Sometimes, however, Mother Nature creates a disruption so widespread that all they can do is sit back and wait for the storm to pass before jumping back into action.

In fall 2024, Georgia’s , where I served as superintendent, was hit by Hurricane Helene, which for almost four weeks during the first semester. With no electricity, internet access or safe running water, students were not in school mode — they were in survival mode. Minimizing the impending learning gap, especially for children with learning differences, would be a major challenge.

Through the collective commitment of teachers and families, the drive of dedicated students and a new inclusive instructional model to help those who were struggling, Appling County was able to maximize every minute of learning when its schools reopened. At the end of the year, students in Appling’s special education program were not only on track with their literacy, but many achieved a significant bump in their reading proficiency. 

In 2024 — just three weeks before the hurricane hit — the district launched a pilot program in remedial and special education classes in grades 6 to 9 to foster reading fluency and comprehension for English learners and students with dyslexia, autism and other learning differences. We didn’t know at the time how crucial, or effective, this system would be in addressing learning loss after the school closures. 

Emphasizing visual cues, Appling’s uses glyphs — diacritical marks — to simplify pronunciation. Teachers can paste any text or upload PDFs or Word documents into the platform, and it will embed a phonetic guide into every word.

For example, when students read the word “technique” on the screen, the silent letters — h and ue — are grayed out for them. A dot marks the division in syllables between “tech” and “nique,” while an accent above the i alerts students that the letter is pronounced differently from its usual sound. Rather than getting caught up in the , students understand the content more quickly and boost their vocabulary and comprehension. 

Because students in the pilot program were already making strides in their literacy before the storm hit, their transition back to the classroom was an easier one than it might have been. They had already started to build the skills needed to independently decode words, allowing them to focus on reading comprehension. This meant their teachers could dedicate less time to remediation and more to accelerated learning strategies that focused on reading comprehension, vocabulary and sentence structures across all content areas.

In addition, by reviewing the literacy platform’s dashboard, special education administrators and intervention specialists easily identified which students achieved excellent growth in reading and which needed additional help. They were also able to dig into the root causes of students’ struggles, such as attendance issues or housing instability, both of which intensified after the hurricane.

Because of Appling County teachers’ strong sense of urgency in helping their students regain lost instructional time — and their willingness to embrace new literacy strategies — the momentum following the return to in-school learning was more powerful than school leaders had expected. 

Of the students who participated in the new phonetics program, 157 had scores that could be compared from 2024 to 2025. Twenty-eight percent saw their scores increase 20 points or more, and 18% moved up to the next proficiency level. 

Teachers also watched their students become more confident and engaged — children who rarely spoke up in class started raising their hands to ask questions or volunteering to read aloud. This confidence in reading extended to other subjects and classes, where teachers saw increased participation as well. 

Throughout the implementation of the program, administrators participated in professional learning and classroom observations along with academic coaches to help teachers implement the new initiative. Based on the positive initial results from the pilot, the district is now expanding this phonics-forward approach to all remedial reading classrooms in grades 3 to 10 and all content area classrooms in grades 6 to 10.

Even in the face of overwhelming challenges, when teachers have the support of administrators, innovative tools that enhance engagement and the flexibility to meet students’ diverse needs, they can forge a path through the obstacles that stand in the way of children’s success. By prepping, pivoting and innovating, Appling teachers became a force of nature that even a hurricane couldn’t withstand.

California took a big step toward overhauling its reading curriculum last week when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill pushing for phonics-based instruction in elementary and middle school classrooms.

The provides training for school principals and reading specialists in the “science of reading,” a method of literacy instruction focused on vocabulary, comprehension and sounding words out rather than learning words by sight. The approach has led to improved reading scores in Mississippi, Louisiana and districts like Los Angeles Unified, which adopted it several years ago.

The law also updates the state’s list of textbooks, flash cards and other classroom reading materials to align with a phonics-based approach.

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The law comes on the heels of a host of other literacy initiatives, including mandatory dyslexia screening and universal transitional kindergarten. Combined, the efforts will dramatically reshape the way children in California learn to read and hopefully lead to higher test scores, experts said.

“California has one of the best literacy policy frameworks in the country right now,” said Marshall Tuck, chief executive of the advocacy group EdVoice and a former candidate for state superintendent of public instruction. “We worked very hard on this and we’re thrilled to get to this point. Now we just have to see it through.”

After years of controversy, little opposition

The new law passed the Legislature unanimously and had little opposition. That’s in stark contrast to , which met steep resistance from English learner advocates and the state’s largest teachers union. English learner groups said that a phonics-based approach only works for children who are fluent in English; the California Teachers Association said teachers need flexibility to pick a reading program that works for their students.

But those groups threw their support behind the current bill after a few changes: Reading materials will be available in languages other than English, and using phonics-based instruction will be optional, not mandatory. Although the to adopt the new approach, some may choose to stay with their existing curriculum, which is permissible under the state’s school governance system that leaves most decisions up to local school boards.

“What does this all mean? It means we’ll see,” said Todd Collins, an organizer of the California Reading Coalition and former Palo Alto Unified school board member. “But I’m hopeful. I think most school districts will get the message that they need to improve early literacy.”

Scores inching up

Collins’ group surveyed 300 California school districts in 2022 and found that 80% were not using a phonics-based approach to reading instruction. That’s changing, with some of the state’s largest districts adopting science-of-reading strategies and seeing good results. Los Angeles Unified, for example, saw its English language arts test scores jump 5.5 percentage points since it adopted a phonics-based curriculum in 2022. San Francisco Unified, Fresno Unified and Long Beach Unified have also seen improvements.

California’s reading scores are about the same as the national average, according to the latest , and have been inching up since the pandemic. Last year, 49% of students met or exceeded the state’s English language arts standards — still below pre-pandemic levels but a from the previous year.

Helping teachers

Among those who’ve pushed for the switch to phonics is Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio, a Democrat from West Covina who co-authored the bill. A former elementary teacher, Rubio hopes the new law will help classroom teachers as much as students and their families.

“It’s hard for teachers to see their kids feel defeated and frustrated,” Rubio said. “Now they’ll be equipped to really help their students succeed.”

She was inspired to author the bill, she said, in part because of her younger brother’s experience in school. He was wrongly placed in special education and never properly learned to read, she said, leading him to disengage from school and drop out in ninth grade. Countless other students have had the same experience, she said.

“I know how much it means to learn to read. It can shape someone’s whole life,” Rubio said. “That’s why we stuck with this.”

Another boost to reading instruction came in June, when Newsom included $200 million in the state budget to train teachers in the science of reading. The money should be enough to train every K-3 teacher in the state, Collins said. Credential programs are already training future teachers in the approach.

Tuck, of EdVoice, said the next step is ensuring the policy rolls out smoothly in schools. The new curriculum is a major shift for most schools, and teachers will need plenty of support.

“We can celebrate today, but tomorrow it’s back to work,” he said.

This article was and was republished under the license.

Next week, the unpopular teacher licensure test, the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment, will be officially retired and replaced with a literacy performance assessment to ensure educators are prepared to teach students to read.

The Reading Instruction Competence Assessment (RICA) has been a major hurdle for teacher candidates for years. About a third of all the teacher candidates who took the test failed the first time, according to  collected between 2012 and 2017. Critics have also said that the test is outdated and has added to the state’s teacher shortage.

The literacy performance assessment that replaces the RICA reflects an increased focus on foundational reading skills, including phonics. California, and many other states, are moving from teaching children to recognize words by sight to teaching them to decode words by sounding them out in an effort to boost literacy.

Mandated by , the literacy assessment reflects new standards that include support for struggling readers, English learners and pupils with exceptional needs, incorporating the  for the first time.

“We believe the literacy TPA will help ensure that new teachers demonstrate a strong grasp of evidence-based literacy instruction — an essential step toward improving reading outcomes for California’s students,” said Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice, a nonprofit education advocacy organization.

Literacy test on schedule

Erin Sullivan, director of the Professional Services Division of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, said the literacy performance assessment is ready for its July 1 launch.

“We’ve been field-testing literacy performance assessments with, obviously, the multiple- and the single-subject candidates, but also the various specialist candidates, including visual impairment and deaf and hard of hearing,” Sullivan said. 

California teacher candidates must pass one of three performance assessments approved by the commission before earning a preliminary credential: the California Teaching Performance Assessment , the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment ( or the Fresno Assessment of Student Teachers ().

A performance assessment allows teachers to demonstrate their competence by submitting evidence of their instructional practice through video clips and written reflections on their practice. 

“It’s very different,” said Kathy Futterman, an adjunct professor in teacher education at California State University, East Bay. “The RICA is an online test that has multiple-choice questions, versus the LPA — the performance assessment — which has candidates design and create three to five lesson plans. Then, they have to videotape portions of those lesson plans, and then they have to analyze and reflect on how those lessons went.”

Field tests went well

, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing board is expected to hear a report on the field test results, approve the passing score standards for the literacy cycle of the performance assessment and formally adopt the new test.

All but one of the 280 teacher candidates who took the new CalTPA literacy assessment during field testing passed, according to the report. Passing rates were lower on the FAST, with 51 of 59 passing on the first attempt, and on the edTPA with 192 of 242 passing.

 Cal State East Bay was one of the universities that piloted the test over the last two years. 

“It’s more hands-on and obviously with real students, so in that regard I think it was very helpful,” Futterman said.

State could offer flexibility

Upcoming budget trailer bills are expected to offer some flexibility to teacher candidates who haven’t yet passed the RICA, Sullivan said. 

The commission is asking state leaders to allow candidates who have passed the CalTPA and other required assessments, except the RICA, to be allowed to continue taking the test through October, when the state contract for the RICA expires, she said.

“We are looking forward to putting RICA to bed and moving on to the literacy performance assessment, but … we don’t want to leave anybody stranded on RICA island,” Sullivan said.

The commission has approved the Foundations of Reading examination as an alternative for a small group of teachers with special circumstances, including those who would have completed all credential requirements except the RICA by June 30, but the test may not be the best option for them, Sullivan said.

“It’s just a very different exam,” Sullivan said. “It’s a national exam. And while the commission looked at it and said, ‘We think this will work for our California candidates,’ it’s not the best-case scenario. So, trying to get these folks to pass the RICA and giving them every opportunity to do that until really it just goes away, that’s kind of what we’re looking at.”

The Foundations of Reading exam, by Pearson, is used by . It assesses whether a teacher is proficient in literacy instruction, including developing phonics and decoding skills, as well as offering a strong literature, language and comprehension component with a balance of oral and written language, according to the commission’s website.

Teacher candidates who were allowed to earn a preliminary credential without passing the RICA during the Covid-19 pandemic; teachers with single-subject credentials, who want to earn a multiple-subject credential; and educators who completed teacher preparation in another country and/or as a part of the Peace Corps are also eligible to take the Foundations of Reading examination.

The Foundations of Reading test has been rated as strong by the National Council on Teacher Quality.

State focus on phonics

SB 488 was followed by a revision of the Literacy Standard and Teaching Performance Expectations for teachers, which outlined effective literacy instruction for students.

California state leaders have recently taken additional steps to ensure foundational reading skills are being taught in classrooms. On June 5, Gov. Gavin Newsom confirmed that the state budget will include hundreds of millions of dollars to fund legislation needed to achieve a comprehensive to early literacy.

, which passed the Assembly with a unanimous 75-0 vote that same day, would move the state’s schools toward adopting evidence-based literacy instruction, also known as the science of reading or structured literacy. 

Five years after the pandemic forced children into remote instruction, two-thirds of U.S. fourth graders . Reading scores lag .

This data from the 2024 report of National Assessment of Educational Progress, a state-based ranking sometimes called “America’s report card,” has .

Many school districts have adopted an evidence-based literacy curriculum called the “” that features phonics as a critical component.

Phonics strategies begin by teaching children to recognize letters and make their corresponding sounds. Then they advance to manipulating and blending first-letter sounds to read and write simple, consonant-vowel-consonant words – such as combining “b” or “c” with “-at” to make “bat” and “cat.” Eventually, students learn to merge more complex word families and to read them in short stories to improve fluency and comprehension.

Proponents of the curriculum , and the science of reading has with helping last year.

In practice, Louisiana used a variety of science of reading approaches beyond phonics. That’s because different students , for a variety of reasons.

Yet as a who has studied literacy in diverse student populations, I see many schools across the U.S. placing a heavy emphasis on the of the science of reading.

If schools want across-the-board gains in reading achievement, isn’t the best way. Teachers need the flexibility and autonomy to use various, developmentally appropriate literacy strategies as needed.

Phonics fails some students

Phonics programs often require memorizing word families in word lists. This works well for some children: Research shows that “decoding” strategies such as phonics .

However, some students may struggle with explicit phonics instruction, particularly the growing population of neurodivergent learners with autism spectrum disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. These students learn and . And they tend to have different strengths and challenges when it comes to .

This was the case with my own child. He had been a proficient reader from an early age, but struggles emerged when his school adopted a phonics program to balance out its called Daily 5 that prioritizes reading fluency and comprehension.

I worked with his first grade teacher to mitigate these challenges. But I realized that his real reading proficiency would likely not have been detected if the school had taught almost exclusively phonics-based reading lessons.

Another weakness of phonics, in my experience, is that it teaches reading in a way that is disconnected from authentic reading experiences. Phonics often directs children to identify short vowel sounds in word lists, rather than encounter them in colorful stories. Evidence shows that exposing children to fun, interesting literature .

Balanced literacy

To support different learning styles, educators can teach reading in multiple ways. This is called balanced literacy, and for decades it was a .

Balanced literacy prompts children to learn words encountered in authentic literature during guided, teacher-led read-alouds – versus learning how to decode words in word lists. Teachers use multiple strategies to promote reading acquisition, such as blending the letter sounds in words to support “decoding” while reading.

Another balanced literacy strategy that teachers can apply in phonics-based strategies while reading aloud is called “rhyming word recognition.” The rhyming word strategy is especially effective with stories whose rhymes contribute to the deeper meaning of the story, such as Marc Brown’s “Arthur in a Pickle.”

After reading, teachers may have learners to form words, then tap the letter cards while saying and blending each sound to form the word. Similar phonics strategies include tracing and writing letters to .

