[EdTalks] The Reading Revolution: Mastering Structured Literacy in Greenville County Schools

The way children learn to read is undergoing a massive transformation as school districts move away from outdated models. In this episode, Austin Greene and Beverly Holt-Pilkey join us to discuss the district-wide shift toward structured literacy and what it means for the future of student achievement. We explore the transition from balanced literacy to a model that prioritizes explicit, systematic instruction to ensure every child becomes a confident reader.

Our guests explain the research-backed strategies grounded in the science of reading that are now driving early literacy instruction. We discuss the practical application of tools like Reading Horizons and Amira, the importance of LETRS training for educators, and the impressive student outcomes already appearing in state assessment data. From phonemic awareness to complex comprehension, this conversation highlights how the district is aligning its framework to meet the individual needs of every learner.

If you are an educator, parent, or community leader interested in how evidence-based practices are closing achievement gaps and fostering a love for books, this episode is for you. You will walk away with a clear understanding of the modern literacy framework that is setting students up for long-term academic and professional success.

Episode Resources

• National Reading Panel 2000 Report

• The Science of Reading - The Reading League

• Scarborough’s Reading Rope

• South Carolina Read to Succeed (Act 114)

• Amira Learning

• Reading Horizons

Guest Introductions and Professional Backgrounds

Mary Leslie Anderson: Literacy instruction is changing in a big way across our district, and today we're breaking down what that shift looks like in real classrooms. Austin Greene and Beverly Holt-Pilkey join us to explain how early literacy practices are evolving, how teachers are being supported through this transition, and how teacher prep programs are adapting as well.

Erin Rigaud: We will highlight the early outcomes we are seeing. Stronger skills, more confidence, and real progress for young readers. This is the work that's setting students up for long-term success.

Mary Leslie Anderson: Austin and Beverly, we're so glad to have you here on Ed Talks. Today, we're going to talk a little bit about early literacy and something that is important for all of us to know. Before we get started, I would love for each of you to tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got to the position that you're in.

Beverly Holt-Pilkey: I am Beverly Holt-Pilkey. I serve as the Director of Early Intervention and Elementary Support for Greenville County Schools. This is my 35th year in education. I have been very blessed to have an extended career split between two different states, North Carolina and South Carolina. I was born and raised in North Carolina, earned my bachelor's in secondary English from Appalachian State University, and then my master's in school administration and curriculum and instruction from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I was a part of the program for North Carolina Principal Fellows, where you spend two years deeply immersed in the study of school leadership, and in my case, curriculum and instruction, while also being able to serve in schools in that role. I have served as an elementary and a middle school principal and had various roles at the district level all across the spectrum of students. I was a director of gifted programs for K-12, an executive director for special education, serving students ages 3 through 21, and then have spent time in two different districts as an elementary director.

Mary Leslie Anderson: Wow.

Beverly Holt-Pilkey: I am very fortunate to have some incredible experiences as an educator and be able to see our students all across the continuum of education.

Austin Greene: That is such a hard introduction to follow. My name is Austin Greene. I am Coordinator of Special Academic Programs in the GCS Academics Department. I am a proud product of Greenville County Schools. I went to Lake Forest, League, and Wade Hampton. At Wade Hampton, I was in the teacher cadet program and really found my love for teaching and committed to being a teaching fellow at USC Upstate. I majored in elementary education and then went and got my early childhood master's from Furman and my Ed.S. in administration. I spent the first eight years of my career as a teacher, interventionist, and coach in Spartanburg District 5. I then came home to Greenville County to be an instructional coach and ultimately moved about 10 years ago to the academics department. I served as a Title I specialist and now in my current role. That encompasses my past 20 years in education.

The Transition from Balanced to Structured Literacy

Erin Rigaud: To start, our district has made some major changes to how we teach early literacy recently. Can you walk us through what that shift looks like and what prompted it?

