When the Kentucky General Assembly passed the read to Succeed Act last year, this phonics based approach to teaching became a requirement for all school districts.

Two of the sponsors of what was called Senate Bill nine State Senator Stephen West of Paris and State Representative James Tipton of Taylorsville were on the panel of experts on our early learners reform that was held earlier this fall, along with Christy Biggerstaff, director of early literacy with the Kentucky Department of Education's Office of Teaching and Learning.

They talked about what's included in the legislation and why teachers say they are excited about the change.

We have an oversight responsibility in the legislature.

60% of our state budget goes to education, and we had looked at our NAEP scores when KERA first came out in 93.

We we had seen a pretty significant increase, but that had plateaued and our scores were on the decline.

And we knew something had to change, something was not working in Kentucky and something was not working in our economically depressed areas west into Louisville or other places.

So we realized that something had to change quickly, and we worked for several years to get Senate Bill nine across the finish line.

There are different parts of this legislation.

What are the first part is what I'll refer to as the universal screener.

We have to know where the children are so we required the districts to use and we used the term evidence based.

We think that's key.

It has to be evidence based.

Universal screeners were to be selected to be to identify these students, students that were identified as potentially having problem.

The next phase is a diagnostic assessment.

And not only do we have to have the correct tool, the teachers have to be trained on how to use that tool.

So that's part of the legislation.

I think another key component of this legislation is we recognize that most of our teachers have not been trained in science of reading.

So it is essential that we have professional development and that's where the letters program came in.

It's the foundational learning.

It's how the brain learns to read.

It's information that our teachers have been asking for and have been desperately seeking for a long time.

And I hear that from a lot of the participants in the letters cohort saying, you know, this is the professional development that I never knew I needed.

And now that I have it, I'm so excited to put it into place.

But the letters instruction goes through the components of literacy, the phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension and fluency, and really teaches our teachers how to teach reading how the brain works.

You know, as he was talking about the science behind all of that information, because once you know the how and you understand the why and the why, it really becomes apparent.

So that's really essentially what the letters program is doing for our teachers.

It's teaching them how to teach reading.