But now, bills before the state legislature would roll back these reforms and again allow schools to dismiss children in kindergarten through third-grade. 

Three measures under consideration would strip a prohibition on “disciplinary dismissals” — the removal of children from schools — in grades K-3, loosen the definition of student behavior meriting exclusion from the classroom, end a requirement that schools try non-exclusionary strategies before dismissing a child and let schools once again punish youngsters by denying or delaying their access to lunch and recess.

A separate bill would overturn a ban on seclusion for K-3 students — the practice of confining a child in isolation. Some people believe seclusion should be an option when a child’s behavior is out of control. Others call it punitive and cruel, particularly when used on very young children. 

That split was evident in testimony at a recent state House of Representatives hearing on the legislation. Sitting on opposite sides of a windowless Capitol hearing room, the witnesses took turns describing starkly different realities. 

Principal of Jeffers Pond Elementary in the affluent, suburban Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools, Patrick Glynn testified that suspensions provide “the gift of time” so staff can “allow for healing” and create a “re-entry plan” for the student in question. 

Minnesota Elementary School Principals Association President Lisa Carlson, who oversees a school in another prosperous Twin Cities suburb, said a suspension can send a strong signal to a parent in denial about a student’s issues: “For some families, the only way to truly recognize the severity of a situation is to be inconvenienced by it. When a child is suspended, parents are forced to stop, pay attention and take action.”

But parent and educator Ali Alowonle told lawmakers that suspension taught her child the wrong lesson. “She was told that she could not come to school because a police officer had to determine if she were a danger,” Alowonle said. “She began to hate school and refused to go. Suspension broke my kid’s trust in school and adults there.”

Parent Susan Montgomery broke down describing her son’s suspension setting off a destructive cycle. “Now, at 20, he is trying to rebuild his life,” she said, pausing to choke back sobs. “He is taking computer class, participating in healing circle, Bible study, working as a janitor and attending recovery groups — but all behind bars.”

However and whenever lawmakers vote on the bills — they may be standalone legislation or wrapped into an omnibus spending package – they will resurface longstanding racial and demographic divides.

Minnesota has long had nation-leading racial disparities in education, with a teacher corps that is more than 90% white and an increasingly diverse student body. Its schools also have a long history of suspending and expelling non-white students and children with disabilities at much higher rates than their white, nondisabled peers. 

In 2017, the state Department of Human Rights entered into a settlement with 41 school districts and charter schools that were found to have suspended and expelled non-white children and those with disabilities at disproportionate rates. A 2022 from Solutions Not Suspensions, a coalition of advocacy groups that has campaigned for 10 years for laws requiring schools to stop disciplinary practices, found that children of color received 79% of exclusionary discipline despite being 49% of the student body during the 2018-19 school year. Children with disabilities made up 14% of students but received 43% of suspensions and expulsions. 

The agency noted that when the reason for discipline was subjective — e.g. “disruptive behavior” or “verbal abuse,” versus bringing a weapon to school — the disproportionality skyrocketed.  

Armed with these numbers, advocates got a break in 2023, when Democrats gained power in both legislative chambers and the governor’s office. They enacted laws outlawing the use of dangerous prone restraints by police officers stationed in schools and dramatically narrowed schools’ authority to dismiss children. 

But limits on police authority in the wake of Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis officer had divided Minnesotans along both partisan and geographic lines, with city residents saying they were long overdue and rural residents largely opposed. In 2024, with an election looming and the support of rural Democrats feared to be softening, the Democratic-majority legislature reversed the ban on prone restraints.

The 2024 election left the state House evenly split, with equal numbers of lawmakers from each party set to take office. The late discovery that a Democrat did not actually live in the district where he was elected gave Republicans a one-vote majority until a March 11 special election likely restores the 67-67 split. They immediately started working to try to roll back policies enacted by the Democrats in 2023 and 2024.

Support for the discipline reforms passed in 2023 had been weak among rural Democrats. Now, advocates fear that the rollbacks being proposed by the Republicans could clear the state Senate, which has a one-vote Democratic majority. Advocates fear Democratic Gov. Tim Walz would not veto the measures. 

