Santa Fe South (SFS) Schools, a public charter school district located in the south Oklahoma City metro area, has recently been identified as a recipient of an Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) Oklahoma Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grant (CLSD). SFS Schools, in turn, has named OU Outreach-developed ELQA as its “valid and reliable assessment for progress monitoring purposes,” as stipulated in grant requirements.  Jennifer Quillian, ELQA Project Director, stated that representatives from SFS Schools reached out to ELQA during the grant application process to confirm that the ELQA team would be a grant partner.  “We’re so happy for Santa Fe South, and very pleased that the ELQA has been valuable to their faculty, students, and patrons,” Quillian said.

The federally-funded CLSD grant initiative Oklahoma received totals $58.9 million over a five-year period, with $11,228,650 allocated for the first year. According to OSDE, the grant will fund “a transformative initiative in line with Oklahoma’s Comprehensive Literacy Plan. The initiative's primary objective is to enhance school readiness and improve language and literacy success among disadvantaged students throughout the state.” Twenty districts across Oklahoma were awarded sub-granted funds to support the implementation of literacy programs specifically designed for their student populations, birth through grade 12. “These sub-grants will enable schools to improve literacy instruction, offer targeted interventions, and build a stronger foundation in language arts for their students” (sde.ok.gov).  Two objectives of the grant that the ELQA team will help to implement at SFS Schools five sites with Pre-Kindergarten programs include:

1. Early Language Development: Increase the percentage of participating four-year-old children making significant gains in oral language skills.
2. Teacher Training and Professional Development: Provide extensive training for Oklahoma teachers in the science of reading and effective literacy instructional strategies to ensure high-quality literacy education statewide.

For the past four years, SFS Schools have used the ELQA to screen Pre K and Kindergarten students for indications of risk of not meeting age-appropriate benchmarks of growth in literacy, as well as for progress monitoring and collection of data to help teachers design instruction and select appropriate interventions.  Teachers there gave high praise to the ELQA during focus group interviews, emphasizing that reviewing the ELQA data had helped them realize the critical importance of introducing and subsequently reinforcing instruction again and again to assure that learners truly have acquired a concept or skill.  One school leader stated they had introduced transformative skill-building curriculum to help teachers fill these instructional gaps. “I think the ELQA assessment was a big driver of that,” she said.  SFS Schools, which has a large English Learner demographic, also relies on ELQA’s Spanish language parent reports.  Teachers send home a Spanish translation printout of the ELQA progress report with the student’s report card.  “If you yourself don't speak that language and can't read a language, you tend to think your kids are doing exceptionally well because they're doing better than you are.  So, understanding where they should be on track, that development, our parents loved that report,” said another SFS teacher.  

Dr. Belinda Biscoe and a team of literacy specialists and statistical analysts launched the ELQA more than 20 years ago as a literacy development progress monitoring instrument for 4-year-olds.  The ELQA has evolved and now includes assessments for 3-, 4-, and 5-years olds in both literacy and numeracy, as well as a Spanish language version for dual language classrooms.  ELQA has been used in thousands of classrooms in Oklahoma and around the nation.  “Our inspiration for designing the ELQA has always been to help teachers quickly get to the core information they need to help their young learners take the next steps toward proficient literacy,” said Dr. Biscoe. “Our partnership with Santa Fe South Schools in their literacy grant is a great example of ELQA’s mission fulfilled,” she said.