Orton-Gillingham literacy – Troy City Schools in Ohio trained all elementary staff in Orton-Gillingham, aiming to close post-pandemic literacy gaps for English learners.
A post-pandemic literacy gap is proving stubborn for many multilingual students, but one Ohio district is betting that a more intensive, skills-based approach can change the outcome.
In Troy City Schools. a public district with nine campuses about an hour north of Cincinnati. leaders set out to improve literacy for English learners after the disruptions of the pandemic.. The district serves roughly 4. 000 students. and while the share of children with primary languages such as Spanish. Ukrainian. and Japanese is about 3%. educators say the academic impact on that smaller group has been especially visible.
The district’s push is rooted in a clear problem: federal data shows English learners’ achievement scores lag behind those of their peers and. over the long term. have shown little improvement.. In Troy City Schools. that concern sharpened after the pandemic as literacy gaps widened. including at Concord Elementary. where teachers reported increased difficulty for multilingual learners.
For staff at Concord Elementary, one of the biggest hurdles has been phonics—how letter sounds combine to form words.. Walters. a literacy instructional support specialist in the district. said students were showing signs of frustration. including withdrawal and social-emotional strain.. Those reactions. she noted. were tied to the learning load of mastering both English and grade-level content at the same time.
Before the district’s overhaul. English-language instruction was described as inconsistent and fragmented across classrooms. a problem that staff say left teachers without a shared. reliable pathway for reading instruction.. Even with the urgency to raise English learner achievement. district leaders reported that it took time to turn the plan into sustained training.
After the onset of the pandemic. Troy City Schools spent three years evaluating changes before securing the resources to deliver them. according to Danielle Romine. director of Elementary Teaching and Learning.. The district funded the effort through post-COVID relief grants and budget allocations. reflecting a decision to invest not only in classroom materials but in professional development.
At the center of the strategy is Orton-Gillingham. a literacy approach that incorporates movement and touch into learning to read and spell.. Walters became certified in the method through the Institute for Multi-Sensory Education. and she now supports staff by training and coaching them to implement it with fidelity.
The district trained 116 staff members—explicitly including every elementary teacher, intervention specialist, paraprofessional, and principal—in Orton-Gillingham techniques.. The scope of that training is part of what Romine described as the way initiatives can spread: when teachers see a program that works. requests for additional training can grow quickly.
Classroom routines now emphasize auditory and kinesthetic drills designed to connect literacy concepts through visuals, sound, and movement.. Walters described practices such as using flash cards for visual support. tapping fingers to mark letter-sound correspondences while spelling words. and engaging students in activities intended to strengthen long-term recall.
Teachers also incorporate word knowledge and meaning into decoding skills, including instruction on word origins and history.. The approach highlights exceptions like “red words. ” which do not follow phonics rules—an element Walters said resonates with multilingual learners because it removes the sense that reading difficulties are simply “the way it is.”
At Concord Elementary, fourth-grade students take part in sand-tray activities as part of the method.. In this routine. a teacher dictates sounds while students write the letters represented by those sounds in sand—an approach meant to reinforce what students learn and make the letter-sound relationship more durable.
District leaders point to early results as evidence that the approach is gaining traction. Walters said district-wide third-grade reading proficiency dropped to 56% in 2021-22, then rose to 81% by 2023-24—bringing performance slightly above the district’s pre-COVID achievement rate.
State-level information further suggests improvement for English learners at Concord Elementary. where the school surpassed its target goal for English proficiency among multilingual students.. While the district cautions that gains are still part of an ongoing effort, educators say the momentum is meaningful.
Teachers have also described student progress that they say is happening quickly.. Walters reported hearing accounts of English learner students arriving in the fall who were conversing in English by December. as well as cases where a student’s phonics diagnostic score increased by 38 points within the same timeframe.
But the district is not treating the work as something confined to its own campuses. Romine said the longer-term aim is to extend support beyond Troy City Schools—potentially to the broader community or county—by enabling staff training that can reach educators from other districts.
For English learners, Romine and Walters stressed that success in reading cannot be limited to a single classroom measure.. Walters said the district is also thinking about what happens when children may be in the U.S.. only for a few years before returning to Japan, and why early literacy matters for those longer-term outcomes.. In that view. building reading readiness early helps reduce the risk of harmful gaps that can follow students as they transition between education systems.
Ultimately, Walters said the goal goes beyond literacy alone. She wants students to be able to succeed across math, science, and other subjects—because the foundation students build in reading determines how they access learning throughout the school years.
English learners literacy Orton-Gillingham Troy City Schools phonics instruction multilingual students post-COVID education