There is no one right way to teach literacy in a developmentally appropriate, balanced literacy framework. There are as many ways as there are students.

What a truly balanced curriculum looks like

The push for the phonics-based component of the science of reading is a response to the , a balanced literacy approach that uses what’s called “cueing” to teach young readers. Teachers “cue” students to recognize words with corresponding pictures and promote guessing unfamiliar words while reading based on context clues.

filed by Massachusetts families claimed that this faulty curriculum and another cueing-based approach called Fountas & Pinnell had failed readers for four decades, in part because they neglect scientifically backed phonics instruction.

But this allegation overlooks evidence that the Calkins curriculum worked for . And a 2021 study in Georgia found modest student achievement gains of 2% in English Language Arts test scores .

Nor is the method unscientific. Using picture cues with corresponding words is supported by the .

This . Stories such as the “” and “” have vibrant illustrations of animals and colors that correspond with the text. The pictures support children in learning whole words and repetitive phrases, suchg as, “But he was still hungry.”

The intention here is for learners to acquire words in the context of engaging literature. But that “cueing” during reading is a guessing game. They say readers are not learning the fundamentals necessary to identify sounds and word families on their way to decoding entire words and sentences.

As a result, schools across the country are tied to balanced literacy approaches with the science of reading. Since its inception in 2013, .

Recommendations for parents, educators and policymakers

The most scientific way to teach reading, in my opinion, is by not applying the same rigid rules to every child. The best instruction meets .

Here are five evidence-based tips to promote reading for all readers that combine phonics, balanced literacy and other methods.

1. Maintain the home-school connection. When schools send kids home with developmentally appropriate books and strategies, it encourages parents to and develop their oral reading fluency. Ideally, reading materials include features that support a , including text, pictures with corresponding words and predictable language.

2. Embrace all reading. Academic texts aren’t the only kind of reading parents and teachers should encourage. at home also acquire new literacy skills.

3. Make phonics fun. Phonics instruction can teach kids to decode words, but the content is not particularly memorable. I encourage teachers to that children absolutely love.

4. Pick a series. High-quality . Texts that become , such as the “Arthur” step-into-reading series, are especially helpful in developing reading comprehension. As readers progress , caregivers and teachers should read aloud the “Arthur” novels until children can read them independently. Additional popular series that grow with readers include “,” “,” “” and “.”

5. Tutoring works. Some readers will struggle despite teachers’ and parents’ best efforts. In these cases, can help. Sending students to one session a week of at least 30 minutes is well documented to . Many nonprofit organizations, community centers and .

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

As states rush to address falling literacy scores, a new kind of education debate in state legislatures is taking hold: not whether reading instruction needs fixing, but how to fix it.

More than a dozen states have enacted laws banning public school educators from teaching youngsters to read using an approach that’s been popular for decades. The method, known as “three-cueing,” encourages kids to figure out unfamiliar words using context clues such as meaning, sentence structure and visual hints.

In the past two years, several states have instead embraced instruction rooted in what’s known as the “science of reading.” That approach leans heavily on phonics — relying on letter and rhyming sounds to read words such as cat, hat and rat.

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The policy discussions on early literacy are unfolding against a backdrop of alarming national reading proficiency levels. The 2024 that 40% of fourth graders and 33% of eighth graders scored below the basic reading level — the highest percentages in decades.

No state improved in fourth- or eighth-grade reading in 2024. Eight states — Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Nebraska, Nevada, Utah and Vermont — than they did a year or two prior in eighth-grade reading.

Five — Arizona, Florida, Nebraska, South Dakota and Vermont — saw dips in their fourth-grade reading scores.

In response to these troubling trends, a growing number of states are moving beyond localized efforts and tackling literacy through statewide legislation.

last year mandated universal K-3 literacy screenings. lawmakers this month passed a bill that would allow some students to retake required reading tests before being held back in third grade; that bill is en route to the governor’s desk.

and are weighing statewide literacy coaching and training models, while lawmakers in introduced a bill to allow literacy interventions to cover broader reading and academic skills, not just early reading basics.

Mississippi, a state seen as a model for turnaround in literacy rates over the past decade, evidence-based reading interventions, mandatory literacy screenings and targeted teacher training, and to explicitly ban the use of three-cueing methods in reading instruction in grades 4-8.

Together, these efforts signal a national shift: States are treating literacy not as a local initiative, but as the foundation of public education policy.

“Literacy is the lever,” said Tafshier Cosby, the senior director of the Center for Organizing and Partnerships at the National Parents Union, an advocacy group. “If states focus on that, we see bipartisan wins. But the challenge is making that a statewide priority, not just a district-by-district hope.”

‘It’s the system that needs fixing’

Before he was even sworn in, first-term Georgia Democratic state Sen. RaShaun Kemp, a former teacher and principal, had already drafted a bill to end the use of the three-cueing system in Georgia classrooms.

This month, the  focused on the science of reading passed the state legislature without a single “no” vote. GOP Gov. Brian Kemp  a similar  into law Monday to outlaw three-cueing.

Sen. Kemp said his passion for literacy reform stretches back decades, shaped by experiences tutoring children at a local church as a college student in the early 2000s. It was there, he said, that he began noticing patterns in how students struggled with foundational reading.

“In my experience, I saw kids struggle to identify the word they were reading. I saw how some kids were guessing what the word was instead of decoding,” Kemp recalled. “And it’s not technology or screens that’s the problem. It’s what teachers are being instructed on how to teach reading. It’s the system that needs fixing, not the teachers.”

Sen. Kemp’s bill requires the Professional Standards Commission — a state agency that — to adopt rules mandating evidence-based reading instruction aligned with the science of reading, a set of practices rooted in decades of cognitive research on how children best learn to read.

“Current strategies used to teach literacy include methods that teach students to guess rather than read, preventing them from reaching their full potential,” Sen. Kemp said in a public statement following the bill’s legislative passage. “I know we can be better, and I’m proud to see our legislative body take much-needed steps to help make Georgia the number one state for literacy.”

In West Virginia, lawmakers have introduced similar bills that would require the state’s teachers to be certified in .

Cosby, of the National Parents Union, said local policy changes can be driven by parents even before legislatures act.

“All politics are local,” Cosby said. “Parents don’t need to wait for statewide mandates — they can ask school boards for universal screeners and structured literacy now.”

Still, some parents worry their states are simply funding more studies on early literacy rather than taking direct action to address it.

A Portland, Oregon, parent of three — one of whom has dyslexia — sent written testimony this year urging lawmakers to skip further studies and immediately implement structured literacy statewide.

“We do not need another study to tell us what we already know — structured literacy is the most effective way to teach all children to read, particularly those with dyslexia and other reading challenges,” Katherine Hoffman.

Opposition to ‘science of reading’

Unlike in Georgia, the “science of reading” has met resistance in other states.

In California, that would require phonics-based reading instruction statewide has faced opposition from English learner advocates who argue that a one-size-fits-all approach may not effectively serve multilingual students.

In opposition to the bill, the California Teachers Association argued that by codifying a rigid definition of the “science of reading,” lawmakers ignore the evolving nature of reading research and undermine teachers’ ability to meet the diverse needs of their students.

“Placing a definition for ‘science of reading’ in statute is problematic,” wrote Seth Bramble, a legislative advocate for the California Teachers Association in a addressed to the state’s Assembly Education Committee. “This bill would carve into stone scientific knowledge that by its very nature is constantly being tested, validated, refuted, revised, and improved.”

Similarly, in Wisconsin, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in March vetoed a bill that would have reversed changes to the state’s scoring system to align the state’s benchmarks with the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal assessment tool that has with funding cuts and layoffs under the Trump administration. Evers said in his veto that Republican lawmakers were stepping on the state superintendent’s independence.

That veto is another step in the evolution of a broader constitutional fight over literacy policy and how literacy funds are appropriated and released. In 2023, Wisconsin lawmakers $50 million for a new statewide literacy initiative, but disagreements over legislative versus executive control have stalled its disbursement.

Indiana’s legislature faced criticism from educators over a 2024 requiring 80 hours of literacy training for pre-K to sixth-grade teachers before they can renew their licenses. Teachers argued that the additional requirements were burdensome and did not account for their professional expertise.

In Illinois, literacy struggles have been building for more than a decade, according to Mailee Smith, senior director of policy at the Illinois Policy Institute. Today, only 3 in 10 Illinois third- and fourth-graders can , based on state and national assessments.

Although Illinois lawmakers the school code in 2023 to create a state literacy plan, Smith noted the plan is only guidance and does not require districts to adopt evidence-based reading instruction. She urged local school boards to act on their own.

“If students can’t read by third grade, half of fourth-grade curriculum becomes incomprehensible,” she said. “A student’s likelihood to graduate high school can be predicted by their reading skill at the end of third grade.”

Despite the challenges, Smith said even small steps can make a real difference.

“Screening, intervention, parental notice, science-based instruction and thoughtful grade promotion — those are the five pillars, and Illinois and even local school districts can implement some of these steps right away,” she said.

“It doesn’t have to be daunting.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

Can you spell deja vu? 

The battle over the best way to teach children how to read has re-erupted in the California Legislature, as dueling factions haggle over a bill that would mandate a phonics-based style of reading curriculum.

The new bill, , would require all schools to use a method based on the so-called “science of reading,” which emphasizes phonics. Last year, an died in the Assembly after pushback from the teachers union and English learner advocates, who argued that curriculum isn’t effective with students who aren’t fluent in English, and therefore shouldn’t be required.

The stakes are high, as California’s since the pandemic. Nearly 60% of third graders weren’t reading at grade level last year, with some student groups faring even worse. More than 70% of Black and low-income students, for example, failed to meet the state’s reading standard.

The bill would build on that requires credential programs to teach phonics instruction to teachers-in-training. The proposed legislation would require existing teachers to undergo training in the topic.

Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio, a Democrat from West Covina, who sponsored both bills, hopes this year’s version will fare better than its predecessor, even though it only contains minor tweaks from its earlier version.

“At this point, it’s personal for me. I’m termed out in four years and I want to get this done,” Rubio said. “Reading is such a foundational skill. We need to create the best opportunities for all kids to read, not just for those who can afford after-school tutors.”

Phonics vs. whole-language

The science of reading refers to that shows reading isn’t a natural skill, like learning to speak. It must be explicitly taught, and the best method, primarily, is sounding words out rather than memorizing whole words by sight or trying to guess a word based on its context — an approach known as whole-language or balanced literacy instruction.

California schools use about half a dozen reading curricula, and some are more phonics-based than others. Typically, schools use a combination of programs and give teachers some leeway. Proponents of Rubio’s bill say that system makes it hard to track which reading curriculum works and can make it tough for students who switch schools, if the new school is using a different approach to literacy. That’s why the state needs a uniform reading curriculum, they said.

The California Reading Coalition, an advocacy group, surveyed 300 districts statewide in 2022 and found that that didn’t focus sufficiently on phonics. The report highlighted 10 districts that have large numbers of high-needs students but also had high reading scores — including Bonita Unified in Los Angeles County, Clovis Elementary near Fresno and Etiwanda Elementary in San Bernardino County. The districts use a variety of reading programs, but most have an emphasis on phonics.

Nearly 40 other states require phonics-based reading instruction.

“In other states, we’ve often seen governors and state education heads take the lead in driving these policies,” said Todd Collins, an organizer of the California Reading Coalition and former Palo Alto Unified school board member. “That would make a big difference for California — leadership from the top is crucial for getting good results. … We have a state-level reading crisis. State-level problems call for state-level action.” 

Opposition from teachers, English learner advocates

The California Teachers Association, the union that represents 310,000 of the state’s K-12 educators, fought the previous literacy bill, arguing that teachers need flexibility in the classroom. So far the union has not taken a position on the new bill.

English learner advocates have fought both bills particularly hard. The California Association of Bilingual Education said the latest bill “fails to address the needs of English learners” and would cost too much money because it requires teachers to undergo training.

They also said that California already has a literacy framework and the state should do a better job of promoting that rather than introducing a new program altogether.

Students who aren’t native English speakers need a more flexible approach to reading, the group said. Reading programs that are heavily focused on phonics are too narrow and confusing for students who struggle with English, especially if they can’t understand what they’re reading, they said. 

Martha Hernandez, executive director of the English learner advocacy group Californians Together, said the new bill is a “non-starter” unless it can include a broader approach to reading instruction, not one that focuses primarily on phonics.

English learners, she said, need schools to teach phonics hand-in-hand with oral language development and reading comprehension in a way that’s specifically suited to second-language acquisition. Prioritizing phonics gives short shrift to those other skills, she said.

“Literacy is multi-dimensional,” Hernandez said. “English learners need a more comprehensive approach.”

The bill has not yet been scheduled for a hearing, as both sides continue to work on a compromise.

Evidence of English learner success

Some districts that use phonics-based programs have seen good results with English learners and low-income Latino students generally. 

At Kings Canyon Joint Unified, for example, English learners scored almost twice as high on reading tests last year as their counterparts statewide, according to the . Almost half of low-income Latino students met the state reading standard, compared to 33% statewide. Kings Canyon, located in Fresno County, uses a curriculum called Wit & Wisdom, which is phonics-based. 

Last year at Bonita Unified, near Pomona in Los Angeles County, which uses a phonics-based program called Benchmark, English learners scored nearly three times higher than their peers statewide. Almost 60% of low-income Latino students met the state reading standard, nearly double the percentage of their peers statewide.

Rubio was an English learner in California schools, and feels strongly that phonics is the most effective way to teach students who aren’t fluent in English. It can help them learn English vocabulary at the same time they’re learning how to decode words, a useful skill in any language. 

Yolie Flores, president of Families in Schools, an advocacy group that’s cosponsoring Rubio’s bill, was also an English learner in California schools. Literacy was a priority in her family, she said, in part because her father never learned to read. A laborer from Mexico who never attended school past third grade, he “worked his whole life, but couldn’t read a rental application, he couldn’t read basic instructions, he couldn’t read letters from our school,” Flores said. “He always told us, you must learn to read. It was very important to him — he knew that our ability to read would open our world.”

Flores is frustrated by the state’s persistently dismal reading scores for English learners — a situation that she believes could be improved with a phonics-based program.  

