Fresno Unified celebrates a major win in improving early literacy. What data says
The youngest learners at Fresno Unified surpassed their early literacy goals, the district announced.
Latest testing results show that 70% of Fresno Unified’s kindergarteners — 3,074 students out of 4,364 — have achieved mastery in foundational literacy skills measured by a grade-level assessment, exceeding the 62.5% target the district set for June 2026.
“The results,” the school district said in a news release, “mean more students are on track to be proficient readers by the end of third grade, and first-grade teachers will be able to accelerate learning without having to repeat and reteach past skills.”
This marks the first major victory for Superintendent Misty Her, who took the helm of the state’s third-largest school district in April 2025 and outlined plans to turn around Fresno Unified’s long-standing academic underperformance.
“These results reflect the incredible work happening every day in our classrooms,” Her said. “When students build strong literacy skills in kindergarten, they are better prepared to thrive academically and graduate ready to pursue the opportunities they choose for their future.”
Among the four goals aimed at raising student literacy and the percentage of college- and career-ready graduates, two focus on early literacy and literacy intervention. Each of the goals came with interim benchmarks designed to assess whether Fresno Unified is on track to reverse student underperformance by June 2030.
There are a total of four interim benchmarks for June 2026. Besides kindergartners meeting their goals, the school district has not yet released this school year’s data for the other three targets, which focus on assessing first-graders, third- through sixth-graders, and seventh- through eighth-graders’ stretch growth in literacy.
AJ Kato, the district’s spokesperson, said the data will be presented to the school board during the fall semester. The third- through sixth-graders’ monitoring report is scheduled for the Aug. 26 meeting, and the seventh- through eighth-graders’ data will be discussed at the Dec. 9 meeting.
The available data from the last school year, however, shows that elementary students were not making enough progress towards achieving their goals.
In 2024-25 school year, 46% of first-graders met their stretch growth target in the iReady diagnostic assessment. While the figure fell 1.5% short of the spring 2025 target, it represented an increase of 5 percentage points compared to spring 2024. The district aims to reach 54% by June 2026.
For literacy intervention, only 28% of identified third- to sixth-grade students met their stretch growth goal on iReady by June last year, showing a slight improvement from the 26% baseline recorded in spring 2024. The figure was 12.5% lower than its Spring 2025 target. The district has set a 55% goal for this June.
