What is Iowa Early Literacy Initiative (ELI)?
The Iowa Legislature adopted a comprehensive early literacy law that focuses on making sure all students are reading at grade level by the end of third grade, so they are prepared for academic success in fourth grade and beyond. ELI law promotes effective evidence-based literacy programming, instruction, and assessment practices for students in Iowa. Literacy status indicators, the risk indicator associated with ELI, will be calculated for K-6th grades. 7-12th grade students will not have literacy statuses automatically calculated.
More information about the legal requirements, guidance and other support materials are available on the Iowa Department of Education's Early Literacy Implementation page.
What are ELI Requirements?
Below is a brief version of the big ideas and actions of the ELI guidance:
| Action needed - All K-6 Students |
Why is this good for students? | ||
| Universal literacy screening |
Screen K-6 students in Fall, Winter and Spring using a state approved assessment. The screening assessment results are used to determine the student's literacy status. |
Efficiently identify students at risk to allow for early intervention | |
| Action needed - At Risk Students |
Why is this good for students? | ||
| Students with a literacy status of At Risk | Students with a literacy status of Persistently At Risk | ||
| Intervention | Strongly encouraged in order to close smaller gaps sooner, but not required by law | Intervention required | Early intervention while gaps are smaller and easier to close |
| Monitoring | Weekly progress monitoring required | Weekly progress monitoring required | Frequent, regular monitoring data allows adjustment when interventions are not closing the gap quickly enough |
| Parent/Family Communications | Strongly encouraged, not required by law | Communications about the child’s needs and school efforts to address those needs required | Shared understanding and planning for a united plan to help the child improve |
Why do our 7th and 8th Grade literacy statuses say Not Available?
Students in grades 7+ will display the literacy status designation of Not Available in Student Success. The necessary elements to calculate literacy status, reviewed and approved literacy assessments and a declared default measure, are only available K-6 at this time.
What about parent/family communications?
Put your parent hat on for a moment and play out what you’d like to know if your child was found to have an emerging or ongoing concern with literacy. You’d probably like to know that there is a concern, what the school is going to do about it, what can be done about it at home, and how everyone will know if the interventions are working. You would want periodic updates.
When you frame the communication this way, you will meet the requirements for most ELI elements:
- Communicate the literacy status and the data used to make that determination.
- Describe what the school is going to do about it.
- Share ideas for things the parent/family can do at home to support literacy improvement.
- Plan for regular periodic progress monitoring updates to check on the effectiveness of the intervention activities. Share these with parents and families at least as often as you share report card information.
Example parent/guardian communications are available on the Iowa ELI page. Note: English examples are in the Early Literacy Technical Assistance Appendices while translated versions are available under Support Materials.
What should we do about intervention and progress monitoring?
It is true that ELI says you are not required to provide intervention until the child is below benchmark twice in a row, but we've always strongly encouraged everyone to go ahead and intervene now, rather than wait and possibly let the gap grow wider for the child between now and the next screening window. For At Risk students who don’t require intervention yet, you might support them by tightening and/or intensifying universal instruction or by applying specific interventions right away. The key is that early intervention, while problems are smaller, means that gaps are easier to close. Waiting may mean larger gaps to close later. If the team chooses to not intervene, watch the progress monitoring data to see if the child is closing the gap or falling further behind and act if needed.
For the students who were Persistently At Risk after the previous screening (last spring) but scored above benchmark in the current screening (this fall), intervention is not required but progress monitoring is required. Monitoring allows you to make sure they don't fall behind again after the intervention is removed. If a student does begin to falter, the intervention can be reinstated to prevent regression.
How often do we need to monitor progress?
The ELI requirement is weekly progress monitoring for grades K-3, with frequent monitoring encouraged in grades 4-6. The benefit for the child is that weekly data using measures sensitive to improvement on the general reading skill will provide feedback within a few weeks to tell whether or not the intervention is working. Infrequent progress monitoring means a longer delay before the data will indicate if the intervention is closing the gap or not. If the gap is not closing or widening, the intervention needs to be intensified or replaced with a more effective, better intervention.
Can we monitor progress using a different grade level measure?
For most students this is not necessary or best practice. The practice of monitoring students with an assessment that is "off-level" - not their current grade level - has some limitations and quirks. The FastBridge CBM-R measures were intentionally designed to minimize the need to measure off-level. FastBridge developed the progress monitoring passages to be a bit more readable in order to get a larger sample of reading out of lower-performing students. A larger sample of reading on easier passages means better sensitivity to growth. As long as the student can read 10 or more words correct per minute on the grade level passage, there should be limited need to use an off-level measure. Generally, about 98% of students should be able to have their reading growth monitored using grade level materials. For a small percentage of students with very low skills, monitoring on more appropriate content is appropriate and necessary.
Also, be aware that off-grade level progress monitoring goals are based on the grade level of the measure, not the child’s actual grade level expectations. This may produce a false sense that the student is making good progress towards an end of year benchmark that was actually intended for younger children, while actually not closing the gap on the appropriate grade level measure. Even though monitoring on grade level at a lower frequency can help keep an eye on the grade level target, fewer data points means a longer time before it is clear that the intervention is (or is not) working.