“It is mind-boggling and disappointing and frankly, I find it harmful that (the California Association of Bilingual Education) would oppose something that could help all kids, including bilingual students, succeed in school and life,” said Flores, a former Los Angeles Unified school board member. “There is a vast body of research from the most respected reading scientists in the world telling us one unequivocal truth: there is a specific, evidence-based approach to teaching children to read. I struggle to understand why they are fighting it.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t taken a position on the bill, but has been a strong supporter of literacy generally. He championed a screening test for dyslexia, which will be given to all kindergarten-through-second-graders starting this fall; approved funding for 2,000 literacy coaches to work in high-needs schools; and fought for transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds, which is intended to boost students’ reading skills.

Over the past few years, the warring factions of the literacy battle have found common ground, publishing a of that essentially call for a truce. In the papers, both sides agreed that English learners have unique needs when learning how to read, and any formal policy or curriculum should address those needs. They also agreed that both sides should dispense with labels and over-simplifying the various approaches to reading instruction, and look at the issue with more nuance.

The truce doesn’t seem to have reached the Legislature, though. So far, English learner groups remain opposed. 

‘Unlocking something’

At Oakland International High School, a public school for recent immigrants, nearly all students are English learners and a majority read at a kindergarten level when they enroll. That’s because they’ve had little formal education in their home countries or their schooling has been disrupted, in some cases for years.  

But teachers there use a phonics-based approach that’s tailored to English learners, with good results. A student will learn to sound out the word “hop,” for example, while seeing a picture of a person hopping, then spell “hop” and read “hop” in a passage. They learn to connect the sound of a word with its meaning.

“When they start to see the patterns and rules, it starts to make sense and they get excited,” said Aly Kronick, a literacy teacher at Oakland International High for the past 10 years. “It’s like they’re unlocking something. They feel successful.” 

She said the process can be slow, but within two years students go from minimal literacy skills to reading whole passages with high levels of comprehension. Some students have even gone on to four-year colleges. One student went on to become a bilingual teacher. Others have returned to the school after they graduated to lead phonics instruction in the classroom.

Rachel Hunt, a parent in Los Angeles Unified who’s a former teacher and school principal, has been a proponent of phonics-based reading instruction. She noticed firsthand the importance of a good reading program when her family moved from Massachusetts to California about eight years ago. Her child, who uses they/them pronouns, was in second grade when the family enrolled them at an elementary school in Los Angeles County that was using a phonics-based curriculum. Although her child was reading at grade level, they struggled with the ability to identify sounds, which affected their spelling skills.

“They were so behind in that regard,” Hunt said. “They felt so self-conscious. Other kids would call them ‘stupid.’ They developed a lack of self-esteem which was really damaging.”

Her child eventually caught up and is now a sophomore at Eagle Rock High School near Glendale, where they’re an avid reader and doing well.

“If you see that a majority of kids aren’t reading at grade level, and we know that explicit (phonics) instruction works, it seems obvious that this is something we should be mandating,” Hunt said.

This article was and was republished under the license.

Chip

Hill

Jars

Bep

Fod

Glork

If you’re an adult seeing this, with years and years of reading experience, your brain probably processed the list pretty quickly. You could even pronounce the last few entries, even though they aren’t real words.

Beginning readers need to be taught how to do this. Reading doesn’t come naturally, and kids need to be explicitly taught how letters correspond to sounds. If kids don’t master this foundational decoding skill, they will likely struggle to read more challenging texts.

Clearly, decoding is an important and fundamental reading skill. So why don’t we test for it in the United States? England does. Starting in 2012, the Brits started giving a phonics check to all 6-year-olds. At the end of their first year of school (equivalent to kindergarten), kids are given a list of to read out loud. Half of them are real words, like “chip,” and half are nonsense words, like “bep.” Teachers listen to each student read the words and then score them on how many they decode correctly. Children have to get at least 80% correct to pass.

Not that much happens with the results. For example, England doesn’t require that kids who fail the phonics check have to repeat a grade. But get to see their child’s result, and kids who fail the test have to retake it the next year. The results are also shared with officials who use them to evaluate each school’s performance.

In this light, England’s phonics check is a light-touch intervention with relatively low stakes. But it has driven dramatic increases in student performance. The percentage of kids passing the phonics check on their first try from 58% in 2012 to 82% in 2019. (The check was paused in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, and the pass rate fell to 75% in 2022, but it was back up to 80% this year.)

Moreover, England’s scores on international assessments have also risen. On the PIRLS test of fourth grade reading, England’s scores rose 6 points from to , a time when most countries were seeing declines. Scores in France, Finland and Germany, for example, fell 6, 19 and 17 points, respectively. More recently, England’s scores rose 11 points from 2011 to 2023, while performance in the U.S. was falling 24 points. The phonics check isn’t responsible for all these gains — England has also emphasized a and tests specifically aligned to that content — but it is a fundamental building block.

Could the U.S. benefit from an England-style phonics check? Sure, we already have plenty of reading tests, some of which give educators of early literacy . But there are key differences in how American students are assessed, and we could learn some from the Brits.

First is the question of timing and focus. America’s federally mandated English Language Arts tests don’t start until third grade and gauge a host of reading skills that are interwoven with the students’ background knowledge. The national NAEP reading assessment, first delivered in fourth grade, suffers from the same issue. In contrast, England’s phonics check is specifically concerned with one key reading skill — decoding — and measures it at age 6. That’s earlier and more focused than what we’re doing here in the States. 

Second, England makes clear that all students are expected to master decoding, and it communicates to parents whether their child has done so. In the U.S., that benchmark is far from universal, and parents are not always informed. According to , 16 states have adopted “universal screener” tests that identify students in grades K-2 who are at risk of having difficulty reading. Nine of those states also require parents to be notified when their child has been flagged with a reading deficiency. But that means 41 states and the District of Columbia are leaving that and hoping schools are teaching kids to decode. 

Any school or district could decide to adopt its own version of a phonics check. It’s a simple and, because the stakes are low, there’s not much to worry about with respect to test security.

But state and national policymakers could think even bigger. If a state were to adopt a phonics check and report the results, it would send a strong signal to teachers and school leaders about the importance of making sure all students are taught to decode. At the national level, congressional leaders could consider requiring every state to deliver a phonics check. Or, at the very least, they could include something similar on NAEP.

Simply put, America’s third grade reading tests are administered too late to spot and rectify emerging problems. Too many school systems simply pass kids along in the hopes that they will naturally pick up reading skills over time, rather than catching and fixing gaps early. An early phonics check would make sure that all kids are learning to decode letters into sounds.

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. 

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 , 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 , 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  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 is $115,525, and the average household income for  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.

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

The , 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. 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, 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 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, .

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 .

“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 reads.

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

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.

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.

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 and .

But while reading scores have improved somewhat, 73% of and 78% of still score below proficient on national reading tests. And the yawning gaps between groups of students have stayed the same or even expanded.

In 2022, Black fourth-graders 69 points lower than their white peers, a gap that hasn’t budged significantly since 1998. The disparity between children poor enough to qualify for free school meals and those who are not is now 56 points, 14 points larger than in 1998. The trend for eighth grade is .

Like , D.C. has taken steps to address this reading crisis. In 2020, the D.C. Council adopted requiring measures like teacher training, and in September, a literacy recommended additional reforms.

These efforts are a good start, and the task force’s recommendations should be implemented and funded. But, like most other jurisdictions, D.C. has focused on ensuring that children receive systematic instruction in foundational skills like phonics. Important as phonics is, it’s just one ingredient in proficient reading. In addition to being able to decipher or decode words, students need to be able to comprehend text.

making this possible are background knowledge and vocabulary. If schools improve phonics instruction without also systematically building knowledge, many students will reach higher grades able to decode complex texts but unable to understand them. That explains why, when states adopt early literacy policies focused on phonics, gains on elementary school reading tests by or .

For both aspects of reading instruction — decoding and comprehension — a good curriculum is crucial. Teachers should receive training in the science related to reading, including the evidence showing that it’s vital to building students’ academic knowledge beginning in the early grades. And to help them translate their understanding into effective practice, they need a coherent curriculum that is grounded in that science. Unfortunately, most widely used literacy curricula are not, so district and school leaders need reliable guidance.

  tries to address this need by requiring that all schools adopt a “science-based reading program” beginning with the 2024-25 school year. But the law doesn’t instruct the state superintendent’s office or any other entity to identify those that are effective. In fact, it defines a “science-based” program as one that covers foundational reading skills and “comprehension strategies” — with no specific mention of the need to build knowledge.

An increasing number of states are issuing lists of approved literacy curricula that districts are either encouraged or required to choose from. Some also incentivize districts to train teachers — and, ideally, school leaders — in how to use the curricula. 

D.C. should develop its own list, relying on evaluation tools created by The Reading League, for foundational skills like phonics, and the Knowledge Matters Campaign, for knowledge-building.

One complicating factor is that the district developed its own English language arts curriculum, which states that it includes the “build[ing] of background knowledge through reading and experiences.” For example, a first-grade unit covers “the different forms of money and how it is made and earned.” From the limited material we’ve seen, it’s hard to tell whether this home-grown curriculum builds knowledge as effectively as those created by trained experts (the Knowledge Matters Campaign, for example, has identified ). The district’s curriculum also has not been subjected to rigorous review, as far as we know.

In any event, according to several reading instructors, there has been little or no training in how to use the curriculum. Nor is it clear how many schools are in fact using it.

One of us accidentally learned, from a staff member, that a district elementary school was using a curriculum called Core Knowledge Language Arts — one of those identified as effective by the Knowledge Matters Campaign. That’s good news, but how many other schools are still using curricula focused on comprehension skills? And what curricula are D.C.’s many charter schools using — if they’re using any at all? At this point, no one seems to know.

The district should at least collect and publish information on which literacy curricula are being used, as the literacy task force has recommended. If school choice is to be meaningful, parents deserve to know what curriculum a school is using. And armed with this information, officials could gain a clearer picture of what is working.

As D.C. moves forward with implementing science-of-reading reforms, it has the opportunity to provide much-needed guidance to schools in finding curricula that pair effective phonics instruction with effective knowledge-building — and to encourage professional learning grounded in the specifics of those curricula. By doing so, D.C. could narrow achievement gaps that haven’t budged since 1998 and provide a true success story that could be a model for the nation.

Inside a classroom at the , a group of small children sit in a circle with their teacher to learn about the alphabet, but how they go about learning their letters is what makes this lesson unique — and fun.

These children have , small touchpads loaded with learning games. Distributing the Seedlings to schools, care centers, state and local agencies, and families is the mission of , a nonprofit founded by former State Board of Education member that seeks to prepare underserved children ages 3 and 4 for kindergarten through interactive games teaching letters, numbers, shapes, and colors.

For this classroom game, a child holds a Seedling displaying a letter over their head, and asks their classmate and teacher questions about the letter like, “does my letter make the ‘W-uh’ sound?” or “does my letter come after ‘V’ in the alphabet?”

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The child can then use the answers as clues to determine the mystery letter. Once the letter is correctly guessed, they can trace the letter on the Seedling tablet, successfully learning a portion of the alphabet while using visual, auditory, and tactile skills.

What makes this game and these Seedling touchpads even more special is that the devices were given to Ashe County Schools, and many other locations across North Carolina and beyond, at no cost.

Over 22,000 Seedlings have been distributed to children since 2016, according to ApSeed. The nonprofit distributes them for free to families and locations such as Head Starts, pre-K programs, child care services, at special events, health care practices, or WIC centers.

ApSeed currently serves 16 counties in North Carolina, four counties in South Carolina, and other locations in California, New York, Liberia, and Zimbabwe.

Funding for ApSeed comes from grants and private donations as well as from government appropriations. In 2022, the General Assembly allocated $2.5 million to ApSeed, which in turn provided service for about 12,000 children.

Making a ‘big hairy audacious goal’

ApSeed is part of what Alcorn calls a “big hairy audacious goal,” or “BHAG.” Alcorn said a BHAG is something to achieve on the macro-level at least 10 years out that requires leadership and helps to create a future that would otherwise be impossible.

A BHAG for ApSeed is to promote higher graduation rates to create a well-educated workforce for the future of the state and elsewhere by starting early with a community’s youngest learners. Alcorn emphasized that those who graduate high school are more likely to have higher wages once entering the workforce.

Alcorn said when a student is able to succeed academically early on, the success continues to have a ripple effect throughout the child’s educational journey.

“If you’re pretty good at pre-K you’ve got a good chance of being a good kindergartener, right? And then if you’re good at kindergarten, you’ve got a pretty good chance at first grade,” Alcorn said.

Helping children succeed is a priority for ApSeed, Alcorn said, but helping communities succeed is an additional priority, he said. When schools have success, that encourages others to reside in that area, he said, benefiting that community.

Alcorn is working toward a return on investment, hoping to see long term-results that start with a child first beginning to learn.

Dr. Eisa Cox, superintendent of , said increasing the area’s graduation rates is part of her district’s strategic plan, and that effort is a dedication that begins with early learning. Cox said if a child is unprepared for kindergarten, they will be less likely to graduate.

“It’s a long-term commitment to how we support families and how we support learning, from the time they begin learning clear through postsecondary education,” Cox said. “We want kids to graduate ready with skills and the knowledge and the confidence that they can do whatever they want.”

Planting a Seedling

Terry Richardson, director of exceptional children and pre-k programs for Ashe County Schools, said the opportunity for multi-sensory learning on the Seedlings is important as children develop their unique learning styles.

“It’s auditory, tactile, and visual. Every child learns in a different way. We don’t know what their learning style is until we get them and we are teaching, and to see what their learning style is,” Richardson said. “They can learn every area of literacy and math on the ApSeed tool through the visual, the tactile, or the auditorial because it’s integrated within each app.”

The Seedlings come preloaded with games and have no Wi-Fi or camera capabilities to ensure safety and promote the age-appropriate learning of the child using it.

Each Seedling comes with headphones, a charger, information for families on kindergarten readiness, and a protective case with a handle.

The touchpads have a variety of games that range in difficulty levels from “baby games” all the way to multiplication for those children seeking to explore extra challenges. Colorful and happy cartoon animals serve as the mascots for the games and cheer the students on when a question is answered correctly.

Richardson recalled getting goosebumps during an ApSeed distribution event that brought out over 500 families, and said she has seen children with Seedlings around her community.

