Annual Report
School Year 2023-24
Quick Stats For SY 2023-24
Schools Served
Teachers Trained
Children Reached
cents of every $ spent went toward direct delivery in schools
DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE
Dear Colleagues,
School Year 2023-24 has been a whirlwind of activity and exciting ventures for HILL for Literacy, including a new state project in CT, the launch of a learning management system in HILL Online, and the expansion of our professional development offerings to better meet client needs.
We launched Expertise, the gateway for our clients to manage their professional learning, resources, tools, and implementation support, in Summer 2023 by offering 100 Massachusetts educators the opportunity to take our Science of Reading series for free, thanks to our Massachusetts state appropriation funding. We also began the development and rollout of a completely asynchronous version of our acclaimed Science of Reading series to provide districts a more efficient and affordable alternative to live training. Our team’s dedication to continuously improving our technology to serve our clients’ evolving needs led to discovery meetings with districts that illuminated several key features for us to prioritize and add to our product roadmap. Through HILL Online alone we served 178 districts, more than 3,500 teachers, and 38,000 students in School Year 2023-24, and anticipate serving even more in School Year 2024-25.
We’re proud of our continued work with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education on the GLEAM initiative, now in its third year. We also partnered with the CT State Department of Education and other organizations to provide training in leadership and the science of reading to 130 districts across the state through the ARPA Right to Read Grant, more than we’ve ever before reached in a single initiative. Both state projects provide critical support and training in the best evidence-based literacy practices to school districts as we work collaboratively with these entities to address each state’s achievement gap.
We look forward to School Year 2024-25 and continuing our partnerships with the CSDE and MA DESE to reach more teachers and students through their statewide initiatives, including a new round of Open Access Professional Learning in Massachusetts. We’re actively expanding our asynchronous offerings in Expertise, including a Small Group Training Series, brief elearnings on topics relevant to the implementation of an MTSS framework, and just-in-time microlessons embedded into other components of HILL Online such as Continuum. We’ve also added several exciting new enhancements to our product roadmap, with plans to release them to our clients over the next year, improving the accessibility and sustainability of our district partnerships.
As a nonprofit, our organization’s ability to continue operations is due in part to the generous donations of community members and foundations. We don’t take the challenge of teaching kids to read lightly: according to the latest NAEP results, 68% of 4th graders fail to read at grade level each year and we know that we can help them. Your support can have a tangible, meaningful impact on the lives of children in HILL schools. Donations can be made via our website or by contacting the HILL office at 888-860-0190.
Best Wishes,
Darci Burns, Ph.D.
Executive Director
CONNECTICUT RIGHT TO READ STATEWIDE TRAINING SERIES
Beginning in October 2023, HILL for Literacy partnered with the Connecticut State Department of Education, UCONN, and LiteracyHow to support districts in addressing educational disparities and supporting evidence-based literacy teaching and learning in grades K-3. ARPA Right to Read Grant recipients enrolled a district literacy leadership team in our Right To Read Statewide training series which features 10 days of professional learning pertaining to the science of reading and the creation of a district literacy plan. Through this incredible initiative, we’re working with an impressive 130 districts, 291 schools, and 778 literacy leaders.
The HILL is dedicated to supporting these districts in the creation and implementation of their district literacy plans, and the response from participants is highly positive.
130 Districts
291 Schools
778 Teachers
Our district has thoroughly enjoyed and gained much needed information from these meetings. The plans that we have filled out will help us to focus our work over the summer and into the next school year.
Jennifer Spangle, Dean of Students
Integrated Day Charter School
As we approach a specific programmatic change in literacy, this work will help us support teachers by ensuring that teachers are aware of our vision and have the supports necessary to move forward with this change.
Abby Skarvelas, Literacy Specialist
East Hampton Public Schools
BROCKTON SUMMER SCHOOL LITERACY & PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
The Summer School Literacy and Professional Learning Grant (SSLPL) is an initiative designed by the Massachusetts Department of Education to simultaneously maximize achievement in extended school year programs and provide professional development in evidence-based literacy practices and took place in Summer 2023. The program was facilitated through a partnership between HILL for Literacy and Crafting Minds hosted by the Brockton Public Schools. The grant provided a half-day of literacy instruction within the Brockton extended school year program, specifically to rising first grade students reading below grade level.
The SSLPL model focuses on two critical areas of professional development: 1) building teacher background knowledge in the science of reading and 2) coaching educators as they plan and deliver Tier 2 structured literacy routines. Participating educators received 45 hours of training through both content delivery and on-demand coaching.
This deep, rich opportunity for professional development in the summer is also going to have an incredible impact not just in the individual classrooms of these teachers, but throughout the district moving forward.”
Karen Spaulding, Ed.D., Assistant Superintendent for Teaching & Learning, PreK-5, Brockton Public Schools
Educator training kicked off with a series of initial stand-and-deliver workshops that focuses on a discrete set of skills (8 hours). Teachers then engaged in embedded practice within the district-supported extended school year program (at least 8 hours), and received ongoing support through coaching (15 hours) and weekly staff meetings (8 hours). Instructional coaches were also supported by HILL facilitators who modeled routines, offered corrective feedback and provided instructional planning. SSLPL participants represent a range of Brockton educators including classroom teachers, reading specialists, special educators, speech and language pathologists, and administrators.
