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SALT LAKE CITY — In an effort to boost support for struggling elementary readers and provide professional development for educators, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox has increased funding for the University of Utah Reading Clinic to $1,321,574 — an increase of more than $350,000 the previous fiscal year.
The increase will help the clinic support parents of struggling readers, as well as educate teachers in reading assessment and intervention, to ensure Utah's kids' reading skills are where they need to be, even in the midst of a pandemic.
The additional funding is significant, as reading comprehension is an important indicator of future success, said Kathleen Brown, director of the U. Reading Clinic.
"Their confidence goes up, and we know from research that they are far more likely to have continued successes academically," she said. "An investment in reading skills is really an investment in a child's entire academic journey."
The Utah Legislature created the clinic in 1999 with a mission to provide direct services to parents and students who are struggling readers, along with providing direct services in professional development to educators throughout Utah.
"We are an absolutely statewide effort, this is not contained at the U. at all, or even (just) along the Wasatch Front," Brown said.
The clinic started delivering virtual services in the form of assessment, intervention and professional development in 2016, something that set the clinic up well to handle the "mind-boggling" increase of demands it has faced since the onset of COVID-19, according to Brown.
"Everything shut down and immediately we started getting calls from principals, from parents, from teachers wanting to know what we could do to help," she said. "The (virtual) environment is often not productive, particularly for the kids who struggle."
"Since we'd already been doing virtual service, we were able to pivot really nimbly and go to 100% virtual."
The funding that Cox provided during this past summer was crucial in helping the clinic expand its capacity to combat the reading losses children experienced due to the pandemic, and this increase in funding will do even more to help the clinic expand its reach and help more Utah children and their families, Brown said.
"It's game-changing for us. Our response is much more impactful than if we didn't have it," Brown added. "I can't tell you how happy I was when I got the email that we got that funding."
Current estimates are that contract specialists and tutors at the clinic are expanding capacity to serve an additional 400 educators and 11,200 students at Utah schools, in addition to 240 individual children at the clinic, according to a release from the U.
Brown said that the increase in funding has allowed the clinic to hire more personnel and provide that personnel with the technology needed to tutor children across the state and "hit the ground running."
In the 22 years since the clinic opened its doors, data has shown, that on average, the reading clinic's interventions help students grow a year's worth of reading ability in 45 sessions.
"If we could get funding like this consistently, it could be game-changing for kids in Utah," Brown said.
