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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Start with this: Standards are not curriculum

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

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

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

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

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

Ask for expertise and evidence

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

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

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

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

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

Support sustainable change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Missouri law changes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The law is meant to push schools toward proven strategies.

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

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

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

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

Implementing the law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Momentum to change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New curriculum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How did we do it? 

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

Study the Evidence

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

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

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

Co-Create Consensus

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

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

Prioritize Professional Learning

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

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

Offer Ongoing Support for School Leaders

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

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

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

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

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

Take literacy, for example.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why now?  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But many won’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Acknowledge the need for change

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

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

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

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

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

Anticipate challenges in selecting target texts

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

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

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

Engage multiple groups of stakeholders

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

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

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

Lead without looking back

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then came her dyslexia diagnosis. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We want to be the best,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But some states require more than Indiana.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big Ideas for Little Learners

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

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

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

Knowledge-Building in Action

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Schemas Make Skillful Readers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kids like her daughter Clara, a second grader, glommed on to its rich characters; she’s especially fond of Lily, who wears her black hair in a short bob and has a collection of plush toy lions. Fellow teachers, meanwhile, like that it “hits everything” students need to be strong readers.

“It slowly builds, introducing more and more sounds, and then it jumps right into blending those sounds into little words,” Morrison said. At least two independent studies link the program to “significant positive” results.

But that winning combo initially wasn’t enough for Ohio’s education department to put Superkids on its list of approved K-5 reading materials. Morrison homed in on a likely culprit: EdReports, a nonprofit that for nine years has operated as a kind of “Consumer Reports” for the multi-billion dollar K-12 publishing industry. At the time, Ohio leaders approved only programs that won the organization’s coveted green rating. Superkids earned a more modest yellow.

“How EdReports can be the sole basis of this process is astounding,” Morrison, also a local school board member, wrote to the state. Ohio trains teachers in the science of reading, she said, but “this list takes us three steps backward.”

Ohio ultimately relented after Zaner-Bloser, which publishes Superkids, appealed. Temporary as it was, the episode demonstrated the outsize power of EdReports in the world of high-stakes curriculum decisions — a power that has come under increasing scrutiny as more parents embrace the phonics-laden science of reading. Critics of the nonprofit say it has continued to award green ratings to reading programs that might still accommodate balanced literacy — a discredited philosophy in which teachers encourage kids to learn to read by surrounding them with books— and has slapped effective programs with yellow ratings.

In interviews with The 74, EdReports officials say they’ve gotten the message.

Starting in June, its reviews of early reading materials will reflect a fuller embrace of the science of reading. “Phonics and fluency are now non-negotiables” for a green rating, said Janna Chan, EdReports’ chief external affairs officer.  

Reviewers will also verify that materials no longer use “three-cueing” — a practice associated with balanced literacy that encourages students to identify unfamiliar words by picking up clues from text or pictures. Since 2021, at least 10 states have banned the practice.

An internal memo sent to EdReports staff in February and obtained by The 74 acknowledged growing doubts about the organization’s credibility as states pass new reading laws. CEO Eric Hirsch wrote that the organization is “most vulnerable to criticism around our reviews” of comprehensive English language arts programs called basals or “big box” curricula — programs that some have attacked for being “bloated” and giving lip service to the science of reading. Hirsch wrote the memo in response to a Forbes article that critiqued the organization and highlighted newer groups providing alternatives to its reviews.

EdReports contracts with a network of over 600 reviewers, many of them current or former teachers who earn up to nearly $3,000 per review. Working in teams of five for an average of four to six months, they determine if curriculum products meet standards and are easy for teachers and students to use.

Evidence of the organization’s considerable influence isn’t hard to find.  A 74 analysis of GovSpend, a data service that stores recordings of public meetings, reveals that since January 2021, EdReports has been mentioned over 100 times during school board meetings. District leaders and staff frequently invoke its ratings when making budget recommendations.

The “end-all, be-all for curriculum review” is how Bill Hesford, an assistant superintendent in the Bayfield, Colorado, district described the organization during a January discussion of a new math program.

That same month, T.C. Wall, assistant superintendent of the Bolivar, Missouri, schools, assured her board that all reading programs up for consideration had earned the organization’s highest rating.

“We’re starting with quality stuff,” she said.

Financially, there’s much at stake for both districts and curriculum companies. Fueled by a one-time infusion of federal relief funds, school systems spent roughly $19 billion on curriculum in the 2021-22 school year alone. Due to the time and expense such reviews require, districts typically wait as long as six years before revamping their offerings.

Pressure to ‘conform’ 

For many publishers, EdReports’s green stamp of approval is a valuable marketing tool they trumpet in press releases.

Others lost trust in its reviews years ago. 