“I’ve gone to different activities in the community and you’ll see kids carrying little ApSeed around and things like that because it’s such an engaging, appropriate learning tool for literacy and math that are developmentally appropriate for their ages,” Richardson said.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

PIERRE — The state House Education Committee unanimously voted Wednesday at the Capitol to support Gov. Kristi Noem’s $6 million effort to train teachers in phonics literacy. now goes to the Joint Appropriations Committee.

The effort, spearheaded by the state Department of Education, provides extensive professional development to teachers in what the bill calls the “Science of Reading.” It extends to training for public school, private school and tribal teachers.

The legislative ask is a continuation of the department’s literacy program that started in 2023 and was paid for by federal COVID relief funds. Those funds expire by September. The $6 million would continue the program for the next four years and will offer training to all elementary schools and teachers in the state.

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“In four years, when the money runs out, we’re hoping and believe that the need for the money will as well,” Department of Education Secretary Joseph Graves told lawmakers.

Half of all South Dakota students aren’t proficient in English Language Arts exams, according to . According to the , 68% of South Dakota fourth graders aren’t proficient in reading – an increase of four percentage points since 2021.

Early literacy skills are closely linked to reading achievement throughout school and adulthood, and experts argue reading could be the most important skill needed for success as an adult, . People who can’t read are less likely than others to vote, read the news or be stably employed.

The bill was widely supported by education lobbyists and did not have any opponent testimony.

The bill follows a global debate – often called the “reading wars” – about how best to teach children to read. One side advocates for an emphasis on phonics, which is understanding the relationship between sounds and letters, while the other side prefers a “whole language” approach that puts a stronger emphasis on understanding meaning, with some phonics mixed in.

Graves called whole language teaching a “vague” and “loosey-goosey” method based on the idea that children will naturally learn to read. argue that phonics lessons are boring, prevent children from learning to love reading and distract from the ability to understand meaning in text.

“Proficiency rates in literacy fell (across the nation), and it quickly became clear that elementary schools filled with whole language teaching resulted in Johnny not being able to read,” Graves told lawmakers.

The Science of Reading program comes from “gold standard research” and “huge statistical meta-analyses” pointing to five foundational components of literacy education, Graves said: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.

Most of South Dakota’s teachers who were trained in phonics before “whole language” and “balanced literacy” was the standard have retired.

Jennifer Macziewski, a first grade teacher in Rapid City, received Science of Reading training three years ago through a state grant. The training was a two year course, so she just started implementing the instruction for her classroom this year.

Macziewski has been teaching for 13 years, she told South Dakota Searchlight after the committee meeting. About 75% of her students typically finished the school year having reached the literacy proficiency benchmark prior to the Science of Reading instruction. About 40% reached that benchmark by the end of the first semester.

She credits that anticipated success to the change in teaching.

“That’ll open a lot of doors for them,” Macziewki said. “Typically it would take them longer to learn to read, but I already have some kids who’ve hit the third grade benchmark. They’re going to start reading to learn instead of learning to read now, which will free up resources for teachers to help students who haven’t met those benchmarks yet.”

The new instruction is explicit and systematic and “opens up the code of reading” to children so they can decipher words “as long as they can memorize that secret code.”

“Instead of students having to learn thousands of words by memorizing them, they just have to memorize 100 or so unique words,” Macziewki said. “There’s an improvement in their writing too because they better understand the language, are able to break apart sounds and break down the words.”

English Language Arts standards will be up for review across the state beginning in 2024. Students are currently tested in English Language Arts standards in third through eighth grade, and in 11th grade.

The South Dakota Board of Regents plans to focus on the Science of Reading in teacher preparation programs across the state as well, Graves said, adding that if the state is going to improve its reading proficiency scores, then this type of support is needed.

“As we do this and as we continue to offer the training to teachers, we’re convinced the data will quickly demonstrate SOR’s efficacy,” Graves said. “Teachers in schools which adopt it will show increasing reading proficiency rates while those who do not will be left behind and thereby nudged into pursuing this effective program.”

Two other education bills died in the House committee on Wednesday.

One bill would have established a grant program for 30 new South Dakota teachers as a way to incentivize graduating students to stay in-state or encourage out-of-state educators to move to South Dakota.

The second bill would have established qualifications for future members of the Board of Education Standards, with a majority of the seven-member board having a professional background in education.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

High-dosage tutoring is one of the most effective tools to help students recover from lost learning, including in subjects like reading, where . 

But what if schools didn’t wait until students fell behind? What if all kindergartners got a reading tutor from the start?

That’s what the early-literacy tutoring company is testing out. They have a hunch the results will look good. 

By contracting with schools and tracking outcomes, the company hopes to convince more schools and districts to invest in early literacy tutoring, according to Matt Pasternack, Once’s chief executive and co-founder. 

“It sounds crazy, but why couldn’t you just teach every kid in America to read one-on-one?” Pasternack said.

The program includes daily, 15-minute sessions during school, but is flexible, according to Pasternack.

Pasternack said the curriculum is informed by the , a growing movement to change literacy instruction and re-emphasize phonics. Alone with a tutor, students are taught to recognize letters, the sounds that they make and how they blend to form words. 

By the end of the year, Pasternack hopes all students can decode fluently, which he thinks will enable them to learn “more autonomously in every grade afterward.”

The two-time grantee received roughly half-a-million dollars from Accelerate, a national nonprofit that has given roughly $21 million to various groups to scale tutoring efforts post-pandemic. Once worked with “hundreds” of students during the 2022-2023 school year and will work with over 1,000 during the upcoming school year, according to Pasternack. The program has been offered at public, charter and private schools in states including California, Hawaii, Texas, New York, and Ohio, and in Washington, D.C. 

The program costs schools about $400 per student and has been given to entire classes and as an intervention for selected students.

Schools are required to provide personnel to be tutors, such as paraprofessionals or other existing school staff. Once provides a scripted curriculum and ongoing coaching. Pasternack said school staff are generally not compensated for the additional tutoring duties, but the program is working to partner with local universities so they can get course credit. 

One-on-one key to teaching phonics

Pasternack said “one-on-one instruction simplifies the implementation of the science of reading.” 

He said phonics is challenging to execute in large classrooms because it requires “near-perfect classroom management.”

“In order to teach those types of skills, you need to hear what every single child is saying,” Pasternack said.

“Master teachers” excel at large-group instruction, but many others struggle, Pasternack said. 

Rebecca Kette, an intervention specialist at Orchard STEM School in Cleveland and a former Once tutor and coordinator, said one-on-one time was beneficial to meet her students’ needs.

“I think a constant struggle for classroom teachers is that individualized attention for children,” Kette said.

Patrick Proctor, the at Boston College and a professor focused on bilingual education and literacy, said without individualized attention, teachers can’t meet students’ phonic needs.

“A whole-group phonic program is not designed to meet every student where they are at, but rather is focused at on-average expectations of where students should be,” Proctor said in an email.  

‘Everything in a package’

Once tutors get two half-days of training upfront followed by weekly sessions with Once coaches. All tutor sessions are recorded and viewed by the coaches, who provide feedback during weekly meetings. 

“The way that they tutor and train people, you understand the curriculum and are able to deliver it,” said Joseph Salazar, a Once tutor and coordinator and an English as a Second Language teacher at Seaton Elementary in Washington, D.C.

Salazar said he knows how much goes into designing lessons, so he appreciates Once’s script and curriculum. Even if he didn’t have teaching experience, he said he’d feel confident.

“Once provides everything in a package,” Salazar said.

Empowering school employees, like paraprofessionals who may not have prior experience in literacy instruction, is important for scalability, according to Matthew Kraft, an education and economics professor at Brown University who has studied .

“Scaling tutoring requires expanding the pool of tutors,” Kraft said in an email. “Paraprofessionals offer an attractive pool of labor for tutoring because they have lots of experience working with students and they are already employed by school districts.”

Early results and criticism 

Pasternack said research about Once is “extremely preliminary.” He’s “hopeful” more results will be available “by the middle of this year.”

by LXD Research highlighting the impact of the Once program on students at seven schools last academic year concluded there was a positive correlation between Once lessons and students’ scores on the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessment.

“Overall, the more lesson cycles students completed in Once, the higher their scores,” Rachel Schechter, the report’s author, writes.

Salazar said that of the six students he tutored last year, all started below benchmark and five met or exceeded reading-level benchmarks by the end. 

Kette said her students showed “big gains” in oral-reading fluency.

Laura Justice, at Ohio State’s Department of Educational Studies and the executive director of its Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy, agreed there is “strong evidence” for the efficacy of small-group lessons on decoding and comprehension skills. But before scaling a program like Once, it’s important for claims to be “assessed using experimental methods,” she said. 

Justice said there isn’t evidence supporting the idea that one-on-one is more effective than small-group tutoring. 

Pasternack said he’s open to exploring small groups, but that it would pose several challenges for the program.

“All the kids need to say the exact same sound at the same moment otherwise they’re going to listen to each other, rather than reading,” Pasternack said.

Justice also said it should be tested whether daily sessions really boost outcomes more than sessions two or three times per week.

“There is a threshold of additional instruction that is needed to help children advance, but instruction above that threshold does not necessarily pay off,” she said in an email.

Pasternack said that Once has “documented cases” of students that missed sessions and attended approximately two or three sessions per week. 

“The kid just moves half as quickly,” Pasternack said. “You can’t move faster in less time.”

Proctor said he’s skeptical about the logistics of scaling Once. Tutoring a class of 16 students one-on-one for 15 minutes each amounts to four hours of instructional time a day. But, since school days are complicated, he said it would take longer. 

“Likely it wouldn’t happen every day for every child because schedules are challenging,” Proctor wrote. “Multiply that by every day of the school year and you get a lot of slippage.”

Pasternack responded by saying schools aren’t required to use Once programming everyday.

“We work with each school to create a schedule that works for that school,” Pasternack said.

Proctor also challenged the belief that schools “need to be going so heavy on phonics and decoding in kindergarten.”

“The point of kindergarten is to develop social skills, introduce children to literacy, language, and numeracy, explore music, play,” he said.

But Pasternack said declining kindergarten enrollment makes him think current standards may not be working.

Additionally, Pasternack said Once isn’t just about decoding. Each lesson emphasizes phonemic awareness, includes comprehension questions, and revolves around reading an episode, he said, “in a suspenseful and engaging epic journey of a group of animals searching for safety, wisdom and connection.”

Ultimately, Pasternack said he hopes Once can build on existing research and “broaden the conversation.”

“We don’t want to play games with the data,” he said. “We are truly curious. Does scripted, explicit, one-on-one instruction in foundational literacy change the trajectories of the students who receive it in kindergarten?”

Correction: Rachel Schechter is the founder of LXD Research and the author of a report on the Once tutoring program. Her named was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Overdeck Family Foundation provide financial support to both Accelerate and ����Ӱ��.

Back for Season 5, Michael and Diane catch up on their summers and book reading, Diane’s new entrepreneurial venture, , the season ahead — and then offer some hot takes on the reading wars and Lucy Calkins, four-year college-for-all and education jargon.

Listen to the episode below. A full transcript follows.

Diane Tavenner: Hey, Michael.

Michael Horn: Hey, Diane. We are back. It’s been a little while.

Diane Tavenner: It’s been more than a minute, for sure. It is really good to be here with you and in a little bit of a new space and new time.

Michael Horn: Indeed, indeed. And we should say most people are accustomed, I think, at this point, to us starting at the beginning of the academic year, which traditionally, or not traditionally, unfortunately tends to happen at the end of August, early September. But, Diane, you have some big news, like, you’re no longer on an academic calendar, so everyone knew you were stepping down from Summit after 20 years. Tell us what you’re doing now as we enter this fifth season.

Diane Tavenner: Well, Michael, I’m so glad to be back in conversation. I have missed it a lot, the rhythm of it. And what you’re pointing out is this idea that for the first time in my entire life, I did not have a back to school experience. And I’ll be honest, that has been an anchor point for me for my whole life. That sort of sets the schedule for the fall. So here we are. It’s a little bit later, but I’m learning to be fluid with that time because I am not in schools anymore. I have co founded a new company called Point of Beginning, and we are working on a product called Point B, and it’s a technology product that is really focused on helping students and right now, high school students.

But I think eventually, potentially younger students figure out and this probably won’t come as a shocker to a lot of people if you’ve been listening for a few years, figure out their purpose and what a pathway towards fulfillment will be post-high school. And while that can certainly be inclusive of four year college, we want to really focus on and expand the other possible pathways that exist for people, to help them, discover them, explore them, create their own vision for what that will look like, figure out how to make good choices, and then enact those pathways. And so we’re about three months in about a week away from the first version of the product being tested by real people and in a real startup.

Michael Horn: That’s exciting, Diane. So I have a couple reflections, but before we have those, my Point B, like, how do people find it on the Web? Learn about what you’re doing. I assume there’s going to be some schools that are like, do we get to sign up so our students can use this?

Diane Tavenner: Well, it’s super early, but you can always reach out to me. You can find us on the Web at , and you can start to check out what’s happening there. Sign up for updates if you’re interested, and, of course, reach out to me. We want to talk with, work with anyone and everyone. And so if this is an area of interest or passion, I hope you will reach out and I hope we’re going to get a lot of opportunities to sort of touch on these subjects that are so fascinating over the course of this season. Michael, because I do think this season’s a little bit different. I think we’re going to do some throwbacks to Season 1, but also a little bit different. So do you want to just talk a little bit about what’s happening? I will say off the top, one of the things that’s different is we will have video this year. I missed that memo. So you can see I didn’t really dress up for you today, but I’ll try to look better going forward. But what else is different?

