ST. PAUL Two state senators and three community advocates are scheduled to receive national recognition for their efforts to improve reading instruction for all Minnesota students in a ceremony on Monday, October 26, 2009, at noon, in the State Capitol Rotunda (75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, St. Paul).
Those honored at Monday’s event will include: Senators Kathy Saltzman (DFL-Woodbury) and Gen Olson (R–Minnetrista),and reading advocates John Alexander, M.Ed.–head of school for Groves Academy (St. Louis Park), Susan Thomson–educational therapist, and Bette Erickson–educational therapist and vice president for The International Dyslexia Association, Upper Midwest Branch (IDA-UMB). Certificates of recognition will be presented to each individual from the National Association For Reading First. Each will be recognized for their “leadership in supporting groundbreaking literacy legislation in Minnesota,” and their three-year sustained effort authoring and championing the passage of the strong literacy provisions signed into law under House File 2 (HF 2), this past legislative session.
The new law centers around the foundational knowledge of the five components of effective reading instruction as identified by the National Reading Panel’s Report of 2000—phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Beginning in February 2012, the assessment for Minnesota pre-kindergarten through elementary licensure candidates will measure the knowledge, skill, and competency in comprehensive, scientifically based reading instruction (SBRI) strategies.
Under the new law, institutions of higher education in Minnesota are required to prepare licensure candidates for the new reading assessment. Teacher candidates must now show competency before beinggranted a license. Higher education will take the time until the law’s enactment in early 2012 to align their curricula to the new licensure requirements.
In addition, the Minnesota Board of Teaching (MnBOT) has developed rules that are consistent with the literacy provisions in HF2. The reading licensure rules for teacher candidates pre-kindergarten through six grade are expected to be approved within the next few weeks.
These new literacy provisions are attracting national attention. Dr. G. Reid Lyon, distinguished professor of Education Policy and Leadership at Southern Methodist University, research psychologist, and former chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch within the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health, explains that “Minnesota’s new literacy provisions are some of the strongest in the nation.”