Collaborative Classroom, a curriculum provider, publishes four literacy programs based on the science of reading used by hundreds of districts. One of them underwent four reviews in three years because, in Hirsch’s view, new features warranted a fresh examination. But the process left Kelly Stuart, the publisher’s president and CEO, exhausted and disillusioned.

“We play in this world as a nonprofit,” she said. “But if we were a for-profit company, there would be a tremendous amount of pressure on us to conform and meet all green.”  

In a world so contentious its seminal debates are called “wars,” critics have been particularly vocal — including those who initially welcomed EdReports. 

Karen Vaites, a literacy expert and advocate, once led marketing efforts for Open Up Resources, a nonprofit that offers free curriculum materials to districts. Declaring that “excellence is now easy to find,” she was among the first to point educators to EdReports in 2018.

In recent years, her views have taken a 180.

“EdReports is no longer an effective guidepost,” said Vaites, who founded the Curriculum Insight Project in January to essentially compete with the organization. One of its first projects is to review Bookworms, an Open Up Resources program that earned a yellow from EdReports, but has research showing effectiveness and won praise from districts that use it.

Vaites said she no longer has a financial relationship with Open Up Resources. But having once been an EdReports “fangirl,” she said she feels “doubly obliged to let people know that they need to look beyond” the site.

If loving memes about curriculum is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

But seriously, enough with districts adopting pricey curricula that bomb @EdReports reviews. #StopTheMadness pic.twitter.com/zAkvHIUsYS

— Karen Vaites (@karenvaites) August 10, 2018

Hirsch declined to address her specific criticisms, but said he and his team plan to gather feedback from researchers, as well as district and state leaders, to respond to critics’ concerns. By the end of the summer, the organization expects to update guidelines for all three of the content areas it reviews — English language arts, math and science — and apply them to next year’s reports. 

Hirsch told The 74 the pivot is in keeping with its mission as an organization geared toward — and staffed by — teachers.

“You’re not a great teacher if you can’t reflect on practice,” he said.

‘No counterbalance’

With backing from major foundations, Hirsch founded EdReports in 2015 to help guide districts toward materials that satisfied the then-relatively new Common Core standards, a set of guidelines in math and language arts that most states still follow. In an attempt to tap into the booming market, many publishers touted their products as “Common Core-aligned” even when their commitments were tenuous at best. Experts say a third-party reviewer was sorely needed. 

“Some publishers had a vice grip on the whole curriculum thing,” said Kareem Weaver, an Oakland literacy advocate featured in The Right to Read, a documentary about the push to provide low-income and minority students with high-quality reading instruction. “Before EdReports, there was no counterbalance to publishers’ claims of being ‘high-quality.’ ”

Now with an $11.5 million annual budget, Hirsch called the organization “amazingly transparent,” without “taking a dime from publishers.” But Weaver thinks EdReports would have a greater impact if its reviews factored in evidence of effectiveness. 

“Don’t just treat kids like guinea pigs,” he said. “Parents have to know if their kid is actually going to get the things they need in regular classroom instruction.”

Hirsch responded that solid, independent evidence of a specific curriculum’s effectiveness is rare. When it does exist, publishers typically offer it in response to reviews. But he conceded that EdReports could make the information easier to find. 

‘Bloated’ materials

Evidence is also important to state leaders, who increasingly expect districts to adopt reading programs based on research. But some experts say publishers are responding to new mandates by “overstuffing” their products — adding structured, phonics-based lessons without removing the older ones.

Vaites points to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Into Reading, one of the three programs approved as part of NYC Reads — a two-year effort to overhaul literacy instruction in the nation’s largest school district. EdReports gave it a green rating, despite complaints about its overabundance of units, lessons and worksheets. 

“As a novice teacher, you’re going to get overwhelmed when you see four pages that go along with one lesson,” said April Rose, an instructional coach at P.S. 132Q in Queens, who works with the United Federation of Teachers to support staff transitioning to the program.  With such wide offerings, some teachers struggle to find assignments for students that match the standards they’re trying to teach, she said, or hop from one skill to the next without giving students deep practice.

Jim O’Neill, a general manager at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, said Into Reading is designed to let teachers “grow while teaching with the program.” The broad range of lessons and activities, he added, is also intended to support students at multiple levels in one classroom.   

“Coming out of the pandemic, there are two things we have — students with different needs, but also new teachers who are just beginning to teach reading,” he said. “Having carefully crafted lesson plans can help them get up and going with the right resources for the right students at the right time.” 

Hirsch acknowledged bloat is a problem, but said publishers are reluctant to remove features some teachers prefer. 

He suggested that districts adopting a new curriculum view EdReports as just a starting point — and follow up with adequate training and support for teachers. 

Timothy Shanahan, an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, agreed. “School districts rely too much on these external reviews without a clear understanding of what they tell you and what they do not,” he said. “They need to give a close look at the programs themselves.”

