SPECIAL REPORT: With districts, not state, responsible for improving reading, some students will be left behind

The pandemic pushed teachers at Brooklyn Primary School in Baker City to overhaul how its teachers taught reading. 

When kids returned to the K-5 school in eastern Oregon, some of the second graders needed help sounding out the word “the.” Some of the third graders — who were in kindergarten when schools closed — struggled to write.

“They didn’t get to build muscle memory with writing,” teacher Ashley Ballard said. “They didn’t get to regularly…