Beverly Holt-Pilkey: When we think about changes in literacy instruction, we can go back to the National Reading Panel's 2000 report that highlighted those big five components of literacy: phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. It really emphasized systematic, explicit instruction, especially in the areas of phonemic awareness and phonics. Thinking about phonological awareness, we are understanding that the sounds in spoken language mean something, especially when we're talking about manipulating those individual sounds, those phonemes. Phonics involves those relationships between letters and sounds. Fluency is making sure that we can read text accurately, but also quickly and with expression. Vocabulary is being able to unlock the meaning of those unknown words. Finally, comprehension is how the reader is making meaning of a text that he or she is reading. The National Reading Panel Report significantly influenced reading instruction policy and curriculum development all across the United States. Those five pillars identified in that report really formed the basis of the science of reading movement. You probably hear a lot of talk around the science of reading and Scarborough's Reading Rope. That has been a shift moving into a structured literacy versus a balanced literacy approach. We are looking at word recognition and language comprehension and how those go together so that we are increasing automaticity, fluency, and the accuracy that a reader has, alongside their strategic reasoning to build a skilled reader. As a school district, we have made a shift from that balanced literacy model and focusing on the work with Fountas & Pinnell to a structured literacy approach based on that science of reading. That includes our diagnostic assessments. We utilize a diagnostic and universal literacy screener in the district to help us understand where our students are along that continuum of becoming a developing and then a skilled reader. Then we look at a just-right match of instruction to where our students are.

Austin Greene: Personalizing that for our journey in GCS, I would say we really started that three years ago, just looking at resetting how we would define a guaranteed and viable curriculum. Looking at that elementary level for all students, how can we guarantee that no matter where they are, they're getting solid instruction across the rope to ensure that we have fluent readers? We shifted in 2024 when they released the new ELA standards. We used that as a great reset for us to go deeper with understanding what the standards are asking us to do and ensuring that students have access to that. We also went from three curriculums to one. Our core curriculum had more of a choice across the district and we really streamlined. Now as a district, we're unified on one core curriculum for our Tier 1 instruction, which is HMH Into Reading. Of course, knowing that the standards drive our instruction first, no curriculum is perfectly aligned, but we are moving towards that guaranteed and viable curriculum so that all students have universal access to those consistent experiences. We also have shifted to Heggerty in Pre-K, making sure that there is a strong phonemic awareness curriculum for our early learners so that we're developing that phonological awareness immediately when they're entering the school system. Another major change we've made that went into effect this year was the adoption of Reading Horizons a few years back. That's been a slow onset, and now we're at a place where all schools, all kindergartners, and all first graders are using that as a core curriculum. This really hits that part of the Scarborough's Reading Rope around word recognition. Where Beverly was talking about decoding, sight recognition, and understanding the phonological awareness piece, we now have a core curriculum that is very supportive for our teachers and students. The last change that we've really made as a district is in response to Act 114, which is Read to Succeed. We are required to have a universal literacy screener. We did make a shift from using FastBridge to moving to Amira. What Amira has allowed us to do is provide that universal screener benchmark where all of our kindergarten through fifth grade students have that regular diagnostic experience. The other thing it does is it has a tutoring component, which really complements that benchmark. It is one-on-one tutoring where the student is experiencing reading and having direct feedback tied to the reading rope. We have pretty specific data on where each individual kid is around the strands of that reading rope. Our teachers then have specific strategies to support each individual kid as a result of that data.

Professional Development and Teacher Support Initiatives

Mary Leslie Anderson: How have we supported educators as they've learned and implemented new practices? And what does that really look like in a classroom?