Disclosure: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, the Overdeck Family Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation provide financial support to EdReports and to The 74.

The project brings Los Angeles in line with other large districts around the country, such as New York City, which have also begun implementing evidence-backed tactics for teaching literacy, amid a national reading crisis.

But LAUSD faces some unique obstacles. A report released in February by the advocacy group Families in Schools detailed gaps in instruction and disconnects between parents and teachers on how to teach reading. 

LAUSD lags in reading scores behind other districts in California, a state with one of the lowest literacy rates in the country.  

LA Unified’s plan also places California’s largest district at odds with state lawmakers, who this month tabled a bill that would require reading instruction based on decoding words using letters and a focus on phonics. 

The proposed law, which was backed by groups including the California State PTA and the NAACP, died in committee after the state teachers union and English learner groups registered their opposition. 

The legislature’s rejection of the bill swung the nation’s most populous state away from a national trend for mandates of science-based reading instruction. 

Dozens of states have taken up such laws and policies, including Mississippi, Ohio, Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and the Carolinas. 

The push for a unified, evidence-based approach to literacy instruction faces obstacles in Los Angeles Unified, where only about a quarter of students met reading standards on the most recent assessments. 

The district in June replaced a key intervention program aimed at boosting reading and math skills for struggling elementary school students that had employed materials based on the science of reading.  

The new approach, known as the Literacy and Numeracy Intervention Model, will cost less and reach middle school students as well, according to district officials.

Carvalho said in a December interview that the district had made “significant progress” in rolling out a unified set of curricular options aligned to the science of reading to elementary schools under the effort, and that by June 2024 it would “achieve systemic adoption for all grade levels.”

Last month he adjusted the timeline, saying in a subsequent interview that all elementary schools would have access to the materials by the start of the upcoming academic year in August. 

The superintendent said the district would use the extra time over the summer to conduct training for teachers on the new instructional approaches and materials.

“I think we’re actually in a good place so far, considering the size of our district,” said Carvalho. “It’s a massive undertaking.” 

Under the district’s new approach, Carvalho said, schools will choose from a menu of curricula that contain approaches to literacy instruction including phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary. 

The so-called “science of reading” approach favored by LAUSD and many other districts today stands in contrast to the “whole-language” theory once employed by many schools, which emphasized learning to read by using visual cues and words the student already knows, rather than decoding the sounds of their letters.

“There will be a number of reading series, all meeting the criteria, and then principals and their school councils have the flexibility to adopt for their own school, any one of the ones that meet the criteria,” said Carvalho. 

The adoption of a unified approach to reading instruction will provide consistency across schools and bolster the education of transfer students in a district with large numbers of transient kids, Carvalho contended.   

Four decades of research show the science of reading works, Carvalho said, with more recent studies showing it can boost literacy rates for struggling students and reverse declines in pandemic learning loss. 

A recent study conducted by researchers at Stanford University found that test scores at 66 of California’s lowest-performing schools jumped after educators adopted approaches in line with the science of reading.  

Students in several other states have already exceeded pre-pandemic literacy levels by employing curriculum with explicit phonics instruction, according to a Brown University analysis of test score data.

Carvalho said Los Angeles schools that have already begun using the district’s approved literacy materials and teaching methods have embraced the changes and begun to show some academic progress.  

Students at Esperanza Elementary School in Westlake have made significant gains on reading assessments following the adoption of phonics-based teaching materials and methods promoted by the district, from Core Knowledge Language Arts, said principal Brad Rumble. 

Less than half of first graders at the school met reading benchmarks before the roll-out of phonics-based lessons began in 2021, according to Rumble, but 65% met standards this year. Likewise, the principal said, second graders reading on grade level rose from 39% to 61%. 

“We start with the sounds, and then we move to more complex skills, like decoding and sight recognition,” Rumble explained. “We don’t just forget what we’ve learned.” 

Students at the school tackle vocabulary development and the understanding of language structure, becoming fluent readers by grade three, Rumble said, “and then, those fluent readers comprehend what they’re reading.”

Core Knowledge Language Arts help teachers at Esperanza Elementary build systematic reading lessons, said Rumble. The gains made by students at his school point the way that Carvalho wants the rest of the district to go.   

With high numbers of students living in poverty, and large populations of homeless children and immigrant families, Los Angeles Unified faces special challenges in reading instruction.     

The Families in Schools report found that just 15% of parents knew what their schools reading curriculum was, while only about half said they had the tools to help their child learn reading. 

Just 40% of Los Angeles students can read at grade level by third grade, the report notes, with just 9% of English learners meeting standards. By eighth grade, less than 1% of English learners met standards.

