The purpose of Act 114 is to improve literacy rates of the students in South Carolina including all reading instruction, intervention, programs, and other reading services must be aligned with the science of reading.
State, District and School Reading Plans
Third Grade Retention
Summer Reading Camps
Interventions
Literacy Competencies and Endorsements
Early Learning and Literacy (Child Early Reading Development and Education Program, CERDEP)
Teacher Preparation
Reading Coaches
The South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) is partnering with Lexia to offer eligible educators access to Lexia’s LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling) suite of professional learning programs. LETRS teaches the skills needed to master the foundational and fundamentals of reading and writing instruction – phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and written language.
The Reading Coach/Literacy Coach will assist teachers in ensuring that all teachers are teachers of reading and implement effective literacy strategies. Coaches will work with all teachers (content teachers and elective areas) in the school he or she serves, prioritizing time for those teachers, activities, and roles that will have the greatest impact on student achievement, namely coaching and mentoring in classrooms.
All resources can be found at this link. Click the links below for more information.
Extra Resources For Reading Coaches
Read to Succeed Reading Coach Job Qualifications
On June 11, 2014, Governor Haley signed into law Act 284 (Read to Succeed). On March 11, 2024, Governor McMaster signed Act 114 (amendments to Read to Succeed) into law. The purpose of this piece of legislation is to improve literacy rates of the students in South Carolina including all reading instruction, intervention, programs, and other reading services must be aligned with the science of reading. One of the many components of Read to Succeed is third grade summer reading camp. Each district must identify third grade students who are not reading proficiently on grade level and provide them with the opportunity to attend a summer reading camp. Legislators provided funding to districts in order to hold the camps. Identified students will attend a camp four hours a day, four days a week for six weeks, or the equivalent of ninety-six instructional hours. Summer Reading Camp (SRC) requirements are extended to students in Grade 1 and Grade 2 in SY 2025-26 and SY 2026-27, respectively.
Act 114 (updated Read to Succeed legislation) requires that beginning with the 2024-2025 school year, a student must be retained in the third grade if the student fails to demonstrate reading proficiency by scoring Does Not Meet Expectations on SC READY Reading. A student may be exempt for good cause from the mandatory retention but shall continue to receive instructional support and services and reading intervention appropriate for their age and reading level. GCEs remain the same except for the reading portfolio which has been removed as a GCE.
Successful completion of Summer Reading camp is defined more narrowly to include alternate formative assessments or reassessment of SC READY (see note below) and revised cut scores to reflect the requirements of Act 114.
The Read to Succeed legislation (Act 284) requires that the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) with the approval of the State Board of Education develop, implement, evaluate, and continuously refine a comprehensive state plan for prekindergarten through grade twelve to improve reading achievement.
The South Carolina State Reading Plan has been developed to guide the support of the State Department of Education for districts and schools. The South Carolina State Reading Plan also provides guidance to district and school plans as they work to support the reading and writing development of their students with research-based, outcomes-oriented strategies.
The South Carolina State Reading Plan was approved by the South Carolina State Board of Education on June 10, 2015.
All schools should submit their reading plans via the reflection tool links below.
Please note: The format for the reading plans remains overall the same as the prior year, with the addition of new questions required by budget provisos asking schools to reflect on their plans for literacy instruction, intervention, and curriculum. Please only use the updated Formstack and Word links below, as prior year documents do not include the new information.
The purpose of the Summer Reading Camp (SRC) Community Partnership Grant (CPG) is to provide students who are significantly below grade-level reading proficiency with the opportunity to receive quality, intensive instructional services, and support.
Eligible applicants are South Carolina community partnerships made up of community organizations and local school districts that are collaborating to provide SRCs and instructional support to struggling readers in elementary schools with a poverty index of 40 percent or greater.
To support the literacy needs of students, the Read to Succeed (R2S) Act seeks to strengthen pre-service and in-service programs that prepare educators in the teaching of reading.