A lawsuit filed in Massachusetts state court accuses famous literacy specialists Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas, and Gay Su Pinnell and their publisher Heinemann of pushing reading curriculums they knew didn’t work.

Adopting a consumer protection approach, the lawsuit charges the curriculum authors with “deceptive and fraudulent marketing.” The filing alleges they willfully ignored decades of research into more effective practices and used shoddy studies to prop up their own work, then charged school districts for updates when they were forced to admit their materials were not effective.

“Think about that: If your car is broken, and it’s the fault of the manufacturer, the manufacturer recalls the part and fixes it,” said attorney Ben Elga, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. “They do not charge you for their failure. It’s outrageous.”

The lawsuit also names Heinemann parent company HMH, previously known as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Teachers College at Columbia University.

The plaintiffs, who are seeking class action status and inviting other families to join the lawsuit, are two Massachusetts families whose children struggled to learn to read. One of the parent plaintiffs, Karrie Conley, said in the lawsuit that due to her school district using Calkins’ Units of Study curriculum, she had to spend more on private school tuition and reading tutors for two of her children than she spent to send her older child to college.

“Nothing is more painful than trying to help them, but not knowing how,” she said in a Wednesday press conference announcing the lawsuit. “So many times I’ve asked myself, How did it get like this? I trusted that when I was sending my children off to school, they were getting instruction that had been tested and proven effective. I trusted that these so-called experts were actually experts.”

The lawsuit comes as many states are overhauling their approach to reading instruction to better align with decades of research into how children learn. What’s known as calls for explicit phonics instruction that helps students connect letters and sounds, as well as texts that help students build the background knowledge to understand what they read.

Calkins’ Units of Study curriculum and Fountas and Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention and other materials instead relied on exposure to books and promoted discredited methods such as three-cueing, in which students use the first letter of a word and various context clues, including pictures, to guess what a word might be.

These curriculums were widely used in American schools, with Calkins in particular achieving near legendary status among teachers. Critics say these instructional methods are largely to blame for American students’ low rates of reading proficiency. Journalist Emily Hanford’s and her podcast helped push these pedagogical debates into the public eye.

Calkins later and changed Units of Study to include more phonics instruction. But . Units of Study was once the , but the nation’s largest school system . Last year, Teachers College .

Fountas and Pinnell, meanwhile, have .

A lawsuit represents one perspective on a complaint. Representatives of Heinemann, Teachers College, and Calkins, Fountas, and Pinnell could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Heinemann has .

Dozens of states have adopted new curriculum standards that , but others, including Massachusetts, have not.

Elga, the lead attorney and founding executive director of , has a background in consumer protection and antitrust cases. He said he believes this is the first time that a consumer protection approach has been used to advance an education policy agenda.

“Consumer law is very broad, so there are a lot of cases that challenge products that don’t do what they say they should do or are marketed in a deceptive way,” he said. “This is the first case we’re aware of applying those laws to this type of product.”

The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages and injunctive relief, including that the defendants provide an early literacy curriculum that reflects the science of reading at no charge.

Families have previously sued states and school districts over rock-bottom literacy rates, alleging that government entities have failed in their obligation to meet students’ basic educational needs. These and that sent millions of dollars to districts with low reading levels but without mandates on how to teach reading.

Elga said he sees school districts as victims alongside students.

“It’s our contention that one of the major problems here is that the school districts have been the victims of this faulty marketing,” he said. “So we wanted to bring a case that challenged the people who were actually distributing these types of materials.”

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

Sign up for to keep up with NYC’s public schools.

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

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

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 and has since made the curriculum overhaul his signature initiative. His other policies, , 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 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 , 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 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 , 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. 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 . 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 .

Unlike the other two curriculums, Into Reading includes a Spanish-language version. And it covers a lot of ground, with roughly 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 , and relies too heavily . A New York University report also warned that its materials are not culturally responsive, a claim the company .

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 — 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,” .

“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, .)

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 and includes lots of opportunities to write. Two kindergarten units , 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, 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 , a K-8 gifted and talented program. However, some other school communities .

Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, .

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 , which indicate or needs more support to be performing at grade level. (These screeners are supposed to replace 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 . “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 was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at . Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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.

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 , 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 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 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.

include standards for . 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 , 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 as a guide.

About 11,000 teachers have at least started the training under the . 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 “,” which has helped and inform a wider audience about reading research.

Although much of the research on reading 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 . Several other 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, 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 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 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 first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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. 

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.

“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 ����Ӱ�� 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 — 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.

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?”

In his final go, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb wants to double down on K-12 literacy initiatives and bolster workforce training but won’t seek specific policy related to growing concerns around .

His reading plan could result in holding thousands more third-graders back a year in school.

The Republican governor on Monday unveiled his 2024 agenda, the last in his eight-year term. His policy goals additionally emphasize a need for expanded pre-K and childcare voucher eligibility, as well as increased access to disaster relief at the local level.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

Specifically, Holcomb’s agenda targets earlier access to IREAD-3 testing and ensuring Hoosier students are mastering foundational literacy skills. The latest reading scores showed that .

Currently, the IREAD-3 exam is only required in third grade. The governor’s administration is hoping to require testing in second grade, too. Doing so could help teachers and parents better identify struggling students and implement additional supports — such as through summer school or after-school tutoring — before kids get too far behind.

Students who fail the standardized exam can already be held back, but there are exceptions if a child is disabled or an English-language learner.

State officials — including Holcomb — maintain that too many Indiana third graders who can’t adequately read are advancing to the fourth grade. His agenda seeks to tighten up the state’s retention policy to require third grade students who fail IREAD-3 to be held back for at least one year, starting in 2025.

None of Holcomb’s priorities would require lawmakers to reopen the biennial state budget during the short legislative session, however.

“Ultimately, this (agenda) will be very interactive … looking through a lens of our customers, citizens and local leaders — how they may access all the programs that the legislature, year after year after year, appropriates dollars to. These are programs that really do make a difference,” he said during an agenda announcement at the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually impaired in Indianapolis. “Whether it’s a local government or philanthropic organizations or local leaders, some don’t know about some of the programs. And so, how can we better connect chambers, local leaders, etcetera, in a very easy way?”

Indiana’s General Assembly reconvened Monday for the start of the 2024 session.

Legislative leaders they’re not taking on new and controversial subjects, promising a “quieter” non-budget session.

While Holcomb’s agenda is closely aligned with goals expressed last month by Republican legislative leaders, his policy recommendations leave out issues like Medicaid reimbursement rates, gambling, and regulation of large water transfers.

Improving literacy

An — with the force of law — dictates Indiana’s existing third grade retention policy.

According to data from the Indiana Department of Education, in 2023, 13,840 third-graders did not pass I-READ-3. Of those, 5,503 received an exemption and 8,337 did not. Of those without an exemption, 95% moved onto 3rd grade while only 412 were retained.

Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said Monday that adding a legislative piece will make clear what retention means, and include “the proactive approaches” schools should implement in kindergarten, first and second grades.

“This will just really add clarity for the state and also help us stay laser focused on the fact that we have to have students reading by the end of third grade,” Jenner continued, although she said the state board of education could make changes on its own, if it had to. “But I think there is a significant appetite with both the House and the Senate to look at potential legislation options.”

Holcomb’s goal is that 95% of students in third grade can read proficiently by 2027. State officials said they can still meet that mark — but only if immediate changes and early-warning systems are put in place.

A pilot program spearheaded by the state education department has already helped hundreds of Indiana schools administer IREAD-3 to second graders as a way to help parents and teachers determine if reading interventions are needed for younger students before they take the exam.

The 2022-23 school year was the second year schools could opt-in. The test — likely to rebranded as “IREAD” — was taken by almost 46,000 second graders. That’s up from about 20,000 second graders who tested the year before.

“It is a very, very popular option for schools because it provides whether the child can read, whether they’re on track, or whether they’re potentially at risk, and it provides that data at a younger age,” Jenner said. “That then can be used by the parent and the teacher to best support that child’s learning in the future.”