Beverly Holt-Pilkey: South Carolina has made a significant investment in rolling out LETRS as a literacy instruction component for all teachers, pre-K through grade three. For special educators, we've expanded that in this past year to include fourth and fifth grade teachers, though it is still optional for them. As far as Greenville County Schools' investment in that, we started with our Palmetto Literacy Project schools from 2022-23 into 23-24. That was phase one with eight schools engaged in this deep understanding of how we teach students to read, getting really into the notion of the science of reading and thinking about how we analyze and collect data along that continuum of Scarborough's Reading Rope. We then expanded for the remainder of our elementary schools. Kindergarten through third grade, we have LETRS for early childhood for our preschool teachers, special education teachers, and even GT teachers through the 24-25 and 25-26 school year. We are getting to the point as of January where we will have that critical mass of all of those teachers working with students around those foundations. Learning to read grade levels happens through the training that's offered through LETRS. There are lots of things that come with that. It's not just the teachers gaining the knowledge and participating in online and in-person training, but also engaging in bridge-to-practice activities. They can take this new professional learning and implement it with students and see how they are responding to it. We see some really nice correlations with the training around LETRS to accompany the training about Reading Horizons that Austin spoke about, and certainly that clear alignment with our universal literacy screener, Amira. This gives a teacher a snapshot of where a child is along the reading rope and what specific skills they may need in each of those areas. We really had that focus on our pre-K teachers with LETRS for Early Childhood wrapping up in the 24-25 school year. Of course, that is also ongoing as we onboard new teachers who are coming into the district and teachers who may be changing grade levels. There's financial support from the state level in terms of a stipend that teachers can earn through completing the LETRS training. Our Board of Trustees has made a tremendous commitment to growing teachers' knowledge in this area and supporting a local stipend for that as well. Additionally, Austin mentioned the rollout of Reading Horizons across all of kindergarten and first grade for this school year. We even have some schools who have seen the power of that explicit and systematic instruction and have rolled that up to their second grade teachers. We offer training sessions throughout the year, and we had 27 different sections of that training for new teachers coming into Reading Horizons this year. They also receive job-embedded ongoing coaching, which is so powerful. That comes from the literacy specialist and the instructional coach in their schools, but also from our partnership with Reading Horizons and a specialist who comes in to coach. One of the other things that we've done in terms of supporting that district-wide implementation of Reading Horizons is engaging in a leadership academy. This is essentially a four-day deep dive in Reading Horizons that goes beyond that initial training. We have a number of our literacy specialists and instructional coaches, as well as our district academic specialists, who have participated in the Reading Horizons Leadership Academy. They are able to be that just-time professional learning resource that teachers need as they encounter questions as they begin to implement. Really, we are trying to build practitioners and coaches at the school level to help support teachers that way. One additional thing we have spent time making a change in is revising our Greenville County Schools Literacy Framework. We are making that shift from balanced literacy to a structured literacy approach that's grounded in the science of reading. We've spent a lot of time developing that and the rollout of the support for it. There was lots of training happening over the course of the summer. We developed a literacy framework that also has some embedded videos that a teacher can access on demand. We spent deep dive time with our literacy specialists for our elementary schools into unpacking the structures in that framework. We had an opportunity to walk through a model lesson to think about how they go back and support their teachers as they are implementing the revised framework as well.

Understanding the Structured Literacy Approach

Mary Leslie Anderson: I'm wondering if you might explain the difference between a balanced literacy model and the explicit literacy model for those who might be not as in the know in terms of that literacy instruction.

Beverly Holt-Pilkey: Moving away from thinking about a student as a holistic reader—where you might say a student is reading on a specific level—means being able to dig down into what foundational skills that student needs in order to access a text at that level. We are making a change along those lines. We are moving from thinking about everyone learning just by being exposed to literature and books, to really thinking about how we are building those building block skills. How are we building those foundational skills?

Erin Rigaud: That seems like a really big shift for not just the kids as they're coming up through elementary school, but for the teachers and how they were trained versus how we're training them now. Can you speak to any evolution of that thought process? Was there pushback? Was it welcomed with open arms? Has it been a journey over the last three years to get everyone in this new wave of thinking?

