Rhode Island’s Science-of-Reading Overhaul vs The Fed Freeze
From Legislative Mandate to Classroom Practice—and the New Federal Freeze That Could Stall It
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I was reading, “Trump’s $7 Billion Education Funding Freeze Blindsides Schools” in the Wall Street Journal. Within the article I read: “Angélica Infante-Green, the commissioner of education in Rhode Island, said she was particularly worried about withheld funding that has been used to train teachers in science-based reading instruction.” My eyes picked up the phase ‘science based reading instruction’ so I asked ChatGPT to provide information on what’s happening in Rode Island. I checked the references best I could and re-wrote the information. There may still be some inaccuracies. Nevertheless, here is what I discovered.
Rhode Island’s literacy campaign began with a humbling statistic: only 35 percent of fourth-graders reached Proficient on the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—a rate that had barely budged in a decade. providenceschools.org A bipartisan study commission traced the stagnation to two main causes. First, most elementary classrooms still leaned on Readers that provided little explicit phonics. Second, large numbers of teachers had never studied the science behind reading acquisition. Those findings drove two July 2019 statutes—the Right to Read Act (H 6086A/S 0863) and the Curriculum Law—requiring every Local Education Agency (LEA) to use a research-based core program and to prove that, by 1 September 2025, every PK-5 teacher is proficient and every other educator at least aware of structured-literacy practice. providenceschools.org
How the State Decided What Counts as “Science-Based”
Rhode Island’s Department of Education (RIDE) uses a three-lens screen:
National design quality. A program must earn “all-green” ratings on EdReports—alignment, knowledge-building, usability—assuring daily phonemic-awareness and phonics routines in K-2 and coherent, complex text sets in later grades.
State foundational-skills fidelity. Local adoption teams apply RIDE’s eight-pillar Foundational Reading Skills Tool (phonological awareness, phonics, encoding, controlled decodables, syntax, vocabulary/background knowledge, fluency, assessment). ed.gov
ESSA impact research. Vendors must supply studies that meet the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) evidence tiers.
Tier I—randomized controlled trial (RCT); met by Amplify CKLA and Great Minds Wit & Wisdom.
Tier II—quasi-experimental; met by HMH Into Reading (Palm Beach 2022).
Tier III—correlational with controls; met by ARC Core.
Because all three lenses must be passed, every core program now used statewide has at least one empirical study showing measurable gains in word reading or comprehension. RIDE audits ten percent of districts each year to keep the evidence current.
Which Curricula Districts Adopted
By spring 2025, 94 percent of LEAs had fully implemented a High-Quality Curriculum Materials (HQCM) core. Elementary schools most often use HMH Into Reading (22 LEAs), Amplify CKLA, ARC Core, or Benchmark Advance; middle schools favor Great Minds Wit & Wisdom or McGraw-Hill StudySync; high schools rely on Savvas myPerspectivesor Odell High School Literacy. When a core lacks a full K-2 phonics strand, districts bolt on Wilson Fundations, SIPPS, or 95 Percent Group resources; students flagged by screeners receive Tier 2/3 interventions such as the Wilson Reading System. collegeraptor.com
How Teachers Are Being Prepared
Proficiency pathway (about 60–100 hours). All PK-5 classroom, special-education, reading-specialist, and ESOL teachers complete Lexia LETRS Units 1-8 or an approved alternative (AIM Pathways, Brainspring/IMSE Orton-Gillingham, Keys to Literacy). The sequence blends eight asynchronous modules with eight day-long workshops and a bridge-to-practice assignment, earning a Literacy/Dyslexia Endorsement.
Awareness pathway (10 hours). All other staff—from art teachers to high-school physics teachers—finish five free modules on the BRIDGE-RI platform. ed.gov
Job-embedded coaching. The five-year, 40 million-dollar RI READS Comprehensive Literacy State Development (CLSD) grant funds one literacy coach per eight classrooms in high-need schools plus a cadre of state Literacy Fellows who conduct quarterly “implementation walks” and co-plan follow-up PD with principals. ed.gov
Launch institutes and PLCs. When a district adopts Into Reading, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt runs a two-day start-up, then quarterly instruction on small-group routines, decodable usage, and assessment calibration. Six-week PLC cycles—analyze screeners, plan instruction, peer-observe, reflect—embed the new routines into daily practice. collegeraptor.com
Teachers who complete LETRS on their own time typically receive stipends of $500–$1 000. Substitute coverage for peer observations is paid from Title II-A teacher-quality grants; ESSER III dollars have bought screeners and decodables; CLSD covers coaching salaries.
