Montana receives $50M grant from Biden administration to improve literacy | The Montana Independent
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Student walking down an aisle of bookshelves. (Redd F / Unsplash)

The Montana Office of Public Instruction is set to receive just under $50 million from the U.S. Department of Education to help improve literacy education for elementary and middle school students, the state agency announced in September.

The funds will come in the form of a grant from the Education Department’s Comprehensive Literacy State Development program. The award will span five years, according the Office of Public Instruction.

Project 2025, a conservative plan of proposed policies for a potential Republican presidency should former President Donald Trump win the White House in November, calls for dissolving the U.S. Department of Education, which could eliminate the grant program and future educational programs as well.

The CLSD grant program was authorized by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, with the aim of improving literacy skills in K-12 education.

Montana is one of 23 states to receive funding from the grant program in this round.

According to the Office of Public Instruction, the state will use the money to provide evidence-based literacy resources and professional development for teachers. The OPI’s next step is to designate subgrantee school districts in the state to receive the funds. The districts that are chosen will be notified by December.

The agency said in its announcement that it plans to use the funds to establish teams at awarded schools to “deliver technical assistance, fiscal monitoring, decision making, and facilitate professional learning of subgrantees,” as well as to help districts implement evidence-based literacy practices, collaborate with higher education institutions to provide professional learning, and more.

“Increasing reading and writing proficiency reflects Montana’s constitutional promise of developing our children’s full educational potential,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen said in a press release. “The comprehensive literacy grant aligns our new state teaching and learning reading standards, accreditation rules, and the innovative MAST testing model. The subgrants to districts will help increase teacher confidence which builds upon our students’ academic success.”

The CLSD program is intended to focus on disadvantaged children, including those living in poverty, English learners, and children with disabilities. Arntzen told the Montana Independent that the subgrantee districts will be chosen with this in mind.

“We want to give a hand up,” she said. “The federal government eligibility is on the high needs, and high needs based on proficiency scores as well as the high needs in poverty. And so recognizing that the federal eligibility is that, we then are going to drill down in a little bit more and really looking to see the type of instruction that is occurring in the school and the opportunity to review their talent.”

The state is receiving the grant funds just as it is revitalizing its own literacy education standards, Arntzen told the Montana Independent.

She said the funds will be used to provide teachers with a mentorship program as the state undergoes that process.

Last year, Montana enacted a law providing resources to assist third grade students who do not meet literacy standards. With this in mind, the state is using the federal funds to provide help to children in grades three through eight.

Arntzen said in designating subgrantees, the OPI will look for school districts that already have suitable plans for increasing students’ reading proficiency.

“So if their literacy plan is focusing on progression, then the award would be possibly given to them because they are structurally set and ready to go,” she said.

While the funds are intended to be used for high-need students, she said, all students in the districts that are chosen will ultimately benefit through eligibility for all members of a given community: “When I look at what the eligibility of the federal government on high needs or on anything dealing with poverty index, I have almost 40% of our students that qualify for that poverty index of free and reduced, but what is interesting, and what I do very much appreciate, is that there was an opportunity for schools to open it up through a community eligibility program, so it didn’t target students and put a letter on their backpack to say that they were poor,” she said.

Arntzen said that as a conservative, she is grateful to federal officials for allowing Montana to make its own case to receive the funds, even as she pushed back on the prospect of what she termed as one-size-fits-all numerical goals for student literacy.

“I made many trips out and visited with many individuals on the Hill, as well as to the secretary, to say, Please, let us be innovators,” Arntzen said. “They believed us. They recognized us, and I am grateful and that they did that. … They know who we are in Montana, as transparent as we are, and they know our strengths and they have believed in us. So I’m very, very pleased that Montana has been awarded this.”

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