That was roughly a decade ago, when the kindergarten and first grade teachers at Harry S. Truman Elementary School in Rolla, Missouri, were discussing what reading skills students should have by the end of the year. 

Swyers, who was in her first few years of teaching in the district at the time, realized there was a gaping disconnect between what state standards required and what her students could realistically achieve.

“They would tell us these expectations, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, how are our kids able to even do that?’ ” she said. “I was like, ‘This is a nightmare — they are coming into [first grade] not knowing all their letters and sounds, but then they’re going to expect them to sound out and write two or three sentences within the first quarter.’”

Swyers began several years of research into the science of reading, and in fall 2023 she started using a phonics program from the . But because she was the sole teacher at her school using the materials, she felt unsure about how well she implemented them. (Truman Elementary was recognized as a Bright Spots school by �鶹��Ʒ for its work in third grade literacy that year.)

But the next year, Swyers received support that she’d yearned for. Truman Elementary became one of seven schools in the . The program, funded by local donors, brought in literacy coaches to help 50 kindergarten and first grade teachers with their reading instruction. The coaches met in person and virtually with educators on a monthly basis.

The collaborative involved five school districts in rural Phelps County: Rolla, Newburg, St. James, Phelps R-III and Dent-Phelps R-II. All experienced large jumps in student reading proficiency by the end of the program’s first year. By spring 2025, 97% of Rolla kindergartners were , compared with the 68% recorded in fall 2024.

The program is run by , formerly known as The New Teacher Project. It’s a national nonprofit that’s implemented similar coaching initiatives in New Jersey, California and Tennessee. In Missouri, the five Phelps County school districts are beginning their final year in the collaborative.

“The third year of our partnership with Phelps County looks a lot different than it has the last two years,” said Kim Davidson, who manages TNTP’s work in Missouri. “So the last two years have really been an infusion of support with our coaches working on the ground. [Now] we’re partnering with them to make sure that they have the skills to carry that forward.”

The reading progress of Swyers’ students was a “night and day difference” from before the coaching program, she said. Parents started to tell her how their children sounded out everything they saw at home and asked how to spell words.

“My kids were writing multiple sentences and sounding things out. They could not get enough,” she said. “Writing — because it [involves] so many processes for the brain — always felt like pulling teeth. They’d cry. It just took a lot of time. I feel like once we started doing [the coaching program], writing was fun. Reading was fun. It made it a lot more enjoyable to come in and do my job.”

Swyers said the knowledge she gained from the coaching program helped her create better game- or play-based activities that taught her kindergartners reading skills. The advice she received from her mentor gave her more confidence in the classroom.

Kelly Martin, a TNTP coach from Arizona, partnered with teachers in three of the Phelps County districts. It was her first time coaching in such a rural area, and she said the small, tight-knit community made it easier to work closely with students and teachers. Her past stints were in cities like Portland and Las Vegas. 

When visiting schools in person, coaches observed classroom teachers as they explained foundational reading skills, such as phonics, fluency and comprehension. Martin debriefed with each one to suggest ways to improve or add to their instruction for next time. 

Martin checked in with the teachers two weeks after visiting in person to answer questions and see how they were doing. Educators also received professional development about reading instruction a few times a year.

“The community and the school were just so open to the support and help, and they were so welcoming, so it was easy for me to build a relationship with them and even with their students,” she said. “I felt like I was part of the community itself, and I think that’s important — especially in rural communities where everybody knows everybody — that was a big piece of why it was so successful.”

Martin said the schools she worked with made increasing progress after making specific changes. Newburg Elementary School, for example, didn’t have a consistent reading curriculum when Martin first began coaching teachers there. 

“The [principal] decided they needed a curriculum, and once they had that, it was amazing — the progress both them and their students had once the teachers had a systematic process of teaching foundational skills,” she said. “The confidence that the teachers [got] was incredible.”

From fall 2024 to spring 2025, the percentage of Newburg first graders who read at or above grade level increased from 30% to 78%. Both kindergarten and first grade students made gains that more than doubled typical annual growth, according to .

Ashley Wood was one of Martin’s mentees at Newburg Elementary School. She became a full-time teacher, holding only an associate degree, the year her district began the rural literacy collaborative. She worked on earning her bachelor’s while in the classroom.

“[Martin] visited the school once a month to watch us teach our reading, and since I was new, I needed some extra help with the curriculum because it was our first time using this curriculum, so she modeled it for my class and for me,” Wood said. “We would meet with her during our planning period, and she would [ask], ‘How’s it going? What’s working? What’s not working?’ She always had something new to bring to us.”

One strategy Martin helped Wood implement was using flashcards daily to help students practice the alphabet. The flashcards weren’t part of a curriculum, but they helped her class associate letter sounds with pictures and review them quickly.

In the Dent-Phelps district, the of first graders reading at or above grade level jumped from 21% in fall 2024 to 82% in spring 2025.

Jessica Kiser began teaching kindergarten in the Dent-Phelps district when the literacy program was launched in 2024. She previously taught in Wisconsin, where schools were further ahead in teaching the science of reading and foundational literacy skills.

“I had been used to a little bit more rigor and different literacy initiatives that already had a foothold in the schools in Wisconsin,” she said. “I noticed that upon receiving the coaching, not only myself, but other members of my school, were feeling a lot more confident with implementing different phonics curricula and the knowledge of what best practice is.”

Kiser said Martin coached her, helping her find data trends that showed which skills specific kids were missing. Martin brainstormed strategies to implement in the classroom, such as an activity that involved finger laser lights that students used to trace letters of the alphabet.

