science of reading – The 74 https://www.the74million.org America's Education News Source Wed, 30 Oct 2024 16:18:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.1 https://www.the74million.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/cropped-74_favicon-32x32.png science of reading – The 74 https://www.the74million.org 32 32 New Study: Many Older Students Struggle to Push Beyond Reading ‘Threshold’ https://www.the74million.org/article/new-study-many-older-students-struggle-to-push-beyond-reading-threshold/ Wed, 30 Oct 2024 11:01:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=734729 Mara Mitchell long suspected her oldest son C.J. just skimmed over books without really comprehending what he was reading. But she didn’t grasp how poor his skills were until he sat down a couple years ago to read a simple book to his little brother.

After he um’d and uh’d his way through a picture book about starting kindergarten, “My youngest said, ‘Mama, C.J. can’t read,’ ” Mitchell said. “Somewhere a ball had been dropped, and as much as I’ve been trying to be an advocate for him, something was missed.” 

Mara Mitchell’s son, C.J., left, is a ninth grader at Whites Creek High School in Nashville. Mitchell didn’t realize how far behind he was in reading until he was in middle school. (Courtesy of Mara Mitchell)

Now in ninth grade at Whites Creek High School in Nashville, C.J. is among many teens who lack the skills to sound out and understand challenging vocabulary. In class, he often struggles to pronounce longer words. 

“When I get to them, I’ll stop, and I’ll wait on the teacher to say it,” he said. In middle school, he was determined to figure out words on his own because teachers told him it would only get harder in high school.

New research shows older students like C.J. hit a “decoding threshold.” Over 20% of students in fifth through seventh grade stumble over words they don’t recognize or can’t sound out, often preventing them from grasping the main idea of reading materials for school, according to the study released Wednesday from the Educational Testing Service and the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund.


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Falling literacy rates following the pandemic have drawn more attention to adolescents’ reading proficiency. National tests from 2022 showed alarming declines in eighth graders’ reading skills.

But experts have long recognized that many older students lack a strong foundation in reading. “A lot of kids could very well have their basic K-2 foundational skills down pat, but they still need decoding support,” said Rebecca Sutherland, a co-author of the report and the associate director of research for Reading Reimagined, a project of the research and development fund. “There’s an assumption … that kids can self-teach.”

A nationwide push to strengthen students’ reading performance has centered on the early grades. Over the past decade, nearly 40 states have enacted legislation calling for research-backed reading instruction that emphasizes phonics. Sutherland said the new data points toward the need for a similar agenda for older readers. 

The report on over 167,000 students in grades three through 12 is based on the results of a screening assessment called ReadBasix, developed by ETS. The project was inspired by a landmark 2019 study showing that students who fall below the decoding threshold struggle to comprehend material as it grows more complex and abstract in the higher grades. 

“If decoding a sentence is consuming all of your cognitive capacity, then you’re not going to have anything left for comprehension,” Sutherland said. 

As an example of how students’ skills drop off as they reach the upper elementary and middle grades, she said those who can easily read “tree” or “tricky” have no problem with similar one- or two-syllable words. But when they encounter words that don’t follow typical patterns — like “tripartite” in an American government class — those skills don’t necessarily transfer. 

The findings don’t explain why students fail to transition to more challenging vocabulary. C.J., for example, wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia until fifth grade. Others may have been in a school with a “whole language” approach to early literacy that didn’t emphasize phonics.

The study sheds light on why upper elementary and middle school teachers estimate that 44% of their students frequently struggle to read materials for class — a top finding from a recent survey Sutherland conducted with the Rand Corp.

Almost three-quarters of the roughly 1,500 teachers who responded said they need more resources to identify and support students with reading problems. The conundrum is that middle and high school educators, who strive to be subject matter experts, don’t spend much time on basic reading skills, and state standards typically don’t expect them to.

Middle school teachers (lighter shade) say their schools offer less support for struggling readers than those in the elementary grades. (Rand Corp. and Advanced Education Research and Development Fund)

“The demands on teachers are enormous, and the preparation is so minimal,” said Julie Burtscher Brown, a literacy specialist for the Mountain Views Supervisory Union in Woodstock, Vermont. “In the higher grades, students can be multiple years apart, sitting together in one class.”

She’s part of a steering committee leading the new Project for Adolescent Literacy, which will release the results of its own teacher survey next month

Brown led a course to introduce teachers in her own 1,000-student district to some of those practices. 

Mountain Views Supervisory Union in Woodcock, Vermont, offers training for teachers on adolescent literacy. (Julie Burtscher Brown, X)

“We had AP Physics teachers learning alongside preschool teachers. It was really quite special,” she said. The course covered, for example, how studying the structure and origin of words in class can contribute to comprehension. Brown urged teachers to give all students the opportunity to write and read aloud throughout the day. “So many students need support reading multisyllabic words accurately, and we’re not going to do that with picture books.”

Avoidance strategies

As students get older, their struggles with reading often show up in disruptive behavior or a pattern of avoidance in class.

“When it’s time to read, they have to go to the bathroom,” said Christina Cover, a special education teacher in the Bronx, New York, and a member of the steering committee for the Project for Adolescent Literacy. “They might sit there and refuse to read, refuse to discuss. Everybody else is annotating their books with tons of sticky notes.”

But in middle and especially high school, teachers often think it’s not their responsibility to spend time on the basics. Many are already assigning excerpts of books instead of full chapters.

Diane Kung teaches an honors English class at Berkeley High School in California and another course focused on Asian American-Pacific Islander literature. Her students are working on “big projects” based on nearly college-level texts dealing with race and bias. 

Berkeley High School English teacher Diane Kung is trying some new vocabulary exercises with students to help those who might struggle with more challenging texts. (Courtesy of Diane Kung)

“With basic vocabulary, you assume that most kids will just know it or look it up,” she said. The school, she said, also has a “vast network of support,” including case managers for special education students and afterschool programs for low-income students. 

Her views on what classroom teachers should do for students who lack strong reading skills have shifted over time. Last year, she taught a small intervention class for English learners that allowed for “deep diving” into fundamentals and basic grammar. She plans to offer warm-up vocabulary exercises in her other classes to help students who might need extra support.

She also has a 7-year-old daughter who is learning to read.

“As I watch her develop, I’m thinking about my own students who are 14, 15, 16,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, maybe this is what they missed when they were her age.’ ”

New ‘frontiers’ 

That’s why Sutherland recommends that districts extend screening to students in later grades. ReadBasix, offered by Buffalo-based Capti, starts at $500 a year for multiple licenses. Stanford University developed the Rapid Online Assessment of Reading, or ROAR, which is free. 

Getting curriculum companies to offer foundational materials for students in the upper grades, like they do for younger readers, is the next step, experts say. 

Curriculum designers “often make the assumption that students in upper grades have already mastered decoding,” said Eric Hirsch, executive director of EdReports, a nonprofit that reviews how well curriculum follows Common Core standards.   

While educators are directing more attention to older students’ reading challenges, parents who watched their children struggle during the pandemic have also brought the issue to the forefront.

“Suddenly you have a lot of families who are feeling super powerless, seeing their kids at home on screens and saying, ‘Oh my goodness. My child can’t access their education for a multitude of reasons,’ ” said Rachel Manandhar, a special education teacher who works with Kung at Berkeley High. “Literacy became paramount.” 

Mitchell was one of those parents. She went through a literacy fellowship program this past summer offered by Nashville PROPEL, a parent advocacy group. The experience, she said, boosted her confidence when asking teachers about the services C.J receives at school and opened her eyes to his reading problems.

Mara Mitchell participated in a literacy fellowship offered by Nashville PROPEL that she said has helped her become a stronger advocate for her son C.J. (Courtesy of Mara Mitchell)

“This is why work was not being completed,” she said. “He can’t do it on his own because he doesn’t understand what he’s being asked to do.”

At school, almost every assignment includes reading material. In a wellness class, he recently had to answer questions based on articles about video games, stress and mental health. 

Mitchell has always signed C.J. up for tutoring at school, but now someone also works with him specifically on reading skills. PROPEL connected Mitchell with a specialist that hemeets with virtually once a week. Together they’ve been reading “Clean Getaway,” a middle school-level book in which an 11-year-old learns about racial history in the South while taking a road trip with his grandmother. C.J. said it’s the type of book he wants to be able to read independently. 

“I struggle doing it on my own,” he said. “I try it a little, and then I come home to get help.”

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4 St. Louis Schools Getting $1M in Grants to Rethink How They Teach Kids to Read https://www.the74million.org/article/4-st-louis-schools-getting-1m-in-grants-to-rethink-how-they-teach-kids-to-read/ Mon, 28 Oct 2024 12:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=734629 Four St. Louis schools will be revamping their approach to reading instruction in a new two-year program created to boost literacy for K-3 students.

In September, St. Louis education nonprofit The Opportunity Trust launched the Emerson Early Literacy Challenge, a $1 million effort to help charter and district schools brainstorm ways to improve reading in the early grades. The four schools, selected from St. Louis City and County are Atlas Public School, Commons Lane Primary School in the Ferguson-Florissant School District, Premier Charter School and Barbara C. Jordan Elementary in the School District of University City.

The Emerson challenge is a direct response to work the St. Louis NAACP is doing to improve reading scores and close the literacy gap for Black students, said Jesse Dixon, an Opportunity Trust consultant and one of the project leaders for the challenge. The project is being funded by a $1 million donation from Emerson, an international automation technology and software company headquartered in St. Louis.


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The NAACP branch recently filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against 34 St. Louis school districts because of disparities in reading proficiency for students of color. 

The branch also launched a campaign this year called Right to Read, which is working with superintendents, teachers, parents and nonprofits to get all third graders in the city and county of St. Louis reading well by 2030. Dixon said the Emerson challenge is building on the campaign’s principle that requiring instruction based on longstanding research about how children learn to read — the science of reading — is key to improving literacy.

“For years, teachers had been trained how to teach reading in ways that we’ve now since learned are counterproductive and actually hinder the progress of kids learning to read,” he said. “It … sent a strong message about how big a problem this was and how evident it’s become that we need to teach reading in this other way.”

Dixon said a big problem in improving St. Louis’s reading proficiency rates — which were at 18% for third graders in the city and 43% for third graders across the county in 2022 — is how the science of reading is implemented.

“Many districts and charter schools have already adopted science of reading curriculum, and yet, we’re still not getting much better,” Dixon said. “These are well-intentioned, hardworking, smart educators and education leaders doing everything they can to try to catch these kids up and get them to be proficient, and something’s not working, and we need to learn what it is.”

Leaders of each selected school will receive $20,000 this year to brainstorm strategies and craft plans to improve early literacy. They can get up to $250,000 during the 2025-26 school year to implement those plans. The Opportunity Trust will also provide support from literacy experts.

Dixon said the school leaders will have to look outside St. Louis, to districts that have successfully implemented the science of reading and boosted literacy. 

“They can learn what’s working around the country and they can learn from each other,” he said. “At the end, [they will] write a plan for how to spend their quarter of a million dollars consistent with everything they’ve learned, and so that they can implement those practices next school year and get the kind of results we all know are possible.”

Dixon said St. Louis education officials and experts still don’t know what’s going wrong with schools that have adopted science of reading curriculum but seen no results.

“That’s part of the challenge — we don’t think any school in St. Louis has figured this out,” he said.

One of the selected schools, Atlas Public School, incorporated curriculum materials based on the science of reading when it opened in 2021. The school serves more than 460 students from prekindergarten through fourth grade.

Colby Heckendorn, executive director and co-founder, said Atlas students scored slightly above average this spring, ranking in the 51st percentile for reading on the NWEA MAP Growth assessment — a test that’s widely used in schools across the U.S.

“We feel good about that, but we still know and believe our students can do better,” Heckendorn said. “That’s why it’s important for us to continue to refine our practice and make sure that our teachers feel supported and have the training that they need.”

Heckendorn said he’s looking forward to collaborating with other schools to brainstorm strategies around reading instruction.

“I think that’s one of the things that’s going to be great about the literacy challenge — really reflecting on how we are best supporting our students who need more enrichment and to be pushed to the next level,” he said. “How are we supporting those students who are really struggling, to set them up for success as well? Those are things that our team is really excited to dig into and reflect on.”

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First-of-Its-Kind Report on Dyslexia, Reading Unveiled at Nebraska Department of Education https://www.the74million.org/article/first-of-its-kind-report-on-dyslexia-reading-unveiled-at-nebraska-department-of-education/ Thu, 03 Oct 2024 14:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=733710 This article was originally published in Nebraska Examiner.

LINCOLN — A first-of-its-kind statewide report related to reading and dyslexia for Nebraska K-12 students shows strides in addressing literacy as policymakers see room for improvement.

The Nebraska Department of Education submitted its first report to the Legislature on Sept. 3 as required under Legislative Bill 298. State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn shepherded the legislation through in 2023 as a next step from 2018 legislation that began assessing K-3 students three times a year to get them on individualized reading improvement plans and supports earlier, if needed. In 2017, the Legislature defined “dyslexia” in state law.

LB 298 requires each public school in the state to report the number of students in the 2023-24 academic year who were:


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  • Tested for a specific learning disability in the area of reading, including tests that identify characteristics of dyslexia and the results of such tests.
  • Identified as having a reading issue, including dyslexia, pursuant to assessments under the Nebraska Reading Improvement Act, which Linehan passed in 2018.
  • Identified as having a reading issue who have shown growth on the measure used to identify the reporting issue.

The full report

Dive into the first full report on specific learning disabilities in the area of reading, including dyslexia, from the Nebraska Department of Education to the Legislature, and a district-specific breakdown on the data.

“Things only get measured in government if somebody’s watching, and you have to have somebody watching,” Linehan told the Nebraska Examiner of the report.

Breaking down the report

The data indicates that of 10,225 public K-12 students ages 3 to 21 who were tested last year for a specific learning disability in the area of reading, 4,747 students (46.43%) were eligible for special education services.

However, the department cautions that the term “specific learning disability” is broad and consists of various distinct areas in which a child might need additional support to meet state standards: oral expression, written expression, basic reading skills, reading fluency, reading comprehension, mathematics calculation and mathematics problem solving.

“In sum, there is currently not a clean and clear way to fully identify the number of students with a specific learning disability in reading,” the report states.

There is also great variance in what “universal screeners” are used across school districts to assess students in grades K-3, with up to 13 different screeners used across the state’s 244 school districts.

In the 2023-24 academic year, 23,814 students in grades K-3 — more than a quarter of all K-3 students — were on a reading improvement plan. Of those, 22,538 students (94.64%) were reported to improve during the year.

Elizabeth Tegtmeier of North Platte, president of the Nebraska State Board of Education, which oversees the Education Department, said the report to the Legislature had “fallen short” of her expectations. She said she and the board expected a “serious and detailed audit.”

Linehan, who has dyslexia, said until that breakdown was publicly available, “I don’t think you’re going to find out what schools are actually addressing this and which schools still need more help in identifying it.”

District-specific data

The Examiner and Linehan requested data broken down by district, excluding data concealed for federal privacy reasons.

Of 196 districts, for example, more than 50% of K-3 students were on a reading improvement plan in 20 districts. In contrast, fewer than 10% of K-3 students were on a reading plan in eight districts. The median was 28.2% of K-3 students on a reading plan in each district. The department masked data for 48 districts for privacy reasons.