State officials noted that many students are expected to receive additional reading help during the summer.

Funding for summer school — equal to about $18.4 million per year under the current state budget — is mostly going toward students taking physical education and health courses in the summer, Jenner said.

“What an opportunity we have to better leverage that funding on the students who are not able to read or may not have numeracy skills,” she emphasized, adding that, for now, policymakers want to “focus on the current budget line that we have,” rather than appropriating new funds.

Although Jenner, Holcomb and Republican state legislative leaders have said that high rates of absenteeism are likely contributing to , policy to address student attendance and chronic absenteeism is not included in Holcomb’s agenda.

that about 40% of students statewide missed 10 or more school days last year, and nearly one in five were “chronically absent” for at least 18 days.

Even so, Holcomb said Monday that he will “participate in the discussion that the legislators might have” about attendance.

“I plead with parents to not underestimate the impact that your child not being in school has on them adversely, long-term. … We’re past COVID now, and so parents need to understand the adverse impact of keeping their child out of school,” the governor said. “There just is a correlation. I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to realize that the less time you’re (in school), the less you’re going to learn.”

“We want to make sure that in this discussion of chronic absenteeism, that what we’re doing is going to make a difference,” Holcomb continued. “And I will continue to use my platform to plead with parents, begging them to make sure if their child can be in school, they need to be.”

The governor’s priorities also call for a mandatory computer science course to be completed by students before graduating high school. He additionally wants to task Indiana’s public colleges and universities with offering more three-year bachelor’s degrees, and make it easier for students to earn two-year associate degrees at the state’s four-year institutions.

Expanding child care

A multi-part plan to expand early childhood education and child care options is also high on Holcomb’s agenda.

The governor’s plan aims to increase the number of child care and early education providers across Indiana by adding credentialing training to state-sponsored grant programs and making more employees of child care entities eligible for On My Way Pre-K and Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) vouchers.

Holcomb’s administration further wants to reduce the minimum age of caregivers; from 21 to 18 for infant and toddler caregivers, and from 18 to 16 for supervised caregivers in school-aged classrooms.

“We know that to accommodate more kiddos in early learning environments, we need to have more workers there,” Holcomb said. “Dropping age limits down — that doesn’t mean dropping standards down. We think with the proper training and standards in place and oversight … you should qualify and be eligible to work there.”

Accessing disaster relief

Holcomb said Monday he will also work with legislators to help Hoosiers gain easier access to funds in the wake of both man-made and natural disasters.

Broadly, that means increasing the amount of relief dollars individual counties can receive, in addition to making it easier for individual Hoosiers to access aid.

The governor’s plan includes a proposal to allow some dollars from the State Disaster Relief Fund (SDRF) to help local units implement hazard mitigation plans that assist in protecting against future damages. Mitigation could come in the form of newly-built tornado shelters or participation in the National Flood Insurance Program, for example.

Counties with such plans in place could also qualify for increased reimbursement after a disaster.

Holcomb’s administration is also seeking to bump the maximum potential award for individual assistance from $10,000 to $25,000. Those funds can help Hoosiers with post-disaster damages and debris removal, among other needs.

Holcomb said he’s confident the state can afford to increase available aid, noting that Indiana’s disaster relief fund is financed by firework sales.

There would still be caps on how much could be dispersed, however, which officials said helps ensure the state fund isn’t depleted.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on and .

Gov. Tina Kotek kicked off her first term this year with an especially big goal – to revamp the way Oregon teaches children to read and write.

Less than half of Oregon students can read and write at their grade level. This has a substantial impact on the students individually and on society.

Kotek is urging lawmakers to approve plans to change Oregon’s approach to literacy education.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

would award grants to improve early literacy in schools and communities across the state, and would establish the Early Literacy Success Initiative. The initiative would primarily provide coaching, materials and training to educators to improve literacy education before third grade and create literacy-focused tutoring and summer school programs.

Kotek and Rep. Jason Kropf, D-Bend, who spoke to the state House education committee Monday for an informational hearing, want the proposals merged into .

