The Steelville Board of Education unanimously voted to approve a new literacy plan for elementary school students at their Aug. 27 monthly meeting. While the literacy plan is already actively being used at Steelville Elementary School, the Board of Education aims to roll out the new literacy plan district-wide at the middle and high school starting next month.

Assistant Superintendent and Director of Learning Matt Hammonds said that the newly-approved literacy plan aims to incorporate educational requirements set by the state into a comprehensive, centralized plan for educators in the school district.

“The literacy goal just ties all of that together in a district-wide perspective, mainly trying to bring the flow of all of the requirements that DESE (the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) has on us, including the reading success plans, dyslexia screening, screening of students K through 5 in our district.”

Under current state requirements, students who fall below certain performance standards in reading assessments and dyslexia screenings are required to enter a school-provided Reading Success Plan (RSP), which supplements student learning by providing specialized coursework or by placing struggling students with a dedicated literacy teacher.

According to Hammonds, the literacy plan aims to catch students who are struggling early and ultimately decrease the number of students who are required to enter RSPs.

“Our main goal is to use this literacy plan to actually dwindle down fewer students that need to be on those reading success plans,” said Hammonds, adding that existing student assessments show that literacy is already growing over the course of the school year. “Our benchmark assessments show student growth over time in grade levels from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.”

According to Hammonds, addressing literacy struggles among young students is one of the reasons that the school district implemented the literacy plan at the elementary school level first.

Candice Richter, principal of Steelville Elementary School, said that one goal for improving student-literacy is to strengthen critical-thinking and analysis skills among students.

“One of our biggest things that came across all grade levels was that we are not making kids grapple with the content. Teachers are so structured with kids, they are teaching it and delivering it, but they’re not having them process it and think deeper,” Richter said. “Our goal is to have intentional moments where kids have to sit as a whole, in pods or partner pair-share, and they have to come up with answers on their own without a teacher feeding it. We need to make them think deeper.”

The 2026-27 literacy plan outlines specific goals for the district to meet by May 2027.  Among the district’s goals are to get 85 percent of all students reading at or above their appropriate grade level, to increase the percentage of students in kindergarten through first grade scoring at or above benchmark from 64 percent to 75 percent, and to increase the percentage of students in 2nd through fourth grade who score at or above benchmark reading levels from 59 percent to 70 percent. Steelville R-3 School District uses STAR reading assessments to assess student literacy performance. STAR assessments are developed by Renaissance, an educational software development and learning analytics company.

The school district’s literacy plan doesn’t just focus on student improvement. It also incorporates professional development for teachers. Funding for professional development is provided by DESE’s Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grant. It is the school district’s second year as a recipient of the grant.

“A big part of that literacy plan includes professional development, which we’ve already started getting, including like the LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling) training, the Aspire training is happening this year with our middle school and high school teachers for the science of reading,” Hammonds said.

The grant pays for teachers to attend career and technical education centers, like the Rolla Professional Development Center, which will provide training for Steelville middle and high school teachers next month as the literacy plan expands district-wide.

Steelville R-3 School District Superintendent Steven Vetter said that reading scores aren’t where they need to be, but that the new literacy plan will help fill that gap.

“Over the years when we talk scores, we don’t see the results we want. I think everybody always kind of agrees. We know the curriculum. We know that it’s good. Teachers are teaching. You see it when we’re working hard, and so to finally hopefully start to get down to the missing piece and hopefully fill that in, bridge it, and move forward,” Vetter said. “It’s an exciting time, and we’re going to see those results pay off very soon.  I want it for the teachers, I want it for the kids, the work they put in.”