Michael Horn: Yeah, no, I’m glad you prompted us on that because folks who have been listening to this for now in our fifth season are going to say, gee, there’s some differences that I noticed. One, we’re on video, we’re coming to you from the Future of Education channel. But all that means is that you can find us in more places. So it’s still Class Disrupted, still Diane and Michael having conversations, although we’re going to have a lot more guests helping us drive the conversations this particular year. We’ll get more to that in a little bit. But the Future of Education, as you know, is this other conversations that I started a few years back and it’s something that broadcasts on MarketScale, it broadcasts on YouTube, it broadcasts through my Substack newsletter. But if you’ve been listening to us through ����Ӱ��, if you’ve been listening to us through wherever you listen to podcasts, whether that’s Apple, Google, whatever Spotify, I don’t know where else people listen to podcasts, I am, but those are some of the big ones, right? You can still do that. You’ll still find us at Class Disrupted. Nothing has changed on that front. It’s just a few other avenues for us to get to connect with listeners and hopefully get some feedback, get some conversation started because we are all about listening and trying to find different pathways through education. And what I love about what you’re doing at Point B is to me it touches on what I think is increasingly people are recognizing as like one of the central issues of education, which is it’s not just the academic knowledge and skills. Yes, those are important, but they need to be in fulfillment of something and we have left a generation of individuals at the moment without having a real sense of purpose. And I think it shows up in our mental health stats. I think it shows up in the challenges we have around post secondary completion. I think it shows up in the challenges we have for employers to find employees that are psyched to be there and ready to be productive and contribute. And I think it prevails throughout is just there’s a lot of people adrift Diane, so I love that you’re tackling this and that, as you said, we’re going to get know, beat up different angles of what it means to chart that pathway and purpose over this season.

Not as a shameless plug for Point B, but really just to really get at this issue that I think is so undergirding so much of what we do. I think it’s great that we’re going to get to dig into this.

Diane Tavenner: Well, one of the gifts of this transition, Michael, has been the ability to just really go back and be a learner in so many different ways. And one of the things I’ve been eager to catch up with you about is what you’ve been reading this summer, because that’s always a big part of our conversations. And I feel like, oh, my gosh, we’ll go each week, we’ll talk about what we’re reading, but there’s this whole backlog right now. And so I’m really curious what you’ve been reading, what you’ve been learning. As I know my list, which is quite long, was very related to the transition. And I went kind of deep in areas of personal health and transition health and things like that as I kind of reflect on 20 years and you don’t always take care of yourself. And there’s these moments of reflection of like, how can I kind of catch up on that? I also did some deep diving on organizations and businesses and how when you get to start fresh, what do I want to bring forward, what do I want to do differently? What’s the modern stuff there? And so those are some fun books, like Farther, Faster, and Far Less Drama, Janice and Jason Fraser and 10X Is Easier Than 2X, which is a term I’m kind of allergic to in Silicon Valley, but I actually read [the book] and got a lot of value from it. That’s Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy. I’m going to get that wrong. Atomic Habits by James Clear as I changed my entire life. How do I have the routines and the habits that are really supporting how I want to be living? And then some other I finally felt like in a place where I could kind of reflect on the pandemic. And so Premonition by Michael Lewis, which is a fast-paced and fascinating and a story I wish I had known all these seasons, quite frankly. So that was really interesting. And we continue to be in tough times. And so also digging into How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them by Barbara Walter.

Michael Horn: Wow.

Diane Tavenner: That’s some of my list. How about you? What is on your list?

Michael Horn: You’ve, gosh, you’ve gotten to read some interesting books. Here are mine. I’ll be curious what your take is. I’ll try to spin an arc of it, but mine, as you know, I had finally started to get into Harry Potter with my kids. So we have now completed the full set of Harry Potter books. I have read every single one. Number four, and the last one are my favorite. I thought they were the best written of them all, so that was super fun.

I did have this moment of pang, Diane, because, as you know, my kids recently turned nine, and I had this moment when I finished the 7th Harry Potter book. I was like this, like 90% likelihood this may be the last book I read out loud with my kids, right? And to be fair, one of them had already opted out, like she had read them all without me and gotten ahead, and one of them was nice and held on for my sake at my slow pace. So we got through all those Harry Potter books, and then I personally, because they’re nine, was going deep on what does it mean when they’re teenagers? And so Lisa Damour has been in my ear constantly over the last few months with her collection of three books, which I highly recommend. The most recent one is about The Emotional Lives of Teenagers in general. The first two are about girls raising girls who are teenagers. So she’s terrific. It’s been really helpful. And it does strike me a lot of the parenting advice is all really the same at the end of the day, but it actually helps to hear it in different modalities and formats and hear it again every three months or so.

So that was great. And then, of course, I had my history kick still going in the background. So I finished just before we started recording this, actually, a couple of days ago, the Ron Chernow biography of Ulysses S. Grant, which is a terrific book if you want to get angry about the South’s actions during Reconstruction after the Civil War. I learned a ton from it. Just really interesting about the development of him also as a leader and sort of how his values came out over time and like a really reticent hated to speak, for example, even while he was president, but then he traveled around the world after he was president and became quite a public speaker. And so just development and learning, right, as themes throughout all this.

Diane Tavenner: Interesting.

Michael Horn: So it’s fun, Diane.

Diane Tavenner: That is really fun. And I will just say that your girls are nine. My son is 21. For those who’ve been following our kids sort of growing up over these years. And I have sort of welcomed a second son to our family who’s also in that age group, so hopefully we’ll get a chance to talk about him. But Rhett, who I talk about here sometimes as something to potentially look forward to, Michael, he is writing an alternative history novel, right? So it’s really fun. And so I’m getting to read and talk with him and brainstorm with him about that, which is pretty awesome.

And it goes back to the founding of the US. And he’s got some interesting alternative narratives there. So I’m like, back into kind of those founding family founder, founding Father stories.

Michael Horn: Families, yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome.

Diane Tavenner: And families.

Michael Horn: Well, being in Lexington, Massachusetts, and having just taken my family to Williamsburg, Virginia, where as a kid, I went every single spring break. Diane but my kids had never been there. And so my brothers, my parents, they all descended on Williamsburg, and we had an old family reunion and lots of nostalgia. But I was really impressed with how the place has updated its language and the way it talks about a lot of people in a lot of different roles who now, to be fair, I think when I was a kid, my kids were far more interested in the restoration and talking to the characters than I remember ever being as a kid. I remember just being not that let’s put it that way as a kid, but it was a heck of a lot of fun. So I’ll be very curious to read.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, well, his angle is, what if we didn’t just have Founding Fathers? What if there was actually a founding mother at the Constitutional Congress? What might be?

Michael Horn: Different question. It’s a good question. So before we wrap up and before we preview what’s going to be the next episode, let’s do just a few hot takes, if you will, because I’ve been burning on a few issues, sort of gnawing at me, and, you know, I’ve been sending you texts like, can we please talk about so I want to do this now. And so I’ve got a couple for you. You probably have one or two for me.

Diane Tavenner: I do.

Michael Horn: Awesome. The one I want to go into is we’ve covered, obviously, the reading wars on this podcast and sort of the ignoring, I would say, of the evidence right. Of how certain people need phonics and phonemic awareness to learn how to read and to decode. Right. And sort of what that’s done. And you’ve made the point like, this should not be a problem we have in our country. Everybody should be able to learn how to read at this point. So I was listening to the Daily, the New York Times podcast, their coverage of it, and Michael Barbaro, classmate of mine at Yale, he and I worked very closely on the newspaper together.

And so I was listening to his version of sort of about Lucy Calkins and sort of the history behind that and things of that nature. And what occurred to me was she and Fountas and Pinnell and all those people, they really messed people up with the Three Cueing method and all these things that sort of gave short shrift to teaching people to really learn how to decode. But they also had some really good things in there. And I guess I just had this moment of know, we’ve talked about how we’re not thrilled with banning curriculum and stuff like that. And I guess I had this pit in my stomach, Diane, where I was like, Writer’s Workshop is something that’s a staple of the Lucy Calkins curriculum. Right. And I don’t know. I’d love your take as an educator, because I’m not one.

I just learned a lot about this space. But my take is, if the child doesn’t know their letters and can’t do any sounding out Writers Workshop, you’re layering something over a novice learner that probably doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense. But once you have any ability to decode and do these stuff, even if it’s not spelled right, I think there’s probably a lot of value in having Writers Workshop to be able to like the purpose of writing is right? And to be able to spin these stories or respond to prompts or react to things that you’ve read aloud in class or whatever else. And the discussion format of the Writers Workshop and the ability to edit your peers work and things of that nature. It strikes me, Diane, that that’s something like, we really wouldn’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater there, but I’m just sort of curious. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Writers Workshop is like, this terrible thing, and I’m just not understanding.

Diane Tavenner: No. I have gotten a lot of joy from the passion of your texts that have been coming through over the summer about this. So it’s so fun to be back in conversation. Here’s what I would say. And as a former English teacher, as, you know, generally higher level middle and high school, but I was a reading instructor, too, for preschool through adults for a period of time, and this is where nuance is so important. And when we get into these battles and these wars, we lose the nuance, and we do throw the baby out with the bathwater. As an English teacher, writers workshops are among one of the most powerful tools and activities you can use, I believe. And I think most great English teachers believe that, too, and use them incredibly well, even with younger children, as you’re talking about.

And so what I hope does not happen is that people just hear anything that’s been associated with these non-scientific methods and ban them, if you will. And I think this connects to another thing you’ve been talking about, which is, like, jargon in our work and how we use it. So you’ll get to that in a moment. But no. Writers Workshops enable the practice of an extraordinary suite of skills that are really important that even young kids can start to practice. And it’s a tool that can be used all the way up. I mean, it is all the way up into professional circles. And so we should most certainly hold on to writers workshops. We should know what we’re doing.

We should be critical and disciplined and apply the science and all of those things, but they should not be banned, for sure.

Michael Horn: OK. All right. Well, I feel a little bit better. You have a hot take first before I go on my second one.

Diane Tavenner: Jargon well, I mean, here’s what the conversation that’s happening everywhere I turn right now in my networks and communities. And that is that the data is going to come out. We’re going to see yet another year of, I believe, decline in four year college enrollment. And so that’s several years. And we’re not seeing the bounce back that I think people thought would happen after. COVID there’s a bigger trend that is at play here. And I think what I’m hearing is people, who, like me, who have spent the last 20 years really focused on four-year college for all kids. They know that this has to be questioned, that this is maybe not the strategy for everyone going forward.

We need to be thinking about different pathways. They know it’s fraught. They don’t even know how to talk to their communities about it. I keep hearing people are like, I don’t know how to start that conversation, let alone do something about it. And of course, my worry is that we have to be doing something right now, and if we can’t even talk about it, there is an issue. So this is top of mind for me and I think has huge implications for high schools, for sure, in America, which we’ve been pounding away for years now, about how they need to be redesigned. There’s a lot of stuff going on out there. It’s a really interesting moment in time.

Michael Horn: Yeah, that’s super interesting. Just a quick reflection on it is I was talking to Scott Pulsipher recently, the president of Western Governors University, and for those that don’t know, it’s an online, competency-based university. And as he likes to say, we didn’t invent competency-based education. No, you didn’t. But I think they’re the first players to do so at such scale that they do. And they had 230,000 enrollments in the last academic year that just completed Diane. And they now have I’m going to mess this up, but it’s like 340 or 350,000 alums in their 23-year history. And just to put that in perspective, Harvard University has 400,000 alums.

And it was interesting because they’re an online, competency-based institution, $4,000 for every six months. So low cost. Students complete the bachelor’s in an average of two and a half years. And he was just saying for the learners that come to them, which historically were adult learners, but increasingly, by the way, now 12%, I think, of their population, something like that, is 18- to 24-year olds. That’s changing. Right. He said, for them, education is not the end. It is a means to a better life. Right.

And so I guess that’s my reflection there is, I think, part of starting that conversation is like, what’s the end? What are you trying to prepare for? And framing education as that vehicle as opposed to the oh, the purpose is college. Right? Because that’s a pretty empty purpose once.

Diane Tavenner: You get through it, right, and what we’ve all discovered or are discovering. Yeah, certainly lots on that one to dig in over the course of the year.

Michael Horn: We’re going to revisit that a few times, I suspect. All right, last one for me. You alluded to it a moment ago, which is jargon. And it comes directly out of this, though, conversation of the reading instruction and things of that nature, because I guess my reflection, Emily Oster, who’s reading I love, or writing I love, she had this great piece recently about a harrowing incident for her. She got in an accident running on the road and she got hit by a biker and went to the ER and she was listening to all the doctors talking in jargon around her. And she said, sometimes jargon is sort of parodied, but it actually serves a really important purpose, which is it allows people to shortcut conversation and professionals in a field to very quickly communicate with each other to more efficiently get work done, she said. Now it can also alienate people outside of you and make them feel dumb, which then makes them feel like they don’t understand and then a whole bunch of downstream effects of that, which is not good. But used well within the field, like in an emergency situation, it really short circuits right to the purpose and helps, in her case, get the treatment that she needed to have. And so I guess my reflection was we also have a lot of jargon in education and I think the reading wars, in quotes, I can do this now because people can see me video, sorry for those listening to the audio, but we use a lot of jargon in education to try to signal certain things. But the problem within education, at least my reflection, and I’m curious, your take, is that we don’t all mean the same thing by the words. We all have vastly different definitions. And so we’ll have these fights like constructivists versus behaviorists. Or someone will be like, oh, we’re an inquiry-based school, or we’re a project-based learning school. Or direct instruction and let’s just go back to the reading thing. 

There is direct instruction in that example, right, of teaching someone phonics and phonemic awareness. There is inquiry, I suppose, on the question what you’re going to write about in Writers Workshop. There might even be hopefully a project with a performance at the end, like the actual completing right. There’s some constructivist, there’s some behaviorist. It’s all a little bit right. And we set up these progressive education versus classical. We have these words, A, we don’t know the definitions, but like, most of what we’re doing is pulling from the right amount to get the right effect for the kid to help advance them. And so I just find a lot of these buzz phrases, at best counterproductive, but also potentially quite misleading, Diane, because we think we’re saying the same thing when we are in communication and we’re all just talking past each other. But I’d love your reflections.

Diane Tavenner: I’ve had this experience hundreds of times over the last 20 years. I distinctly remember being on a panel at one point and having this conversation about the word knowledge versus skills. Yeah, that’s another one levels and there is not a shared definition of that. And so people use those things interchangeably and they’re different when you’re talking about designing schools and learning experiences, et cetera, and it completely derailing any sort of meaningful understanding of what each other’s are saying and therefore ability to move forward. So it’s a very significant issue.

Michael Horn: Yeah, well, I guess my hope for schools is that we just start maybe doing more of the plain English thing so that parents know what we’re talking about and then maybe we’ll know what we’re talking about as well and communicate better with each other.