The report lauded LAUSD’s new efforts to educate teachers in the science of reading and instruct parents to teach literacy at home, but said a “greater, long-term commitment is needed,” to build on recent, slight gains in test scores.  

The group’s CEO Yolie Flores, a former vice president of the LAUSD Board of Education, said the district can do better. 

“Families understand that if their children can’t read, it’s essentially game over,” said Flores. “This is why we urge Superintendent Carvalho and the LAUSD board of education to deepen its efforts.”

Flores said Carvalho’s promise to put the science of reading in every Los Angeles elementary school is a step in the right direction. The district now needs to ensure the new lessons are implemented, she said.   

“We can’t keep kicking the proverbial can down the road,” said Flores.   

Carvalho said that so far he’s heard few complaints with the program, although some concerns have been raised by members of the English-language learning community, he said, with what can been seen as a one-size-fits all approach of uniform curricula. 

The local teachers union, he said, has not registered any opposition to the project. United Teachers Los Angeles did not respond to a request for comment on the matter. 

Although other states have had success in legislative mandates for evidence-based reading instruction, California lawmakers dropped a proposed law after the state’s largest teachers union registered its opposition. 

In a letter opposing the legislation, the California Teachers Association said the bill  would duplicate current literacy programs and limit teachers’ discretion in serving diverse student populations, including English learners. 

Separately, advocates for English learners also sent letters to lawmakers in opposition to the bill, saying the state needs a plan that “centrally addresses” the needs of bilingual students.   

California assemblywoman Blanca Rubio, a Democrat and teacher who authored the bill, said her own time in the classroom informed her belief in phonics-based instruction. 

“For me, it is not one size fits all approach,” said Rubio. “The science of reading takes into account the research on how kids best learn to read. When I was a teacher, we set goals and we used the data to inform our instruction.”  

Carvalho, who supported Rubio’s bill, said results from state reading assessments taken by LA Unified students this spring will help determine whether the district’s roll-out of evidence-based reading instruction is working.   

Regardless, the superintendent is confident in the district’s new approach to literacy instruction. “I’m a true believer that the basics of reading instruction and philosophy, must be rooted in a science of reading,” Carvalho said.

Assemblymember Blanca Rubio (D-Baldwin Park) and 13 co-authors have proposed a bill that would update the state’s English curriculum with the science of reading – research that has found the best way to teach reading is through phonics, phonemic awareness, oral reading fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

The bill calls for more instructional materials and curriculum for classrooms to align with the science of reading. It also emphasizes the need for increased professional development for teachers and more progress monitoring for students struggling with reading. 

“All English language arts, English language development, and reading textbooks and instructional materials for transitional kindergarten, kindergarten, and any of grades 1 to 8, inclusive, shall adhere to the science of reading,” reads the bill which was submitted to the Assembly’s education and higher education committee in February.

Schools would require a waiver if educators wanted to use instructional materials that aren’t aligned with the science of reading. It is supported by 12 Democrats and two Republicans in the state assembly.

 A December 2023 policy brief by EdVoice, Decoding Dyslexia CA and Families In Schools found 60% of California students aren’t reading at grade level skills by the time they reach third grade. 

“As an educator, I have firsthand knowledge of the struggles instructors face to ensure their students know how to read,” Rubio said in a statement. “California teachers work tirelessly to better the success of each student. However, California is failing its students, especially diverse students from low-income families.”

In the 2022-2023 school year, 31% of third-graders in low-income families were reading on grade level. For students not considered low-income, 63% were reading on grade level.

That trend has been steady for nearly a decade, with low-income students underperforming in reading tests every year since at least 2014.

“Historically, we’ve seen low performance in literacy in California,” said Eugenia Mora-Flores, a professor and an assistant dean at USC’s Rossier School of Education. “It’s not surprising, actually. We’ve definitely seen low literacy performance in large districts like L.A. Unified and others where we have students that are not performing at grade level.”

To address low scores, legislators want teachers to use the science of reading. Some schools across the state already use this method when teaching students. Others use “whole language,” which focuses on the meanings of words instead of breaking them down into pieces.

That’s different from the science of reading, which relies on phonics and encourages students to learn how letter combinations sound out loud to decode words based on their spellings.

“[The science of reading] is an acknowledgment that kids will learn to read if they can learn the letters, sound them out and gradually pick up on fluency over time,” said Pedro Noguera, dean of USC’s education school. “If you don’t read at proficiency by third grade, then you’re in trouble because everything in school is literacy-based. After learning to read, then you read to learn, right? If you can’t read a math problem, you can’t do the math.”

Noguera said a mandate alone won’t solve California’s literacy problem without looking at the bigger picture when it comes to teaching kids to read.

“If we just focus on the science of reading, on phonics, we’re also missing the point, right?” Noguera said. “If we want kids to be good readers, phonics is not going to take them there. They need good books. They need a comprehensive approach to literacy.” 