Beverly Holt-Pilkey: I think anytime that you make a change or you have a significant shift, it takes time. When you're moving away from a way you have taught for many years and perhaps even had some success with, you encounter some resistance or just some uncertainty. The support from the state level in terms of that deep professional learning has helped. The fact that we have 2024 South Carolina ELA standards that were revised and really reflect a lot of those foundation of reading skills in the standards supports the shift. It's not something that's just happening locally; it is a shift occurring statewide based on all of these things that we've been learning about. Going back to the National Reading Panel's report, that was now 25 years ago. How that has grown and evolved over time is significant. Even some of those individuals who were really practitioners and researchers of a balanced literacy model have begun to make some of those changes. I think that support helped with the change. Then we have the tools that we've tried to put in place for teachers to help support them as they really start to dig in and think about what the individual needs of this student are. We referenced Amira as our universal screener and then the tutoring component of that. That is a way to help support teachers as well with making this sort of change. We use that data to then inform small group instruction in our classrooms and develop those Amira champions at each school. These are primarily our literacy specialists who are getting lots of information and understanding about how we use the information available to us to take the next steps for a child along their reading journey.

A Look Inside the Modern Literacy Classroom

Mary Leslie Anderson: Everybody looking into a classroom probably remembers at some point how they were taught to read. You all will laugh at me when I tell you, but does anybody remember SRA? I mean, where you go over to the little box and you pick your color? Yes, the colors and the levels and reading groups. I was a product of reading groups. If a parent wants to visualize what their student is doing in the room, what would we tell them?

Austin Greene: I think we would always say, no matter where we've been on this reading journey, we know it's essential students are reading, they're writing, and they're speaking. All of those things are core components, and they look different depending on where the child is. What looks the most different, in my opinion, is that we're really looking at the phonics side and making sure the phonological awareness is strong alongside comprehension. We are looking at how we stair-step that to make sure both parts are intact, but also spending a little bit more energy at the early ages on that explicit and systematic instruction. I think that's what Reading Horizons has given us. It's given us a tier one core curriculum that makes sure that students have multisensory options to be able to experience those early reading principles. If you go into a classroom and you see that curriculum come to life, you're going to see students speaking. They're going to be practicing writing. They're going to be reading and applying the skills that they're learning. In a very systematic, thoughtful way, the scope and sequence has a lot of research behind it. It's really strategic, and it's allowed us to be intentional with that. You'll also see teachers responding to the data and responding to student needs along the way because they've got targeted information to help them know about their readers.

Beverly Holt-Pilkey: That's exactly right, Austin. You're still going to see small group instruction that is happening in the classroom, designed to meet that student exactly where they are. For example, if you have a student who is struggling to break apart simple words, they will benefit from a very different type of instructional support than a student who is an emerging reader and simply working on extending in ways to identify a central idea of a text. You'll see small group instruction tailored to what the students need, which allows the students to receive what they need most to continue progressing as a reader.

Evolution of Teacher Preparation and Certification

Erin Rigaud: For the teachers that are currently being trained to come into the classroom in these preparation programs, are you seeing those adjust and change along with the times? Where are we with that?

Beverly Holt-Pilkey: We are seeing some change. Act 114, which is the South Carolina Read to Succeed legislation, not only was about what's happening in our K through 12 settings, but also what's happening as a part of teacher preparation programs. Part of that legislation indicates that our pre-service teacher candidates seeking their certification in early childhood, elementary, or special education must complete a 12-hour course sequence in literacy. That includes instruction in those major components of the reading process aligned with the science of reading, going back to the foundations of the National Reading Panel's report, and having opportunities to apply those experiences in their field opportunities. Their internships and their student teaching experiences must be aligned with the South Carolina literacy competencies for pre-K through fifth grade teachers and ensure that teacher candidates are becoming skilled in being able to assess students' reading difficulties and then providing those appropriate interventions. Upon successful completion of those preparation programs and the certification requirements, which include the candidates earning a C or better in all of the literacy programs' approved Read to Succeed courses sequence, the teacher candidate will actually earn a South Carolina Read to Succeed Literacy Teacher Endorsement. Our practicing teachers who are initially licensed or have an ongoing license are able to earn that Read to Succeed Literacy Teacher Endorsement through the completion of both volumes of LETRS or four courses that the State Department of Education has outlined that can meet that certification. According to that Read to Succeed legislation, all teacher candidates beginning September 1st of 2026 must pass an assessment in teaching reading for initial certification in the areas of early childhood, elementary, or special education. You see some of those requirements and experiences for pre-service teachers that match what our teachers currently practicing in the classroom are expected to do.

