Wisconsin Act 20 Guide
In this detailed guide, our literacy experts break down everything you need to know about Act 20. Use this linked table of contents to quickly navigate the guide:
- What is Act 20?
- Why Was Act 20 Created?
- Key Objectives of Act 20
- Impact on Literacy
- Key Components of Act 20
- Required Reading Training
- Funding to Support Act 20
- Choice Schools
- Additional Resources
Impact on Literacy
One of the most significant changes to reading instruction established by Act 20 is that at-risk students will require a Personal Reading Plan (PRP).
At-risk students are defined as learners who fall under the 25th percentile in reading screener assessments. These assessments are tools that evaluate a pupil's reading ability across various areas of reading, such as phonological awareness, word recognition, spelling, vocabulary, listening comprehension, oral reading fluency, and reading comprehension.
After the screener has been administered and a student is identified as “at risk”, diagnostic assessments must be given within 10 days to gather further data about a student’s reading strengths and potential gaps. A PRP must be developed and communicated with families shortly after, with the goal of implementing the plan as soon as possible. The plan will address early literacy skill deficiencies and detail various methods of accelerating the students' reading levels.
The PRP must include:
- Goals established to improve reading comprehension and achieve grade-level literacy skills.
- A plan to monitor the student’s progress.
- A description of interventions, routines, and practices that will be used to address the student’s reading deficiencies.
- Comprehensive reading instruction that fits the science-based early reading curriculum.
- Strategies for parents to encourage and support their pupils to achieve grade-level literacy skills.
- Additional services to expedite the student’s reading development.
- Interventions that will be explained to the pupil as soon as they can be implemented.
- Weekly monitoring of the pupil’s progress using the methods described in the PRP to examine the student’s development and assess whether the student is progressing at a sufficient rate.
- A copy of the PRP for the student and the student’s parents. The PRP must be acknowledged by the pupil’s parent.
- After 10 weeks of instruction with the PRP, the instructor will notify the pupil’s parents of his/her progress, the interventions utilized over the course of those 10 weeks, and determine how to improve the student’s PRP.
In a science of reading framework, teachers start by teaching beginning readers the foundations of language in a structured progression − like how individual letters represent sounds, and how those sounds combine to make words.
Key Components of Act 20
We’ve simplified the key components of Act 20 to help you understand the definition and implementation of Science-Based Early Reading Instruction, how teaching phonics differs from Meaning Structure Visual (MSV) instruction, and how new literacy assessments will effectively guide students to reach grade-level reading proficiencies.
Definition of Science-Based Early Reading Instruction
There are nine key objectives to Science-Based Early Reading Instruction. This instruction model consists of:
- Phonological awareness: this includes word awareness, rhyme recognition, repetition and creation of alliteration, syllable counting or identification, onset, and rhyme manipulation.
- Phonemic awareness: this includes phoneme identification, isolation, blending, segmentation, addition, substitution, and deletion.
- Phonics: the relationship between sounds and words, alphabetic principle, decoding, orthographic knowledge, encoding, and fluency.
- Building background knowledge of words in context.
- Oral language and speech development.
- Vocabulary building to develop lexical and morphological knowledge.
- Instruction in writing.
- Instruction in comprehension.
- Reading fluency.
Phonics is defined as the study of the relationships between sounds and words; this includes alphabetic principle, decoding, orthographic knowledge, encoding, and fluency.
MSV Prohibition
Act 20 prohibits “three cueing” (as defined as meaning, structure, and visual cues (MSV), of teaching a pupil to read based on meaning, structure, syntax, and visual cues or memory.) Examine your current curriculum, determine what fits this description, and remove it from your instruction.
Early Literacy Curriculum K-3
Act 20 has many requirements that must be fulfilled for schools and districts to reach total compliance. However, that does not mean that all schools must change their curriculum.
School boards retain the independent authority to select the early literacy instructional materials they will adopt and implement. Those instructional materials are required to meet the definition of “science-based early literacy instruction” found in Act 20.
Act 20 does not require schools to change their curriculum. It does require schools to implement science-based early literacy instruction as defined in the statute and prohibits schools from implementing three-cueing instruction as defined in the statute.
School districts should review their existing curriculum against the definition of science-based early literacy instruction to determine whether their instructional materials and practices meet the requirements.
Additional resources concerning family/caregiver communication, district remediation plans, family history surveys, PRP tool kits, and curriculum tools are available on the DPI website.
Act 20 Literacy Assessments
Four assessments have been created to enforce Act 20 compliance and support students’ reading development.
- The Early Literacy Screener assesses students’ reading levels.
- The Diagnostic Assessment examines where students need to grow in reading comprehension if they fall under the 25th percentile.
- The Family Notification is designed to inform parents of their student's reading deficiencies, how they are measured, and interventions that will be prescribed to help the pupil reach grade-level reading.
