{"id":98,"date":"2026-05-09T17:01:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T17:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/?p=98"},"modified":"2026-05-09T17:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T17:02:10","slug":"notes-on-madisons-reading-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/2026\/05\/09\/notes-on-madisons-reading-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes on Madison\u2019s Reading Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/isthmus.com\/news\/cover-story\/are-trained-tutors-an-answer%C2%A0to-madisons-reading-crisis\/\">Jenny Peek<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The gravity of Madison\u2019s literacy crisis didn\u2019t come into focus for Patterson until she became a literacy teacher leader with the Madison Metropolitan School District; before that she had been teaching fourth and fifth grade for 15 years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou kind of know as a teacher but once you have an admin-type view you start seeing it at a district-wide level and a nationwide level and it\u2019s like, \u2018Oh my gosh,\u2019\u201d Patterson says. \u201cSo that\u2019s when my journey to literacy really began.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>College students will get training, online and in person, from both Morgridge and the district on social-emotional learning, mentoring, and the science of reading, though the exact details of that training are still being figured out.<\/p>\n<p>Despite building strong relationships, and its long tenure, it\u2019s unclear how effective <a href=\"https:\/\/www.schoolinfosystem.org\/?s=schools+of+hope\">Schools of Hope<\/a> has been in improving reading. Over the course of its two-plus decades, literacy rates in Madison have remained relatively unchanged.<\/p>\n<p>During the 2024-25 school year, 51.2% of the district\u2019s third through fifth graders were not meeting grade level expectations in reading, according to the Forward exam, which is given to all third through fifth graders in the state.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s even worse for students of color. That same school year, 83.6% of the district\u2019s Black elementary school students and 73.8% of the district\u2019s Hispanic elementary school students were not meeting literacy expectations. That\u2019s in comparison to 23.6% of the district\u2019s white students.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sedso.io\/maps\/wi\/?district=Madison+Metropolitan&#038;grade=All+Grades\">3,887 Madison 4 year old to third grade students scored lower than 75%<\/a> of the students in the national comparison group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jenny Peek: The gravity of Madison\u2019s literacy crisis didn\u2019t come into focus for Patterson until she became a literacy teacher leader with the Madison Metropolitan School District; before that she had been teaching fourth and fifth grade for 15 years. \u201cYou kind of know as a teacher but once you have an admin-type view you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}