“All English language arts, English language development, and reading textbooks and instructional materials for transitional kindergarten, kindergarten, and any of grades 1 to 8, inclusive, shall adhere to the science of reading,” the bill reads.

Dozens of states across the country have already implemented laws enforcing the science of reading.

Last year, Indiana mandated that schools must use the science of reading by fall 2024. So have legislators in Michigan, Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and the Carolinas, among others. 

In a state with one of the lowest literacy rates in the country, Mora-Flores said it will come down to how well the mandate is implemented across California.

“In some ways, [the bill] can be seen as a good thing because it’s saying, at minimum, we all need to make sure kids are getting something, and you’re going to be held accountable to it because now it’s policy,” Mora-Flores said. “On the other side of that, it’s really going to come down to the quality of translation and implementation.”

This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Starting next year, Ohio school districts and community schools will have to use core curriculum and instructional materials for English language arts and reading intervention programs from lists created by the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce as part of the state’s science of reading implementation.

ODEW recently released their list for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten through fifth grade, and about a third of the state’s school districts and community schools are already using at least one of the initially approved core reading instruction curriculum, according to ODEW survey results.

This is part of ODEW’s efforts to implement the science of reading across classrooms starting next school year.

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The state’s two-year, $191 billion budget included science of reading provisions — $86 million for educator professional development, $64 million for curriculum and instructional materials, and $18 million for literacy coaches.

The science of reading is based on decades of research that shows how the human brain learns to read and incorporates phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Ohio is one of 37 states that have passed laws or implemented new policies related to evidence-based reading since 2013, according to Education Week.

“There’s nothing more important than young people knowing how to read,” Gov. Mike DeWine said back in January at ODEW. “I’m convinced that using the right curriculum and making sure all the teachers are teaching in that way based upon the science of reading is going to make a huge, huge difference in the next few years.”

It has previously been reported that 40% of Ohio’s third-graders are not proficient in reading and 33% of third graders were not proficient in reading before COVID-19.

“I think this is a great opportunity to really improve reading in the state of Ohio and it’s one thing I’m going to monitor myself very, very closely,” DeWine said.

ODEW Survey

One of the first steps in preparing to get the science of reading in every Ohio classroom was figuring out what curriculum is currently being used in schools and what professional development educators are receiving.

ODEW sent a survey in September to all public school and community school superintendents (1,007 in total) about the instructional materials they use and professional development training their educators receive. Almost all of them (995) completed the survey as of Dec. 22 and ODEW recently released the survey results.

The survey showed 789 school districts and community schools use the same core instructional materials for kindergarten through fifth grade. Of those, 93% use published curriculum while the remaining 7% use locally created instructional materials for core literacy instruction.

Professional development

Nearly 70% of school districts and community schools said their teachers previously completed science of reading professional development before this current school year, according to the survey results.

The science of reading provisions in the budget includes stipends for teachers to receive professional development in the science of reading.

K-5 teachers, English language teachers in grades 6-12, intervention specialists, English learner teachers, reading specialists and instructional coaches will receive $1,200 stipends. There will also be $400 stipends for middle and high schoolers teachers in other subject areas.

All teachers and administrators must complete their professional development by July 2025, unless they have already completed a similar course.

“It was very plain to me and to my wife, Fran as we traveled around the state last year that a lot of teachers had come out of their college without really the background in science of reading,” DeWine said. “So this is going to take a while, but I think teachers are embracing it when they really start to see the results.”

The Ohio Department of Higher Education Chancellor is required to create an audit process that shows how every educator training program aligns with teaching the science of reading instruction.

Literacy coaches

The budget will fund 100 literacy coaches that will help public schools with the lowest level of proficiency in literacy based on their performance in the state’s English language arts assessment.

More than 400 community schools and districts reported having no literacy coaches. 18 districts and community schools have between six and 10 literacy coaches, and 10 reported having more than 10 literacy coaches, according to the survey results.

In 2020, the Aldine Independent School District became the first district in Texas to adopt a high-quality, knowledge-based reading curriculum. It was a seismic change for teachers, who had been using a familiar balanced literacy program with skills-focused lessons and leveled readers for several years. But it was a necessary change for students — in 2018-19, just 30 percent of Aldine third graders were reading at or above grade level.  

Despite the challenges of COVID-19 and its effect on academic achievement, we have made strides by implementing the Amplify CKLA curriculum. Today, teachers lead highly structured, thematic units that focus on the same content over a period of weeks. All students work with the same knowledge-rich, grade-level texts, whether they read them independently or with support. That gives every student the opportunity to build vocabulary and a base of common knowledge, which boosts reading comprehension and fosters inclusive communities of learning. 