Mary Leslie Anderson: That's wonderful to hear.

Austin Greene: I love that. It's exciting opportunities for alignment.

Measuring Success: Student Outcomes and Progress

Mary Leslie Anderson: As these new approaches take root, what early outcomes are we seeing for students and what signs tell us that we're moving in the right direction?

Beverly Holt-Pilkey: This is a very proud moment for us to talk about the academic accomplishments through the hard work of our students, teachers, and school leaders. Greenville County Schools saw some historically significant outcomes in grades 3 through 5 on the SC READY ELA assessment. That is our statewide summative assessment for students in grades 3, 4, and 5. In ELA, we saw gains across schools in grades 3, 4, and 5 that were much higher even than the gains that happened across the state. Across all three of those grade levels, we had more than 70% of our students who were meeting proficiency. That's a great feeling that really goes back to all of the hard work that our educators have put in to hone their craft and their skill in reading instruction. I'm very proud of the work that has happened in Greenville County Schools and those outcomes for our students. We know the most important thing is that our students are achieving at high levels so they're always ready for that next level.

Austin Greene: And all alongside a year with new standards and thinking about so many different things our teachers were facing. To see those outcomes pay off, I just can't help but get excited about the momentum they've already taken with them into this next year. We always look at our interim assessments. We have benchmarking that we take with the Amira diagnostic assessment, but we also take a Mastery Connect benchmark, which allows us to get a good idea of how our kids are progressing towards reading and math standards throughout the year. Our fall benchmark assessments really showed that our second through fifth graders are already growing again from where they left in the spring. We're also seeing that our third graders this year are already growing in comparison to last year. It's very exciting across all grade levels. We also received some recent great news that just from our literacy screener data using that Amira tool, Greenville County actually has fewer students identified as early readers demonstrating at-risk needs compared to the national average at every grade level. That is really exciting because when we get to start comparing on a national level and seeing those gaps close, we get really excited about that.

Closing Thoughts for Parents and the Community

Erin Rigaud: That's fantastic. We always like to close with our favorite question: if you could tell the public listening anything at all, what would it be?

Austin Greene: I would say just don't count out the work that we do in education. We are dynamic. I think our teachers—I look at them and this is an art. They're never satisfied. They're always working. I say that for our leaders too and all of our support. I want people to know we're responsive, we're ever-changing, and we're looking at feedback and data to refine and get better. It's all because we want to service every student that walks through the door. I'm proud of the work that we do, but more importantly, I can guarantee you we will do anything to help students succeed.

Beverly Holt-Pilkey: As we think about the work that we do, our work does not end when the school day is over, and neither does learning. Greenville County Schools is honored to work alongside our parents as partners in our students' education. Parents, your partnership through reading at home, asking questions, celebrating growth, and staying curious with your child strengthens everything that happens inside of the classroom. We thank you for trusting us, for engaging with us, and for walking alongside of us as we help students discover the joy and the power of literacy. Together we are building lifelong readers, one page, one conversation, and one shared moment at a time.

Mary Leslie Anderson: I have nothing to follow up with.

Erin Rigaud: I know, that was the perfect way to end. Well, thank you both for being with us today. We are so excited to share all of this wealth of information with our listeners.

Mary Leslie Anderson: That's right.

Beverly Holt-Pilkey: Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here and to talk about the great things that are happening in Greenville County Schools.

Mary Leslie Anderson: Thank you for joining us for today's conversation. We're Mary Leslie Anderson and Erin Rigaud with Rooted Consulting. Until next time, keep nurturing school culture and keep growing strong roots in your community. Simple Civics Ed Talks is a joint project of Greater Good Greenville, Greenville First Steps, and Public Education Partners Greenville County.