Kate Lynn Snyder is a lobbyist for Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union. Speaking in opposition to the changes, she reminded lawmakers that it is still legal for teachers to remove students from classrooms. Schools can send children home for less than a day, impose an in-school suspension or send a child to a sensory break room. When there is an ongoing, serious safety threat, expulsion is still possible.

“The largest complaint I hear about school safety from my members is that when our teachers call administrators to send someone to their office, no one is answering the phone,” she said. “That might be because of the perception that their hands are tied, or it might be because of the educator shortage, but either way teachers, like students, are not getting the currently allowed supports that they’re asking for.”

The state Department of Education also opposes the changes. At the hearing, lobbyist Adosh Unni described resources the agency has made available to schools interested in changing their approach to discipline.  

Matt Shaver, a former teacher who is policy director of the advocacy group EdAllies, urged lawmakers not to return to allowing schools to withhold or delay lunch or recess because of a student’s behavior.

“I took a lot of recess away from kids during my decade in the classroom,” he said. “I used this tool when students didn’t finish their homework or worksheets or weren’t focused in class. My line was, if you’re going to be playing during class time, you’ll do class time during your play time. I thought I was pretty clever and delivering consistent logical consequences that would teach the behaviors I wanted to see for my students. In hindsight, I was wrong.

“This wasn’t an effective tool because the same kids missed recess over and over,” he continued. “Instead of keeping a kid inside for a punishment, my time with them would have been much better spent on the playground building that relationship that would have made it more likely for them to respect and listen to me as their teacher.”

Following years of underperformance and legislative wrangling, the Wyoming Department of Education has proposed a new set of rules for how the state’s public schools teach kindergarten through third-grade students how to read, and is seeking public input on the changes. 

Drafted in response to a  in state law, the rules are intended to raise reading proficiency levels by the end of third grade by improving assessment and intervention practices that identify and support students’ varied needs. 

This legislative debate over literacy laws began about five years ago, according to Rep. Landon Brown (R-Cheyenne), who chairs the Joint Education Committee. At that point, the Legislature proposed eliminating reading assessment instruments altogether. This came at the same time that on the American reading curriculum’s widespread failure to implement evidence-based instruction methods for early literacy. 

“In Wyoming we really have a K-12 and beyond literacy problem, but the major emphasis should remain in K-3,” said Megan Hesser, parent advocate for Parents of Wyoming Readers and founder of Hesser Literacy Partners, an LLC offering consulting, coaching and private tutoring using evidence-based reading practices. “The research out there shows that if you are not reading on grade level by the end of third grade, without some massive interventions, you will always be behind grade level, it doesn’t change. It’s the reason that the [National Assessment of Educational Progress] scores don’t change.” 

The most recent NAEP tests reveal that not even  met or exceeded grade-level proficiency scores in 2022. These students face a significant risk of lifelong reading difficulties.

Instead of abolishing standing reading assessments, concerned constituents — mostly parents of struggling readers — began fighting to fortify K-3 literacy laws in the state. 

The  up for comment are a result of their years-long efforts. 

The Department of Education drafted the rules with input from a committee of stakeholders the agency selected to represent a composite of the state’s districts as well as a range of formal training and in-classroom experience. 

“We wanted a full range, so we have all the way from superintendents to curriculum directors to reading interventionists,” WDE Chief Education Officer Shelly Hammel said. “Every single one of the individuals that participated in our stakeholder committee had been classroom teachers first and then moved into other roles.”

The group also included those with special education and English-as-a-second-language backgrounds. 

The department will accept input  through July 31. Interested parties can also weigh in via virtual comment forums  from 5:30-7 p.m., or , from 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. 

Literacy bedrock

Hesser became a leading advocate for better literacy legislation after her son fell behind in the classroom. For more than two years he struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia, dysgraphia, avoidance behavior and anxiety related to learning to read, she told the Joint Education Committee at its last meeting. 

The problem, she said, is much larger than test scores.

“It’s time that the education committee considers that there’s a link between K-3 literacy and mental health,” Hesser said. “Reading is the root of a lot of these pieces that seem unrelated.”

