Tift County Schools picks K-5 ELA curriculum for upcoming school year
Apr. 17—TIFTON — Tift County Schools have selected the HMH Into Reading program to serve as their English Language Arts core curriculum for their K-5 students.
TCS Board of Education members approved the curriculum at their April 11 meeting with the intent of the program going into effect this upcoming school year.
At the previous meeting April 9, Jennifer Howell, chief academic officer, explained that she had been working with TCS staff to determine the core resources that would best suit what the school system needed, while also staying within the guidelines of the recently passed state House Bill 538, which mandated a greater emphasis on early literacy education.
Howell said that she and her staff had been working since December 2023 to trim down a list of resources, rated on foundational literacy skills and structured literacy components, constructed by the state government.
She reported that they had reduced the selection to only a handful of curriculum after determining which resources had the best user-friendly aspect for teachers and strongest structured literacy component, among them being HMH, Benchmark Education, a resource TCS had relied on in the past, and MyView, a program from Savvas.
From there, the staff researched the resources used by neighboring school systems. Howell reported that Colquitt was using MyView and Ben Hill HMH. Howell said she was notably impressed by the program in the latter county. Staff conducted a survey with the school system's own teachers, which resulted in a 97% approval rating from a sample size of 95 teachers for HMH Into Reading.
Howell asserted that the curriculum would be purchased through SPLOST funds, the board approving an expenditure of up to $2.2 million to afford the program. An exact cost, however, has not been determined.