The districts with the highest percentage of students on a reading improvement plan were Umo N Ho N Nation Public Schools (75.93%), Bayard Public Schools (66.23%), Southern School District 1 (59.79%), Maxwell Public Schools (59.62%) and Kimball Public Schools (59.35%).

The districts with the lowest percentage of students on a reading improvement plan were  Norfolk Public Schools (5.45%), Gordon-Rushville Public Schools (6.1%), Johnson County Central Public Schools (7.3%), Tekamah-Herman Community Schools (7.33%) and Seward Public Schools (7.97%).

Six school districts reported a greater than 100% improvement rate, which David Jespersen, a department spokesperson, was likely due to “uncertainty” about the various parameters in the first year of reporting.

The report showed 100 districts reported 100% growth, while no reported growth percentage was shown for 54 districts.

The five school districts with the lowest reported growth percentage were: Ralston Public Schools (23.32%), Madison Public Schools (36.49%), South Sioux City Community Schools (39.22%), East Butler Public Schools (50%) and McCook Public Schools (50.85%).

However, the department cautioned that one growth point on one screener might not equate to the same growth on another assessment.

“It is difficult to interpret the significance of the reported student growth based upon the 2024 data collection,” the report states.

Linehan said that district-specific data is important in part because when she toured about a dozen school districts in 2017, with former State Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln, multiple teachers and superintendents said they had never taught a student with dyslexia.

‘Bottom line, it’s a journey’

Linehan said the data can also show that the department understands the state has a problem and needs to prioritize where funds go.

David Jespersen, a spokesperson for the Education Department, said that while the department can’t “fully verify” that all school districts are following the three annual assessment periods, “we have no reason to believe they were not.”

The state-level funding is designed to employ local and regional literacy coaches to support teachers who teach children from age 4 to third grade how to read. Linehan passed the appropriation in LB 1284 this year.

Tim Royers, a teacher in Millard Public Schools, and president of the Nebraska State Education Association that represents teachers, agreed the report indicates progress but said it is “certainly not job done.”

He said expanded training opportunities for staff, parents and other stakeholders is needed to provide holistic support to students.

“Bottom line, it’s a journey,” Royers said. “There’s definitely some evidence of progress there but we feel that there’s still work to be done.”

For the 2023-24 academic year, K-3 enrollment ranged from seven students in McPherson County Schools to 15,411 students in Omaha Public Schools. The median enrollment was 100 K-3 students per district. Total enrollment ranged from 52 to 51,693 students, with a median of 379.

Improving data collection and literacy

In a letter to Nebraska Education Commissioner Brian Maher, Linehan and State Sen. Dave Murman of Glenvil, the Legislature’s Education Committee chair, pointed to a report from the Nebraska Statewide Workforce & Educational Reporting System.

It stated that third-grade reading proficiency can be a significant indicator of later academic success, including graduation and college-going rates.

Linehan and Murman said the department should also consider doing away with a specific part of the department’s rule on special education services. They pointed to a subjective “environmental, cultural or economic disadvantage” that could be impacting a student’s learning but doesn’t qualify them for a “specific learning disability.”

The Education Department suggested various ways to improve data collection, such as:

  • Adding clear language to specify the total number of students evaluated for any form of a specific learning disability, including reevaluation.
  • Implementing clear guidelines for categorizing students identified with a specific learning disability, the total number of which is broken down into:
    • Number of students with a primary disability in reading (in two brackets — age 3 to third grade, fourth grade to age 21).
    • Number of students evaluated but not identified as having a disability in reading.
    • Number of students identified with having a disability in another area.

“Without early support, the gap between dyslexic students and their peers can widen, making it harder to catch up later,” the report states.

The report states that policymakers, educators and stakeholders must collaborate to address the identified gaps.

“By refining data collection processes, enhancing instructional strategies and providing adequate resources, we can better support our students and advance literacy outcomes across the state, the department writes.

The future of literacy policy

Linehan has advocated throughout her eight years in the Legislature for students with dyslexia. This is her final year in the Legislature because of term limits.

She and Murman suggested the department offer insight into demographics, performance on reading evaluations, types of evidence-based reading interventions deployed and criteria for student progress.

Royers said “the gift of time” is important for teachers when screening can be time intensive, especially in kindergarten or early grades when students might begin to develop coping mechanisms. For example, a student might memorize sight words or a combination of shapes that could mean “cat” that a teacher might not catch without one-on-one intervention.

“We know what the playbook is, but it takes a lot of investment at a one-on-one level in order to execute the playbook properly,” Royers said of young students.

Royers said giving educators more time, or bringing in support staff, would be most helpful to join the spirit of recent legislation to be proactive.

One of Linehan’s fears is not catching children as early as possible, which she agreed is difficult. Teachers see a range of students, with some already able to read a book, while others haven’t yet learned the alphabet.

Linehan said new funds should be invested in staff, not “the newest curriculum out there.”

The State Board of Education and Legislature should also collaborate for accountability, she said. For example, they should seek more specific information about the use of new teaching coaches: specific goals, such as the number of coaches needed and how many teachers the state should support.

Tegtmeier said the Education Department will continue to address literacy, particularly with a stated legislative priority to improve third grade reading proficiency to 75% by 2030. For the 2022-23 school year, 62% of third graders were proficient on state assessments.

“Literacy remains a board priority with significant amounts of resources devoted to it,” Tegtmeier said. “It is imperative that guidelines and regulations from NDE accompany the assessment requirement to ensure consistency throughout the state. Our students, parents and taxpayers deserve no less.”

A review of Nebraska’s 244 school districts for data on 2022-23 state assessments offers insights into proficiency in English Language Arts for K-12 students statewide. There were new “cut scores” to define “proficiency” in this subject area  that the Nebraska Department of Education said “better reflect student achievement in Nebraska when compared to students nationally.”

Nebraska Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on Facebook and X.

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Opinion: I’m a Tutor in South Central LA. Here’s What Kids There Need to Learn to Read https://www.the74million.org/article/im-a-tutor-in-south-central-la-heres-what-kids-there-need-to-learn-to-read/ Wed, 02 Oct 2024 18:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=733694 Ever since my senior year of high school in the suburban San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles, I have tutored students ranging from elementary to high school. 

I have always enjoyed working with students and felt it is a way to give back to the community. 

When I enrolled at the University of Southern California two years ago, I kept up the tutoring, bringing my skills to elementary schools in the low income neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles. 


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What I quickly noticed was, despite the San Gabriel Valley being only 20 miles away from South Central LA, there was a huge disparity in literacy levels. 

The kids in the Valley could read at far more advanced levels than the kids in South Central. And the test scores confirmed what I saw in the classroom.

According to U.S. News & World Report, 77% of elementary students tested at or above the proficient level for reading in the Arcadia Unified School District, in the Valley where I tutored; and 76% tested at or above that level for math. 

Compare that with the literacy levels for Los Angeles Unified District, where 43% of elementary students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 36% tested at or above that level for math. 

During my first semester tutoring in South Central, I had a 4th grade student who struggled to read. 

As I continued my time tutoring in South Central, I realized many of my students struggled with reading and pronouncing words. I spoke to teachers who told me that the pandemic took a toll on learning. 

Some students struggled to focus on their work during online classes. And many struggled with disruption and trauma caused by the pandemic, teachers said.  

But I found there were ways that I could help these kids learn to read. 

I focused my lesson plans on phonics, the building blocks of words. We focused on pronouncing different letter combinations with a phonics book as my chosen curriculum. It turned out that my decision to focus on phonics made a huge difference.  

I used phonics to teach reading because it helped me guide my students. While I know all the pronunciations and word combinations, I didn’t have a list of sounds or letter combinations to teach, so a phonics textbook helped with giving my lessons structure.

As it turns out, districts around the country are embracing phonics as part of a movement in teaching called “the science of reading,” which relies on letter recognition and sounding out words to teach literacy. New York City has rolled out a phonics-based curriculum and Los Angeles Unified is in the process of doing so.

A number of states have laws to mandate the science of reading, but an effort to pass such a law in California failed last year. Still, educators and districts are free to use the tools of phonics in their lessons. 

Through my phonics-based lessons, my students started to increase their literacy level, and reading became easier for them. However, one tutor can only do so much. 

There are many variables that can contribute to the educational chasm. The average household income for the San Gabriel Valley is $115,525, and the average household income for South Central is $64,927, according to Point2Homes. Wealth puts some students ahead academically. 

From my experience, I know that many families in the San Gabriel Valley hire tutors to ensure their children stay on track and perhaps even surpass the educational requirements of their schools. 

But although students in the San Gabriel Valley have more financial resources, that doesn’t mean LAUSD elementary students can’t meet or exceed San Gabriel Valley’s test scores. 

To increase literacy rates in South Central schools, I believe that teachers and parents should create a culture where students are encouraged to read more. Students should view reading as something fun rather than work. 

While tutors can facilitate the reading process, students need to be self-motivated. Tutors can help students pronounce words and teach them the basic building blocks of reading. However, if students don’t read on their own time, they can’t take their skills to the next level. 

That’s why it’s so important for teachers and families to impart kids with a love of reading. The combination of phonics and a genuine interest in reading creates lifelong learners.

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Feds Award Oregon $11.5 Million, Perhaps Millions More to Come, to Improve Literacy Instruction https://www.the74million.org/article/feds-award-oregon-11-5-million-perhaps-millions-more-to-come-to-improve-literacy-instruction/ Wed, 11 Sep 2024 16:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=732702 This article was originally published in Oregon Capital Chronicle.

Oregon’s highest needs schools that are focused on revamping literacy instruction and boosting student reading proficiency will get federal financial help next year.

The U.S. Department of Education announced last week that it will send Oregon schools $11.5 million next school year, and could potentially allocate up to $57 million over the next five years to help the state’s Early Literacy Success Initiative. That initiative was passed by the Legislature in 2023 with an investment of $120 million in state dollars.

An investigation by the Capital Chronicle found the state has spent more than $250 million in the past 25 years to improve reading instruction in schools. But that money has failed to help more than a generation of students, with many teachers not using methods that work to teach reading. Many, the investigation found, were not taught effective reading instruction in the state’s public colleges of education.


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Over the last 25 years, nearly two in five Oregon fourth graders and one in five eighth graders have scored “below basic” on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the nation’s report card. That means they struggle to read and understand simple words.

Schools can use the federal dollars for teacher development, reading tutors and specialists, literacy coaches and new reading curriculum, according to the news release from the U.S. Department of Education. Most Oregon schools are using one of the 15 reading curriculum on the state Board of Education’s approved materials list, but about 30% are not, according to Pooja Bhatt, director of education initiatives for Gov. Tina Kotek’s office.

About 95% of the federal money will be funneled to districts through a competitive application process via the Oregon Department of Education, according to Marc Siegel, a spokesperson for the department. Precedence will go to schools with a high proportion of historically underserved students, including multilingual students and students with disabilities.

The rest of the federal money will help fund a comprehensive statewide literacy plan, Siegel said.

Oregon received the second highest award among the 23 state grants. Only the New Mexico Department of Education received more – about $11.9 million.

Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on Facebook and X.

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How is Your School’s Literacy Curriculum Changing? What Parents Should Know About NYC Reads https://www.the74million.org/article/how-is-your-schools-literacy-curriculum-changing-what-parents-should-know-about-nyc-reads/ Tue, 10 Sep 2024 16:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=732654 This article was originally published in Chalkbeat.

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Sweeping changes to literacy instruction are underway in New York City, with all elementary schools for the first time using one of three mandated curriculums this September.

By requiring instruction in line with long-standing research about how children learn to read, known as the science of reading, the city is hoping to boost its literacy rates. Just under half of students in grades 3-8 are considered proficient in English, according to state exams.


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After Chancellor David Banks took the helm of the nation’s school district more than two years ago, he said the city’s approach to reading instruction “has not worked” and has since made the curriculum overhaul his signature initiative. His other policies, he told Chalkbeat, pale in comparison to fixing reading instruction.

“None of that will even matter if kids can’t read,” he said.

But what do the new curriculums look like? How do caregivers know if they’re working? And what should you do if your child continues to struggle?

Here are answers to some common questions caregivers may have about the changes, based on interviews with reading experts and educators.

How were schools teaching reading before?

Stretching back decades, the Education Department embraced a program developed by Teachers College professor Lucy Calkins, which viewed reading as a natural process that could be unlocked by exposing students to literature. Teachers delivered mini-lessons on a specific skill then encouraged students to read books at their individual levels to practice what they learned.

But most reading experts say the approach did not include enough emphasis on teaching children the relationships between letters and sounds, known as phonics, leaving behind a substantial share of students who would benefit from more explicit sound-it-out lessons.

Calkins’ curriculum also deployed some dubious methods, such as encouraging students to use pictures to guess at a word’s meaning rather than relying on the letters themselves. Though she has since added a greater emphasis on phonics, the city’s public schools will no longer be allowed to use her program.

What is the philosophy behind the literacy shift?

All schools are now required to deliver regular phonics instruction that explicitly teaches the relationship between sounds and letters. Those lessons, which are prioritized in grades K-2, typically run about 30 minutes a day.

In addition to those lessons, schools must also use one of three approved reading programs that are designed to help build vocabulary and comprehension by exposing students to social studies and science topics alongside works of literature and poetry. Research suggests that students are more likely to understand what they’re reading if they’re already familiar with the underlying topic. The new curriculums are designed to build students’ background knowledge across a range of domains.

“You should, as a parent, ask your kid about the books that they’re reading and be prepared to hear an earful from your child about how they read about Jacques Cousteau and the discovery of the giant squid — or to know a whole lot about pollinators,” said Kristen McQuillan, who consults with districts on literacy efforts and is affiliated with the Knowledge Matters Campaign, which raises awareness about the role of background knowledge in reading comprehension. Students should be bringing home writing about those books, too, she added.

Under the old curriculums, students often picked books that interested them from the classroom library that were targeted at their individual reading levels. Although the city is moving away from that leveling system — and instead having kids spend more time reading common books as a class — the practice may continue to some degree. Teachers will still have access to those leveled books, though they have been asked to organize them by topic or genre. Into Reading, the most widespread curriculum under the new mandate, also offers its own set of leveled books that schools can use.

What are the three new curriculums and which one is my school using?

The curriculum rollout began during the 2023-24 school year with 15 of the city’s 32 local school districts required to use one of the three reading programs: Into Reading from the company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Wit and Wisdom from Great Minds; and EL Education from Imagine Learning.

Beginning this September, all elementary schools must use one of those three programs, with local superintendents in charge of making curriculum decisions for all schools in their district. Here’s what each district is using:

What do the three new reading curriculums look like?

Into Reading from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Into Reading is by far the most popular choice among superintendents. Schools in 22 of New York City’s 32 local districts must use it. The most traditional of the three curriculums, Into Reading is organized as an anthology-style textbook packed with passages specifically designed to help teach reading skills, an approach known in education jargon as a “basal reader.” Some caregivers may be familiar with the approach from their own schooling.

Unlike the other two curriculums, Into Reading includes a Spanish-language version. And it covers a lot of ground, with roughly a dozen units in some grade levels that include how plants live and grow, the relationship between sports and teamwork, and how a person’s experiences shape their identity. Some educators say that breadth can be helpful since students may be more likely to encounter subjects that pique their curiosity.

