In 2024, The 74 looked for school districts that were doing an exceptional job of teaching kids to read. One of the places we highlighted was Worcester County, Maryland. It served 7,000 students, about half of whom qualified for free or reduced-price school lunch — on par with the statewide average. And yet, Worcester students had the highest third-grade reading proficiency rates in the state.
Then, we did a similar project looking for positive outliers in middle school math. There was Worcester again, leading all of Maryland.
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So it came as no surprise when we did a follow-up reading analysis last year, this time looking for exceptional individual schools, that three of Worcester’s five elementary schools made our Bright Spots list. In fact, Worcester’s high-poverty Pocomoke Elementary made our Top 5 list, beating the odds for its kids — posting proficiency rates far higher than its average poverty level would suggest — by the biggest margins in Maryland. It wasn’t even particularly close.
Bright Spots chart comparing reading scores vs. poverty level in Maryland. (The 74)
In fact, when Thomas Hamill, Worcester’s coordinator of research, presented the district’s latest results to the school board, even he was at a loss for words, saying, “To have the quantity of scores that we have, at the level that we have, with the poverty that we have, there is no [statistical] reason for us to be performing as high as we are. … We are doing the improbable in Worcester County.”
So what is Worcester doing differently?
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It starts at the top. The district is led by hard-charging superintendent Annette Wallace. Back in 2016, she was recognized as the state’s high school principal of the year for leading a turnaround at Pocomoke High School. When we talked, she repeatedly brought the conversation back to building a culture of connection and belonging. While many school and district administrators might espouse similar ambitions, Wallace makes it concrete by expecting all principals to be able to walk into any classroom and know every student by name, as well as each one’s individual strengths and needs. That’s a high bar.
Dr. Annette Wallace (Worcester County Public Schools)
More unusually for a superintendent, Wallace knows the exact number of third graders in her district who were not proficient in reading last year — 133 — and she has set it as her goal to reduce that number to zero. When asked why, she pointed out that kids tend to fall behind over time and worried that those 133 kids who weren’t reading proficiently by third grade are, “more likely to be incarcerated, more likely to live in poverty and more likely to suffer food insecurity” as adults.
Worcester is not just a literacy story, but it is getting amazing results in early reading. So what can we learn from them? On the surface, Worcester’s literacy plan might look pretty familiar. When I spoke with Cassidy Hamborsky, the district’s coordinator of instruction (who was also an award–winning educator), she talked me through what a typical day might look like. In grades K-2, teachers devote 150 minutes per day to literacy, divided among 90 minutes of core instruction using Great Minds’ Wit and Wisdom, 30 minutes to foundational phonics skills and 30 minutes for the 100 Book Challenge from the American Reading Company.
But what seems different about Worcester is its clarity of purpose. This comes out in a few ways. One, Hamborsky says the district is vigilant about protecting core instructional time for all kids. For example, they wouldn’t take a student away from that time for personalized help or even something like talking with a school counselor. Those things can happen during other parts of the day, but they don’t want any kid to miss out on the time dedicated to building vocabulary and language development.
Two, they are religious about giving kids lots of time to practice. This is mostly through the 100 Book Challenge. During the school day, kids are typically reading physical books that help them build phonics skills or engage in sustained independent reading. Students are expected to complete two 15-minute blocks of reading at school — and then read for 30 additional minutes per day at home. This regimen may vary based on the child’s age and skill level, but kids have to log what they read and then have their teacher or parent sign off.
Families, in fact, are the third key component of Worcester’s reading plan. At the beginning of the school year, they’re asked to sign a “home coach contract” saying that they will check and monitor their child’s reading. Throughout the year, kids are expected to read for half an hour at home five days a week. Over the course of a 180-day school year, that could add up to 900 extra minutes of practice.
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Four, Worcester’s reading instruction is both personalized and data-driven. Every district says it’s data-driven, and Worcester uses some of the same off-the-shelf reading assessments (such as DIBELS and i-Ready) that other districts use. But what separates Worcester from others is that it uses student reading logs to track each kid’s progress. The teachers know exactly which books each child has read and whether kids are keeping up with their reading on a weekly and even daily basis. Teachers will also hold regular check-ins with students, ask them about their reading and even listen to them read aloud.
I suspect this last piece is one of the reasons Worcester sees such consistently strong results. For example, low-income students in the district outperform wealthier peers across the rest of Maryland.
But while Worcester has a lot to be proud of, I think the most enduring reason for its success is that it has leaders like Wallace and Hamborsky who continue to strive for better. Wallace, for example, told me she lies awake at night thinking about those 133 kids who aren’t proficient readers yet and what it will take to get them there. There’s a lot to learn from what Worcester has accomplished so far, but perhaps the biggest lesson is that its leaders don’t think they’re done.