The package would launch a multi-year effort aimed at helping parents, teachers and community groups better serve students. They want to increase early literacy for students in prekindergarten through third grade so students can read at grade level by the end of third grade, or for students who are English language learners, by the end of the fourth grade.

They also want to reduce literacy and graduation disparities and increase the state’s overall graduation rate through these efforts. Oregon’s four-year high school graduation rate was 81.3%.

“It’s clear we have a problem in Oregon,” Kotek told the committee. “This problem didn’t arrive overnight, and we are not going to solve it overnight.”

Students failing

The ability to read and write proficiently is vital, but Oregon is failing significantly.

Less than 40% of Oregon third-graders met the state standards when tested in English Language Arts. That number is even lower for historically marginalized students, dropping, for example, to 23% for students in foster care, 21% for Black or Latino students, 20% for students with disabilities and 8% for English language learners.

As children learn to read, they build on skills and strategies. They learn “phonemic awareness,” which the as the ability to manipulate individual sounds in spoken words, as well as “phonics,” which is when we correspond sounds and spellings with syllable patterns to read written words.

They learn fluency and decoding, vocabulary and reading comprehension, and more.

“Teaching reading is very complex,” said Sarah Pope, executive director of the nonprofit , in her testimony to the committee. “Some have even likened it to neurosurgery.”

Though reading and writing skills are measured throughout K-12 education, results in third grade – the first time students are tested by the state – are an important indicator of future success.

Not only is it the time when students stop “learning to read” and start “reading to learn,” as by Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Abel Ortiz, but also researchers have also found that students who can’t read at�� grade level by third grade are to leave high school without a diploma.

This makes them less likely to be gainfully employed, and more likely to rely on public welfare or become incarcerated.

According to the , full-time workers with a high school degree earn about 24% more than those without one, and research shows students who do not complete high school are more likely to experience poor health and premature death.

Pope said the proposal could “quite honestly change people’s lives.”

Early literacy package

Kotek and Kropf, along with agency officials and advocates who also supported the early learning plan in testimony, want to focus on helping teachers, families and community organizations in addition to the students themselves.

“We are often quick to identify and label individual kids as ‘struggling.’ But the incredibly high number of kids not reading at grade level tells us we need to take a more critical look at how we are teaching literacy,” Kropf said in his testimony.

“Our educators do amazing work, oftentimes under very difficult circumstances,” he added. “This legislation is about giving our educators the training, support and resources they need and want to best help our kids learn to read.”

Part of Kotek’s plan is to support parents as their children’s first teachers. Knowing children develop communication skills from birth, Gabriela Hernandez-Peden, program director of the Spanish-language preschool program Juntos Aprendemos in Central Oregon, told lawmakers, “Education starts five years before they actually end up in the school system.”

Kotek also wants to train educators across the state to use “evidence-based” instruction once the students enter school. This typically refers to a large body of research known as “the science of reading,” which is about how the brain learns to read and write, and what instruction is most effective. Literacy advocates have argued before that school curricula don’t always come from a scientific foundation or that educators are not always properly trained to teach them.

Kotek said it’s important the state provides teachers with ongoing, high-quality, culturally relevant coaching to help them improve, and so they can create school-wide systems to sustain those changes.

“We owe it to educators to prepare and support them for all of what we ask of them,” she said.

The other aspect of the proposal would lead the state to create summer programs that focus on early reading and writing skills in ways that relate to students’ interests and minimize the perception of summer school as punishment. Kotek said “high-dosage tutoring” should also be available for students who need extra support.

Though the education committee members generally indicated their support for improving the state’s literacy education, Rep. Emily McIntire, R-Eagle Point, expressed concerns over regulating the initiative and the cost. Rep. Tracy Cramer, R-Woodburn, questioned whether the proposal could change teaching in schools that are performing well. And the committee’s vice chair Rep. Boomer Wright, R-Coos Bay, said he wanted to ensure there was enough money to pay for it. The state, he said, has a history of requiring more from schools but underfunding them.