Early Impact on Students
Schools that (1) adopted the new, state-approved reading program and (2) put their teachers through the first year of LETRS training saw their students do better on the basic reading-skills questions (things like sounding out words). On average, those students scored about 3½ points higher than the year before.
Across the whole state, English-language-arts scores dipped a little, but the improvement in those well-prepared schools was strong enough to cancel out most of that drop.
Third-graders—who spend the most time on daily phonics—showed the biggest bump: about 4½ points higher than the previous year.
Providence Public Schools—the only district under direct state control—offers a sharper view. According to its publicly posted Turnaround Action Plan (TAP) update for January 2025, Grade 3 reading proficiency climbed 5 percentage points after the first LETRS cohort and Into Reading rollout, and the share of K-3 students scoring “below benchmark” on mid-year DIBELS phonics fell by 28 percent. providenceschools.org
Beginning in autumn 2025, every district report card will display teacher-training completion rates alongside Grade 3 results, explicitly linking adult practice to student outcomes.
The Three Funding Pipelines—and the June 2025 Federal Freeze
Title II-A funds are federal dollars that normally pay for our teachers to take intensive reading courses such as LETRS or AIM. They also cover the outside experts who run the classes and the stipends teachers earn for finishing them. The federal government has temporarily put the next payment of this money on hold, so districts are waiting to see when—or if—it will arrive.
ESSER III / GEER funds are the last pieces of the pandemic-relief money schools received. Districts use these dollars to hire substitute teachers (so regular teachers can attend training), to buy reading-assessment software, and to purchase decodable books for beginning readers. The very last withdrawals of this funding are already scheduled; it all expires in September 2025.
CLSD “RI READS” grant is a five-year federal grant that Rhode Island won to put a trained literacy coach in every high-need school and to support extra reading help for struggling students. The future installments of this grant are currently paused, so new money will not flow until the federal freeze is lifted.
On 30 June 2025 the Office of Management and Budget temporarily froze about 6.8 billion dollars in K–12 grants—including Rhode Island’s next Title II-A reimbursement and undrawn CLSD funds—during a budget review linked to the pending federal tax bill. Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green warns that, if the hold persists past September, districts may have to shrink LETRS cohorts, raid local funds, or lay off coaches—each option slowing momentum toward the 2025 proficiency deadline.
Looking Ahead
If Washington lifts the freeze swiftly, Rhode Island could become the first state where every elementary teacher is credentialed in structured literacy and teaches with a curriculum that cleared EdReports, passed the state’s skills rubric, and met ESSA evidence standards. If not, momentum could stall just as Grade 3 gains begin to surface. Hopefully, teachers will continue to use science based reading instruction while leaders work to restore all three funding pipelines.
Key Acronyms at a Glance
ARC Core = American Reading Company Core • CKLA = Core Knowledge Language Arts • CLSD = Comprehensive Literacy State Development grant • DIBELS = Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills • ESSA = Every Student Succeeds Act • HQCM = High-Quality Curriculum Materials • LETRS = Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling • NAEP = National Assessment of Educational Progress • RICAS = Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System • RIDE = Rhode Island Department of Education
References
EdReports. (2023). Into Reading (2020) program review.
EdReports. (2023). Amplify CKLA Skills (2020) program review.
Great Minds. (2023). Wit & Wisdom ESSA evidence summary.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (2022). Into Reading Palm Beach quasi-experimental study.
Rhode Island Department of Education. (2019). Right to Read Act overview. providenceschools.org
Rhode Island Department of Education. (2021). Foundational Reading Skills Tool. ed.gov
Rhode Island Department of Education. (2024). 2024-25 Curriculum Survey Report. collegeraptor.com
Rhode Island Department of Education. (2024). RI READS CLSD grant announcement. ed.gov
Rhode Island Department of Education. (2024, Oct.). RICAS 2024 assessment results press release.
Providence Public School District. (2025, Jan.). Turnaround Action Plan Update. providenceschools.org
U.S. Office of Management and Budget. (2025, June 30). Education grant pause amid review.