For years, Keppel Union School District approached reading instruction the way many districts did: using practices educators knew, trusted, and had been taught to use.
Then district leaders took a closer look at the data.
After the pandemic, curriculum and instruction coordinator Lisa Martinez began digging into student reading outcomes. What she found was hard to ignore: 177 students in grades 3–8 were not yet reading on multiple measures. And looking more closely, district leaders discovered that 156 of those students did not have Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).
That told leaders something important: The challenge wasn’t limited to specialized support. They realized that they needed to take a closer look at core reading instruction from the start of early childhood education, across the entire district.
Ultimately, Keppel Union shifted from a balanced literacy approach to one of structured literacy grounded in the Science of Reading. Martinez helps lead that work across the district’s five schools, supporting educators as they bring evidence-based literacy instruction into classrooms to support early literacy skills.
At the direction of Superintendent Darbari and with the help of an amazing Instructional Services team, Keppel Union’s district-wide commitment to turning reading research into practice—has earned the district a 2026 Science of Reading Star Award, which recognizes educators, schools, and districts transforming early literacy development through practices grounded in the Science of Reading. Together, they’re leveraging research to improve student literacy outcomes.
“When we know better,” Martinez says, “we do better.”
Leading a district-wide shift to research-based instruction
Keppel Union serves approximately 2,500 students across five schools in a community Martinez describes as remote. “If you drive to Vegas on the 138 and blink, you’ll miss us,” she says. The district also serves a student population that includes 32% multilingual/English learners (ML/ELs) and 73% economically disadvantaged students.
The teachers of Keppel Union care deeply about their students. And like Martinez, they were approaching classroom instruction with a system they’d been trained to use and believed in. Any new approach would need to engender the same kind of trust from the teaching community.
“Buy-in is pivotal,” Martinez says. “Understanding is pivotal.”
To build both, district leaders focused first on teacher learning. They built shared understanding around reading research, studied implementation examples from similar districts, and brought educators and administrators into the work together.
The district also invested in tools to help teachers act on what they were learning. One early step was implementing mCLASSⓇ Literacy assessments to better understand which students needed support and identify patterns across schools. The district later incorporated additional literacy supports and is now offering educators in the district the opportunity to pilot Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA). Today, Keppel Union is also participating in research exploring the impact of Amplify CKLA on ML/ELs.
From stronger instruction to stronger readers
The district is already showing encouraging signs. This year, Keppel Union saw positive growth at all schools from beginning-of-year to middle-of-year measures, including a 10% increase in third-grade students scoring at or above grade level and a 21% increase in students scoring advanced. At the pilot school where the work began, the district also saw a 37% decrease in students scoring well below basic.
But for Martinez, the most meaningful changes aren’t just visible in the data—they show up in conversations with students.
In classrooms, Martinez reports, students can now explain the strategies they use to break apart multisyllabic words. They talk about vocabulary with confidence. They describe the content they’re learning in language arts and make connections across topics. That kind of ownership is one of the clearest signs that the shift is working, Martinez says.
A commitment beyond implementation
Martinez’s advice to other districts is practical:
- Know your “why.”
- Start with the data.
- Learn from others.
- Expect bumps in the road.
- Bring people into the process.
And document the journey! “Take pictures, write articles, celebrate,” she says. “When you look back you can see how far you’ve come, and on those difficult days you can remind yourself of the wins.”
Keppel Union’s work continues, and their story is a reminder that shifting to the Science of Reading isn’t about changing everything overnight, but about working together to build sustainable change over time—and, ultimately, providing robust, research-backed instruction so more students have the opportunity to become confident, capable readers.