Our students have made rapid progress — within the first two years, 50 percent of third graders were reading at or above grade level. The percentage of third graders scoring “well below” benchmark dropped from 48 percent to 36 percent. These are heavy lifts in Aldine, where about 90 percent of students are economically disadvantaged and more than half are English language learners. 

Students’ academic achievement and development rely on their teachers’ understanding and execution of the Amplify CKLA curriculum. As instructional specialists, we have implemented robust curriculum-based professional learning to ensure Aldine teachers are prepared to deliver strong instruction that meets the needs of all students.  

Curriculum-based professional learning brings teachers and instructional leaders together to probe and practice individual lessons, which has helped our teachers implement new curriculum with fidelity. During these sessions, teachers internalize, annotate, collaborate, and rehearse lessons within units of study. They identify the most critical ideas and skills students should encounter, the most likely misconceptions students may experience, and the scaffolds or learning supports needed to grant access to the content to all learners.  

This sort of study doesn’t happen overnight. Here are three key aspects of this work that have shaped our progress: 

Closing the Research-Practice Gap 

Too often, research stands a world apart from the educators who work directly with students. 

Aldine provided resources and time to close that gap. Even before the new curriculum was announced, both teachers and instructional specialists like us read Natalie Wexler’s The Knowledge Gap and participated in related staff development sessions. Meanwhile, a literacy task force was studying curriculums and visiting out-of-state classrooms to make their recommendation. 

This shared reading assignment and attendant discussions helped teachers and specialists learn the science behind best practices and understand the role that building knowledge plays in literacy development. Both were critical when it came time for our teachers to trust that an unfamiliar and seemingly out-of-reach reading curriculum could be effective in Aldine classrooms. 

Revamping PLCs for Curriculum Study

In the past, meeting time for professional learning communities (PLCs) was spent on grade-level “business,” like planning field trips or sharing concerns from individual classroom observations. These are key issues, but they don’t necessarily translate into instructional innovation or academic progress. 

Even when meetings were focused on instruction, master teachers and teachers with outsized experience or confidence spoke up most often. As a result, meetings did not include the voices of all teachers, especially novices or those serving the most disadvantaged student groups. 

Our district revamped grade-level meetings to focus on in-depth curriculum study. Today, during Curriculum-based Professional Learning (CPLs), instructional specialists facilitate in-depth curriculum study sessions, which follow detailed discussion protocols. These one- and two-page discussion guides help teachers unpack and internalize the logic of each unit and lesson, identify opportunities to make cultural connections with and among students, and focus attention on the essential questions and tasks each lesson needs to ensure students master the learning goal.

This structure and guidance help ensure teachers’ time together is purposeful and driven by our common curriculum. In addition, by focusing attention on a shared resource, we’ve seen that more teachers speak up in CPLs, which gives a grade-level group a wider view of classroom practice and learning. 

Building Teachers’ Trust 

Changing curriculum means changing instructional practice and underlying beliefs. Teachers need to trust that a new curriculum will work with their students before they will teach it as intended.  

Often, teachers who work with struggling students are initially wary of high-quality, knowledge-based curriculum. In our district, second-grade teachers were concerned that students would not successfully engage with a unit based on grade-level texts about The War of 1812, for example.  

Ongoing curriculum-based professional learning with grade-level colleagues helped address these concerns. As teachers studied and practiced units and lessons together, they could see the logic and variety of ways students at all levels could access, understand, and make connections with rigorous content. And, as they experienced this new teaching in their classrooms, they could share challenges and evidence of growth. No one teacher was going it alone.  

Any change in curriculum requires strong leadership from the Central Office. But when it comes to changing what actually happens in classrooms and schools, teachers are the real decision-makers. By intentionally equipping teachers with curriculum-based professional learning, we are setting our schools up for long-lasting success. 

Edna Cruz is a bilingual skills specialist at Reed Academy in the Aldine Independent School District, which includes parts of Houston and Harris County, Tx. She is a member of the Curriculum Matters Professional Learning Network, which supports district leaders from around the country implementing high-quality instructional materials. Alaura Mack is an instructional skills specialist for English Language Arts at Reed Academy and is also a member of the Curriculum Matters Professional Learning Network.

I became passionate about helping kids learn to read — and learn to love reading. But I didn’t always have the tools and training I needed. Today I do, and it’s vital other school and system leaders develop that professional expertise, too. 

Here in Massachusetts, as in many states, schools are in the midst of a literacy overhaul that includes the adoption of new instructional materials aligned with the science of reading. They’re also getting training in these more effective ways to teach kids to read.  

That’s a big step forward. Research confirms that outdated ways of teaching reading need to go, and teachers need to be supported with effective resources and aligned professional development.