Diane Tavenner: Well that’s a good let’s leave it there. Maybe this season to try to be.

Michael Horn: Yeah, that is a good question.

Diane Tavenner: As possible. I like that one. And you sort of mentioned at the top. But as we kind of wrap up this first welcome back session and look forward, I think we’re both really excited for more interesting guests and people to talk to this year. And one of our favorite people is going to kick us off in our next episode. So we are excited to bring back Todd Rose. He joined us in season one and he’s been doing a ton of fascinating work over the last few years. It’s so relevant to everything we talk about and broader and so we’re going to have a great conversation with him.

Michael Horn: Yeah, I can’t wait. And it goes directly, I think, to the hot take you had around. If it’s not four-year college, what are we preparing students for? Because what his research recently has shown is that everyone thinks that everyone else is aiming at four year college, but that’s actually not the goal for a lot of the individuals themselves. And we’ll talk about how he does that research, what he’s found success actually means to individual families on the ground. I think it’s going to be a terrific conversation to help set what should be a really exciting set of explorations for us and for our audience this season.

Diane Tavenner: On Class Disrupted. Well, I can’t wait. Michael and I’m so glad to be back with you and until next time, thanks for joining us on Class Disrupted.

State lawmakers plan to require that all students be tested for dyslexia and other reading challenges, but the hurdles ahead point to a bigger problem with how California’s public schools teach reading.

Before teachers can screen their students, they themselves need to be trained both in how to use the screening tests and how to help the students who get identified as struggling readers. Many experts and educators say most public school teachers in California weren’t adequately trained to teach students how to read.

“Nobody goes into teaching to mess up a kid’s life,” said Leslie Zoroya, a teacher coach specializing in literacy at the Los Angeles County Office of Education. “Teachers do think they’re teaching kids to read. But when you look at the data, it’s telling us that is not the case.”

Across the state, only about 42% of third-graders met or exceeded English language arts standards last year.

The mandatory dyslexia screening policy was a part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s  released last week, which allocated $1 million to form a panel of experts who would compile a list of reliable screening tools as well as determine the types of training needed for teachers. The proposal seeks to screen all students between kindergarten and second grade starting in the 2025-26 school year.

The policy proposal comes after several legislative efforts, , to require dyslexia screening in California’s public schools. They failed largely due to . The statewide teachers union argued the practice of screening all students would disproportionately push English learners into special education and said the legislation needs to provide more resources for teachers.

The union did not respond to questions for this story about the types of support and training teachers need. But for some experts, the fact that teachers even need training to help students who struggle with reading illustrates just how far behind California is in literacy instruction.

“We’re going to need a lot more training,” Zoroya said. “This needs to be a statewide effort.”

The problem is twofold, according to experts. First, most of California’s public school districts use reading curricula based on “balanced literacy,” an approach to reading instruction based on the idea that children are natural readers. It relies on exposure to books and the enjoyment of reading with less of an emphasis on sounding out words. Second, the experts say, teacher preparation programs don’t train teachers enough in “structured literacy” or “the science of reading,” which focuses heavily on phonemic awareness and phonics — the practice of matching letters to sounds and sounding out words. 

Betina Hsieh, the chair of the teacher education program at Cal State Long Beach, said balanced literacy curricula do include some phonics and argued that the balanced literacy approach works for most students. 

“No one is saying that phonics and phonemic awareness is not important,” she said. “The thing is, it only gets you so far.”

But Hsieh agrees that all younger students should be screened for dyslexia and reading challenges and that teachers need to be trained. But she expressed frustration that there’s already so much material squeezed into teacher credentialing programs.

Zoroya argues that if teachers had been better trained in phonics instruction, dyslexia screeners would be a natural extension of their instruction. Because screeners test students’ ability to pair letters to sounds, a teacher who is adept in phonics will have an easier time navigating not just screening but helping students overcome their reading challenges.

“This work is too important for adults to be out here arguing,” she said. “We have too many kids coming out of elementary school not being able to read well.”

Too little phonics

Zoroya, who trains teachers across the 80 school districts in Los Angeles County, said most elementary school teachers don’t know how to teach reading through “structured literacy.” The approach’s focus on phonics enables students to sound out unfamiliar words. 

Across California, students typically learn reading by being exposed to text and being read to in the classroom. Teachers focus on cultivating a love of reading as opposed to a more systematic instruction in letter sounds. While most students are able to learn reading through the former method, many are left behind. Dyslexia, a neurological condition that causes difficulty reading, affects about  people across the country. 

According to experts, the fact that California is  that doesn’t screen all students for dyslexia is a symptom of the broader problem of how public schools in the state teach reading. For educators, reading instruction remains hotly debated. 

“It reminds me a bit of politics right now,” Zoroya said. “Even reading is very polarized.”

The debates over reading instruction have a deep and contentious history, which some refer to as “the reading wars.” In California, the “balanced literacy” approach  in the reading wars. But teachers and parents  have spoken out against it, calling it a well-intentioned but  to teach reading. 

Santiago Cuevas, a first grade teacher at San Francisco Unified’s Lafayette Elementary, said he received hardly any training in phonics instruction while earning his credential at San Francisco State University. He had to study the concepts of the “science of reading” on his own to pass the , one of the requirements for a teaching credential. The assessment tests prospective teachers’ ability to develop a reading curriculum, ranging from phonics to reading comprehension. 

Cuevas said he was lucky to get hired at a school that happened to be committed to teaching phonics. But for most other teachers, the material they studied to pass the reading instruction assessment becomes an afterthought because their districts use balanced literacy.

“The RICA is just one of the things on the checklist to becoming a teacher,” Cuevas said. “It’s kind of strange how we didn’t talk about the science of reading at all at SF State.”

Margaret Goldberg, a literacy coach in West Contra Costa Unified, said not only are most teachers using faulty curricula, they’re also not assessing their students enough between kindergarten and second grade. Statewide literacy data is only available starting in third grade. But because students show signs of reading challenges as early as kindergarten, teachers need to take reading instruction seriously as early as age 5, she said. 

“In some ways, it feels very comfortable to primary grade teachers who say their students will catch up later,” Goldberg said. “So it can be very uncomfortable when we put a universal screening measure in place.”

That discomfort materialized in the fight to mandate screening for dyslexia in California. The California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union,  for multiple years despite a chorus of literacy experts calling for early screening for all students. The union said the legislation lacked details around what types of training teachers would need and how often students should be screened. 

Cuevas said teachers who are more comfortable with phonics and the science of reading will be much more comfortable screening students. 

He said, for example, if a student had a hard time saying the word “chair,” the balanced literacy approach would recommend just giving that child more books about chairs. But a teacher with training in structured literacy and phonics instruction has a more systematic approach that includes more testing and targeted instruction.

“It just seems like everyone’s trying to kick the can down the road,” Cuevas said. “With the science of reading, you just think differently.”

A necessary change

Goldberg and Cuevas agree that teachers, even those supportive of balanced literacy, have the best intentions. But they said that the shift toward mandatory screening should be accompanied by a shift toward more phonics instruction.

Goldberg said teachers first need to understand why screening matters. She said teachers typically see assessments as punitive and burdensome, but tests used to detect dyslexia and other reading challenges are a tool for improving instruction. Teachers might not understand why the tests ask students to sound out nonsense words, but Goldberg said sounding out random clusters of letters is the best way to detect whether a student will struggle with reading. 

“They seem like arbitrary tasks,” she said. “Once you understand why each measure is important, administering the screeners is actually quite simple.”

School and district administrators also need to embrace these shifts. Meghan Trutter, a reading intervention specialist in the San Jose area, said teachers who learn about the science of reading later in their careers often tell her “this is what I needed all along.” 

But Trutter said she’s concerned about whether districts will support teachers with the right curricula once the state mandates screening. If teachers aren’t given the necessary textbooks and materials to teach phonics, screening will be a pointless exercise.

“If the district executives don’t get it, they’re going to be another roadblock,” she said. “I can see teachers saying ‘We’ve identified the problems, now what?’ The district might say ‘I don’t know.’”

However, educators say there’s some much needed changes coming to teacher credentialing programs. A law signed in 2021 requires programs to teach the science of reading approach . 

“I believe new teachers that are coming out of these programs are going to be better equipped to teach students how to read,” said Mara Smith, a reading specialist with the L.A. County Office of Education who helped revise California’s standards for teacher credentialing.

Long-term obstacles

The overhaul necessary in higher education will be easier said than done, according to some professors. Hsieh, at Cal State Long Beach, said one issue is the segregation of special education and general education programs. 

She said prospective teachers in general education programs don’t get the training they need in phonics because those skills are more intensely taught in special education programs that focus on working with struggling students. 

Another problem is the short length of teacher training programs. Elementary and middle school teachers earn the same multiple-subject credential. Their training spans instruction for kindergarten through eighth grade. Hsieh says this leaves little wiggle room for changes to teacher-training curricula.

“We’re working on being flexible and adaptive, but it’s challenging,” she said. “There’s so much that’s being demanded of teachers.”

And it’s not just classroom teachers and district administrators who are entrenched in balanced literacy. Most professors teaching in California’s credentialing programs are also committed to the approach, according to Kathy Futterman, a professor at Cal State East Bay. She said most professors aren’t sufficiently trained in structured literacy.

“I don’t know how many professors and instructors have themselves mastered structured literacy,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been swimming upstream and swimming solo for a long time.”

Futterman said the push for structured literacy as well as for mandatory screening started as a grassroots movement among parents and classroom teachers. But without a more systemic transformation, reading instruction in California will remain a patchwork, she said.

“We are heading in the right direction,” Futterman said. “Now we have to make sure everybody can be on board.”

This story was originally published on .

To counter this unproductive narrowing of the curriculum, states should embed civic content into statewide reading assessments. This simple change would incentivize more attention to civic learning while making reading tests more engaging, equitable and accurate.

of American middle schoolers can read an excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech and identify two ideas from the Constitution or Declaration of Independence that King might have been referring to. This is a symptom of the atrophy in the civic mission of schools that represents a grave danger to American democracy. Only , compared with 70% of Americans born before World War II. Most Millennials say that if Russia invaded the United States, they . These data are a wake-up call that the nation needs to recommit public schools to their foundational purpose: preparing young Americans for citizenship.

Including civic content on every grade’s reading test is low-hanging fruit because it encourages engagement with meaningful issues while signaling to teachers the importance of covering social studies content — all of which improves literacy instruction. While phonics (knowing letter sounds) and decoding (putting together sounds to make words) are essential foundational skills, they are not sufficient for proficient reading. Students also need background knowledge to make sense of what they are seeing on the page. that when students are given a text about a topic they are familiar with, they perform better on reading tests. Conversely, students perform more poorly when confronted with texts on topics they’ve never learned about, even if they have strong reading skills.  

Louisiana is piloting assessments that , with promising results. Some texts in the state’s innovative reading test draw directly from books students have read, with additional passages extending into related topics. Designing tests around what students are expected to be taught makes sense and dovetails state expectations for learning, classroom curricula and reading comprehension assessments.

When students are familiar with the topics being tested, they stay more engaged and do better. reveals that achievement gaps are somewhat smaller on Louisiana’s pilot tests, partly because the opportunity gap is being narrowed by creating more equitable opportunities for students to demonstrate their reading skills. Tests that use random texts privilege students who have more world knowledge from outside of school. Louisiana’s innovative test design encourages teachers to focus on the topics the state wants students to learn and more accurately assesses their reading skills.

Embedding civic content in reading tests would make teachers’ jobs easier and support better student learning outcomes. Every state already has adopted civics standards, and almost all state English language arts standards include expectations for reading and writing in science and social studies. But only Louisiana has prioritized content from its standards in innovative reading/language arts assessments. Every state could make similar progress by making small shifts in the direction it gives to its testing contractor. 

Including a focus on civic learning in reading tests is a simple solution that can be implemented by state education commissioners and testing directors without changing any laws or regulations. That said, this shift should be done with key stakeholders through an open and inclusive process. Leading with public engagement and input creates the opportunity to share the rationale and build trust with educators, parents and policy leaders, minimizing the risk that this becomes a polarizing idea. Parents are likely to support the change because much more than generic standardized tests. 

In 2012, Supreme Court said, “the only reason we have public school education in America is because in the early days of the country, our leaders thought we had to teach our young generation about citizenship … that obligation never ends. If we don’t take every generation of young people and make sure they understand that they are an essential part of government, we won’t survive.” 

Democracy is being tested in real life. Reading tests can signal the importance of civic learning and lead to more time and attention to this vital content. State education commissioners should make this a first step to reinvigorate public education’s mission as a bulwark of democracy.

Even so, the test’s administrators are interpreting the flatline at 54% as good news. Paul Gazzerro, director of data analysis at curriculum provider Amplify, said it’s likely that third graders would have fallen even further behind without efforts like tutoring and additional group instruction.

“It looks as if nothing happened, but the reality is I would’ve suspected that things could’ve gotten worse,” he said. “These are students in many cases that are missing very tangible skills. They may even be grade levels behind.”

The results come amid brighter news for younger students. The mid-year data, which reflects the performance of about 300,000 students across 43 states, show that more K-2 students are reading on grade level compared with 2022 — a sign that literacy skills overall continue to slowly inch back to pre-COVID levels. 

“The actual pandemic effect seems to be lessening,” Gazzerro said.

Amplify’s latest early literacy snapshot reflects a far less disruptive year than the last one. Schools aren’t dealing with frequent quarantines as they did during last year’s Omicron wave. In addition, many states and districts are in the midst of revamping how they teach reading and are using to purchase new curriculum and train teachers.

In some cases, states are taking the lead. Tennessee has put toward teacher training and ensuring districts have a phonics-based to match. And the Texas Education Agency will soon publish a list of approved materials to follow up a requiring districts to teach phonics.

At ����Ӱ��’s request, Burbio, a data company, scanned 6,500 districts’ plans for spending American Rescue Plan funds. Over 3,800 report an emphasis on literacy, more than 4,100 mention reading and over 2,586 note ELA or English language arts. A smaller number, 530, specifically included phonics, and 258 identified science of reading in their plans.

