Manitoba teachers are receiving marching orders to pay closer attention to how young students learn to read and use new tools to flag early signs of struggle.
The NDP government is introducing universal screening — systematic checks on a student’s knowledge of the alphabet, letter-sound relationships and compound words, among related items — in kindergarten to Grade 4 classrooms.
Starting in September 2026, every student will undergo these tests twice per year for at least three consecutive years between K to 4 to determine if they are on track to becoming literate.
Education Minister Tracy Schmidt said the results will be used to pinpoint individual challenges and shared with parents so they can collaborate on a response plan, if need be.
“We’re fulfilling that mandate and living up to that principle that no child is left behind, that every child matters, and that every child will receive the individual supports that they need,” Schmidt said after the formal announcement Friday.
School divisions will have the final say on what evidence-based assessments they choose, but the minister urged leaders to defer to the department of education for recommendations.
The Louis Riel School Division was an early adopter of the tools that will be phased in across the province this fall.
“It’s not just about reading. It’s about much more than that,” said Ron Cadez, assistant superintendent of student, clinical and instructional services for the division that encompasses St. Boniface, River Park South and surrounding communities in Winnipeg.
Early identification is key because children for whom reading does not come naturally struggle with self-esteem and mental health issues at higher rates than their peers, Cadez said.
LRSD uses the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing 2nd Edition (CTOPP-2) and Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS).
Cadez and his colleagues began using “screeners” in 2021 with a goal to improve report card data and better align themselves with research on how to help students with learning disabilities make breakthroughs.
Dyslexia advocates have long called for a renewed emphasis on direct and explicit instruction in curriculum across Canada so all students can realize their right to read. Their desired approach priorizes systematic lessons on how to decode and blend words.
Complaints about shoddy instruction and intervention strategies to support struggling readers led the Manitoba Human Rights Commission to launch its “Right to Read” project in October 2022.
The long-awaited dates of its public townhalls were announced this week.
So far, the commission — whose ongoing inquiry has been plagued by delays over the last three school years — has collected surveys from 670 students, family members and teachers.
“There were some gaps in how ready educators feel to do that work of teaching students to learn to read and also, in their access to resources and supports along the way,” executive director Karen Sharma said, reflecting on her early findings.
Cadez said a teacher’s eye and ear observations alone are insufficient when it comes to pinpointing a child’s specific strengths and weaknesses.
“(Screener results) are a predicator of potential risk. It’s not labelling a student. It’s not diagnosing a student. It is simply flagging a situation for us that we need to check in on more,” the LRSD leader said.
He indicated that, in his division, individual teachers collect the data and it is shared with school teams to emphasize that graduating literate citizens is “a collective responsibility.”
Cadez was among roughly 150 educators who gathered in the fall for the first Manitoba Universal Screening Symposium.
The event was organized for teachers to discuss evidence-based screeners and research that supports mandating standardized check-ins with young students to detect challenges early on in their schooling careers.