If you can’t read, she continued, “how are you going to fill out a job application? Or resume? And if you can’t do that, then how are you going to take care of yourself or your family? At some point, something’s got to give.” 

Though Hesser responded to her family’s experience by earning a master’s degree in reading science, she said that parents and teachers were largely left out of the rules drafting process. She hopes they now participate in the reviewing process. 

“There’s so many families and teachers that don’t know what they don’t know,” Hesser said.  

Committee co-chair Brown also said he would like to see the review process build a broader consensus base.

“I hope the parents that had been left behind [and] the parents that have had good processes in this system comment on this,” he said. “I hope that we have legislators that take note of this and understand exactly how important this is.”

Rules roundup

The  regulate five key aspects of reading instruction:  

1. Screening: Establishes a list of approved screening instruments that districts can use to catch reading difficulties, defines the criteria that alternate screeners must meet and mandates that such assessments be administered three times per year. This section also provides for regulations interpretation and needs-based decision making processes. 
2. Evidence-based intervention and curriculum: Orders content standards for evidence-based core curriculum and establishes standards for remediation practices in the case of intervention. 
3. Individual reading plan and parental notification: Defines the process by which identified reading difficulties result in individual reading plans for students, and how both will be reported promptly to parents or guardians. 
4. Professional development: Defines the content and quantity of professional development districts will require of K-3 educators in evidence-based literacy instruction and the identification of reading difficulties. 
5. Reporting requirements and documentation: Establishes that all districts will record district literacy plans, individual learning plans and professional development practices; and will report to the WDE screener data, individual schools’ progress towards the goal of 85% of students reading on grade level and other documentation upon request. 

Looking forward

Hesser’s biggest concern going forward is implementation, she said. 

“I know there are pockets across the state that are a little bit resistant to what’s been happening, as far as these changes to the legislation have gone over the last handful of years,” she said. “So that’s always going to be my biggest concern,” she said.

Brown notes these rules are a first attempt.

“We also need to make sure that we’re nimble enough that if this does not work, we need to be able to change our statute and change our rules package in a hurry to make sure that we’re identifying what’s wrong with our statute, what’s wrong with our rules to make sure that school districts and schools themselves are able to adapt as they need to,” Brown said. 

 is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

A $120 million initiative to boost literacy would be one of the single largest investments of its type in Oregon history if it passes.

But during a public hearing for the proposal at the House Committee on Education on Monday, critics said it doesn’t go far enough and risks wasting money without stricter spending rules.

At the end of the hearing, the committee unanimously approved the initiative, moving it to the budget-writing Joint Ways & Means Committee. It would be the seventh major initiative attempting to raise reading proficiency for Oregon youth by the state or federal government since the late 1990s.

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The Early Literacy Success Initiative, , is sponsored by Gov. Tina Kotek and a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Democratic Reps. Jason Kropf of Bend and Ricki Ruiz of Gresham, and Republican Reps. Bobby Levy of Echo and Mark Owens of Crane.

The bill would create three new grant programs to help school districts pay for K-3 reading tutors, teacher training in reading instruction, new reading curricula and summer reading programs.

It would make Oregon part of a nationwide movement promoting the “science of reading.” The movement promotes reading instruction methods rooted in phonics to change persistently low student reading proficiency.

Since 1998, just over a third of Oregon fourth graders have shown proficiency in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, the nation’s report card. Yet decades of research shows more than 90% of kids can learn to read if they are taught with methods rooted in research about how the brain learns to decode written language. This research is based on decades of evidence that shows most people need to be taught the 44 sounds in the English language and how to map those sounds to letters and letter combinations to decode words. In essence, that means learning to “sound it out” and to recognize sound and letter patterns in words.

Yet literacy teaching in Oregon and in many other states has been largely based on the belief that reading comes naturally to the human brain and that children can learn to read if they’re surrounded by good books and given techniques beyond sounding out words, including guessing or using pictures.

Under the proposal, districts would need to comply with a rule that all materials, curricula and instruction be rooted in the “science of reading” to receive grant funding. The Oregon Department of Education and the State Board of Education would be responsible for determining whether districts were in compliance.

Wide support