photo by: AdobeStock

In the profession of education, here’s a lesson that probably rings true for many a teacher: Take the money while you can because you never know when it may disappear.

Educators who are responsible for making sure elementary students can read may want to pay particular heed these days.

About 15,000 elementary educators in Kansas are required to learn new fundamentals about how to teach reading, and must pass a test on the subject by 2028 in order to keep their teaching licenses.

But now, the two programs that pay for teachers to learn the “science of reading” have lost their funding — one thanks to a federal cut by the Trump administration and the other due to the Kansas Legislature declining to provide funds during its recently completed session.

The end result is that Kansas teachers have a small window to complete the classes, if they want to avoid out-of-pocket expenses. The Kansas Board of Regents’ Blueprint for Literacy program — which failed to received state funding during the recent legislative session — has money to pay the tuition for teachers through June 2026, or for the first 1,500 educators, whichever comes first.

“Don’t wait, don’t wait,” Cynthia Lane, director of the Blueprint for Literacy program, said of her advice for teachers who need to acquire a state-mandated “Seal of Literacy” by 2028.

The University of Kansas and most other public universities in the state — plus a couple of smaller private schools — are now enrolling students for the summer semester in new literacy classes called the “Foundations of the Science of Reading.” Completion of the program requires students to take six hours of college courses — usually stretched over two semesters — via a mix of online and in-person learning.

Thanks to previously-approved state funding, the Kansas Board of Regents will pay for Kansas elementary educators to take the training. The classes have tuition and fees totaling $1,800, which educators would be required to pay, absent the scholarships. Additionally, each educator who passes the program will receive a $500 stipend from the Regents.

The plan was for that program to continue — and grow — in the years leading up to the 2028 deadline for elementary educators to obtain their “Seal of Literacy” needed to renew their teaching licenses with the Kansas Department of Education.

But Kansas legislators during the recent session split on the idea of using state funds for the Blueprint for Literacy program. The Kansas House approved $2 million in funding, but the Kansas Senate didn’t approve any. As a result the program is unfunded for future years.

That, however, is only half the challenge on the state’s literacy front. Another training program exists for teachers to receive the needed training on the science of reading. The Kansas State Department of Education has been paying for teachers to take the LETRS program. But the Kansas State Department of Education was receiving its funding to pay for teacher tuition from the U.S. Department of Education.

Even if your reading comprehension levels are challenged, you may know where this story is going.

“Secretary McMahon notified us that they were no longer honoring that agreement and cut off the remaining funds,” Denise Kahler, a spokeswoman with the Kansas Department of Education, said of a March notification from U.S. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

The sudden cut has major ramifications. The Kansas State Board of Education, which oversees public K-12 education in the state — had planned on using $10 million in federal funds to pay the fees for the LETRS course. The course, which usually takes two years to complete, costs approximately $2,000 per person, Kahler told the Journal-World.

Kahler said the State Board of Education is going through the federal appeals process in an effort to get the funding restored, but no decision has been rendered yet. Kansas board members, though, still place a high priority on the training, Kahler said.

“The state board remains very committed to providing this for Kansas teachers,” Kahler said. “We continue to actively pursue every available avenue to reinstate the necessary funding.”

What’s not changing is select educators are required to pass a test on the science of reading before they can renew their 2028 teaching licenses. While they could choose to take the test without going through the training programs, that may be a difficult task for those who haven’t received any formal training in the science of reading.

photo by: Kansas Board of Regents

Cynthia Lane has been chosen to serve as the state’s first director of the Blueprint for Literacy program.

Lane — who served as a former school superintendent and was a member of the Kansas Board of Regents before stepping down to lead the literacy program — said she was disappointed in the lack of funding, but said she and others must remain in “mission possible” mode. She said the stakes are too high for Kansas to back away from efforts to improve literacy.

Lane became one of the state’s leading champions for literacy improvements as she studied the issue while on the Board of Regents. One piece of data that stood out: Only 67% of Kansas students were reading at the basic level for their grade, based on state assessment scores.