Kate Gutwillig, a veteran New York City educator who has taught all three of the mandated curriculums, recalled one instance where a fifth grader who was reading at a second-grade level was captivated by an Into Reading lesson on Greek mythology.

“He was able to read the Medusa myth and that kid just came to life — he wanted to read aloud and write,” she said. “There’s something good about having a lot of variety.”

Still, Into Reading has earned criticism from some observers, parents, and educators who contend that it is weaker than the other two curriculums because it includes less focus on knowledge building, and relies too heavily on excerpts rather than full books. A New York University report also warned that its materials are not culturally responsive, a claim the company disputes.

Wit & Wisdom from Great Minds

Wit & Wisdom is known for building students’ background knowledge by going deeper into a smaller number of units. The curriculum includes four modules each year — ranging from civil rights heroes to a study of outer space — devoting about 6-8 weeks per topic.

The curriculum exposes students to a mix of fiction and nonfiction texts. It also stands apart for including a “close examination of artwork related to the core topics,” according to the Knowledge Matters Campaign.

“You tend to see a bit more of that literary fiction,” said McQuillan. One fourth grade unit called “the great heart” introduces students to the biology of the heart as muscle that pumps blood while weaving in the figurative meaning of the heart as a representation of emotion and love.

Some educators say adapting to Wit & Wisdom is challenging. The lessons can be lengthy, requiring teachers to figure out how to cut it down to be more manageable. And, as with all three curriculums, students are generally expected to read the same books on their grade level as a class, a challenge for students who don’t yet have strong reading skills.

“I think that’s our biggest struggle,” one teacher who was implementing Wit & Wisdom previously told Chalkbeat. “We’re coming in assuming that the kids have the skills to do this.” (If you’re interested in a deeper look at Wit & Wisdom, Chalkbeat previously featured a Bronx school that was in the process of adopting it.)

EL Education from Imagine Learning

Similar to Wit & Wisdom, EL Education deploys a handful of units each year that students spend several weeks unpacking. Formerly called Expeditionary Learning, the curriculum emphasizes teaching children about the natural world around them and includes lots of opportunities to write. Two kindergarten units focus on trees, for instance, and a significant chunk of second grade is devoted to pollination.

The emphasis on exploring the outside world, McQuillan said, “tends to be a feature of EL that kids get excited about.”

Janina Jarnich, who teaches second grade at P.S. 169 Baychester Academy in the Bronx, previously told Chalkbeat that one of her favorite lessons to teach focuses on paleontology and fossilization.

“By the end of the module, they write a narrative where they are the paleontologist that makes the greatest discovery of their lives,” she said. The lesson “lends itself to lots of hands-on experiences, like making imprints and doing a ‘dinosaur dig.’” She also takes her students on a field trip to the Museum of Natural History.

Some educators noted that the curriculum can be overwhelming — an issue that some teachers said is true of many curriculum packages.

“The weakness is the difficulty of navigating all of the materials,” Jarnich said. “Even after using EL for four years, it can still be tricky to find the end-of-unit assessments and to make sure you have all of the materials necessary for each lesson.”

Are there any exceptions to the new curriculum mandate?

So far, only one school has won an exemption, a K-8 gifted and talented program. However, some other school communities have pushed back against the new curriculum mandate.

Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, suggested more schools should be offered waivers.

How do I know if the new curriculum is working for my child?

Schools are expected to screen students three times a year to assess their reading skills. Caregivers can find the results of those assessments in their NYC Schools Account, which indicate whether a student is performing at or above grade level or needs more support to be performing at grade level. (These screeners are supposed to replace a previous system that assigned students a reading level from A-Z.)

Multiple experts said teachers are generally also doing more regular assessments on top of that, so it’s a good idea to get in touch with them if you have any concerns.

“The answer is: ask the teachers,” said Susan Neuman, a literacy expert at New York University. They should have a sense of whether a student needs extra help based on a range of assessments beyond the screeners, she added.

What should I do if I’m concerned about my child’s progress?

Experts said caregivers should reach out to their child’s school if they suspect their child is behind in reading or if their screener results suggest they are below grade level.

“A plan needs to be put in place, so parents do need to serve as their child’s advocate,” said Katie Pace Miles, a literacy expert at Brooklyn College who launched a tutoring program to help catch students up. “I would ask about what skills can be reinforced at home, and what materials can be provided to the caregivers.”

She said parents should ask their schools to outline whether they are offering their child extra small-group or one-on-one instruction, how many days a week it’s offered, and how long each session is.

“Parents should not be left in the dark,” Miles said. If a student continues to struggle despite efforts to provide extra help, caregivers may want to ask for more detailed assessments of their child and potentially request a special education evaluation, she said.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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Most Alaska Students are Not Proficient in Reading, Math or Science, State Test Results Show https://www.the74million.org/article/most-alaska-students-are-not-proficient-in-reading-math-or-science-state-test-results-show/ Mon, 09 Sep 2024 19:01:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=732554 This article was originally published in Alaska Beacon.

Alaska’s Department of Education and Early Development released statewide assessment data on Friday that shows most students are not proficient in core subjects.

The scores are similar to last year’s results overall, even though the state lowered its standards for the assessment in January. Education Commissioner Deena Bishop said then that Alaska’s standards are still in the top third in the nation.

The Alaska System of Academic Readiness test, commonly referred to as the AK STAR assessment, evaluates student knowledge of grade-level standards in English language arts and mathematics for third through ninth graders and grade-level standards for science in fifth, eighth and 10th grades.


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Student scores fall into four levels of achievement: advanced, proficient, approaching proficient, and needs support.

Across grade levels, roughly 32% of Alaska students were proficient or advanced in both English language arts and mathematics. Nearly 37% of students across grade levels tested were proficient or better in science.

Bishop appealed to Alaskans to use the results for continuous improvement in a statement released on Friday.

“State assessments play a role in measuring how well our students meet the Alaska standards — standards shaped by Alaskan educators. By accepting the results without defense, we commit to using these data for improvement,” she said in a news release. “Alaska is not merely focused on the outcomes themselves, rather our goal is to build the capacity in our students’ foundational knowledge and ability for their future in work and life.”

Pre-pandemic comparisons to measure if students’ scores are improving after school closures are difficult because the state changed its assessment. Scores were slightly higher in the 2018-2019 academic year, however. Then, 39% of students were proficient in or advanced scorers in English language arts and nearly 36% of students were proficient or better in math.

Fifth graders performed best on the 2024 tests. More than 37% met or exceeded state proficiency standards, which was a nearly 2% increase over the previous year. Nearly half of fifth graders, more than 47%, were proficient or better in science standards.

Eighth, ninth and tenth graders had lower levels of proficiency. The state said “efforts are underway” to support students in reading and offer career and technical education options.

Officials with the state Department of Education and Early Childhood did not respond to questions about how to understand this year’s scores in the contact of previous years and pandemic recovery.

Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on Facebook and X.

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Opinion: How Science of Reading Raised Literacy, Graduation Rates in My Small Urban N.Y. District https://www.the74million.org/article/how-science-of-reading-raised-literacy-graduation-rates-in-my-poor-ny-district/ Wed, 04 Sep 2024 12:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=732325 On my first day as a pre-K-8 principal in New York’s Rochester City School District, I was greeted not only with the excitement of a new beginning, but also with a daunting challenge — my district was in a full-blown literacy crisis. Reading test scores were abysmal, and schools were reporting a shocking 0% proficiency rate. Facing a mountain of external pressure, I was tasked with figuring out the problem at my school and fixing it fast.   

Though test results from the reading programs the district had in place showed the students were on track, state exam results proved they were not at grade level. I realized very quickly that there was a misalignment and that tests allowed for a lot of personal bias, with teachers allowing their preconceived notions about how students should perform to influence how they scored exams. Along with the two (yes, only two) literacy experts in the school, we developed an entirely new, evidence-based program tailored to individual learning styles that would help all students become proficient readers. 

The program we crafted was rooted in phonemic awareness, phonics, blending of sounds, comprehension, evidence-based teaching methods and, perhaps most important, objective assessments to truly understand where our young readers were struggling. 


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By the end of the school year, we had realized schoolwide improvements not only in English proficiency, but also in math

Fast-forward a few years to my second job as a middle school principal in the district, and again, the majority of students were either reading below grade level or not at all. Perhaps as a direct result, the high school graduation rate was a staggering 33%. By employing the same evidence-based reading strategies, we were able to give students the skills they need to not only meet literacy benchmarks, but eventually increase the graduation rate to 86%.

What we didn’t know at the time was that in developing this research-based program, we’d stumbled upon the basic foundations behind the science of reading. 

The two schools I was a part of are not unique in their struggles with student literacy. In 2022, 37% of fourth graders scored below basic on NAEP in reading, and just a third were proficient. However, studies show that over 90% of children could learn to read if their school’s coursework included all the core components of scientifically based reading instruction; phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, oral language and cognitive processes. 

While some students will learn to read naturally, incorporating the components of explicit, scientifically based reading instruction will help struggling kids become successful readers and proficient readers become even better. 

Understanding the science of reading helps educators develop effective teaching strategies that are grounded in research. In order to be successful, teachers must be equipped with the right skills and resources. This includes ongoing professional development in teaching foundational skills like phonemic awareness and phonics, learning how to administer guidance and feedback during oral reading practice and properly delivering effective vocabulary instruction to students.

Additionally, it’s critical to use tests that don’t allow for subjectivity in scoring to identify children’s reading difficulties, and implement targeted interventions to support readers of all levels.

My districts were located in underfunded urban areas, where literacy issues hit the hardest in our country. Poor, marginalized communities are critically affected by educational inequities, but even well-funded districts can lack the appropriate resources for reading education. By using classroom volunteers, retired educators and high school seniors looking for volunteer hours, leaders can think outside the box when finding additional resources for their students. 

They can start by looking internally. Consider existing staffers who can be trained in the science of reading, like paraprofessionals and teaching assistants. This frees up specialists to focus on diagnostics and enables them to spend more one-on-one time with the students who have the greatest challenges.  

Also, connect with a network of instructional leaders, reading specialists and local community members to share best practices, strategies and resources. Our district trained and partnered with a local agency that, fortunately, employed many of our students’ parents. Not only were they trained to help in the classroom, but this preparation went further, allowing them to help their children and peers practice reading at home.  

Embracing the science of reading is not just a pedagogical choice but a moral imperative. By grounding literacy instruction in evidence-based strategies, school districts can ensure that every student, regardless of background or ability, has the opportunity to become a proficient and confident reader. This commitment to literacy is essential for fostering a generation of critical thinkers, empowered learners and informed citizens. Literacy is the gateway for children to access the world, and it’s our job as education leaders to make sure that they, their families and their teachers are equipped for what’s ahead.

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St. Louis NAACP Files Federal Complaint Over Black Students’ Low Reading Scores https://www.the74million.org/article/st-louis-naacp-files-federal-complaint-over-black-students-low-reading-scores/ Wed, 28 Aug 2024 10:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=732156 The St. Louis NAACP is making another move to improve literacy in local school districts — but this time, it’s looking to the federal government for help.

The branch filed a complaint Aug. 19 with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against 34 school districts in the city and county of St. Louis because of disparities in reading proficiency for Black students.

It’s the second time the St. Louis NAACP is bringing student literacy into the spotlight. Earlier this year, the organization launched a campaign called Right to Read that also focuses on improving reading scores for Black students in city and county schools.


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Adolphus Pruitt, the organization’s president, said federal officials will assess the complaint, and if it’s within the office’s jurisdiction, will launch an investigation to determine whether the argument is valid.

In the complaint, the organization said low reading proficiency rates for St. Louis Black students “underscores the urgent need for targeted interventions in the region’s schools.”

“The districts are facing one of the steepest post-pandemic climbs, with significant learning losses that require immediate and sustained attention,” it said. “Addressing these challenges will require a comprehensive approach, potentially involving increased funding, innovative teaching strategies, enhanced support services and community engagement to improve educational outcomes for the region’s students.”

If the complaint is valid, the office “would ask the school districts to take certain actions to remediate things,” Pruitt said. “We’re very early in the process.”

In 2023, reading proficiency scores were at 42% for all Missouri third graders, but only  21% for Black third graders, according to state data.

In St. Louis Public Schools — one of the districts included in the complaint — 14% of Black third graders scored as proficient in reading on standardized tests, versus 61% of their white classmates. The district didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

The chapter is calling on community members to help boost student literacy. At a press conference Aug. 20, representatives asked the public to support existing reading programs, create new initiatives and dedicate personal time to participating in literacy activities with children.

Pruitt said that since the filing, he has heard mostly positive feedback from local nonprofits and educators.

“They’ve called in and said, ‘We think you’re doing the right thing. We’re glad to see it.’ Of course, we got some comments from people who say we’re barking up the wrong tree,” Pruitt said. “That’s especially with some of the districts that are predominantly white. Even though their kids — Black or white — are performing poorly.”

In addition to the 34 districts, the complaint names the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Pruitt said state education officials have to be kept accountable along with schools for low reading scores.

“They’re the ones who make sure that the districts are performing,” he said. “It’s like an employee is doing something that they’re not supposed to be doing, and you got a supervisor that’s managing him — well, you have to look at the management.”

The department recently focused on improving literacy in a comprehensive plan called Missouri Read, Lead, Exceed, which aims to increase evidence-based literacy instruction — part of the science of reading. The state also passed a literacy law last year, requiring schools to create success plans for students with reading deficiencies.

The St. Louis NAACP’s Right to Read is designed to help close the literacy gap between Black students and the state average. There’s a focus on third grade because research has found that 1 in 6 children who aren’t reading proficiently by then won’t graduate from high school on time.

Pruitt said that by 2030, the NAACP branch wants all children in the city and county of St. Louis to receive the materials and support they need to help get them reading well by third grade. But he realized the Right to Read campaign wouldn’t achieve that goal without help from the Office for Civil Rights.

“We just need to get more people involved in doing certain things,” Pruitt said. “We [filed the complaint] because once we saw the enormity of the problem, Right to Read —  strictly on an emotional and volunteerism point — is not going to work.”

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All Ohio School Districts Now Teach Science of Reading Curriculum https://www.the74million.org/article/all-ohio-school-districts-now-teach-science-of-reading-curriculum/ Tue, 27 Aug 2024 16:01:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=732093 This article was originally published in Ohio Capital Journal.

As students return to school this fall, their reading curriculum might look a little different.

This is the first academic year Ohio school districts are required to teach the science of reading curriculum, which is based on decades of research that shows how the human brain learns to read and incorporates phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

“The most important thing for school to teach a child is how to read because it’s their access to the rest of their education and to their life,” said Brett Tingley, the president of both Parents for Reading Justice and OH-KID (Ohio Kids Identified with Dyslexia).


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A portion of the state’s two-year operating budget goes toward the science of reading — $86 million for educator professional development, $64 million for curriculum and instructional materials, and $18 million for literacy coaches.

Gov. Mike DeWine signed the state budget into law last summer and teachers across the state have been receiving professional development to prepare for the upcoming school year.

“The jury has returned. The evidence is clear. The verdict is in,” DeWine has repeatedly said when talking about the science of reading.