It’s too soon to know whether these developments have had a measurable impact on students’ skills, but they’re “not hurting, that’s for sure,” said Susan Lambert, Amplify’s chief academic officer for elementary humanities. 

The return to a more predictable schedule has contributed to the growth as well, she added.

“We can make progress when kids are in the classroom,” she said. “The data shows that.” 

Amplify uses an assessment called Dynamic Indicators of Basic Literacy Skills, or DIBELS, to test student progress toward learning letter sounds and blends, recognizing sight words and gaining speed and accuracy. 

Students in K-2 haven’t caught up to peers who were in those grades just before COVID hit. But they did make more progress between fall and winter than students did last year. That’s especially true for the youngest students. In 2021-22, the percentage of kindergartners on track grew 15 points over that time period. This year, it grew 19 percentage points. 

‘Can’t spell Harry or Potter’

For teachers, it’s rewarding to see their students leap from identifying one or two sounds in a word to accurately writing complete sentences. 

JoLynn Aldinger, who teaches first grade in the West Ada School District, near Boise, Idaho, said her students’ growth over the past five months makes her want to “do cartwheels” in the classroom. 

A 25-year veteran teacher, she used to emphasize stories and comprehension over phonics. But when she had a 7-year-old in her class who took longer than her peers to learn letter sounds, Aldinger set off on her own quest to learn more about the so-called “science of reading.” 

‘I thought, ‘I have a master’s degree in reading. I should know how to teach reading,’ ” she said. “I knew what phonics was but I didn’t understand how explicit it needed to be.”

She applied for a grant from her school’s PTA, which paid $1,275 for her to receive training in methods often used with . The techniques, like pounding out syllables on their desks and spending extra time on letter blends, benefit even her strongest readers, she said. 

“I would have kids walk in my classroom who have read ‘Harry Potter,’ but they can’t spell Harry or Potter,” she said. 

Now she shows off her students’ improvement to anyone who will listen. And she asks other teachers if they’ve listened to “Sold a Story,” about how whole language or “balanced” literacy came to dominate reading instruction in U.S. schools. Research shows the approach, which focuses more on access to books and using pictures or other clues to guess words, can leave students without the phonics skills to become strong readers.  

‘Our COVID kids’

The Amplify data includes other indicators that trends are headed in the right direction. Racial gaps in reading — which during the pandemic — have narrowed slightly. And between Hispanic and white students, the disparities are even smaller than before COVID.

Since 2019-20, the gap between Hispanic and white kindergartners needing “intensive” support, for example, has fallen from 14 to 11 percentage points. And in third grade, the gap between Hispanic and white students on track dropped from 13 to 8 percentage points over the same time period. For Black students, it remains at 19 percentage points. 

Third grade, Lambert said, is when foundational skills “are supposed to come together” for students so they can learn from what they’re reading. 

That’s what Jean Hesson, elementary supervisor for the Sumner County Schools in Tennessee, hopes to see this spring when this year’s third graders take the state test. 

“These are our COVID kids,” she said. Even though the district has adopted a strong curriculum, “ultimately you have 20 wildcards sitting in front of you. You have to know where your kids are.”

As in districts statewide, Sumner teachers are now required to use phonics-based instruction. The district adopted the Wit and Wisdom curriculum for reading about history, science and other topics. It added the Fundations program for phonics and Geodes — a set of books that tie content and literacy skills together.

“The pictures don’t lend themselves to guessing words,” Hesson said. Students “truly have to decode and use their skills.” 

Almost 45% of last year’s third graders met or exceeded English language arts standards — an increase over pre-pandemic scores. Hesson is hoping that trend continues.

“If we had not had high-quality materials, teachers would have been teaching in a million different directions,” she said. “I can’t imagine the gaps that we would have created.” 

Let me get this hard sell on the table right up front: You should listen to “,” a podcast about reading instruction in U.S. schools. After all, you can be concerned that 1 in 3 American fourth graders read and still not want a deep dive into how literacy is taught. But “Sold a Story” is about more than a national problem; it’s about a deeply personal struggle experienced by families of all kinds.

In the hands of adept reporter and storyteller Emily Hanford, that deep dive unfolds with crystal clarity, emotional anchors and dramatic cliffhangers to spotlight why many students struggle to read: It is because many schools don’t teach them the specific skills they need to successfully do so.

The podcast’s basic premise is that extremely popular approaches to teaching young kids to read — to decode written words — give short shrift to explicit lessons that connect letters in words to the sounds they represent. In many schools, this explicit phonics instruction is sprinkled into reading lessons, but in woefully inadequate amounts and crowded out by other strategies, including “three-cueing” — which coaches students to use context or pictures to guess what unknown words are. Research, much of it decades old and now called the , shows that systematic phonics instruction is key to helping students become fluent readers. But these other approaches have largely ignored it.

Why? In six episodes, Hanford and her colleague Christopher Peak deftly stitch together the complete picture: an overview of those popular approaches to reading instruction, the national political battle over how to teach literacy and the reading guru whose three apostles, with their billion-dollar publishing company, championed this flawed approach.

The podcast focuses on the idea, established by reading guru Marie Clay, that children can become readers by leaning on context clues instead of sounding out words. Two very popular curricula from celebrated authors — “Units of Study for Teaching Reading” from Lucy Calkins and “Leveled Literacy Intervention” from Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell — were the primary promoters of this flawed idea in school districts and education schools across the country, generating millions of dollars for them and their publisher, Heinemann.

Throughout, Hanford and Peak ground these episodes not in who should be blamed, but in who bears the consequences. The fallout is hitting students struggling to learn to read, parents flummoxed by their children’s lack of progress and teachers who keep saying something like, “If only I had known. …”

Of course, the significance of that fallout hinges on whether Hanford and Peak’s provocative claims about the scope and quality of these curricula are actually correct. There are compelling reasons to believe they are.

Regarding its scope, a 2019 nationally representative Education Week found that “Leveled Literacy” intervention was used by 43% of K-2 early reading and special education teachers, while “Units of Study” was used by 16%. These curricula are Heinemann’s biggest sellers. Hanford and Peak found Heinemann brought in over $233 million in the past decade from just the 100 largest districts. Imagine their business across the remaining 13,000 smaller school districts. 

As to the quality, EdReports, a nonprofit reviewer of K-12 instructional materials, last year found lacking — labeling both as “does not meet expectations.” However, you need not lean on expert reviews to see the disconnect in this curricular approach. In a tacit admission, Calkins revised her “Units of Study” curriculum to incorporate the Science of Reading. The disconnect is even plainer in Fountas and Pinnell’s of their approach that encourages guessing words from context. They write, “If a reader says ‘pony’ for ‘horse’ because of information from the pictures. … His response is partially correct, but the teacher needs to guide him to stop and work for accuracy.”

That response lays bare how detached their approach is from teaching students to actually read text. Getting “pony” from the word “horse” can be “partially correct” only if the goal is something other than teaching students to read accurately, because it rewards children for learning to do something other than read the word. It rewards guessing. Such a strategy might get students partial meaning in the short run, but it will produce struggling readers over time. Indeed, it has.

Hanford deserves credit for her work championing the Science of Reading and pressing the case against predominant approaches to literacy used in many schools across a nation of struggling readers. Fortunately, some states and districts are . recently outlawed three-cueing, and New York City has to increase phonics instruction. But it will take time and deliberate efforts to change instruction in schools. In the interim, “Sold a Story” gives frustrated parents of struggling readers good questions to ask and the courage to demand better instruction. Clear, engaging and, yes, enraging reporting like this can help policymakers, teachers and families ensure that they are not sold a story that might hold their young readers back.

In my day job as an education researcher, I know that too many kids never learn to read well. Kids who don’t learn to read fluently by 3^rd grade as the material gets more complex. 

That fact hit home this spring when I noticed my 8-year-old son had picked up a bad reading habit at school. When he came to a word he didn’t recognize, he would guess. 

Rather than sounding out the word and breaking it down into parts, he looks at the first letter or considers other context clues and then tries to guess. Sometimes he looks to me for confirmation and takes his eyes off the page. If I step in to tell him he got it wrong he’ll just try again, without even looking back down. 

As a parent, this process drives me crazy. You can’t read without looking at the words! I also know this guessing strategy is not going to serve him well as he encounters more challenging texts. 

My wife and I are working with my son to slow down, sound out unfamiliar words and use his finger to track his reading. He’s getting better. 

But these problems are not unique to my kid or his neighborhood school in suburban Virginia. Many schools continue to rely on literacy programs that encourage these practices. Meanwhile, reading scores were declining even before COVID-19 hit, and school closures only made things . 

All this led me to start a new initiative to help parents establish positive reading habits from the beginning—before bad habits have time to take root. I’m calling it . 

Read Not Guess will start with a 30-day challenge to help parents get their kids ready to start the next school year strong. It’s free and open to all, and parents who sign up will receive a daily email with a short lesson. The lessons, which run from July 18 to Aug. 19, are meant for busy families and should take only five to 10 minutes to work through. 

I designed the Read Not Guess summer learning challenge to serve parents who want to help their kids but don’t know how or who just need some extra guidance. It will combine the best of a good phonics instruction book plus friendly nudges and regular encouragement, delivered in bite-sized lessons over email. 

By the end of the challenge, children will understand that English is read left to right, be able to identify and sound out the most common phonemes (letter sounds), begin blending those sounds into words, and start reading complete sentences. Parents will gain a deeper understanding of phonics; practice talking to their child about reading; and learn tools, games and assessments to monitor their child’s reading progress going forward.

Why should parents do all this work? Can’t they just rely on the schools to teach their kids to read? It’s been hard to be a parent through the pandemic, and it might be tempting for parents to take it easy this summer. 

But with many schools still in various stages of upgrading their reading curriculum, some classrooms may still be teaching legacy programs that encourage guessing, even though the good readers can sound out difficult words. Parents do not need to shoulder the full burden, but they can play an active role in building good habits and monitoring their child’s progress. Even relatively  parent interventions can lead to big literacy gains for children, especially the most disadvantaged. — like what Read Not Guess will offer — have even more promising results. 

Summer is a time for barbecues and swimming pools. But while school is out and the kids are at home, summer also presents an opportunity for parents to step in and help their children learn to read — not guess. It’s too important to leave to chance.

This article was written and published while the author was with Edunomics Lab at McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.

The test, administered in schools biannually since 1969, had shown only lackluster academic growth in most states for over a decade. The latest scores suggested more of the same, with meaningful declines in fourth- and eighth-grade English. Peggy Carr, then the associate director of the National Center for Education Statistics, observed that improvement was so meager that “students who are struggling the most at reading…are where they were nearly 30 years ago.”

There was a somewhat startling upside, though. Two jurisdictions, Washington, D.C., and Mississippi, attained some of the highest scores in the history of their participation. And while education reformers have hailed the nation’s capital for innovation, with generous per-pupil funding to match, Mississippi’s historically dismal achievement and gnawing racial achievement gaps were long the target . 

But the 2019 results put an end to the snickers. Through the 2010s, when national data offered only rare bright spots amid prolonged stagnation, Mississippi fourth graders charged from the back of the pack to the national average in both math and reading. While eighth graders enjoyed more modest success, their recent gains in math were among the largest of any state. And best of all, the prosperity was shared: Black and Hispanic students, including those from low-income families, alongside their white and middle-class peers.

Carey Wright, Mississippi’s superintendent of schools since 2013, had already seen student performance climb on state assessments for multiple years. Still, her advisors cautioned her to wait for confirmation from NAEP, a nationally representative exam with a high benchmark for proficiency. When that evidence finally came, she said, people in the state were “blown away.”

“It was like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God — that’s so fantastic! And this is Mississippi!’�ĝ&�Բ�����;

The transformation of one of America’s poorest and least-educated states into a fast-rising powerhouse took most outsiders by surprise. In reality, Mississippi’s emergence in 2019 resulted from a generation of groundwork in both schools and state government, with incremental gains coming along the way. Under Wright’s supervision, the Mississippi Department of Education introduced massive changes to instruction and adopted rigorous new learning standards. State lawmakers pushed through a raft of new education bills, including a controversial mandate to hold back third graders who cannot read on grade level. And now, with the COVID era receding and Wright set to retire at the end of this month, bigger and richer states are looking to Mississippi as a model.

“It’s not that they changed their test some year or played some game that made their scores look better. We’ve seen a lot of that kind of thing, and I’ve learned to be super-skeptical,” said Timothy Shanahan, an internationally recognized expert on reading and an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “When you get these kinds of gains over this period of time, something real must be going on.”

Rachel Canter, a former teacher who founded the advocacy group in 2008, said that the state’s remarkable success is partially attributable to its of reading pedagogy. But hard-won improvement has mostly come from accepting hard truths and embracing accountability, she added.

“If you go back 20 years and look at what our state required children to know and be able to do, it was practically meaningless. Over a 20-year-period, we have gone through — in fits and starts — periods of improving our standards; improving our assessments to measure those standards; and then saying, ‘OK, still not good enough.’” 

‘An abysmal failure’

Canter began her career in education in 2004 as a Teach for America corps member in the Mississippi Delta. A native Mississippian who grew up in the relatively well-off college town of Starkville, she was shocked by the level of deprivation in her host community, where are poor and African-American. 

The signs of failure were everywhere: dilapidated desks handed down since the 1950s, a chaotic “activity schedule” that frequently preempted math courses, and despairing attitudes among some teachers toward even the possibility of improvement. Canter, a middle school English teacher, frequently taught students who couldn’t read.  

“They were functionally a second or third grader, but they could float along and end up in seventh grade,” she remembered. “And it’s like, ‘You’re now three to four years behind. What do you do in a single year?’ That was what made me realize that I couldn’t solve this problem as a classroom teacher.” 

At that time, perhaps the loudest voice in Mississippi’s advocacy and policy environment belonged to the Barksdale Reading Institute, founded in 2000 with the aim of gradually lifting the state’s reading performance through strategic partnerships with K-12 schools and colleges. One of its first moves was to pay for a dozen faculty members to introduce evidence-based literacy practices in Mississippi’s eight public teacher training programs. 

But the intractability of the problem was revealed in a 2003 report written by Kelly Butler, a former classroom teacher: teaching candidates in pre-literacy courses received an average of about 20 minutes of total phonics instruction. The finding was particularly galling given the of experts that children in early grades be exposed to phonics as a critical building block for reading.