The Regents’ Blueprint for Literacy program set a goal of having 85% of all fourth-graders in the state reading at or above their basic grade level by 2033. To do that, teachers need to learn a new way to teach reading.

That new way is called the “science of reading.” The science of reading method to teach literacy is significantly different than the methods many Kansas educators currently are using, Lane previously told the Journal-World. For example, the traditional method for teaching reading often encouraged students to skip a word that they had trouble with and instead use context clues to understand the sentence. The science of reading method rejects that approach and insists that teachers learn the details of phonics and how the brain really processes reading tasks.

Lane often compared the two methods to a snorkeler and a SCUBA diver. The first skims the surface exploring objects from a distance, while the latter dives deep to really examine an object.

“This approach requires us to teach kids deep skills,” Lane told the Journal-World in January as the program was rolling out. “Go deeper like a SCUBA diver so they understand phonics, they understand language and they read at a pace that allows them to understand what they are reading. The guessing game that you and I experienced, of guessing the words or skipping the words, that’s over.”

The battle over the Blueprint for Literacy program wasn’t a very noisy one in the Kansas Legislature. It was just one small part of the overall state budget that got debated, and it wasn’t the highest of profile issues that lawmakers debated.

However, the ambitions of the project may have worked against its winning additional funding. The project received $2.7 million in state funding in its first year — that’s the money that is being used through June 2026 — but the Regents were proposing many years of funding that added up to more than $100 million for program in its entirety.

As the Journal-World reported in February 2024, the Regents envisioned a program that would need $108 million in funding over the course of seven years to accomplish its goals. In addition to funding for teacher tuition and stipends, the plan also envisioned the creation of a literacy education simulation training lab, and six “Centers in Excellence in Reading” that would be built at KU and other universities across the state.

Those centers would provide resources to teachers, and also would train “instructional coaches,” who would go back to their school districts and provide instruction to teachers there.

Lane said she sensed some lawmakers were concerned about the centers and their cost.

“Our message wasn’t clear,” Lane said. “They thought we wanted to build centers. That is not what we were trying to do. We were trying to build teacher capacity.”

While those new centers were designed to help build that teacher capacity, Lane said the idea of creating centers has now been put on hold. Instead, the program will work more closely to bring programing directly to school districts.

The loss of the centers, though, may have an impact on parents. Part of the centers’ purpose was to be a place where parents could come and get help for their children. Reaching the overall literacy goals likely will require parents to become better equipped at helping their children, literacy experts have said.

“The thing that we need to find a way forward on is support for families,” Lane said. “How do we support school districts to better support families?”

Arguably, though, the biggest thing the program needs to find is money. If legislators during next year’s session choose not to fund the Blueprint for Literacy again, it is unclear whether the program could survive.

Lane said she will be prepared to make a strong case to lawmakers for funding. She said she also will be doing much outreach to the private sector to help businesses understand how improving literacy is critical for the state’s economy. She said she’ll look for some private funding support.

She’s also hoping to get some help from the public.

“If people think this is important to children and their communities, they should talk to their legislators,” Lane said.

At the Kansas Department of Education, leaders there are still hopeful that federal funding will be restored that would allow thousands of teachers to go through the LETRS training at no cost. If the federal funding doesn’t materialize, many local school districts likely will start looking for local funding to get their teachers certified.

Leaders insist there is no going back from the idea of requiring teachers to become certified in the new method for teaching reading. The current reading levels of Kansas students are compelling reminders for the need to change.

But if federal funders remain on the sidelines, that change is likely to come with some pain.

“Districts are doing what they can do to find funding,” Laurie Curtis, early literacy and dyslexia program manager for the Kansas State Department of Education, told the Journal-World via email. “But to do that, they would have to (forgo) other things that they were planning to use — some of it critical, such as adopting curriculum aligned with the science of reading. So, it is a significant loss.”