Tingley has been working on this for about a decade and she is grateful DeWine put the science of reading in the state budget.

“To get his buy-in is so important,” she said.

Forty percent of Ohio’s third-graders are not proficient in reading and 33% of third graders were not proficient in reading before COVID-19.

Ohio’s law bans school districts from using the “three-cueing approach” in lessons unless a district or a school gets a waiver from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce or a student has an individualized education program that specifically includes the “three-cueing approach.”

The “three-cueing approach” is any model of teaching students to read based on meaning, structure and syntax and visual cues. It often encourages children to read words by asking three questions: Does it make sense? Does it sound right? Does it look right?

“They should not be asking kids to guess by looking at a word, by looking at the pictures, or by guessing at the context,” Tingley said. “They should be having kids sound out words.”

Requiring science of reading curriculum is a step in the right direction, said Kerry Agins, a Cleveland lawyer that specializes in representing students with special education needs.

“It’s important that our school districts are choosing curriculums and intervention programs that embrace the science of reading,” she said. “For too long, we have used programs that are not aligned to evidence based intervention practices, and we have seen that students have not made the progress that they need to make in order to be proficient readers.”

ODEW was required to come up with a list of curriculum and instructional materials that align with the science of reading.

About a third of Ohio’s school districts and community schools are already using at least one of the approved core reading instruction curriculum that ODEW came up with.

Ohio is one of 39 states and the District of Columbia that has passed laws or implemented new politics related to evidence-based reading instruction since 2013 as of last week, according to an Education Week analysis.

The other piece of the science of reading implementation affects higher education — specifically teacher prep programs.

“If the professors are not training people in the science of reading, then the school district ends up training the teacher and spending a ton of money that they don’t need to spend on professional development,” Tingley said.

The Ohio Department of Higher Education Chancellor Mike Duffey is tasked with creating an audit process that demonstrates how each educator training program aligns with teaching the science of reading instruction.

The formal audits will begin in January and Duffey can revoke a college or university’s approval if they fail the audit.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and X.

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Iowa Department of Education Launches AI-Powered Reading Tutor Program https://www.the74million.org/article/iowa-department-of-education-launches-ai-powered-reading-tutor-program/ Fri, 23 Aug 2024 10:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=731895 This article was originally published in Iowa Capital Dispatch.

The Iowa Department of Education announced Wednesday that some elementary schools will use an AI reading assistant to help with literacy tutoring programs.

The department made a $3 million investment into Amira (EPS Learning) for the use of a program called EPS Reading Assistant, an online literacy tutor that uses artificial intelligence technology. Iowa public and non-public elementary schools will be able to use the service at no cost through the summer of 2025, according to the department news release.

“Reading unlocks a lifetime of potential, and the Department’s new investment in statewide personalized reading tutoring further advances our shared commitment to strengthening early literacy instruction,” McKenzie Snow, the education department director said in a statement. “This work builds upon our comprehensive advancements in early literacy, spanning world-class state content standards, statewide educator professional learning, evidence-based summer reading programs, and Personalized Reading Plans for students in need of support.”


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The program uses voice recognition technology to follow along as a child reads out loud, providing corrective feedback and assessments when the student struggles through a digital avatar named Amira. According to the service’s website, the program is designed around the “Science of Reading” approach to literary education — a method that emphasizes the teaching of phonics and word comprehension when students are learning to read.

Gov. Kim Reynolds and state education experts, including staff with the Iowa Reading Research Center, have said that this teaching strategy will help improve the state’s child literacy rates, pointing to reading scores increasing in states like Mississippi following the implementation of “science of reading” methods.

In May, Reynolds signed a measure into law that set new early literacy standards for teachers, as well as adding requirements for how schools and families address when a student does not meet reading proficiency standards. These requirements include creating a personalized assistance plan for the child until they are able to reach grade-level reading proficiency and notifying parents and guardians of students in kindergarten through sixth grade that they can request their child repeats a grade if they are not meeting the literacy benchmarks.

Reynolds said the law was a “to make literacy a priority in every Iowa classroom and for every Iowa student.”

The AI-backed tutor program is being funded through the state education department’s portion from the federal American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, part of a COVID-era measure providing states with additional funding for pandemic recovery efforts. The federal fund allocated more than $774 million to Iowa in 2021.

In addition to the new AI-backed programming available, the fund money is also going toward Summer Reading Grants, awarded to 41 elementary schools in 29 districts for efforts to address summer learning loss and close achievement gaps. The elementary schools that won grants have all “affirmed their commitment to including the personalized reading tutor as part of their evidence-based programming,” according to the news release.

Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on Facebook and X.

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To Boost Reading Scores, Maryland School Takes Curriculum Out of Teachers’ Hands https://www.the74million.org/article/classroom-case-study-faced-with-literacy-declines-one-maryland-district-takes-curriculum-design-out-of-teachers-hands/ Tue, 13 Aug 2024 16:01:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=731188 This is the final chapter of a three-part series spotlighting school leaders across Maryland who have recently implemented high-quality literacy curricula. (See our prior installments from Washington County and Wicomico County Public Schools.) Jeffrey A. Lawson is Superintendent of Cecil County Public Schools in Elkton, Maryland; below, he shares the story of how the county turned around years of literacy declines by rallying around a core curriculum called Bookworms — and creating the conditions for “sustainable change” over time.

Nearly a decade ago, Cecil County Public Schools had some of the lowest-performing elementary schools in Maryland, and teachers used a variety of homegrown curriculum and curated resources to varying effect. Loud calls for change were coming from the teachers’ union and Central Office.

Today, our schools all use Bookworms, a highly structured, open-source curriculum published by the University of Delaware. We adopted and implemented Bookworms districtwide at a rapid clip in 2016 and quickly saw gains in the share of students in grades 3–5 scoring proficient on statewide tests. We have consistently fine-tuned our practices to maintain progress in the years since.


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Most major changes don’t happen without a long lead time or thoroughly debated pilot. And many changes cannot be sustained over the long haul. Our experience with Bookworms is a counterexample to both. It is possible to move fast and build reforms that last. Here’s how.

Start with this: Standards are not curriculum

In part, our sustainable change may be rooted in the fundamentally unsustainable practices we sought to replace.

In the past culture of Cecil County schools, teachers were expected to “teach the standards.” In day-to-day life, this meant unpacking state standards as they related to their particular students and designing curriculum, including by picking and choosing among far-flung resources and tried-and-true favorite texts. Too often, this approach didn’t work. Students’ educational trajectories were unpredictable and disjointed. Beloved books were not always at grade level. Meanwhile, teachers were overtaxed, and the local union was calling for public hearings to discuss curriculum and workload.

Around 2015, the district convened a committee to select a standard English language arts elementary school curriculum, one that would allow teachers to focus on instruction and more reliably connect students with rigorous, grade-level learning. The committee selected Journeys and Wonders, by heavyweight publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill. Both were costly, comprehensive literacy programs with leveled readers and a suite of related activities and resources.

Jeffrey A. Lawson is Superintendent of Cecil County Public Schools in Elkton, MD. (Courtesy of the Knowledge Matters Campaign) 

I was appointed Associate Superintendent of Education Services in 2016 and given a clear mandate from the superintendent: Raise reading scores, now. I reviewed the work of the curriculum committee, and then cast a wider net. 

The traditional curriculums that were being considered were bulky and based on teacher choice, which essentially tasked teachers with daily lesson design. It seemed likely that almost no real change would occur.

Ask for expertise and evidence

There had to be more options. I started by tapping trusted colleagues in my professional and personal networks. What districts were making literacy progress? What high-quality, evidence-based programs were they using? Through these queries, I heard about the Christina School District in Newark, Delaware. The Bookworms curriculum, published by the University of Delaware, was helping “move students in Newark,” I was told.

My district is about six miles from the University of Delaware, where I am an alumnus. I made some calls, and with senior colleagues from Cecil County, soon visited a school principal and observed reading instruction in Newark.

Bookworms was a clear fit for our needs. Rather than using leveled readers, instruction is rooted in published grade-level books that students can find at the local library. The Lexile levels were far higher that what we had been using in our district, which was crucial. Just as important, Bookworms lessons are designed so all students can access challenging grade-level books, even if they cannot yet read them independently. We saw that this could help Cecil County students break out of their guided reading groups.

The curriculum is highly structured, standards-based, and taught in three 45-minute periods: an interactive read-aloud that engages all students, a writing and literacy instructional period, and a tiered support period. Teachers’ time and planning energies are reserved for practicing instruction and working to meet individual students’ needs, not designing curriculum on their own.

I also found that the Newark teachers were enthusiastic ambassadors for the curriculum, which as an open-source publication would cost us far less than the prepackaged traditional programs. In my experience, when a group of teachers raves about a resource, you should probably take a look and see why. And by spending less upfront, we could invest more resources in aligned, ongoing professional development to help teachers improve their instructional practice.

Support sustainable change

I recommended Bookworms to the superintendent, who agreed and opted to proceed full steam ahead: no pilot, no public comment period. We did plenty of salesmanship and relationship-building to support a smooth rollout. But the move to Bookworms happened quickly and was not up for debate. We wanted to make a move and keep things simple, and Bookworms was sufficiently streamlined and structured to allow us to do that.

It was important to protect morale and ensure teachers felt supported during the shift. One powerful strategy was to direct all school-based administrators not to base performance evaluations on observations of Bookworms lessons in the first year. Our teachers and administrators were learning the curriculum at the same time and with varying levels of prior expertise. Attaching stakes to classroom evaluations of those lessons was not fair. That took a lot of the pressure off, and both teachers and administrators became more comfortable with the curriculum and with one another. We also brought eight literacy coaches in from the University of Delaware to train and assist, which was helpful.

A 5th grade class selects their five favorite books from the school year highlighting themes and characters. (Courtesy of the Knowledge Matters Campaign) 

Another move that helped create a stable transition was allowing elementary level teachers to choose subject specialties. Cecil County also changed math curriculums at this time, and teachers in grades 3–5 were given the opportunity to teach either reading and social studies or math and science. This allowed teachers to really focus on one curriculum and set of instructional strategies. 

We also built in out-of-classroom supports for the curriculum, such as an innovative relationship with the county library system. Our students can check a book on the Bookworms reading list out of the library and have it delivered to them in school.

Finally, we did not count on universal enthusiasm right away. I believe that there are times and places where leaders have to take a stand and ask that others come along with them. Then, people need time to experience and come to their own conclusion about whatever change is underway. That’s been my experience with teachers, who may first encounter a planned reform with skepticism but are almost always immediately won over when they see benefits for their students. Decide and act, and then wait.

Four months after we first implemented Bookworms, one of our early skeptics sent me a note that said, “I just love the fact that we are building good little readers.” That’s the sort of evidence that will keep enthusiasm high and maintain curriculum improvement over the long term.

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How One St. Louis Literacy Org Helps Black Students Become Proficient Readers https://www.the74million.org/article/how-1-st-louis-literacy-org-is-helping-black-students-become-proficient-readers/ Fri, 09 Aug 2024 12:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=731029 What began as a virtual book club for Black St. Louis men to maintain community at the start of the pandemic has now transformed into an organization dedicated to combating the city’s youth literacy crisis. 

Black Men Read was founded by Keyon Watkins in 2020. The club originally consisted of Watkins and about 15 of his friends meeting on Facetime or Zoom to discuss books like The Art of War and The Four Agreements. But when tragedy struck his family on Mother’s Day two years later, Watkins knew he wanted to do more.

On May 8, 2022, Watkins’s brother Damon Hawkins was fatally shot in a parking lot.


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“My older brother was very intelligent,” Watkins said. “However, he couldn’t read. When you can’t read, you have limited options in life. What could the trajectory of his life have been if he knew how to read?”

Because his brother couldn’t read, he didn’t graduate from high school. Watkins, his mother and his niece helped Hawkins fill out job applications, but Hawkins’s lack of literacy, Watkins said, limited his options for jobs, as well as housing. Watkins described the area where his brother lived as “terrible.” He was killed by one of his neighbors. 

Watkins said his brother’s death motivated him to advocate against gun violence and expand Black Men Read to become a nonprofit that could help young children improve their literacy.

St. Louis has struggled for years to raise reading proficiency for its students. As of 2021, only 11% of K-12 Black public school students in the city were proficient readers, in comparison to 55% of white students. 

Research shows that third graders who aren’t proficient in reading by the end of the school year are four times less likely to graduate from high school than students who are. In 2021, only 89 of 1,149 Black third graders in St. Louis public schools scored as proficient or advanced in English Language Arts.

Missouri passed a law in 2022 to require schools to focus on science of reading strategies to improve literacy. But Watkins and other community members aren’t waiting.

In 2022, his organization worked with Head Start programs to read to preschoolers. Soon after volunteering with Head Start, he and eight members of the group began reaching out to members of the community who might be interested in tutoring older students.The organization volunteered twice a week at Barack Obama Elementary School for the second half of the 2023-24 school year. Its members worked with 15 students in first to fifth grade after school and hope to expand to more schools in the Normandy School District soon.

Tutors are required to pass a background screening and undergo training. They worked with Webster University to receive proper tutoring training and used techniques from the University of Florida Literacy Institute, which teaches linguistic and reading comprehension, to guide their lessons. Watkins hopes to offer this training for parents in the future so they can implement these methods at home.

The organization also made a concerted effort to maintain enthusiasm around reading throughout the summer. In June, Black Men Read launched a summer reading program at the First Baptist Church of Meacham Park’s education center. It is hosting about 30 kids on Wednesdays and Thursdays for about 3½ hours. The program began with individual testing to assess each student’s reading level and includes one-on-one tutoring throughout the day.

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“We focus on phonics and sight words. We also have flashcards that will have a story with no words, just pictures so they can visually arrange what happens, first, second and third, to help with reading comprehension. We try to make it fun. We have sight word bingo and crossword puzzles to keep them engaged,” Watkins said.

The summer program includes other activities like slime making and guided workouts from a physical trainer. Black Men Read also partnered with another local organization called Ready Readers to provide each child with a book to take home.

With the school year approaching, two of the biggest challenges Watkins and his team are facing are finding enough volunteer tutors and financial assistance. He said the community has been supportive, but he is hoping to obtain grants soon.

Coalition With STL Kids, which works to “highlight the racist educational status quo,” according to its Instagram page, helps bolster Black Men Read’s literacy efforts while holding the local school board accountable for what it believes are low expectations for Black students. 

“We know that poverty and all these things affect learning, and we have to do what we can to address it, but we also have to start with the belief that despite our kids’ challenges, they can succeed,” said coalition founder Chester Asher. “But the longer we persist in this sense of pity that all these poor children can’t do anything because of their struggle, we just enable and feed a cycle of poverty.”

Black Men Read and Coalition with STL Kids have partnered to recruit 100 new tutors. On Aug. 16, they will hold a training session for new tutors focused on the science of reading and the five pillars of literacy: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

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Missouri Uses Money, Laws to Push Evidence-Based Reading Instruction https://www.the74million.org/article/missouri-uses-money-laws-to-push-evidence-based-reading-instruction/ Mon, 05 Aug 2024 16:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=730252 This article was originally published in The Beacon.

If you drop into an elementary reading lesson, you might see kids learning about the long U sound, building their vocabulary or practicing how to read aloud without sounding like robots.