“It was an abysmal failure because we had no impact on teacher preparation,” lamented Butler, who now serves as the institute’s CEO. “Faculty didn’t know the science. One of the findings was that they really didn’t influence each other. And there was no requirement of what they had to teach.”

The scattered focus on teacher preparation matched Mississippi’s infamously weak approach to setting academic expectations. In a 2007 study of comparative learning standards across 48 states, Mississippi’s were ranked , such that a “proficient” reading score on its statewide exam in Massachusetts. 

In response to persistent criticism, Mississippi joined 45 other states in adopting the Common Core State Standards in 2010. By this time, partly in response to Barksdale’s report, the state licensing board also required pre-service teachers to complete six hours of courses on the science of reading. But the state’s education system hadn’t overcome its reputation for shoddiness — well-known not just in policy circles, but also the business community. Young workers’ lack of skills had become a major liability in Mississippi’s ongoing campaign to attract jobs. 

“[Employers] are drawn to places where there was good education and an educated workforce,” said Phil Bryant, Mississippi’s governor from 2012 to 2020. “And they would verbalize that to me: ‘We won’t come to Mississippi unless you do a better job of educating the workforce.’”

Political shift

After years of somewhat meandering progress, it was a political shift that changed the game in Mississippi. 

A in the 2011 round of legislative elections gave the GOP control over the state House of Representatives. Bryant won office the same day, making him Mississippi’s first Republican governor to enjoy unified control over government in nearly 150 years. According to Canter — who, by this point, was formally lobbying legislators as the head of Mississippi First — the consequence was less an ideological shift than a collection of “new faces in these positions of power.” 

“That opened the door to…conversations that nobody had really been having before, because these were people who were looking to make their name on something and say, ‘This is my issue,’” she said.

The 2013 legislative session would be perhaps the most consequential in the history of Mississippi schools. A landmark bill was passed . So was a set of voluntary pre-kindergarten programs for 3- and 4-year olds (previously, Mississippi was the not to finance pre-K). 

But the most ambitious new measure was the , a sweeping new statute that required third graders to score above the lowest level on an annual exam — the so-called “reading gate” assessment — in order to progress to the fourth grade. 

The requirement generated controversy when it came into effect in 2015, with one parent group pushing to and of kids crying or becoming sick over stress from the test. Even the Barksdale Institute’s Butler, who backed the law’s other measures — such as improved professional development offerings and the placement of expert literacy coaches in struggling schools — originally opposed the retention policy, fearing that accountability would predominantly fall “on the backs of 9-year-olds.” With time, however, she came to favor its application as a “wake-up call” for adults.

“Everyone said, ‘You know you’re going to hold thousands of children back,’” recalled then-Gov. Bryant. “Well, whose fault is that? It’s ours. Our job is to create a safe learning environment where they can read, and if we don’t do that, it’s our fault.”

Erica Jones, a former first- and second-grade teacher who now leads the Mississippi Association of Educators, said that the increased state guidance on reading instruction began to be apparent about a decade ago. 

In the early 2000s, when Jones began teaching, it seemed “as if many of the different school districts were just kind of picking programs that they wanted to implement,” Jones said. “But around 2010, I noticed that the state was giving us a lot of direction on which way we should go with reading instruction, and that really seemed to pull us together.” 

Butler added that the staunchly prescriptive approach taken by state education authorities in 2013 flew in the face of local control. Superintendents could sometimes “resent” the presence of state-mandated coaches in their district, along with the need to periodically employ substitutes while their English teachers received necessary training.

In most instances, Butler observed, “People say, ‘We want to choose our own professional development, and we want to decide when we do it and who gets it. The Literacy-Based Promotion Act essentially said, ‘Here’s who’s gonna get it.’ And the state department…said, ‘And here’s what you’re gonna get.'”

‘Bottom line’ on standards

But whatever momentum had built up behind school reform, repeated shakeups to the education system were never going to sit easily with voters — particularly the conservatives who had backed Bryant in 2011. 

The national pushback against Common Core, depicted by its mostly Republican detractors as and a tool of ideological , swept into Mississippi in 2014. It landed on the desk of Wright, a former high-level administrator in Maryland and Washington, D.C., who was appointed state superintendent the previous year. Practically from the moment she took the job, she had to navigate a treacherous debate around the newly controversial initiative. 

As teachers and school leaders sought to implement the standards, various members of Mississippi’s governing class sought (and ) to scrap them. The years-long imbroglio eventually proceeded to the same resolution that many red states engineered: a rebrand, dumping the blighted “Common Core” title while only subtly tweaking its substance. But as that process played out, Bryant noted that his schools chief had a gift — uncommon in both politicians and bureaucrats — for disarming hostile audiences.

“She would go on conservative talk radio and spend an hour breaking down the standards, describing each one of them,” he remembered. “You just don’t get a lot of education secretaries who say, ‘I’ll go on with the most conservative talk show host because I feel comfortable explaining this.’ But Carey Wright did it.”

Notwithstanding other major priorities, the superintendent said that maintaining rigor in academic standards was her “bottom line.”

“The standards we had before had been evaluated by two outside organizations — one using the term ‘worst in the nation,’ and the other using the word ‘horrific,’” Wright said. “I have every confidence in children in this state that they can reach those standards, but we had to set higher expectations.”

Efforts to move away from the new policy, now called the Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards, died down by the end of Bryant’s term. But some public distaste still exists around the policy of literacy-based retention, particularly after Wright lifted the required score to pass the “reading gate” test in 2018. The next year, roughly one-quarter of the state’s third graders . 

Superintendent Cherie Labat is the head of schools in Columbus, a mid-sized city near the border with Alabama; in 2019, almost 40 percent of third graders in her district after their first crack at the test. While generally supportive of the academic progress in recent years, she reflected that the pain felt by families as a result of the reading law “would give any educator pause.”

“I had a parent come up to me at Walgreens and say, ‘I read to my child. I do homework with her two or three times a week. I send her to school, and she has decent grades,’” the superintendent said. “And then she says, ‘Dr. Labat, am I a good mother? Because my daughter didn’t pass the reading gate.’ I think I’ve never forgotten that.”

A ‘gratifying’ foundation

Happily, recent results from the literacy exam have also given the state perhaps its best news since 2019. In May, the Mississippi Department of Education reported that passed the reading gate on their first try this year, nearly identical to the rate measured just before the pandemic. 

The announcement occasioned jubilation locally as evidence that COVID’s tremendous disruption to K-12 coursework had not derailed the state’s long path to better performance. It could also serve as a valediction for the schools regime now passing from the stage. After an unusually long tenure in office, on June 30. Last week, the Barksdale Reading Initiative that its founders would soon close its doors after mostly realizing their original goals. Bryant left office two years ago. 

Changes to policy are still moving forward, with the legislature signing a huge teacher pay raise in April and bolstering in early childhood education. But Labat argued that still more needed to be done for the dozens of school districts across the state that educate severely disadvantaged children. One report last year showed that, while lawmakers in Jackson have continually funded the K-12 priorities they created, Mississippi than each of its nearest Southern neighbors. 

“We have digital technology coaches, we have literacy coaches, we have phonics-first training,” she said. “But overall, we have to look at the bigger picture, the whole child, to understand that Mississippi can’t be defined by its reading scores. We will be judged as a state by how effectively we have educated our underserved students and how we work to promote the least among us.”

Trends statewide appear positive as Wright prepares to hand off her duties; preliminary data from this year’s round of state assessments suggests a strong COVID bounce-back, she revealed. In the meantime, education leaders from around the country are closely studying for teacher preparation and citing the Mississippi example for K-12 improvement.

“To know that the foundation has been laid in Mississippi is very, very gratifying,” Wright said.

“We’re asking you to take a pledge today,” he said during the May 20 Zoom session, providing a link for participants to sign. Other elements of Thurmond’s agenda include for 100,000 children, free access for families to ebooks and a campaign to deliver to children’s homes.

The event followed the work of a literacy task force Thurmond created last fall. But the superintendent, who is running for reelection, was clear that as long as he’s in charge, California won’t follow the lead of other states — adopting a statewide literacy policy that prioritizes phonics, the connections between letter sounds and written words.

“We are not promoting a one-size-fits-all approach in California,” he said. “That’s been tried before. Our state is too large, is too diverse.” 

Critics dismissed Thurmond’s plan to combat what they describe as a literacy crisis in the nation’s most populous state. 

District leaders, advocates and some lawmakers want all schools to screen for dyslexia, a learning disability, and adopt phonics-based instruction. While Mayor Eric Adams has mandated a phonics-based curriculum and Michigan lawmakers are that would require dyslexia screening, California, some argue, passed up an opportunity to address long-standing achievement gaps in children’s reading.

Overall, 37 percent of the state’s fourth-graders score below the basic level on . The average score for Hispanic students is 27 points below that of white students, and the gap between Black and white students is even larger.

“We keep applying patchwork solutions to a system that never worked,” said Todd Collins, a school board member of the Palo Alto Unified School District in Silicon Valley. He’s also an organizer of the , which last year issued a “report card” ranking districts on the percentage of high-need Hispanic students proficient in reading by third grade. “Library cards and e-books are not going to fix a system that doesn’t teach kids right in the first place.”

Some members of Thurmond’s literacy agree. Kareem Weaver, part of the Oakland NAACP’s education committee and leader of a nonprofit focusing on literacy, said the group produced “a grab bag” of solutions. 

But they “didn’t get to the root cause of why kids aren’t reading,” he said. “We’re not explicitly teaching them how to read and crack the code.”

Thurmond isn’t opposed to districts adopting phonics-based instruction but instead emphasized that because of relief funds and a budget surplus “California has more resources than we’ve ever seen” to provide teacher training and increase the number of reading specialists in schools. passed last year requires new teachers entering the field to know how to teach “foundational reading skills,” but the state isn’t pushing districts to adopt a specific curriculum.

During Thurmond’s online event, only Tyrone Howard, an education professor at the University of California Los Angeles and president-elect of the American Educational Research Association, emphasized phonics. 

“I’m old school,” he said. “The data shows that phonics instruction can go a long way in helping kids to develop the fundamentals around reading.”

Roughly 20 states have adopted so-called based on decades of that emphasize phonics, fluency and vocabulary development as the foundations of learning how to read. Some experts who previously embraced strategies that encouraged children to depend on pictures and familiar words to read ones they don’t know have since changed their views. Once an exemplar of this approach, Lucy Calkins updated her curriculum based on the research, according to a recent article that generated a . 

The question in California is whether a commitment is enough.

“We’ve been committing since ‘A Nation at Risk’ and we haven’t gotten there yet,” said Barbara Nemko, superintendent of the Napa County Office of Education, referring to the landmark 1983 report that inspired education reform efforts. One of Thurmond’s task force co-chairs, she added that if the label has become divisive, “then call it something else.”

Policymakers and education groups in the state are also divided over dyslexia screening, even though over 30 states already have such laws in place. 

Thurmond promised to make a currently in development at the University of California San Francisco available to schools once it’s ready, possibly by the 2023-24 school year. But the California Teachers Association opposes that was introduced last year and never received a hearing. They said mandated screening “lessens the instructional time available for learning the required curriculum.” The California School Boards Association also opposes it.

Reading Recovery and Mississippi

Thurmond isn’t the only state leader whose response to what some have called a has come under fire. Some question the support of researcher and state board Chair Linda Darling-Hammond for Reading Recovery, a long-running tutoring program for first graders offered in about . In a , on pandemic recovery and a recent literacy task force , Darling-Hammond linked the program to successful schools. 

A , presented at a research conference, found that children who participated in the program scored lower on state tests in third and fourth grade than those who didn’t participate. Her comments, said Collins from Palo Alto, show “we have a dated and misguided understanding of what works.”

But Darling-Hammond, who also led President Joe Biden’s education transition team and recommended Miguel Cardona to be U.S. education secretary, told ����Ӱ�� that her statements about the program have never been in the “context of an endorsement” and noted that Reading Recovery is listed in the U.S. Department of Education’s “clearinghouse” of . 

She underscored the limitations of the study, including the fact that the researchers collected follow-up results from just a quarter of the third graders and 16% of fourth graders who were part of the original sample. She noted that a on Reading Recovery, presented at the same conference, found positive results for students in England through age 16.

“I think different interventions work well for different students,” Darling-Hammond said “I hope we won’t get wrapped up in a silver bullet idea about any intervention.” 

She said California fourth graders’ reading scores have inched closer to the since 2013 and highlighted the state’s plan this year to spend $500 billion on literacy initiatives, including reading coaches and specialists. Those positions are necessary, she said, because the state hires too many teachers without full credentials.

“In the schools with the greatest needs, you might have half or more of the teachers without any training to teach reading,” she said.

She also pointed to gains in , which in 2019, made more progress in reading than any other state. But she said people often “simplify” the state’s approach by only highlighting teacher training in phonics-based instruction.

“It’s a very robust program,” she said. “Phonics is very important. Phonemic awareness is very important, but that is not all they do.” 

‘An equity issue’

With the state taking what Darling-Hammond called a more “decentralized” direction than Mississippi, some school and district leaders have moved on their own to revamp the way they teach children to read. 

In 2019, when Lilia Espinoza took over as principal of Hardin Elementary in Hollister, California, she found staff members who worked hard on student reading with little to show for it.

“Historically, this school has struggled to really pump out students who are on grade level,” she said. With a high English learner population — as is the case in many California schools — she said teachers thought if children couldn’t read a word, they just didn’t understand the vocabulary instead of not being able to sound it out.

She reached out to , a private school in Seaside, California, that offered training in structured literacy and using practices that have worked with struggling readers. 

Hardin teachers and reading specialists now devote 45 minutes to an hour each day to explicit phonics lessons as part of a larger English language arts curriculum. Children can get “antsy” during that time, Espinoza said. But despite remote learning, the number of students referred to special education has dropped from 21 in 2017-19 to three this year. She thinks the gains would have been stronger if it hadn’t been for the pandemic.

Now, she worries that other “budget issues” will lead the district to cut funding for reading intervention teachers. She started with four, is now down to two, and might only have one next year. She wrote a letter to state leaders asking for more specialists.

“It’s an equity issue,” she said. “Not being able to secure support for early literacy for all students is not OK.”