Kotek’s staff told the Capital Chronicle her goal is to have a public hearing in the next few weeks when the package is finalized. Bills need to have a work session for a vote scheduled by March 17 to move ahead in the legislative process, but budget bills and rules’ proposals are exempt from that deadline.

“As we learn from other states about what works,” Kotek told the committee, “we must recognize that building and implementing an intentional, thoughtfully designed and comprehensive strategy will take more than one bill, budget line or legislative session.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus 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 and .

However, there is a downside that is not understood: exclude or neglect many struggling readers, even though most of them suffer from similar learning difficulties and require similar evidence-based instruction.

This is particularly inequitable because a are low-income, or of color, or register as having low IQs. These children already suffer delays in getting extra help because many educators their early reading difficulties on poor family backgrounds rather than on poor instruction — a prime example of the soft bigotry of low expectations.

The National Center for Improving Literacy considers dyslexia in that it is “disproportionately underdiagnosed in children of color and children in poverty.” I described these students as “” in a report in 2003. 

Of course, advocates for children with dyslexia vehemently oppose any such injustices. But some laws and practices exert hidden influences that have just such an effect. How does this happen? And how can reading reformers accelerate a change from reforms centered on dyslexia to more inclusive policies that will help virtually all struggling readers? 

To start with, there must be recognition of the widespread but largely false association among dyslexia, high IQs and creativity. Dyslexia is constantly brought to public mind by media portrayals of a who overcame their reading difficulties and became high achievers. Yet, eminent reading scientist decades ago that studies have “led to the discovery that the early word reading difficulties of children with relatively low general intelligence and verbal ability are associated with the same factors (weaknesses in phonological processing) that interfere with early reading growth in children who have general intelligence in the normal range.”

More recently, cognitive neuroscientist and reading expert Mark Seidenberg : “Within [the] broad range of IQs, poor readers struggle in the same ways, need help in the same areas and respond similarly to interventions.”

Nonetheless, these scientific facts are absent or short-changed in many, if not most, state laws. While , not just dyslexia, very few encompass essential requirements for all struggling readers — instruction based on the science of reading, multi-tiered interventions and teacher training — and, as of last year, only eight addressed all three components. 

The most insidious confusion and inequity are found in special education law. Dyslexia is classified under the Individual with Disabilities Act  as a “” — but eligibility is typically determined based on “a severe discrepancy between achievement and intellectual ability,” a criterion that embodies the false association between IQ/creativity and reading difficulties and disproportionately harms low-income and minority struggling readers. 

Though the discrepancy gap test has been , and Congress has encouraged identification of specific learning disabilities through , it is and endures in practice.

A consequence is the pernicious “” — the higher the IQ, the earlier the discrepancy is detected — so students with lower IQs have to wait longer for interventions, and most .  

This injustice is inexcusable, because it is well known . It takes following the science of reading, which generally prescribes the same foundational instruction for all students, within the tiered framework of Response to Intervention. 

But this doesn’t happen.  

One big reason is that the science of reading remains a raging battlefield. For another, while Response to Intervention — systematic early assessment and evidence-based interventions, notably high-dosage tutoring — seems an incontrovertible approach, there are .  Seidenberg’s is that it “has only one flaw: It has to be implemented in real-world environments” that are often inhospitable because of lack of funds and because implementation is “undercut by the disagreements about how reading works.” 

Dyslexia advocates see that their efforts alone are . Many state chapters of , parent groups that are the most powerful grass-roots forces for reading reform, are increasingly pushing to enact or strengthen broad in the wake of the pandemic. These laws embrace all struggling readers, not just those identified as dyslexic. An exemplar chapter is , which is spurring a coalition to strengthen Maryland’s right-to-read law.

Still, the notion that dyslexia is a fairly exclusive province of an IQ elite persists. Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy and others are pushing that would make dyslexia a separate specific learning disability under IDEA while ignoring the need to improve the law for other students with similar difficulties.

Any path to literacy for all students faces a steep incline. That’s why it’s so necessary to expose the inequities in some approaches and cheer on dyslexia advocates who are stepping up in the struggle.