And if you visit Kansas City Public Schools this fall, you should see all students in the same grade learning the same thing.

After all, a push is underway in KCPS to standardize reading lessons and anchor them in evidence about how students learn best.


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Around the state, schools are retraining thousands of teachers, replacing outdated reading lessons and identifying students who need extra help.

Missouri is the latest in a string of states to put money and the force of law behind an effort to teach more kids to read.

The strategy hinges on the idea that some teaching methods weren’t working very well. Kids struggled to read, though they were capable of learning. Research — often known as the “science of reading” — pointed to a better way, but wasn’t always heeded.

“Teachers that are coming into the profession just don’t have that science of reading background from universities,” said Connie Moore, director of elementary curriculum at KCPS. 

Evidence-based teacher training is “assisting those brand new teachers, even veteran teachers, that have students come with reading deficiencies or specific needs around reading,” she said. “We’re getting students to read on grade level, because that’s the ultimate goal.”

Missouri law changes

A Missouri law adopted in 2022 requires that all public school elementary students get reading instruction that has proved “highly likely to be effective.”

That means the teaching techniques must have been studied by looking at the outcome for large numbers of students, and that they include five key components of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

Previously, science of reading proponents say, many students weren’t getting enough phonics instruction. Most kids need to be explicitly taught about sounds, how they relate to letters and how to use that knowledge to decode words.

Meanwhile, students were learning strategies that many now see as damaging — things like using pictures and context to guess words rather than sounding them out.

What a student learned in class could be the luck of the draw, said Megan Mitchell, a K-5 English language arts curriculum coordinator at KCPS.

One teacher might spend most of their time on foundational phonics skills while another might focus on comprehension, she said. But students need systematic instruction in all five areas.

Teachers also need to know how to work with students who need extra help.

“Before, I may have heard the (student’s) error, but just didn’t really have a concrete way to understand where that was coming from,” Moore said. “What’s going on that is causing this student to make this error, and how can I work with them to correct it?”

The law is meant to push schools toward proven strategies.

Changes include standards for educating new teachers. The law also gives the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education power to recommend curriculum, offer more teacher training and closely track how well young students can read.

Students who don’t score well on reading tests are supposed to receive intensive help.

But putting new education laws into action can be harder than getting them passed, said Torree Pederson, the president and CEO of Aligned, a nonprofit coalition of business leaders pushing for education reform.

“You’re handing it off to an agency that’s already stretched and asking them to do more,” she said. “It’s not an easy task to retrain all the teachers in Missouri.”

Implementing the law

The state doesn’t have the power to mandate curriculum or teacher training, but it is nudging districts in a certain direction.

With $25 million in state dollars and $35 million in federal relief money, the state education department is willing to pay for specific intensive reading training for at least 15,000 teachers.

The training, called LETRS and pronounced “letters,” emphasizes the science of reading and the five reading components Missouri law supports. It can take up to 168 hours over the course of at least two years.

The state also offers grants to replace old curriculum with evidence-based materials. Schools that don’t qualify for the grants can use the state’s list of recommended materials as a guide.

About 11,000 teachers have at least started the training under the state’s current program. Heather Knight, the state’s literacy coordinator, said several thousand more have been trained since 2021 through other state or local programs.

The state originally targeted K-3 and preschool teachers, but opened the training up to fourth and fifth grade teachers as well.

More than 480 of the roughly 550 school districts and charter schools in Missouri are participating. But even districts that appreciate LETRS training aren’t embracing it at the same pace.

KCPS has required the training for early elementary teachers, reading specialists and others, seeing it as a way to comply with the law on evidence-based instruction, Moore said. Practically all teachers in those groups have at least started the training.

North Kansas City Public Schools took a slower, more cautious approach, said instructional coordinator Lisa Friesen.

The training is now encouraged but not required for most teachers, Friesen said. About a third of elementary teachers have registered.

Some of the lessons from LETRS have made their way into the district’s reading curriculum, which is designed in-house and updated yearly.

Momentum to change

Mitchell, the KCPS curriculum coordinator, thinks it was about four years ago when she started to hear about the science of reading.

The news came through research for her job, but also from a science of reading Facebook group and from American Public Media podcast “Sold a Story,” which has helped influence public opinion and inform a wider audience about reading research.

Although much of the research on reading is old, there’s new momentum behind evidence-based teaching. But Missouri is far from the first to try it.

A 2013 law gets credit for the “Mississippi miracle,” where that state’s reading scores dramatically increased. All school districts saw improvement, though gains weren’t even. Several other Deep South states have seen notable gains as well. And Florida, whose 2002 reading legislation inspired Mississippi’s, has among the best reading scores.

In early 2024, Education Week reported that 37 states and the District of Columbia had passed reading legislation in the past decade, most within the past five years, and 17 of them within 2023 alone.

A January 2024 policy analysis from ExcelInEd, a nonprofit founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, shows nearly all states have adopted some reading policies. Missouri now checks most of the think tank’s boxes.

Those lists don’t include Kansas’ latest literacy law, which Gov. Laura Kelly signed in April.

New curriculum

Companies that produce curriculum and other classroom resources are taking note.

Education company Learning A-Z knew schools would be looking for materials based on the science of reading, in part because of state law changes, President Aaron Ingold said.

So the company, which had focused on supplemental resources, recently got into creating a comprehensive curriculum called Foundations A-Z. It’s on Missouri’s  list of recommended resources.

Learning A-Z has changed some of its thinking, Ingold said. It no longer includes “cueing,” an out-of-favor strategy that encourages children to look at context such as pictures and sentence structure to figure out words rather than sounding them out.

Instead, the program includes more phonics instruction and books known as “decodables” that contain words and spelling patterns students have learned.

Moore said the science of reading is an example of how research doesn’t always “trickle down to us in a timely manner.”

But with training and curriculum companies on board, and the expectation that teachers will see gains in the classroom, she thinks it’s more than a passing fad.

“I don’t think it’s something that’s going to come and go in education,” she said.

This article first appeared on Beacon: Missouri and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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To Maximize the Impact of Curriculum Mandates, Follow the Science of Reading https://www.the74million.org/article/classroom-case-study-to-maximize-the-impact-of-curriculum-mandates-follow-the-science-of-reading/ Wed, 31 Jul 2024 14:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=730582 This is part two of a three-part series spotlighting school leaders across Maryland who have recently implemented high-quality literacy curricula. (See our prior installment) Gary Willow is Associate Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction at Washington County Public Schools in Hagerstown; below, he shares how the district nurtured homegrown expertise and built community support to ensure the success of their curriculum initiative. 

The “science of reading” is a trending topic in state legislatures and gubernatorial speeches — over the past decade, 38 states and the District of Columbia passed new laws or implemented new policies that require evidence-based literacy instruction. This past January, my home state of Maryland joined the list when the Board of Education required all schools and districts implement evidence-based literacy instruction by the 2024-25 school year

This is a major shift for many districts, where leveled readers and balanced literacy have long ruled the day. It’s also more complex than a simple mandate, since the “science of reading” isn’t a single program or technique. To successfully bring research-backed reading instruction into the classroom, districts will need to identify and invest in high-quality materials and ensure teachers and communities are prepared to make sustainable, lasting change.


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While advocates and educators have been engaged in wide-ranging conversations about reading proficiency in Maryland for many years, relatively few communities have undertaken the specific work of changing curriculum and instruction to follow the science of reading. Washington County Public Schools, where I lead curriculum and instruction as an associate superintendent, has been focused on this work since 2020. Districtwide, preschool and K–5 teachers are now using a new high-quality, knowledge-rich literacy curriculum: Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts, or CKLA.

How did we do it? 

We have learned a lot over these past few years. Bringing the science of reading to the classroom requires careful research, strong collaboration and consensus-building, aligned professional learning, and robust ongoing support for school leaders.

Study the Evidence

Washington County started this work with a clear look at kindergarten-achievement data, which showed that just 39 percent of students met benchmark targets in reading in 2019. It was evident that although everyone worked hard, our students were not reading as well as they should. That helped us reflect on our beliefs and practices and ask big questions. Teachers, coaches, and administrators can ask similar questions by looking at their own data as they consider what students stand to gain from new evidence-based literacy instruction.

It’s important to understand the evidence before adopting sweeping change. We established partnerships to ensure that we thoroughly understood the research and create a vision for local success. Through our first partnership with the Council of Chief State School Officers, we collaborated with Nell Duke to reflect on and elevate our approach to early literacy. 

Duke, who is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee at the Knowledge Matters Campaign, helped us look beyond leveled texts and shift toward instructional expectations aligned with the principles of the science of reading. For example, rather than encouraging students to read independently at their comfort level, our teachers could use a variety of strategies to engage students with appropriately rigorous texts that built on their knowledge of the world, such as read-alouds, partner reads, and activities to learn vocabulary specific to a theme or topic.

Co-Create Consensus

We also engaged TNTP to help facilitate our vision. A diverse group of participants, including elementary and secondary teachers, paraprofessionals, administrators, special-education teachers, and district leaders, worked together to identify our beliefs, priorities, and what would be needed to update reading instruction. We presented these ideas to school leaders, community stakeholders, and families, as well as our elected Board of Education. Through this transparent process, we created clear, shared beliefs and expectations for improved literacy instruction in Washington County.

Ms. Keisha Payton discusses ocean habitats with an animated pre-K class at Bester Elementary. (Courtesy of the Knowledge Matters Campaign)

That meant choosing a new curriculum, which would serve as the foundation and guide for our efforts. With the district’s English Language Arts leaders, Washington County teachers chose Amplify CKLA because it is both evidence-based and knowledge-rich. Through our research and work with Duke, we knew that content knowledge is essential for enhancing reading comprehension because it allows students to better connect with and understand text. Our vision-building community exercises were helpful in this step as well. Background knowledge helps students make meaningful inferences and draw on relevant prior knowledge, which is critical for deep comprehension and learning from reading — priorities for our students. Best of all, knowledge-building curriculums like Amplify CKLA are organized into units that explore a single topic, like farm animals or mythology, students can talk about what they are learning, since they are all reading about the same thing at the same time.

Prioritize Professional Learning

Washington County teachers had access to the new curriculum in the spring of 2023, nearly six months before implementation. Teachers participated in curriculum-based professional learning during the school day, as well as before and after school. Instructional leaders developed new protocols to practice and prepare units and individual lessons, and an instructional coach from Amplify offered support. Teachers have opportunities to study the curriculum, ask questions, and practice instructional techniques together. 

In addition, the district purchased a training course for educators on evidence-based reading instruction techniques created by TNTP. The course emphasizes foundational skills and guides teachers on how to apply these principles in the classroom. District leadership, teachers, administrators, and paraprofessionals all completed the training to build a shared understanding of the science of reading.

Offer Ongoing Support for School Leaders

The success of any school-based initiative depends on the principal, who works with teachers daily and knows their staff and students best. We meet with our principals for a full day once a month, with half of that time dedicated to instruction and coaching. In addition, elementary-school principals routinely visit other schools to watch instruction and share observations with peers and Central Office staff. Principals also participate in quarterly data meetings where district and school leadership work together to analyze student achievement data. These structures create an ongoing dialogue focused on instructional excellence among principals and between principals and district leaders.

Fourth grade vocabulary words as part of a CKLA unit on the American Revolution. (Courtesy of the Knowledge Matters Campaign)

At the heart of these efforts is collaboration and a shared set of beliefs. Transitioning to a high-quality, knowledge-building curriculum and instruction based in the science of reading isn’t easy, and I am grateful for the efforts of our teachers, administrators, and central office staff. With their hard work, and by establishing partnerships, fostering open dialogues about data, and providing structured professional development, Washington County has created an environment where change can and has happened—proof positive for districts across Maryland and the country facing similar challenges in the months and years ahead.

Gary Willow is Associate Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction at Washington County Public Schools in Hagerstown, MD.

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Opinion: From COVID Learning Loss to Artificial Intelligence, Education R&D Can’t Wait https://www.the74million.org/article/from-covid-learning-loss-to-artificial-intelligence-education-rd-cant-wait/ Mon, 29 Jul 2024 13:01:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=730457 When COVID struck, scientists rushed to stem the pandemic in a coordinated effort that led to the creation of new vaccines in record time, saving millions of lives. These vaccines resulted from decades of investment by the federal government in mRNA research. Investing in research and development is a time-tested and effective way to solve big, complex problems. After all, R&D drives innovation in fields like health care, tech, energy and agriculture.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about education. The U.S. has never adequately invested in R&D related to education, so persistent problems remain unsolved and the system is largely unable to handle unexpected emergencies, like COVID. Although strong research does exist, few education leaders use it to guide their decisions on behalf of kids. 

As former state education commissioners in Tennessee and Mississippi, we know that education research, when consulted and applied in classrooms, can yield huge academic gains for students.


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Take literacy, for example.

For generations, Mississippi students ranked at or near the bottom in national reading scores, and Tennessee didn’t fare much better. In the late 1990s, the federal government poured millions of dollars into researching the most effective ways to teach young people how to read. But like a lot of good education research, those findings did little to change what was happening in classrooms and teachers colleges.

As education leaders, we knew we had to act on the findings, which supported systematic and explicit phonics-based instruction. It’s malpractice to look at stagnant achievement year after year and say, “Let’s keep doing the same thing.”

So we aligned our states’ approaches to what the research said was most effective. In Mississippi, that meant training teachers on the science of reading. In eight years, Mississippi’s national literacy ranking for fourth graders improved 29 places, from 49th to 21st. 

For Tennessee, it meant a revised program based on the science of reading and high-quality instructional materials, as well as new tutoring and summer school programs. This led to a nearly 8 percentage point jump in the third-grade reading proficiency rate – to 40% – in just two years. 

There is still a long road ahead to get children in Mississippi and Tennessee where they need to be, but the key to each state’s progress was a desire to learn from researchers and implement evidence-based solutions — even if that meant admitting that current strategies weren’t working. 

That’s not an easy admission, but from our experience leading education efforts in states both red and blue, we believe that education R&D should be the foundation for every decision that affects student learning. That’s why we are calling on leaders in states and in Congress to make it a top priority.

Why now?  

First, students lost significant learning due to COVID, creating an academic gap that may take years to close. Solving this problem requires innovative programs, new platforms and evidence-based approaches. The status quo isn’t sufficient. Education leaders and policymakers need to move with urgency.

Second, America is on the cusp of a new age of technological opportunity. With AI-powered tools like ChatGPT and advances in learning analytics, researchers and developers are just beginning to tap the vast potential these technologies hold for implementing personalized learning, reducing teachers’ administrative responsibilities and improving feedback on student writing. They can even help teachers make sense of education research. Without adequate R&D, however, these technologies may fall short of their potential to help students or – worse – could interfere with learning by perpetuating bias or giving students incorrect information.  

But in order to tap this vast potential, the R&D process must be structured around the pressing needs facing schools. Educators, researchers and developers must collaborate to solve real-world classroom problems. Too often, tech tools are conceived by companies with sales in mind, while research agendas are set by academics whose goals and interests do not always align with what schools truly need. Both situations leave educators disconnected from the R&D process, so it’s no wonder they are often unenthusiastic when asked to implement yet another new strategy or tool.