In Weymouth Public Schools, we’ve tapped state funds to help fund a new English Language Arts curriculum aligned with the best research, train teachers and hire literacy coaches, as well as pay a classroom teacher a stipend to work across all grade levels providing additional reading instruction to colleagues. Just as important, we ensured that the district’s principals, and I, also got science of reading instruction.

Training leaders alongside teachers is somewhat uncommon. But it shouldn’t be. 

In my district, principals, assistant principals and district leaders spend at least an hour a day, and usually more, observing teachers and giving them feedback. Since not all have the skills to hold deep conversations that can invoke pedagogical change, we provide training to create and calibrate walk-through tools to identify what observers should be seeing and to help them provide feedback that is thoughtful and meaningful. 

Given the major changes we’ve made in literacy instruction, my colleagues and I needed additional professional development to help teachers do their jobs well. Literacy instruction today is vastly different from how those of us in leadership positions learned to teach reading.

We now prioritize explicitly teaching phonics — the relationships between letters and sounds — whereas in the past teachers might have asked children to guess at words based on the pictures or storyline of a book. We also focus on developing background knowledge, so our students now read books and other material around important themes, allowing them to build their understanding of a topic and exposing them to more complex reading material. This also expands students’ vocabulary and helps improve their writing, speaking, and listening skills.

Sitting in professional development sessions alongside teachers in my district recently, I was able to see the challenges they faced in implementing the new curriculum, which demands more of students. And I was able to think about ways to help them. In particular, they were worried about effectively planning and pacing their lessons and ensuring they understood the science of reading and were shifting their practices accordingly. I followed up with our district’s literacy coaches and asked them to co-teach and model effective lessons; discuss the pacing with teachers; and share and talk through research and resources to deepen educators’ understanding of the science of reading. 

In addition, in training developed by the publisher of our reading curriculum and tailored to school leaders — a rare offering — I learned what to look for when I went into classrooms to conduct observations. These included clear, transparent learning goals and evidence they were being met; good lesson cadence or pacing; and high student engagement. We use the publisher’s tool, calibrated by our district leaders, to see that indicators of progress are being met by both students and teachers.

This was helpful when a principal and I dropped in on a classroom recently. The students were not talking and working in groups, which the lesson called for and which builds knowledge and improves speaking and listening skills. Good literacy instruction should foster content-related conversations among students that deepen their learning. By providing the teacher with feedback about what we did —and didn’t — see, we were able to work together to improve the learning happening in that classroom.

The district’s progress hasn’t been isolated to just a few classrooms. We track and collaborate around data in real time, using cards that we create that show individual progress for every student. Administrators and educators use these to drive discussions about what improvements need to be made, and how. We monitor students’ progress weekly and can quickly change an intervention if it is not working. The result has been a rise in test scores, with end-of-year results in reading for grades 2 to 5 over the last three years surpassing our goals and beating national benchmarks for academic growth. In 2021, we fell short of the goal of getting 100% of students to typical growth by the end of the year on our interim tests. But, in 2022, we hit 131%, meaning our growth was 31% above the typical progress for the year. Then, in 2023, we hit 146 %. We likely will surpass that this year, as our current mid-year progress toward annual growth is already at 100%.

Keeping this progress going means that school and district leaders, as well as teachers, must tap into the resources needed to successfully make this shift to better reading instruction. To do otherwise would shortchange kids and stymie the progress they must make.

This was late in the aughts, when I had just begun working with adults who couldn’t read. I had no materials, no guidance, no mentors — just a slowly growing group of students who kept finding my GED-prep program and coming back night after night to wait patiently, wearily, for me to figure out how to teach them to read. I’d quickly discovered this challenge was beyond my untrained, intuitive approach.

But now I had a solution! An experienced reading tutor had offered to work with two students. The catch — they would have to travel to her library in another part of the city.

One of these men, Nelson (student names have been changed to protect privacy), was a fierce guy in his early 30’s. He had a shaved head, a gold earring, and a stony, unsmiling face. The other, Joseph, was in his 60’s, tired and worn out from the stress of caring for his aging father and his sick grown daughter on the wages of a man with no reading skills. The two had become friends; I relished the thought of them working with this experienced tutor. I assumed they’d share my excitement, but they just stared blankly back at me. I jumped around trying to explain the qualifications of this tutor and what a lucky break this was. They didn’t budge. Finally, I asked, “Why aren’t you excited about this?”

Nelson glared furiously at me; Joseph finally offered, “We can’t get there unless someone takes us first.” The deep impact of low literacy skills was first revealed to me in this moment. Unable to read directional signage, these able-bodied grown men couldn’t even pursue a solution to their predicament. 

In my 15 years of working with adults who can’t read I’ve seen and heard countless examples of the limitations that low literacy skills impose on adults. But while educators across the country bemoan the reading crisis and call for the heads of Balanced Literacy icons, the discourse entirely avoids the adult education world. 