- Personal Reading Plans are customized to students who score below the 25th percentile and include goals and actionable steps to reach an adequate rate of progress according to grade-specific standards.
Early Literacy Screener
A single reading readiness screener will be administered to Wisconsin students in 4K through grade 3 beginning in the school year 2024-2025. The assessment must be administered to 4K students once in 2024-25 and then twice per year over the following years, and 5K-3rd twice in 2024-25 and three times per year thereafter.
The Early Literacy Screener must be administered to students no more than 45 days into the school year and administered again no more than 45 days before the end of the school year. (Due to 2023 WISCONSIN ACT 192)
(Early Literacy Assessment screener and diagnostic information for 2024-25 can be found here.)
Act 20 states that learners in 5K through grade 3 must be evaluated on phonemic awareness, decoding skills, alphabet knowledge, letter-sound knowledge, and oral vocabulary.
(The screener for Wisconsin, beginning in January or 2025 for the 2024-25 school year, is aimswebPlus.)
Notification
Districts are required to notify parents and families of the reading readiness screener results no later than 15 days after the assessment is scored. These notifications must be written in comprehensive language that the student’s family can understand.
If a child was administered a diagnostic reading assessment, those results must also be provided to parents. These notifications must be in a form understandable to the parents or families.
Diagnostic Assessment
Any child that scores below the 25th percentile of the reading readiness screener must be administered a diagnostic reading assessment within ten days after the reading readiness screener and no later than the 2nd Friday of November within the fall assessment window.
The curriculum council and local education agencies responsible for selecting, procuring, and administering diagnostic reading assessments will recommend which are suitable for public and independent charter schools. The DPI will publish and maintain a list of recommended assessments for school and district implementation.
The DPI-approved diagnostic list can be found here: Diagnostic Assessment Guidance and List.
School boards and independent charter schools that purchase and implement a diagnostic assessment from the list provided by DPI will be eligible for funds through a reimbursement process. DPI cannot guarantee any amount of funding that will be available for this purpose.
Diagnostic assessments must include:
- Evaluation of rapid naming
- Phonological awareness
- Word recognition
- Spelling
- Vocabulary
- Listening comprehension
- Oral reading fluency and reading comprehension (when developmentally appropriate)
Family Notification
Beginning in the 2024-2025 school year, teachers will provide parents and families with the results of the reading readiness screener no later than 15 days after the assessment is scored in an understandable format that includes all of the following:
- Score on the reading readiness assessment.
- Score in each early literacy skill category assessed by the reading readiness assessment.
- Percentile rank score on the reading readiness assessment, if available.
- Definition of “at-risk” and the score on the reading readiness assessment that would indicate that a pupil is at-risk.
- Plain language description of the literacy skills the reading readiness assessment is designed to measure.
If a child was administered a diagnostic reading assessment, those results must also be provided to parents. These notifications must be in a form understandable to the parents or families.
Notifications should include the child’s score in each of the literacy skills assessed, along with a plain-language description of those skills and the score that would indicate whether a child is at risk of challenges with reading development.
If a school cannot acquire the diagnostic results within 15 days, it is reasonable for the school to communicate with the family that they are administering a diagnostic assessment to verify the results of the initial screener and will speak again once they have those results. If the school has any additional information (like classroom data) that could be shared with the family, then they are encouraged to do so for parent-teacher transparency and instructional clarity.
If a diagnostic reading assessment indicates that a child is at risk, the following information must be included.
- Information about how to make a special education referral.
- Description of the common indicators and characteristics of dyslexia (found in Wisconsin Informational Guidebook for Dyslexia and Related Conditions).
Personal Reading Plans (PRP)
Any child in grades K-3 who scores below the 25th percentile on the reading readiness screener must receive a personal reading plan (Due to 2023 WISCONSIN ACT 192, this goes into effect after January 2025.) Parents must sign and return the personal reading plan to school.
A plan is considered completed when the school and the parents decide that the child has met the goals of the plan and has shown an adequate rate of progress according to grade-specific measures. For children enrolled in 5K, adequate rates of progress to exit a personal reading plan are determined by nonsense word fluency and phoneme segmentation fluency.
For children enrolled in grades 1, 2, or 3, an adequate rate of progress to exit a personal reading plan is determined by oral reading fluency.
School districts have the authority to select and implement the tool(s) they believe are best to measure those reading foundational skills and should consult the manuals of those tools to determine whether an adequate rate of progress has been achieved.
Details about what the plan needs to include can be found here: Personal Reading Plan Checklist tool.
A Resource section has been added to the Wisconsin Reads website. There you will find a Personal Reading Plan template and the District Early Literacy Remediation Plan information.
At the same time, teachers are helping students build their vocabulary and their knowledge about the world through read-alouds and conversations. Eventually, teachers help students weave these skills together like strands in a rope, allowing them to read more and more complex texts.
