Университет Миллерсвилл получил аккредитацию за подготовку учителей по методике структурированного чтения

Millersville University’s teacher preparation program last year received accreditation by the International Dyslexia Association, one of only nine in the state to earn the distinction as a leader in literacy instruction. The accrediting organization’s name suggests emphasis on the language processing disorder, dyslexia. But Aileen Hower, coordinator of Millersville's reading and literacy specialist program, said earning the accreditation shows the university is equipping future educators to teach young learners the fundamentals of reading rather than only responding to a student’s identified reading challenges. “Research shows that we need to make sure (general instruction for all students) is as robust as possible so that then the English as a second language specialists, the special education folks and the reading specialists can do their work in collaboration with the general education classroom teacher, not ‘Oh well, we have certain sets of populations of students and they will fix them’,” Hower said. The concept Hower is referring to is called structured literacy, an approach the state of Pennsylvania has backed through legislation and budgets to improve literacy across the state. Pennsylvania claims the highest number of teacher preparation programs in the country that, like Millersville, are accredited by the IDA. “We personally felt that (the accreditation) would be very value-added to our students to make sure that we were almost ahead of the curve or on the curve in terms of the legislation from the state so that (students) felt they were getting their money’s worth,” Hower said. Of the 10 public state-owned universities, known as the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, Millersville offers the most affordable annual tuition ($12,000 a year) and is the only to offer a teacher preparation program with the IDA accreditation. Millersville went through a year-long application process to secure the accreditation, with faculty putting in significant work to prove their program met the requirements of the IDA’s practice standards for reading teachers, Hower said. The accreditation runs through 2030. The IDA accreditation is applied specifically to the university’s master’s in language and literacy program for graduate students who already hold a teacher’s certificate and are interested in obtaining certification as a reading specialist or as an English-as-a-second-language instructor. Many educators who become reading specialists prefer to take those skills to the general classroom for all students, regardless of ability, placing emphasis on offering the best foundational reading instruction to build on rather than isolating rigorous literacy instruction only to targeted populations, Hower said. “We want to make sure that we have the best prepared teacher, no matter who their student is, and we have to meet the students where they are,” Hower said. “We want our graduate students to feel confident and prepared for that.” Rigorous instruction in the fundamentals of reading is especially important, Hower said, as the needs of students evolve. “We have so much more stress on families,” Hower said. “Both parents might be working multiple jobs… all of those things are very dynamic and so that is absolutely going to affect their [children’s] ability to learn and grow in any subject area.” Millersville has also made moves to support literacy instruction in the community. In the fall of 2025, the university offered the Children’s Dyslexia Center of Lancaster a space on campus. The nonprofit tutors children with dyslexia and trains educators to become tutors themselves – including the chair of the university’s department of early, middle and elementary education, Jennifer Shettel. Center Director Heather Brown said there is always a waiting list of students who need the center’s services, though the students rarely wait more than two years for tutoring. Nearly a quarter of Pennsylvania’s 1.7 million public school students are served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which means they have been identified as having a disability (like dyslexia) that adversely affects academic performance, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.