimately the nation. People are looking at what we're doing. It's exciting to see what comes from it" he said.