Columbus Tutoring Services, LLC

09/02/2026

“Don’t teach skills. Build knowledge.”

Nashville Classical East moved 3rd-grade reading proficiency from 40% to 81% in four years, and we love seeing knowledge building as an important part of that story.

Instead of spending precious time teaching abstract comprehension “skills” and test-taking tricks, they’re building knowledge and vocabulary, strengthening fluency, reading great books, discussing ideas, and writing about what students are learning.

As they put it: “Writing is thinking.” And “Books belong in classrooms.”

Friedman: Moving third grade reading mastery from 40% to 81% involved coaching on the Science of Reading, building knowledge and embracing writing.

08/28/2026

Orton-Gillingham Academy (OGA) is a certifying and accrediting body dedicated to upholding the highest professional and ethical standards for the practice of the Orton-Gillingham (OG) Approach for the treatment of dyslexia. OG is an approach that prepares the practitioner to individualize instruction to meet each learner’s specific needs.
Stay tuned to learn more about the four Orton-Gillingham Academy Levels of Certification .

08/25/2026

08/06/2026

The more deeply a student knows a word, the more likely they are to recognize it, spell it, define it, and use it in speaking and writing. It challenges the idea that spelling is a matter of memorization.
Read the full article here: https://ow.ly/SrRt50Z6K1F

07/30/2026

FREE “Until Everyone Can Read Literacy Summit for Older Students" sponsored by the Lilly Endowment. All sessions will focus on supporting older students who struggle with reading. There will be a different speaker and topic for each session

September 12, 2026
Dr. Anita Archer, author, education consultant, literacy expert on “Explicit Instruction – Using Opportunities to Respond as Preventive Behavior Management”

October 10, 2026
Dr. Julie Brown, from Mountain Views Supervisory Union in VT, on “A Whole-School Approach to Improving Secondary Literacy”

November 14, 2026
Dr. Stephanie Stollar, from Mount St. Joseph University, “MTSS in the Secondary Setting”

December 12, 2026
Dave Stevenson, CEO of Reading Futures, on “Supporting Struggling Adolescent Readers”

Rayna Gordon Weiner

Join us for the FREE “Until Everyone Can Read Literacy Summit for Older Students" sponsored by the Lilly Endowment. All sessions will focus on supporting…

06/16/2026

From the Council for Exceptional Children

Special Education Moved from ED to HHS
This afternoon, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) announced an Inter-Agency Agreement to transfer the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office for Civil Rights to the Department of Justice.

This announcement disrupts the special education system that we have all unified to build and support over the last 50 years.

CEC is consistently and vocally opposed to efforts to fracture the federal role in education by dismantling ED and, more specifically, by moving special education to the Health Department. One of ED’s fundamental functions is to support the development, education, and workforce development of people with disabilities, priorities that are reflected in CEC’s members. These essential functions are now at risk as ED continues to fracture its role in supporting special education.

Shifting IDEA from the Department of Education to the Health Department represents more than a bureaucratic change; it signals a move toward a medical model that views students as patients rather than as learners with strengths, potential, and belonging.

For five decades, we have worked to ensure that students with disabilities are recognized as general education students first. Keeping special education alongside all other education programs under ED protects that progress, strengthens inclusion, and upholds a unified K–12 system where every child is part of the school community.

CEC remains steadfast in our belief that the federal government plays a vital role in safeguarding the rights and education of children with disabilities. We all must continue to insist on a strong federal role in special education that ensures consistent oversight, accountability, high-quality personnel preparation, support for families, and, most importantly, policies that place children with disabilities, not politics, at the heart of every decision.

Please take action and call on Congress to assert its oversight power to protect children with disabilities.

Thank you for your commitment to the education of children with disabilities. We will continue to keep you abreast of changes, and together, we will continue our fight.

Benjamin Tillotson, President
Chad Rummel, Chief Executive Officer

06/15/2026

I had a great time working with teachers and therapists at the County Educational Service Center for the past two weeks. I'm looking forward to working together again in the future!

05/21/2026

Interesting:

Rayna Gordon Weiner

Explicit, text-driven modeling unlocks the rigor of complex texts. It's messy, and we should be doing far more of it.

05/20/2026

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have delivered striking evidence that writing by hand engages the brain far more deeply than typing the same words on a keyboard.
In the study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, 36 university students wore high-density EEG caps with 256 electrodes while performing a simple task: copying words they saw on a screen. They did it once by hand with a digital pen and once by typing on a keyboard.
The results were dramatic. When participants wrote by hand, widespread brain connectivity patterns lit up — particularly in theta and alpha frequency bands linked to memory formation, sensory processing, attention, and learning. These connections spanned central and parietal regions. When they typed, those same areas went almost completely silent.
Lead researchers Audrey van der Meer and Ruud van der Weel emphasize that the fine motor movements, sensory feedback from the pen, and visual-motor coordination of handwriting create rich, elaborate neural networks that typing simply doesn’t replicate.
The findings have clear implications for education. As schools shift toward tablets and laptops, this research suggests preserving time for handwriting could give children a significant advantage in learning and memory. In an increasingly digital world, the humble pen may still be one of the best tools for building a stronger brain.
Rayna Gordon Weiner