The field needs educators, researchers and companies working together to prioritize which problems to solve, what gets studied, what interventions get developed and where the field goes next. Instead of education leaders selecting from an existing menu of tools and approaches, they should be driving the demand for better options that reflect their students’ needs. 

Leaders at both the state and federal levels have an important role to play in making this standard operating procedure.

At the state level, superintendents and other leaders must be deliberate in using research to make evidence-based decisions for the benefit of students. Every state and school district has access to a federally funded Regional Education Laboratory, which stands ready to generate and apply evidence to improve student outcomes. But too few leaders take advantage of this resource. Local universities offer opportunities for partnerships that can benefit K-12 students. For example, the Tennessee Department of Education and the University of Tennessee established a reading research center to study the state’s literacy efforts. Programs like Harvard University’s Strategic Data Project Fellowship and the Invest in What Works State Education Fellowship can provide states and districts with talented and affordable experts who can help build their in-house research capabilities. If you’re a state or district education leader who hasn’t yet tapped into your Regional Lab, forged partnerships with universities or hired an R&D fellow, these are three easy ways to start becoming an evidence-driven leader.  

At the federal level, Congress can do much more to engender a bolder approach to education

R&D. A great first step would be to create a National Center for Advanced Development in Education, at the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. 

This center would tackle ambitious projects not otherwise addressed by basic research or the market — and support interdisciplinary teams to conduct outside-the-box R&D. The idea is to create a nimble, flexible research center modeled after agencies like DARPA, whose research produced game-changing inventions like GPS and the Internet. Rather than just making incremental changes, the center would strive to solve the biggest, most complex challenges in education and develop innovations that could fundamentally transform teaching and learning.

Congress can make this possible by passing the bipartisan New Essential Education Discoveries (NEED) Act (H.R. 6691), soon to be introduced in the Senate. Or, the center could be included in a reauthorization of the Education Sciences Reform Act, legislation that shapes the activities of the Institute of Education Sciences and is long overdue for an update.

This is the leadership students need from Congress and state officials, now. Education innovation won’t happen if school systems continue to rely on old ways of thinking and operating. Education needs a bold, “what if” mentality – embracing ambitious goals, smart risks, and game-changing solutions – all guided by the north star of evidence. Only when educators, researchers, companies and policymakers champion a new model for education R&D, will schools pioneer a future where every student receives a truly transformative education.

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Ohio Moves Ahead with Science of Reading Lessons, But Some Schools Still Lag https://www.the74million.org/article/ohio-moves-ahead-with-science-of-reading-lessons-but-some-schools-still-lag/ Mon, 29 Jul 2024 11:15:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=730442 Boxes of new science of reading workbooks sit at the front of classrooms at East Woods Intermediate School in Hudson, Ohio, ready for teachers to start using when students return to school next month. 

Like a third of the 600 districts across the state, the Hudson schools near Cleveland didn’t use science of reading books until Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and the state legislature ordered districts last summer to implement the curriculum by the 2024-25 school year.

Since the law passed, a state survey in the fall of 2023 found about a third of districts were already using the science of reading, a third were partly using it, and another third were using methods now banned by state law. 


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Realizing a change in how reading was taught was inevitable even before the law was passed, Hudson district officials started searching for new books last spring — giving them more time than other districts still using lessons that have now fallen out of favor.

Kindergarten teacher Arnita Washington teaches students in Warrensville Heights, Ohio, basic letter and word skills to demonstrate the science of reading to Gov. Mike DeWine. DeWine visited her class and others in early 2023 to promote the science of reading. (Patrick O’Donnell)

“It’s going to happen,” Hudson Assistant Superintendent Doreen Osmun recalled thinking. “So let’s dig in. Let’s roll up our sleeves. Let’s have our teachers, the experts in the classroom, make sure that they are looking at this thoroughly.”

How many districts currently out of compliance will follow Hudson’s lead and meet DeWine’s original target of the start of the school year to ax old strategies like balanced literacy and whole language in favor of the science of reading isn’t clear. 

But many won’t.

The change in how reading is taught in Ohio has proven not to be easy or quick —  despite DeWine’s urgency. Schools need time to replace old books and retrain teachers, many of whom learned other approaches in college and have used them for decades. It’s both a logistical and emotional challenge, made more complicated by about 200 Ohio school districts still using old teaching approaches when the law was passed.

Officials from some of those districts told The 74 they will take advantage of leeway in state law and approval from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to use the upcoming school year to implement science of reading.

When DeWine first announced the goal in his state of the state address in January 2023, the state had no idea how many schools were already using the science of reading and how many were using other approaches.

The law also relied on the state to take several steps before schools could even act. The biggest was to create a list of reading materials — books, workbooks, computer programs, videos  — based on the science of reading schools should use and a separate list of others that they now can’t. 

Knowing the timeline was tight, the legislature left the language vague and mandated the change “not later than the 2024-2025 school year,” offering flexibility. 

“Depending on where a district is, it may take longer to get to full implementation,” said DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney.

With the state education department being reorganized and its director not hired until December, everything was on hold until the first, incomplete list of approved materials came out in January. More materials were added in March and April. A list of approved intervention materials for students who are struggling was released in May. 

Chad Aldis, head of Ohio operations of the conservative-leaning Fordham Institute and a  backer of the shift to science of reading, said he understands the delay because of the work involved, particularly the “heavy lift” reviewing and approving books and other teaching materials.

“The idea that districts after February or March would be able to purchase new curricula, get teachers trained and be up to speed would have been a little bit ambitious,” he said. “I wish it could have been done sooner. But the process just took time so I think it’s a fair result that we see.”

He cautioned that it could take a few years to see gains in reading test scores as lessons change.

Among the previously-favored and popular books that are now not allowed are materials by Columbia University’s Lucy Calkins and the duo of university professors Irene Fountas and Gay Sue Pinnell, an emeritus professor of Ohio State University.

An intervention program known as Reading Recovery, which was brought to the United States by Pinnell, was also banned by the state, though advocates are suing to allow it.

After the survey, the department gave districts $64 million to help pay for new teaching materials – about $105 per student for elementary schools that need all new books and $8 for materials to help struggling students. Districts that already shifted to the science of reading and needed to make fewer changes received less money.

The department has also created a series of online lessons for teachers in the science of reading, requiring less than eight hours for some high school teachers and administrators and 22 hours for most elementary school teachers. So far, 33,000 teachers have completed that training and another 15,00 have registered for it.

Ohio’s training has been much smoother than in neighboring Indiana, where a required 80 hours and some early scheduling troubles flared into protests to the state board of education. Ohio’s online sessions are much more flexible than Indiana started with and take less time, so both major teachers unions in Ohio have reported only minor concerns.

Districts are also planning their own training as part of regular professional development as the year goes on.

In Hudson, a suburban district regularly among the state’s top scorers on state tests, the district tossed out now-banned books by Calkins as well as the Fountas and Pinnell “Classroom” reading materials it has used since 2020. The school board then purchased Benchmark Advance books approved by the state and by the national EdReports rating organization.

Osmun called the change “challenging,” since the state didn’t have a list of approved books until January.

New reading books sit in Hudson, Ohio, classrooms for the transition to science of reading lessons this fall. (Patrick O’Donnell)

Some districts needing to change have not moved as fast, including Solon, another suburban school district that often has the best test scores in the state. But Ohio education officials rated Solon as  “not aligned” with the science of reading. That district is waiting for the state to create a final list of approved materials before picking new ones, a district spokesperson said. 

The district isn’t sitting still, though. Solon teachers in the 2023-24 school year received training in reading and dyslexia, which is similar to science of reading training. More specific science of reading training will happen this coming year after the district picks new books.

Some low-scoring districts are also using the school year to change. The East Cleveland schools, one of the poorest in the nation and has been under academic supervision by the state, was also rated by the state as “not aligned,” but will use the upcoming year to select new books.

East Cleveland director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment  Tom Domzalski said the district spent last year on an already-planned overhaul of its math curriculum, so it left reading to this fall.

“My math is in a worse place than my reading curriculum,” he said. “We put our time and our energy into the area that needed that time and energy.”

He also echoed concerns of other districts about not wanting to rush after the state released its first list of approved materials in January.

“A good curriculum review process takes anywhere between six and 12 months,” he said. You can get it done in 90 days, too. If you’ve got the right group of people, and you’ve got folks that are in place for it, but how successful is it going to be?”

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Opinion: No Textbooks, Times Tables or Spelling Tests: Things My 6th Grader Didn’t Learn https://www.the74million.org/article/no-textbooks-times-tables-or-spelling-tests-things-my-6th-grader-didnt-learn/ Wed, 24 Jul 2024 10:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=730206 My daughter recently completed sixth grade at our local public school. She had a wonderful experience with warm teachers and a positive school culture. Judging by her state test scores, she’s well on track academically.

And yet, I’m left with a nagging sense of gaps in her education thus far. I’m far from the first parent to note differences like this, but I compiled a list of things her school did differently than what I experienced as a child of the 1990s:

  • Teachers didn’t use textbooks, assign homework or expect kids to study at home for tests;
  • Teachers didn’t teach kids to sound out words;
  • There were no spelling tests;
  • Students didn’t practice handwriting of any kind, cursive or otherwise;
  • Teachers didn’t drill times tables to build speed and accuracy; and
  • Students didn’t learn the 50 states and their capitals, let alone world geography.

Now, there are lots of caveats to this list. Like many school systems around the country, our district is adopting a new reading curriculum that will emphasize phonics in the early grades. It’s also possible that some of these topics will be covered in later grades, or that they would have been covered already but for COVID-related interruptions.


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It’s also true that my daughter has learned other things. She has a deeper conceptual understanding of mathematics than I had at her age. She participated in debates, did more public speaking and learned to conduct research with high-quality sources. On top of all that, her school is warmer and safer and more inclusive than the ones I attended.

But I’m concerned that my list is symbolic of the broader American education experience, one that has reduced instructional time devoted to science and social studies and emphasized isolated skills such as critical thinking or reading comprehension over teaching students a coherent body of knowledge and facts. These choices have negative effects on students. For example, kids have an easier time learning to read when they are explicitly taught to decode letters and sounds; taking notes by hand improves memory and recall; and students do better on advanced math problems when they don’t have to spend their mental energy on simple multiplication tasks.

More fundamentally, a deep knowledge base about the world is the best way to prepare children to succeed in an ever-evolving marketplace.

This experiment is now playing out in real time. My kids are part of the “just Google it” generation, but the AI-powered Google search engine is telling users to put glue on pizza, that a snake is a mammal and that President James Madison graduated from the University of Wisconsin. These silly examples are the result of so-called artificial intelligence hallucinations, but AI-powered tutors also make mistakes in geometry and lower-level mathematics.

It may be tempting to think of the question of knowledge versus skills as merely a matter of balance. Surely kids need some of both. But the challenge is that knowledge or skills acquired in one context do not always transfer to others. As psychologist Dan Willingham has noted, there’s a long history of people believing that one magic skill — such as learning Latin, chess, computer programming or classical music — will somehow unlock other areas of learning. None has. Instead, kids need a steady diet of content in a given field before they will be able to go beyond shallow learning.

In other words, schools need to teach students facts, figures, dates and other specifics before they can expect kids to think critically about those areas.

As British author and assessment expert Daisy Christodoulou put it, “If a school wants to future-proof its curriculum, the best strategy is to teach the fundamentals of literacy and numeracy to a high standard.”

Unfortunately, achievement scores in math, reading, civics and history all peaked about a decade ago and have been in decline since then, and the lowest-performing students have suffered the biggest decreases. This decline matters, because boosting early student achievement is linked to a host of longer-term outcomes. Just this year, a study found that eighth-graders in Missouri who scored as proficient in English, math or science were roughly twice as likely to earn a postsecondary degree and three times as likely to earn a four-year degree as students ranking at the basic performance level.

In other words, more children, and especially the lowest-performing ones, would benefit if schools focused more heavily on teaching content knowledge and boosting achievement.

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Amid Book Bans and Board Elections, Maryland Schools Embrace Science of Reading https://www.the74million.org/article/curriculum-case-study-amid-book-bans-and-board-elections-maryland-schools-embrace-the-science-of-reading/ Thu, 18 Jul 2024 10:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=729943 This is part one of a three-part series spotlighting school leaders across Maryland who have recently implemented high-quality literacy curricula. Frederick Briggs is Chief Academic Officer of Wicomico County Public Schools in Salisbury; below, he reflects on the process of adopting high-quality instructional materials with a strong focus on content knowledge during an age of book bans and controversial school board elections.

In November 2022, voters in my corner of southeastern Maryland were facing a contentious school-board election amid a nationwide surge in book bans at school libraries. Wicomico County Public Schools was among the first districts to review and remove All Boys Aren’t Blue, a coming-of-age memoir about being Black and gay. Candidates for the local school board were debating whether bans are a crucial defense against student indoctrination or a destructive form of censorship.

At that same moment, our school leaders and teachers were piloting three new, knowledge-building English language arts curricula. Such curricula use content-rich texts and intentionally build vocabulary and student understanding of core topics, which a divided public tends to view with a skeptical eye. Yet Wicomico County, where I serve as chief academic officer, successfully completed the pilot, adopted a new curriculum with school-board approval, and implemented Fishtank Learning districtwide the following school year.


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How did we do it? Changing curriculum is never easy, and a charged political environment can make things even more complex. It involves strategic planning, transparent communication, and community engagement. 

By taking a comprehensive and collaborative approach, we successfully navigated the complexities of adopting this new curriculum.

Acknowledge the need for change

For many parents and teachers, the status quo is comfortable. However, the need to change curriculum and instruction was clear when we started this work in early 2022. 

Advocates across the state were calling for wholesale change in literacy instruction, which is now codified in a state law requiring all Maryland districts to use curriculum aligned with the science of reading by the 2024-25 school year. Locally, too many of our students were not reading at grade level. 

In talking with department heads and teachers, three major issues emerged. First, teachers did not have materials that met state standards or adequate training in teaching phonics. Second, the texts our students read did not meet the needs or reflect the experiences of our increasingly diverse population. (Today, 13 percent of students are English learners compared to about 7 percent five years ago.)

Finally, elementary teachers were spending inordinate amounts of instructional time on reading and math skills, at the expense of science and social studies content. As a result, many of our students lacked content knowledge — particularly students whose families could not readily supplement their education at home. After our social studies and science supervisors brought me a copy of The Knowledge Gap by Natalie Wexler, I was sold on the importance of adopting a knowledge-building curriculum.

Together with the Supervisor of Elementary Reading Dr. Renee Hall, I convened a team of school administrators, instructional coaches, teachers, and other experts to review and choose curriculums to pilot during the 2022-23 school year. 

Anticipate challenges in selecting target texts

Our team combed through the texts in the Fishtank Learning units we planned to pilot, which included long lists of aligned texts that teachers could choose for their students. 

We carefully chose materials that were less likely to spark public outcry, given the recent ban and controversy over potential bias in public school readings.

While we wanted to ensure the texts included as many “mirrors and windows” as possible, to engage and reflect the experiences of all county students, we were also mindful of the needs and concerns of our community. Maryland state law requires local schools boards to approve curriculum, and the most recent election had focused on whether a single book should be available in a high-school library.

Engage multiple groups of stakeholders

We built in multiple opportunities for stakeholders to see the materials and share their feedback. We collected survey data from teachers, students, and parents about the curriculum and reported that to the public.

