How APS Schools Are Achieving Sustained Reading Gains

From structured literacy to multimodal teaching, principals and educators share the strategies behind remarkable three-year gains at Pajarito and Manzano Mesa elementaries.

Pajarito Elementary School raised its English Language Arts proficiency rates by 22.9 percentage points over the last three years, while Manzano Mesa increased its ELA scores by 21.8 points during the same period.

So what’s the recipe for the sustained growth those campuses and others have been enjoying? Ask the principals of the two schools, and the first thing they’ll tell you is there’s no magic wand – just a lot of hard work and strategies that are working for their individual schools.

“Our scores have grown because we’ve been doing the hard work for so many years,” said Jessica Lacour, the principal at Pajarito Elementary School.  

And both she and Manzano Mesa Principal Shannon Dickson say the investments the state and Albuquerque Public Schools have been making in structured literacy are paying dividends.

Structured literacy

So what, exactly, is structured literacy? It’s a focus on the science of reading, or, more specifically, on training elementary school educators on how the human brain learns to read. The state of Mississippi has seen dramatic success by embracing this strategy, and New Mexico has followed suit, requiring LETRS – or Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling – training for elementary school teachers.

“All our teachers have been trained in structured literacy, so they’re using the strategies that they learned,” Dickson said. 

Lacour noted that Pajarito had a structured literacy coach who worked closely with her staff for three years. The systems put in place and the knowledge shared with teachers were key to the school's success. She explained that helping teachers understand the learning continuum was essential, as they realized students must master fundamental skills before advancing to comprehension.

That structured literacy coach provided professional development to teachers and did small coaching sessions to help them develop skills they felt were weakest. The structured literacy coach also worked to help teachers understand their assessment data so they could focus on key areas in which students were struggling.

Lacour said her teachers are also focused on helping students apply the lessons they’re receiving, so if students are working on phonics or decoding, they practice those skills for 15 to 20 minutes. 

While structured literacy has provided a crucial foundation for students, educators across the district are leveraging additional strategies to drive growth at their respective schools.

Pajarito Elementary

At Pajarito Elementary, Lacour said she tries to ensure that everything she and her teachers do is aligned and that everyone is pulling in the same direction. She also attributes part of the success her school has seen in ELA to its consistency in providing the recommended time for students to practice reading with Amira Tutor, an AI tool that provides real-time feedback to students. 

Another important factor in her school’s success, Lacour said, is having dedicated teachers who work hard to build relationships with students and teach them that they are capable of doing hard things. Helping students build that perseverance and self-efficacy is key, she said.

Manzano Mesa Elementary 

At Manzano Mesa Elementary, Principal Dickson leans into many of the tried and true strategies, things like having high expectations for students, staff and families and partnering with families.

One of the ways she partners with families is by including information in family newsletters about what they can do to help their kids with reading and math. That includes getting students to read stories to family members, taking them to the grocery store and talking about prices and even setting budgets with them.

But another thing that Dickson and teaching and learning coach Angela Stoltenberg are convinced is making a big difference in their school is the GLAD training they’ve been receiving. Glad, which stands for Guided Language Acquisition by Design, is specifically geared for English language learners, but Stoltenberg stresses that it’s just good teaching practices. 

The school’s fourth-grade teachers have been using the program for years and are seeing tremendous results for all students, she said. 

Stoltenberg and Dickson described GLAD as a multimodal approach packed with engaging, whole-brain activities. Teachers introduce new science or social studies units using Cognitive Content Dictionaries, where students share prior knowledge, develop definitions and associate vocabulary words with kinesthetic hand movements. Units are further enhanced through pictorial input charts — such as visual diagrams of the water cycle kept on classroom walls as ongoing resources — as well as energetic chants set to familiar cadences and popular music. By constantly revisiting these concepts through sight, sound and movement, students are better able to retain key learning.

GLAD has been so successful at the fourth-grade level that the fifth-grade teachers have adopted it, and now the entire school is interested in it.

“It's a very expensive program for training,” Dickson said. “The best thing the district has done is take away our Title 3 money and put it into one big pot, so then schools can just apply to take part in it.”

Of course, a program like GLAD can be time-consuming for teachers, but Dickson said she has buy-in from her staff, and one key factor that makes it possible is collaboration among grade-level teams.  

Celebrating success

Ultimately, the remarkable progress at schools like Pajarito and Manzano Mesa demonstrates that while there is no magic wand, meaningful success is within reach. By combining hard work, structured literacy, innovative tools and the unwavering dedication of educators, families and staff, these schools are creating a powerful blueprint for sustained academic growth across Albuquerque Public Schools.

Schools Showing Sustained Gains in Reading Over the Last Three Years