By the conclusion of the 4.5 week program, teachers participated in 45 hours of professional development and coaching, and students received 60 hours of literacy instruction. As a group, the 75+ enrolled students demonstrated meaningful growth across all measures of reading ability.
EXPERTISE LAUNCH
In Summer 2023, we launched our newest HILL Online application, Expertise, the gateway for districts to manage their professional learning, resources, tools, and implementation support. Our first offering was Open SOR—a series we made freely available to 100 Massachusetts educators. Now we’re serving 3,340 educators in Expertise alone, and even more in our other applications such as Continuum and Roadmap.
Expertise provides educators with timely job-embedded, contextual professional learning to ensure they understand the how and the why behind the HILL’s MTSS framework and have a common foundation of background knowledge across their school or district. When a district reaches the sustainability phase, that knowledge provides the groundwork for successful longterm changes in practice to improve student learning.
We’ve partnered with Axiom Learning Solutions to develop a completely asynchronous version of our Science of Reading series for Primary and Intermediate grades and released the final module at the end of May. We also continue to develop and offer Instructor-led courses (ILC) for the Science of Reading and Adolescent Literacy and launched a new version of SOR for Early Childhood educators in the fall. In addition, our team has been working hard to regularly release new free elearnings in Expertise and recently began development of a new asynchronous series to support the implementation of small groups. In the next school year, we plan to embed just-in-time learning from Expertise into Continuum to ensure educators have the information they need precisely when they need it and further expand our asynchronous course library with meaningful, relevant content for our clients.
Due to the diverse needs of schools, we believe it’s important to maintain both ILC and asynchronous options for professional learning. During this first year of Expertise, we collected survey data from 544 educators in primary and intermediate grades taking the asynchronous or ILC series at the end of Modules 1 and 5 to check their knowledge of the content. We already knew the ILC version of the series was impactful on educator learning, and the graphs below demonstrate that teachers in the asynchronous series are understanding the concepts (or “getting it”) on par with the ILC version. For both series, very few participants needed additional clarification on the content.
We invested in asynchronous course development due to the potential for greater feasibility, sustainability, and equity in learning. Having these options available to our clients will allow them to use facilitator time more strategically and tailor their in-person time to meet specific needs in their schools.
Educators On Our Asynchronous SOR Series…
I have taken many courses over my 23 years in public education. This is the best course I have taken. This online format allows me as the student to replay sections on the course I didn’t understand.
– Patricia Ferretti, Brockton Public Schools
I love being in the asynchronous course because it allows me to move at my own pace. I like to rewatch videos and hear information again because I like to do note-take during the learning. This has helped me process the information better.
– Sherri Carvalho, Fall River Public Schools
Doing this course at my own pace allowed me to slow down and understand it and have the ability to discuss with colleagues.
– Jaime Santucci, Franklin Public Schools
SCIENCE OF READING SERIES STUDY
In summer 2023, the HILL partnered with researchers from UCONN to conduct a study on 100 participants taking our Science of Reading Series for Primary & Intermediate Grades. Pre and post online surveys were conducted before and after each module to gauge the educators’ understanding of the content and how it changed after the instructor led course. The study found statistically significant increases between participants’ pre and post test scores on all modules.
In addition, qualitative date from a post-course survey shows most teachers feel greater confidence in providing Tier 1 reading instruction and in understanding how to include evidence-based practices in their classrooms.
HILL ONLINE HIGHLIGHTS
In SY23-24, we rolled out many new features and enhancements in HILL Online for our clients. We met with several district leaders to garner feedback on their experience with our applications to ensure our product roadmap was aligned to their needs. Those new features include:
- an improved group scheduling functionality to allow teachers to specify how and when groups occur and what they look like in order to better support teachers and reading specialists with cognitive planning and provide administrators with awareness and transparency.
- a new RTI summary report to provide teachers and administrators with an overview of how students are responding to instruction.
- Clever and Classlink API integration that syncs a district’s student rosters to HILL Online, ensuring ease and accuracy of data transfer to our applications.
- usability improvements around expanding the types of users who can utilize Continuum.
- enhancements to the user interface of Continuum and our ability to include new data sets to customize a district’s experience, as well as easily exporting data in additional ways to support client requests.
Overall, we served 178 districts and 38,042 students in HILL Online, with 3,650 teachers using Continuum, 3,340 using Expertise, and 2,236 using Roadmap. We are eagerly looking forward to SY24-25 where we have even more exciting improvements and features in the works to provide our clients with a delightful experience using our applications to support and sustain the literacy initiatives in their districts.
Key Partners
- Black and Puerto Rican Caucus of the Connecticut General Assembly
- Center on Teaching and Learning, University of Oregon
- Center for Behavioral Education & Research, University of Connecticut
- Connecticut Commission on Women, Children, and Seniors
- Connecticut State Department of Education
- Crafting Minds
- Educational Performance Systems, Inc
- Keys to Literacy
- Literacy How
- Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education
- NeuEon, Inc.
- Public Consulting Group
- Rhode Island Department of Education
- Right to Read CT
- RMC Research Corporation
- Schoolworks
- The Reading Institute
- YPTC
Our Supporters
For a complete list of HILL Supporters, please click the link below.
Our Schools
For a complete list of HILL Schools, please click the link below.
Interested? Give Us a Call or Email!
888.860.0190 | info@hillforliteracy.org
Financials
from FY2022-23 financial audit
REVENUE
EXPENSES
For more about the administrative side of the HILL, please see the links below.
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