In addition, we presented the curriculum in multiple public forums. In the past, this step was not necessary. Administrators would simply present a chosen curriculum to the school board and invite members of the public to review materials at district offices by appointment—which never happened. This time, we wanted to avoid any appearance of sneaking books by the public and face whatever controversy would emerge head-on.

We hosted school-based events where parents could review and ask questions about all of the materials. School-board and other community members also attended and discussed parents’ feedback, questions, and concerns. This established a forum for conversation and discussion, and gave our community time to carefully read and reflect on the curriculum. I believe this process, which occurred over an entire school year, can serve as a model when our district is facing a contentious decision in the future.

Lead without looking back

While teacher, student, and parent feedback from the pilot overwhelmingly supported Fishtank Learning, there were community members who opposed the move. Some of our teachers were not pleased that we were changing materials. And no other school district in Maryland used Fishtank.

Ultimately, with school board approval, we adopted Fishtank and implemented it districtwide in 2023-24. It took a thicker skin than I would have guessed, since none of our curriculum resources in the past had ever attracted such attention and concern. But when something is in the best interests of students, you have to move forward — even if that means taking some daggers along the way.

Students in Ms. Brooks’ 1st grade class create an anchor chart after a read-aloud of “Thank you Mr. Falker.” (Courtesy of the Knowledge Matters Campaign)

In the past 18 months, we’ve implemented Fishtank and a phonics program by the 95 Percent Group in all of our elementary schools. We’ve also trained every single elementary school teacher and principal in the science of reading through the LETRS program

I believe that each of these powerful tools are even more potent in tandem, because they give teachers comprehensive resources and training to implement evidence-based practices in their classrooms. 

By engaging our community in a comprehensive review, taking our time with a pilot, and working together with our school board to invest in a new, high-quality curriculum, we are helping all students to become skillful, knowledgeable readers.

Frederick Briggs is Chief Academic Officer of Wicomico County Public Schools in Salisbury, Maryland.

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Opinion: ‘Just a Mom’ Starts Nonprofit to Help Kids — Like Her Daughter — Learn to Read https://www.the74million.org/article/just-a-mom-starts-nonprofit-to-help-kids-like-her-daughter-learn-to-read/ Tue, 16 Jul 2024 17:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=729834 Eleven years ago, I sat in the guidance counselor’s office at my daughter’s school. My happy-go-lucky Lucy suddenly didn’t want to go to kindergarten, and I had found her one day hiding in the bathroom doing extra homework. She wasn’t moving as fast as other kids. Her self-esteem was taking a hit.

Then came her dyslexia diagnosis. 

My husband and I explained to her, “Mi amor, not everyone’s brain is wired the same way, and yours is having a hard time putting letters and sounds together. This isn’t your fault.”


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I told this guidance counselor about my frustration. I knew the most important indicator of lifelong success is the ability to read, and reading-related learning challenges are common. Yet schools aren’t set up to support these students. It didn’t make sense.

Individual instruction is the best way for struggling readers to catch up, but affordable options were hard to come by.

“You’re just a mom,” he said, dismissively. “There’s nothing you can do.” 

I wouldn’t just give up and hope my daughter would eventually read well enough to get by. 

Most kids don’t learn to read alone, and no child should be expected to somehow figure it out. My family became a team, navigating this challenge together: switching schools multiple times, finding specialized centers, doing hours of research. I sold my business so I could dedicate myself to Lucy — scheduling intensive instructional intervention while ensuring she could be a kid. I started a book club for her and went to soccer and swimming lessons so she could see her friends. 

Today, Lucy is an honor roll high school student and a strong reader. But getting here was a lonely, humbling road. I heard people talking about my kid having “a problem.” I was doing everything I could, but doing it alone was so difficult. It’s partly why I founded The Lucy Project here in Miami in 2020. I know what it’s like to have a struggling child and little guidance. And I now know from experience, it doesn’t have to be like that. 

The Lucy Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit advocating for and providing science-backed reading instruction. A full-time team of five — curriculum specialist, operations director, learning specialist, executive assistant and me — runs the show. We have school partnerships, teacher training programs and one-on-one lessons. Five part-time learning specialists are fully trained by my team. In October, we’ll hire six more. 

Our first chair was also a mom whose child has dyslexia. Currently, half of the board comprises moms in similar situations, bringing firsthand experience and dedication. While I lead as CEO, I’m a parent who spends ample time guiding parents with emotional support and effective resources so the whole family will thrive. Our goal is to create a replicable, scalable model that serves all children.

The Lucy Project has served more than 375 students from 36 Miami-Dade schools and has worked with four Title I schools in underserved communities: Kinlock Park, W.J. Bryan, Goulds and Norwood elementary schools.

The project harnesses the Science of Reading to enhance literacy skills among children, particularly in underserved communities. It’s the backbone of The Lucy Project’s professional learning and student programs, as Science of Reading moves everyone forward. It is crucial for many and essential for some. 

Lessons are fun, interactive and responsive to each student’s changing needs. Learning specialists break down reading and spelling into smaller skills and help students build on them over time. Early intervention is everything. While the majority of second- and third-graders reached grade-level proficiency within one school year, remediation makes the biggest impact in kindergarten. 

Norwood Elementary’s partnership launched the first Literacy Hub, which included summer professional learning for two kindergarten teachers and coaching throughout the year. All students engaged in Structured Literacy lessons in small groups, and those who needed focused support received it one-on-one. At the start of the 2023 school year, 52% of kindergartners were on grade level. By year’s end, that number was 91%.

The Lucy Project also hosts seminars, apprenticeships and professional learning that have empowered more than 100 teachers so they can empower their students. Our team helps Miami-Dade students access daily reading remediation and provides parents with emotional support, guidance through the school system,and referrals to appropriate agencies.

We provide income-based private tutoring on a sliding scale, depending on household income. A mix of corporate and individual donors and grants from foundations fund these programs and make financial assistance possible for families in need. 

To catalyze cutting-edge literacy education, The Lucy Project is hosting a conference, Unlocking Literacy: Miami’s Science of Reading Summit, on July 30. Featuring nationally recognized experts in structured literacy education from leading universities like Stanford and Yale, the event is open to educators and families, who can register right here. The idea is to empower South Florida families and the whole community with practical teaching strategies that provide results.

Having this type of community support network drastically improves outcomes for students and families. It takes a team to ensure every child learns to read and succeed in life. Together, school administrators, educators, literacy specialists, nonprofits, parents and caregivers, and funders who collaborate are a force that can change the world. 

It’s time to start thinking like a team. Because we are.

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World-Renowned Artist Jeff Koons Visits NYC Classroom to Share New Literacy Game https://www.the74million.org/article/world-renowned-artist-jeff-koons-visits-nyc-classroom-to-share-new-literacy-game/ Fri, 07 Jun 2024 20:11:27 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=728102 In a brightly lit classroom in midtown Manhattan, first grader Scarlett turned to her tablemates, picked up a playing card and said, “OK, it’s my turn!”

Flipping the card over, she began to read. “When,” she said. “W-H-E-N.” She placed the card back on the table and announced she wanted to keep going.

“Good job!” Madison Schwab, her first-grade co-teacher responded.


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She tried another one. “Fret. F-R-E-T,” she carefully and triumphantly sounded out. 

Scarlett and her Success Academy classmates, all sitting in clusters of three or four, were playing a new literacy game called Popped!. 

A work of art in the “Apocalypse” exhibition by American Jeff Koons of a huge red balloon dog at the Royal Academy in London on September 22, 2000. (Hugo Philpott/ Getty Images)

At the next table, a group of students chatted with one of the game’s creators: world-renowned artist Jeff Koons, whose famous sculpture, Balloon Dog, just turned 30 and serves as the game’s mascot. 

“There is a tremendous problem with education,” Koons bluntly told The 74 in an interview Thursday, referring to reading instruction. Of the science of reading, which the game is meant to bolster, he said, “I think it’s wonderful.”

Popped! was created in collaboration with Clever Noodle, a company that promotes literacy through table-top games. Jacquelyn Davis founded Clever Noodle after she noticed her son, Madden, struggling to read during the pandemic. 

A former teacher and school leader, she began creating games, which she says are based on the science of reading and its emphasis on phonics instruction, to get her son back on track. At the encouragement of Madden’s teacher, Davis said she decided to fill the need for other students as well. 

“We want reading to be so much fun that they don’t even know they’re learning,” Davis added. “And that’s why we’re beyond grateful that Mr. Koons is going to work with us.”

First grader Scarlett plays Popped! with her classmates. (Amanda Geduld)

In the first-grade classroom, Tanisha, 7, sat at a table in the back, surrounded by colorful posters and signs. Of Popped! she said, “I think it’s fun because I like reading, and I like reading books, too.” Her favorites? The Fly Guy and Elephant Piggy series. 

Tanisha packed up the game and headed to the rug where Koons was presented with drawings and cards to celebrate Balloon Dog’s big birthday. 

The father of seven thanked the students for their artwork saying, “Each one of these is so special … we are all artists.”

“When you see the blue dog in the future,” he continued, “it’s smiling back at you.”

Clever Noodle released Popped! in the midst of a nationwide literacy crisis and a reckoning with how schools have historically taught reading. As of April, 38 states and Washington, D.C., have passed laws or implemented policies related to evidence-based literacy instruction that broadly fall under the science of reading umbrella, according to an Education Week analysis.  

Davis noted that they were excited to bring the game to Success Academy because they were already integrating the best practices of evidence-based literacy instruction. Since its founding in 2006, the 55-public school charter network, the largest in New York, has used a phonics program for all kindergarten and first grade students. 

Koons and Davis are hoping to extend this sort of learning that is also exciting to other students through the game. 

Koons has his own reading story. He shared that he grew up with a mild astigmatism, a curve in the eye’s surface which blurs vision, which made reading challenging and, he believes, ultimately pulled him more towards the visual world. But, as an adult, reading greatly impacts his work. 

“When I make a body of work I look back and think, ‘Oh, I was reading this philosophical text and I was reading this novel’ … It just activates the mind.”

Koons is widely known for his stainless-steel sculptures depicting everyday objects, including the iconic Rabbit and Balloon Dog pieces. In 2019, a $91 million sale of his Rabbit sculpture set a new auction record, for a living artist. 

Davis relayed that when Koons was younger, he felt intimidated and not welcomed when he walked into a museum. His response was to make art that was accessible, inviting and helped people find themselves. 

“For us, reading is that,” Davis said. “Reading makes the world accessible. Reading makes math accessible. It makes science accessible … I love that [Koons] focuses on accessibility because for me reading is about access to the world.”

“That was put so well,” the artist responded. 

As the presentation concluded, Davis announced that all of the students would get their own Popped! to bring home.

“We hope you have a great time playing … and we hope you do a lot of practice over the summer, so you can stay smart and come back to school ready.”

Disclosure: Campbell Brown sits on Success Academy network board of directors emeritus. Brown co-founded The 74 and sits on its board of directors.

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Indiana Science of Reading Teacher Training: More Than Most States, But Not All https://www.the74million.org/article/indiana-science-of-reading-teacher-training-more-than-most-states-but-not-all/ Mon, 03 Jun 2024 16:00:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=727832 The 80 hours of science of reading training Indiana has mandated for teachers, criticized by some educators as too long and unnecessary, is more than many states, but fewer than others.

Indiana, like all 38 states that have adopted the phonics-based approach of teaching reading, has to navigate several challenges to put it in classrooms quickly. It’s not always a smooth change in any state, particularly since veteran teachers must toss aside lessons they have used for years and rapidly learn new approaches.

Indiana legislators, who voted last year to order the shift to science of reading, say the change is urgent and training must be done well to reverse the state’s declining reading scores that had fallen even before the pandemic.


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Tempers flared at the May state board of education meeting where teachers criticized the 80 hours of science of reading training required for all preschool through fifth grade teachers as “excessive” and “burdensome.” 

Other complaints about a lack of training slots and unwieldy training schedules that added fuel to teacher frustration are easing, as more slots and more flexibility of training times are coming soon.

Indiana’s 80-hour training requirement is on the high end compared to other states. It’s almost four times as long as in neighboring Ohio, for example. But it’s also far from the highest. A few states, like North and South Carolina, are requiring twice as much.

Robert Morris, a teacher in the Duneland school district, told the state board in early May, the 80 hours of training training is unnecessarily “rigorous and time consuming,” 

“While no knowledge is a waste, it does seem excessive as a requirement,” Morris said as part of a crowd urged to attend by the Indiana State Teachers Association, the state’s main teachers union.

Dianna Reed, secretary of ISTA, told the board the mandated training has “compounded existing challenges of teacher burnout and retention.”

“Colleagues have expressed they would rather let their licenses lapse at the next renewal date, than be subjected to more hoops and mandates to prove their worth,” she said. “We are already experiencing a shortage of qualified educators and these new requirements do not signal to our teachers that their education degrees obtained…are valued.”

Teachers also complained that the $1,200 stipend the state is offering as compensation for the training amounts to $15 an hour — what retail and fast food jobs pay. 

Jeff Raatz, chairman of the Indiana Senate Committee on Education and Career Development did not respond to questions from The 74 about why the legislature chose 80 hours as its mandate. 

Robert Behning, chair of the Indiana House Committee on Education, defended requiring 80 hours, noting it is just one of several steps Indiana is taking to improve literacy.

“We want to be the best,” he said.

Behning said 80 hours may seem like a lot, but the state’s not requiring completion until 2027 and only when teachers are renewing their teaching licenses. Teachers whose licenses renew later will have more time.

Behning also said Indiana already requires 90 hours of coursework each time a teacher renews their license. Because Indiana is prioritizing reading, he said, the state will count the 80 hours of science of reading training as fulfilling that entire requirement, saving teachers 10 hours.

“I don’t find it unreasonable when we’re giving them the length of time that they’re being given to do it plus, since we’re counting it for relicensure,” he said.

Setting teacher training in the science of reading for already-practicing teachers isn’t easy. Training time, compensation, and online vs. in-person sessions differ greatly by state.

State law in Arizona and Wisconsin requires less than 50 hours of training for current teachers as they shift to the science of reading, while Florida requires 60 hours, according to experts that track reading laws.

Tennessee also requires 60 hours of training, split between online and in-person.

Some require even less. Neighboring Ohio as well as Washington, D.C., each recently announced that teachers must do 25 hours or fewer of online training as part of the shift.

But some states require more than Indiana.

North Carolina, whose legislature ordered a shift to science of reading in 2021, requires all teachers of kindergarten through fifth grade to do the two year, 160-hour 

Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) lessons from Lexia Learning that many educators consider the gold standard program in science of reading methods. 

South Carolina also just approved in March full LETRS training for all K-3 teachers. That decision openly copies Mississippi, which also gave LETRS training to all K-3 teachers starting in 2013, as one of several pieces of the so-called “Mississippi Miracle” shift in teaching reading that led to significant score increases.

The Indiana Department of Education did not reply to questions from The 74 about how many teachers need science of reading training, but by some accounts the state’s universities have not been training teachers in reading well.

The National Council on Teacher Quality last year found that while schools like Ball State and Marian University- Indianapolis taught aspiring teachers all the elements of good reading instruction, most didn’t. It graded multiple Indiana University campuses, including Bloomngton with a D or F.