“I would set out a white piece of paper and they could draw their little laser letters on the white paper, and we could turn the lights off so that it was so much more magical,” Kiser said. “That was just a little strategy to help get them more excited.”

Kiser also learned to have her classroom focus for a whole week on one — books that help readers match letter-sound relationships — instead of trying a different version every day. 

Rural Missouri schools that are not part of the collaborative are catching on to the benefits of literacy coaching. 

For the past two years, a literacy coach has helped teachers in the Salem R-80 School District with reading instruction in the classroom while staff interventionists pulled students out for one-on-one support. 

It’s a model that’s helped Salem Upper Elementary achieve Bright Spots status, like nearby Truman Elementary. But Principal Brendan Piatt said he wants to adopt a system that’s more like the TNTP model in Phelps County.

“That is something that we are planning to really look into this year because we’ve heard really good things about our neighboring county,” he said. “The cost of that was not reasonable for us, but I think that our local professional development center is hoping to get some of those strategies in place for us, which is more cost-effective for our school.”

The state is expanding the Phelps County coaching model to reach other school districts, said Heather Knight, the Missouri education department’s literacy coordinator. The work is part of Missouri’s overarching , which is funding literacy programs with $25 million in state and $35 million in federal dollars. 

With the help of the federal money, the education department created the Missouri Coaching Model, a program that will deploy 15 coaches into 37 elementary schools this year to help teachers with reading instruction, similar to the effort in Phelps County.

“This is a way for us to scale that work,” Knight said. “In addition to that, we are starting the Literacy Coaching for Success initiative, and that is the exact same Missouri coaching model, only it’s outside of that federal grant. So we have an additional 27 schools that have agreed to take part in that work, and those schools will receive literacy coaching this school year.”

Swyers said she has a solid foundation to incorporate literacy strategies into her classroom this year because of the coaching program. The activities she will try include some old-school techniques: writing letters on a chalkboard with chalk or organizing the alphabet with magnets on tables. 

“I’ve been taking a piece or adding a piece here and there, and then kind of shifting what I’ve already done and how I can make it better,” she said.

Yet Missouri’s reading results remain well below where they were a decade ago. Fourth-grade NAEP reading scores fell more than 10 points between 2013 and 2024, one of the largest declines in the country.

Many of the state’s reform efforts are still being implemented, and statewide averages can take years to respond. But if Missouri leaders want to accelerate improvement, they could start by studying the schools that are already producing the strongest outcomes for disadvantaged students.  

Like almost state, Missouri’s reading scores have fallen over the last decade. The chart below shows the change visually. It plots the distribution of Missouri’s fourth-grade reading scores in 2013 (in blue) versus 2024 (in red). The average score fell by 10.4 points, and, compared to 2013, Missouri had a lot more low performers (the red section on the left) and fewer medium and high performers (the blue section in the center-right).   

To find the state’s top public schools for teaching kids to read, it might be tempting to start with those that have posted the highest reading scores. However, that approach can give schools credit for things they didn’t do. Students may arrive in kindergarten already knowing their letters and sounds, for example, or parents may be able to provide extensive literacy support at home. The schools those students attend may be excellent, but high scores alone don’t tell us how much value the school itself added.

That’s exactly the philosophy behind our Bright Spots project at �鶹��Ʒ. Rather than simply ranking schools by raw scores, we adjusted for student demographics and identified schools producing stronger reading outcomes than expected based on their average poverty level. After controlling for economic advantages, we sorted through the data for 42,000 schools and identified 2,158 as Bright Spots.

An even simpler way to capture this idea is to look for schools getting good outcomes for student groups that typically struggle. For example, in Missouri, just under 42% of students scored proficient or higher on the state’s third-grade reading test in 2025. But among low-income students, that number was under 30%.

Still, some schools stand out as places worth investigating. Among schools with at least 20 low-income test-takers, 83 saw their economically disadvantaged students score better than the statewide average for all students. Some of these, like Mallinckrodt Elementary in St. Louis and John T. Hartman Elementary in Kansas City, are selective magnet schools and may not have replicable models. But others, like Cedar Springs and Cole Camp elementaries, are open to all students in their communities and get strong outcomes for low-income kids.

Income is highly correlated with reading proficiency, but other factors matter too. For example, non-native English speakers have a harder time answering English reading comprehension questions.

Still, five Missouri schools had higher reading proficiency rates for English learners than the state did overall. Those were led by McKelvey Intermediate school, where 71% of English learners scored proficient or better on the third-grade reading test. That was 30 points higher than the state’s overall proficiency rate. Additionally, the North Kansas City School District may be worth further attention, given that it had two of the top five highest-performing schools in this category.

Similarly, students with disabilities often struggle to read proficiently, and across Missouri, just 14% reached that benchmark in third-grade reading. Yet some schools did much better. For example, students with disabilities attending Lakeview Elementary in Wentzville actually outperformed the statewide average for all students. Notably, the Lindbergh School District had two of the top five schools on this list.

Some of these schools may benefit from exceptional leadership, unusually talented teachers or local circumstances that would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.

But as they look to implement reading reforms, Missouri policymakers could start by studying the schools that are already beating the odds. By visiting classrooms, interviewing teachers and principals, examining the curricula they use and observing how they support struggling readers, state leaders could start to unpack what policies are working, and which ones are getting in the way.

That’s the fundamental idea behind the Bright Spots project. Data alone can’t tell us why these schools succeed. But it can tell us where to start looking.