Community Education

Peninsula schools’ overhaul of reading and writing curriculum nears finish line

Posted on May 1st, 2025 By: Christina T Henry

Peninsula School District is nearing the end of an upgrade, several years in the works, in how it teaches students to read and write.

A committee of teachers and other district representatives recommended the district adopt Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) as its new elementary English language arts (ELA) curriculum. CKLA was part of a pilot last fall comparing it to another program under consideration.

The committee voted unanimously on March 4 in favor of CKLA, citing effectiveness, positive feedback from teachers and parents, engaging content for students and a lower cost.

“In all of the curriculum adoptions that I have had the opportunity to work on, I’ve never had a committee make a unanimous decision,” said Natalie Boyle, elementary director of teaching and learning, at the April 22 school board meeting. “And so, this was very evident that our teachers felt strongly about this.”

Natalie Boyle, Peninsula School District Director of Teaching and Learning, at podium, speaks to the school board on April 22, 2025, with members of the Elementary English Language Arts Curriculum Adoption Committee. The committee has recommended Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) as the new elementary ELA curriculum.

Last call for comments

The school board will vote in May on final adoption of CKLA. Pending board approval, the district will roll out the curriculum in the fall.

The date for that vote has not been set. Contact school board president Natalie Wimberley at [email protected] with comments on the recommended ELA curriculum.

The district will also implement a new middle school English language arts curriculum (Amplify, adopted by the board in March) in September. The board adopted an updated high school ELA curriculum last spring and implemented at the start of this school year.

Elementary instruction critical

Literacy experts note that children who have not learned to read by third grade are statistically less likely to succeed academically, including in other subjects, and that they’re likely to fall farther behind as years go by.

One of Peninsula School District’s goals is for 100% of students to be functional readers by the time they move on to fourth grade, as measured by what percentage meet state standards in English language arts. According to the most recent data on the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s website, only 62% of Peninsula’s third graders tested in the in the 2023-24 school year were “on track for college-level learning without needing remedial classes.”

The district has been working for two years not only to improve test scores, but to fundamentally restructure its entire approach to literacy instruction.

Curriculum screening process

Peninsula reviews and updates curricula about every six years. Elementary curricula is overdue for an update, according to Boyle.

During the 2023-24 school year, the district formed ELA curriculum adoption committees for high school, middle school and elementary levels. They surveyed parents, students and teachers about what they wanted in a reading instruction program.

The adoption committee chose two pilot programs: CKLA and a combination of two curricula, Really Great Reading, teaching foundational skills, plus Wit & Wisdom, the “core knowledge” piece.

Issues with Wit & Wisdom

The curriculum pilot hadn’t even begun when Wit & Wisdom began drawing negative comments at school board meetings last summer.

Sarah Garriott, chair of the Pierce County chapter of Moms for Liberty, complained that some materials in Wit & Wisdom were age-inappropriate and potentially traumatizing for students. Others said Wit & Wisdom would be difficult for teachers to use and hard for students with learning difficulties to understand.

Wit & Wisdom was central to a 2022 lawsuit filed by another parents’ rights group against a school district in Tennessee. Plaintiffs said it went too far in presenting issues of race and gender identity.

One speaker, Paul Frederickson of Gig Harbor, told the Peninsula School Board that Wit & Wisdom would “place adult burdens on little shoulders.”

Engaging content

Roughly 770 elementary students and their teachers took Wit & Wisdom plus Really Great Reading for a test drive from September through early November. The same group, representing nearly all Peninsula elementary schools, piloted CKLA from mid-November through early February.

Families liked that CKLA “supports a range of skills” and “shares diverse perspectives and varied subjects,” according to a report by the adoption committee. Students enjoyed the variety of topics and types of stories.

“My students were really engaged in a new way that I hadn’t seen for the last few years,” said Discovery Elementary teacher Ashley Trinh, who also served on the adoption committee. “We did Greek myths in second grade, and I was skeptical at first, but they just really dived in and made a lot of real-world connections.”

Pilot teachers liked CKLA’s connection between topics throughout grade levels, which educators call “scaffolding.” For example, kindergarteners study “Deep Roots: Introduction to Native American Cultures,” a topic revisited in third and fifth grades. “You can see that line that goes through all the grade levels,” said Marci Cummings-Cohoe, a first-grade pilot teacher and committee member.

What about Wit & Wisdom?

The committee’s report didn’t mention Wit & Wisdom/Really Great Reading. Asked to elaborate on the comparison, especially addressing community concerns about potentially “traumatizing” content, district spokesman Jake Voss relayed this statement from ELA curriculum committee leaders:

“Themes from educators regarding Wit & Wisdom focused on the logistics of planning for lessons and the instructional time rather than content and topics. Our pilot educators felt the teacher guides associated with Wit & Wisdom required a lot of pre-reading and additional planning. They found the content to be engaging for our students and scaffolded, however navigating the teacher materials was not intuitive and increased development time.”

Family comments on Wit & Wisdom didn’t mention disturbing or inappropriate content, Voss said. “Their comments focused on appreciation for stories that interested their children, learning about history and support for individual student needs.”

Good choice, ‘disappointing’ process

Michael Perrow, of the Gig Harbor Peninsula Area Dyslexia Parent Group, said his members approve of CKLA as the new ELA curriculum along with the Wilson Reading System, providing intensive intervention for struggling students. Perrow and his wife Kelly sued Peninsula School District on behalf of their daughter, who is dyslexic, and in 2023 won a substantial settlement.

“These programs represent a significant step forward,” Perrow said. “They are evidence-based, aligned with the science of reading, and — if implemented with fidelity — have the power to transform literacy outcomes, especially for early learners in kindergarten through third grade. For families like mine, with two dyslexic children who were failed by the district’s previous ineffective and debunked reading programs, this change offers real hope.”

“While the program selections themselves are commendable, the process through which they were adopted is deeply disappointing,” Perrow said.

He complains that parent surveys were brief and perfunctory, and no parents or community members were part of the curriculum adoption committee, other than those who were both parents and staff members. An open house announcing the CKLA selection “came with less than a week’s notice and occurred after the process had run its course.”

“Moving forward, I urge the district to embrace transparency, rebuild trust, and include the voices of the very families and students these changes are meant to serve,” Perrow said.

Working smarter, not harder

Teachers commented that CKLA was easier to use than Wit & Wisdom/Really Great Reading, in part because CKLA contained both skills and core knowledge elements.

“I had a student teacher, and I had to miss a couple days, and she was able to jump right in and use this (CKLA), so I mean, it’s user friendly,” Cummings-Cohoe said.

“It just felt like they were learning so many science facts and connecting it in a more real way to their reading and writing, whereas in years past, it was kind of like pulled apart in different ways,” said Trinh. “And this just made it feel like we were, you know, working smarter, not harder.”

CKLA came in significantly cheaper than the second pilot program. Wit & Wisdom would cost $750,000 and Really Great Reading, $577,000, for a total of nearly $1.33 million. CKLA would cost $839,600. Teacher LETRS training is a separate, additional expense.