“Indiana ranks among the worst in the nation for the average number of components of reading its programs adequately address,” the council’s national Teacher Prep Review concluded.

While Indiana is requiring universities to change what they teach, the Indiana Department of Education has hired Massachusetts-based Keys to Literacy to provide free training for up to 9,000 teachers to help them adjust their teaching.

Right now, Keys offers training split between 40 hours of asynchronous online classes – those teachers can take any time – and 40 hours of synchronous classes where teachers must join up to 200 others online with an instructor at selected times. That requirement drew criticism from teachers who said it imposes a schedule on time they prepare for classes or have family plans.

When Keys to Literacy opened up new training slots in April, those filled immediately, leaving many teachers thinking they were shut out of a chance at free training. Some worried they’d be stuck paying for other training on their own.

But the legislature removed the synchronous training requirement effective July 1, so teachers can take online training any time that fits their schedule after then.

Jenner and Keys have also opened up fall and spring 2025 sessions, which make more slots and times available.

How the state will pay for extra slots or extra teachers has not been resolved, but Behning said the legislature should easily approve money when it builds a new state budget next year, if needed.

The July 1 end of the synchronous training requirement has tradeoffs, however, in how effective the training can be. Officials of Lexia, Keys and The New Teacher Project, another science of reading provider to several states, say research of all online learning shows that some time with a live instructor brings better results, as teachers saw when they taught online during the pandemic.

Back-and-forth interaction with an instructor and other students is also valuable as teachers start to take the theories behind reading and start finding ways to use them in daily lessons.

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For Stronger Readers in Third Grade, Start Building Knowledge in Preschool https://www.the74million.org/article/for-stronger-readers-in-third-grade-start-building-knowledge-in-preschool/ Mon, 27 May 2024 11:30:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=727570 In joyful preschool classrooms, three- and four-year-olds play and pretend together. They sing and dance, listen eagerly at story time, and ask endless questions. Nearly everything is new, which fuels an intense enthusiasm for learning. High-quality preschool supports social skills, fosters friendships, and builds a sturdy foundation for kindergarten and beyond.

As researchers specializing in linguistics and early literacy development, we celebrate the growing movement to connect preschool instruction with the science of reading. Between 2019 and 2022, 45 states passed new laws requiring schools adopt a scientific approach to reading curriculum and instruction. In 31 states, the laws apply to preschool students as well. 

These mandates are a golden opportunity to capitalize on the unique energy, curiosity, and explosive growth in oral language that children experience during the preschool years. 


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Early-learning experiences have exponential power: they can shape lifelong learning habits and accelerate literacy, particularly for English-language learners. To unlock that potential, educators and providers must ensure that students acquire a critical mass of vocabulary and related content knowledge from engaging social studies and science texts and activities.Knowledge-rich preschool curriculum is the key. To assist states and preschool providers as they revisit their literacy lessons, the Knowledge Matter Campaign recently updated its K–8 English Language Arts curriculum review tool to include “Early Childhood Essentials.”

Big Ideas for Little Learners

When students learn to read in elementary school, they draw on their vocabulary and what they already know about the subject to make sense of the words on the page. For decades, research has shown that a preschool student’s vocabulary size is a powerful predictor of their later academic success, and that background knowledge is a powerful factor in reading comprehension. Preschool curriculums that intentionally build student knowledge through activities that engage young children with complex oral language are designed with these insights in mind.

The Knowledge Matters Campaign has identified four major attributes of a high-quality, evidence-based, knowledge-building preschool curriculum:

  • They are grounded in read-alouds on science and social studies topics that include target vocabulary and are compelling to young children, like space travel or weather.
  • They include texts from multiple genres, such as stories and informational texts, that are presented in sequence and use the target vocabulary words.
  • They teach related words, phrases, and ideas, including academic vocabulary.
  • They extend learning through individual and small-group activities that prompt students to draw on their knowledge and use complex, content-rich language, such as discussions or sensory learning.

Knowledge-Building in Action

What does a knowledge-building preschool curriculum look like? Such classrooms follow multi-week units focused on a single, high-interest topic. Their walls feature art and photographs about the topic, and teachers actively engage students in read-alouds and discussions that are focused on the topic. A set of vocabulary words are gradually introduced and reinforced in texts, discussions, and activities.

For example, in the World of Words curriculum used in New York City public preschools1, a three-week Wild Animals unit is focused on an interrelated set of 10 vocabulary words and what information students should know by the end of the unit. Teachers and students discuss these key concepts, such as that wild animals live outdoors and away from humans, and are not kept as pets, and use target vocabulary words like bear, lion, and giraffe. All the while, they connect this learning to “big ideas” such as where wild animals live and how wild animals either protect themselves or need protection from others.

Discussions are grounded in five books: a nonfiction information book, two storybooks, and two “predictable” books, which use repetitive phrases and sentence structure. Varying text types expose students to several types of academic language, in addition to the colloquial language preschoolers pick up from their peers. When teachers read and re-read these books aloud throughout the unit, students are welcomed to chime in and participate in the read-aloud.

Consider the opening lines in If I Were a Lion, an illustrated predictable book about wild animals written in verse:

If I were a lion / I’d growl and roar / and knock the dishes / on the floor.
If I were a bear / I’d have big claws / I’d rip up pillows with my paws.

Students can explore the vocabulary and ideas, learn the cadence of the passage, and build important connections about different animals, habitats, and behaviors—all while they practice early-literacy basics like print awareness and letter knowledge. Repetitive texts and related topic knowledge are especially helpful to English-language learners, since they connect new vocabulary with tangible information about the world.

study of the curriculum found positive impacts on student vocabulary and understanding of science concepts. And in the dynamic preschool classroom, extension activities about everyday social studies and science topics are at the ready, from a visit to a school garden to a walk around the neighborhood—activities that engage and excite young children.

Plus, learning about lions and bears is a lot more fun than learning about “L” and “B.”

Schemas Make Skillful Readers

Knowledge-building curriculums also prepare students to read and understand texts about unfamiliar topics. Preschoolers don’t just learn about wild animals; rather, they experience how information can be related and organized within a theme or topic. Content-rich texts and lessons prompt students to build knowledge networks and conceptual frameworks, or schemas, that help them identify patterns and take in more sophisticated ideas. When students experience this type of understanding, they develop inferencing skills that they apply to other information.

Strong readers are not born—they are built over time, and those efforts start in preschool. As states take a closer look at preschool education, curriculums designed to build oral language and student knowledge can point the way forward. Today’s joyful chatter can be tomorrow’s persuasive essay, so long as we start early and give these curious, fast-developing students the tools and opportunities they need to thrive.

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To Hold Back Struggling Readers or Not: Indiana & Ohio Take Different Paths https://www.the74million.org/article/to-hold-back-struggling-readers-or-not-indiana-and-ohio-take-different-paths/ Sun, 19 May 2024 15:00:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=727187 Indiana and Ohio joined the growing number of states last year mandating teachers use the science of reading, but the neighboring states have gone in opposite directions with another reading strategy — holding back struggling third graders. 

In Ohio, where students who scored poorly on state reading tests had to repeat third grade for the last decade, the state legislature ended the requirement last summer in a bill that also adopted the science of reading.

In Indiana, state officials just restored mandatory retention of low-scoring third graders after a seven year absence. Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a law this month requiring students that don’t score as proficient on the state’s IREAD-3 tests to be held back in third grade, with few exceptions. The state estimates the new law will hold back 18 times as many third graders when it takes effect in 2025  — 7,500 compared to just over 400 today.


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Third grade retention and science of reading are two strategies for improving reading that have sparked similar excitement – more than a decade apart – and a rush of states to adopt them. Both Ohio and Indiana joined the third grade retention movement in 2012, though Indiana later backed away before rejoining it this spring and Ohio never fully embraced it.

Both states have also seen reading scores drop on NAEP, the “nation’s report card,” even before the pandemic, then decline more after. Such results make it only natural for legislatures to shift gears, experts said.

“Third grade is obviously a critical moment,” said American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Robert Pondiscio. “There’s nothing to be gained by giving kids more of what hasn’t worked. It should trigger different, intensive efforts.”

He and others like Timothy Shanahan, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, said the key is not just adopting something that sounds good, but making sure it changes classroom instruction. 

Both Ohio and Indiana seem to be covering those bases, with more teacher training, new textbooks, and other student supports. Whether those are enough and how well they are used by teachers, schools and parents is still to be determined. 

Right now, the desire for immediate change, particularly in Indiana, is clear.

“About one in five students in Indiana can’t read effectively by the end of third grade,” said Indiana State Rep. Linda Rogers, one of the law’s authors. “This is not acceptable. If a child hasn’t learned basic reading skills by that point in school, they’re going to struggle to learn almost every other subject.”

Both Ohio and Indiana are taking strong steps to change how reading is taught to young students, just in different ways. (Patrick O’Donnell)

Indiana education superintendent Katie Jenner told the legislature the state can’t have 14,000 third graders scoring below proficient on Indiana’s IREAD-3 test, as happened in 2023, without taking real steps to catch them up.

“The students who are just moving on are never passing. Ever. Ever,” Jenner said. “It’s hard to say that, but it’s honest.”

Indiana’s new law also requires more testing of second and third graders to identify struggling readers and for more interventions, such as l summer reading classes after second and third grade for students who are behind.

Jenner said adding these interventions and the retention mandate is a natural second step in the state’s literacy plan after focusing on having the right reading lessons through the science of reading and training teachers to teach them last year.

Requiring students to repeat third grade after not passing reading tests became law in California in 1998, rising  to national prominence after Florida adopted the policy in 2002 under then-Gov. Jeb Bush. Since then, several states have passed similar laws, though with differing policies on which students – such as special education, English Language Learners or students who have already repeated a grade – are exempt.

All shared a similar reasoning: Third grade is where students usually shift from ”learning to read to reading to learn,” or needing to read well enough they can read and learn other subjects. Students need to master reading by then, backers argued, or they will fall behind in 4th grade and beyond or may never learn to read. Mandatory retention also gives students, parents and teachers a deadline for taking reading seriously.

The strategy has promising early results, with some studies showing students making strong reading gains in the first few years after retention, though gains often faded by high school. Some of the most dramatic results came in Indiana under an earlier version of third grade retention that was dropped in 2017, a Brown University study showed.

But opponents in multiple states raised objections each time bills were introduced, usually citing studies that show smaller gains and psychological damage to students who are held back because of teasing, feelings of failure and being separated from friends. The studies have also noted Black and Hispanic students are usually held back at higher rates than white students.

Indiana was an early state in the third grade retention movement when former state superintendent Tony Bennett pushed for it in 2010. The legislature did not agree, but the state board of education mandated it with an administrative rule in 2012.

The Indiana Department of Education eased that requirement in 2017-18, telling schools to consider student performance in all subjects, even if not scoring well in reading, to decide if a student should move to fourth grade.

Third grade reading also had big changes in 2012 in Ohio, when then-Gov. John Kasich won approval from Ohio’s state legislature for his “Third Grade Reading Guarantee” that required more tests to identify students having trouble reading and for schools to hold back students who score poorly.

Unlike Indiana, which always made proficiency the threshold for promotion, Ohio set a lower score that needed to be raised over time. That set off constant debates each time the state school board had to decide how much to increase the score. Over time, the score crept higher but too many board members had reservations for the needed score to ever reach the proficiency level.

About 3,600 students were held back each year under Ohio’s retention law before several Republicans joined Democrats in opposing it last year.

“Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to literacy that currently exists, (a change) will give local and parental control to districts when deciding to retain a child,” Republican Rep. Gayle Manning told legislators in pushing an opposition bill last year.

In the end, a joint House and Senate committee chose to give parents the final say in holding back their children as part of a compromise state budget bill. Though many Ohio Senate Republicans wanted to keep the retention requirement, they relented because the bill included the shift to the science of reading and a requirement that students keep receiving extra reading help until they can catch up.

“I wasn’t in favor of it (ending retention), but we put some things in that I wanted,” said Senate Education Committee Chairman Andrew Brenner, also a leading backer of science of reading. “I think that will help immensely to get kids back on track over the next couple of years.”

The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce does not yet know how many students avoided retention this fall because of the law change.

In Indiana, attempts by Democrats to give parents the final say in whether a child has to repeat third grade, like Ohio decided last year, were voted down by Republicans. Attempts to delay the law until the state could see how science of reading changes affect scores also were voted down.

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Alabama State Board of Education Approves Literacy Coursework Change https://www.the74million.org/article/alabama-state-board-of-education-approves-literacy-coursework-change/ Thu, 16 May 2024 13:01:00 +0000 https://www.the74million.org/?post_type=article&p=727072 This article was originally published in Alabama Reflector.

The Alabama State Board of Education Thursday adopted a new literacy coursework for Science of Reading for teacher preparation programs in the state.

The change, approved on a unanimous vote, comes after years of a state focus on literacy scores, especially in the lower grades.

State Superintendent Eric Mackey said the standards would apply to elementary teachers, collaborative special education teachers and “could be applied to some other areas also.”


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“Mostly, they are focused again on early childhood and elementary teachers,” he said.

The Science of Reading is an interdisciplinary body of research about reading and issues of reading and writing. The Reading League’s definition, cited in the standards, includes phonemic awareness and letter instruction as instructional practices but not emphases on larger units of speech, such as syllables.

The new standards also outlaw the “three-cueing” system in institutions of higher education and K-12 schools. The rule change defines three cueing as a “model of teaching students to read based on meaning, structure, and syntax, and visual cues.”

Three-cueing is a teaching strategy that is affiliated with “balanced literacy,” a compromise between whole language and phonics-based instruction that became prominent in the 1990s, according to the Hechinger Report. Three-cueing encourages students to guess and look for clues, such as at pictures, when facing an unfamiliar word.

The skills associated with the Science of Reading were not taught in schools for many years, as reported by Emily Hanford for APM Reports. As of May 2023, 15 states had outlawed the use of three-cueing after Hanford’s reporting, with some lawmakers and policy makers citing the podcast, according to APM Reports.

HB 173, sponsored by Rep. Leigh Hulsey, R-Helena, would have banned the use of three-cueing, with some exceptions. The legislation passed the House of Representatives on March 5 but was among the many bills that died in the final days of the session.

“This prohibition is specific to the teaching of foundational reading skills and should not be construed to impact the teaching of background knowledge and vocabulary as connected to the language comprehension side of Scarborough’s Reading Rope,” the Senate Education Policy Committee substitute reads.

Scarborugh’s Reading Rope is a visual representation of establishing proficient reading, according to the Arizona Department of Education.

Hulsey said Tuesday that her bill was “complementary” with the standards adopted by the board, and that she expected to bring it back next year.

“Ultimately, kids need to learn how to actually read, and that is done through the science of reading, learning how to decode sound out letters, and figuring out how to put those things together to actually decode the word and be able to be lifelong readers, versus someone who is just looking at words and guessing,” she said, “We’re not setting kids up for success if we’re not actually teaching them how to read.”

She said the exceptions in the bill were mainly for older learners and those with learning disabilities.

In October, members of the Literacy Task Force cited teacher training and implementation as a hurdle in implementing literacy instruction.

Mackey said they had received comments earlier. They received no additional public comments on the current version, which they voted on the intent to approve months ago.

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

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