Those two-thirds of American 4th graders who can’t read at grade level? They will soon be adults who can’t read. 

The 95% of 8^th-graders in Detroit who can’t read proficiently? Same. 

And then what? 

It is long past time for the adult ed world to embrace the evidence and catch up to the Science of Reading. There are obstacles, of course. Adults are not only less cute than children; fewer education dollars are allotted to them, fewer teachers and schools are concerned with them, and absolutely nobody is making bank writing books to entice them to read. There is no Captain Underpants or Dr Seuss for adults reading at a 1^st or 2^nd grade level.

Forty-eight million adult Americans read below the third grade level. Forbes Magazine reported in 2020 that the plague of low literacy skills could be costing the US $2.2 trillion annually in health care, social services, and lost wages. Worse, low literacy is handed down to children; the biggest indicator of a child’s literacy fate lies in the mother’s reading level. 

Economics aside, virtually everyone, on both sides of the aisle, wants adults to be able to read. Clearly this is an issue worthy of our attention; naturally we would expect that the reading wars, the push for evidence-backed methods, the revolution that has taken down the shibboleths of the last decades are impacting the world of adult ed, right? 

You tell me. Let’s look.

Imagine your spouse or parent or neighbor can’t read. 

You know about the Science of Reading. You listened to “Sold a Story”. You believe that Whole Language is a discredited theory and that Balanced Literacy is not an effective way to teach reading.

You set out to find services. You look at libraries, literacy centers, or maybe your local municipal website. You make the happy discovery that many of these sites offer basic literacy services for adults. But when you click on the links you discover the next layer: that phrases like “adult literacy classes” and “adult basic literacy” actually mean classes in computer-training, ESL, job certifications, or GED. Lovely and essential programs, but what about those 48 million who need to learn to read? Where are the structured phonics programs for adults? 

Some literacy centers are clear that they simply don’t offer services for readers below the 4^th grade level. Others aren’t so clear. In New York City, the Mayor’s Office website offers various Adult Basic Ed links for adults who want to learn to read, but when you click to learn more there are circular links and even broken links. A prominent adult literacy foundation names its core methodology for teaching reading as Whole Language, which is like a state-funded health clinic listing blood-letting as one of its services. 

Back in the aughts, under pressure from the students in my program who were so desperate to learn to read that they wouldn’t leave, I began asking around: How do you teach reading to adults? The response from education directors, foundation presidents, teachers, and advocates was dismaying. “Are they retarded?” a director of adult education programs asked. “They probably need to work harder,” said one adult ed program manager.

“We let the students pick their own curriculum,” the local director of a regional literacy program that serves hundreds of students told me. I was confused. “You’re teaching higher level students, then?” I said. “They can read?”

“No, they can’t read,” she said. “But they’re adults so they get to choose what they want to work on.” By then I was several years into learning how to teach reading, and as a literate college graduate I was still struggling to figure it out. But this program expected low-skilled readers to direct their own hero’s journey. 

Where are the materials? 

My early group of adult students was so desperate to learn to read that they tolerated my clumsy early efforts. I cringe to remember what I put them through. The children’s books, the random workbooks, the naïve assumption that I could just show them how to sound out and that would do the trick. Here’s what I know from years in these trenches: for most of these students learning to decode is extremely difficult.  

Adults who didn’t learn to read are often the most dyslexic, had the least effective teaching, and are the most impacted by socio-economic factors. Some, if they are immigrants, never went to school at all, or they may have dropped out in second or third grade.

If raised in the U.S., most either dropped out at the earliest moment or languished for years in special education classrooms.  

All of them now have adult lives, usually with jobs (or job searches), families, and health issues. They have adult brains, often weary, and rigidly attached to ineffective decoding strategies.

The most popular strategies 

Short on decoding skills, most adults come up with strategies. First, they memorize as many words as they can by sight. Second, they use the context to make a guess. Third, they stare in frustration at the word and wait for it to pop into their head. Of course there are unique flourishes. One student would re-write the word repeatedly while sternly admonishing herself: “Get it, girl. Come on, get it.” Many will unleash a chaotic, seemingly panicked jumble of guesses.

The one thing every single one of the adult basic literacy students I’ve met shares is a complete lack of awareness of the reading code. Not one has come into my program with the understanding that sounds are more relevant than letter names or even that sounds are a thing. 

They are, as a group, a case study in the importance of direct instruction of phonemic awareness and phonics.

As much or even more than any group they require the best teaching methods.  

Why then the almost total absence among adult ed programs of evidence-backed basic literacy programs?  Why the attachment to Whole Language principles? Why the undying love for Paolo Freire, who gives us zero specific strategies for teaching reading to adults? 

Is it any wonder that basic literacy students are often considered impossible to retain for more than a few months and not really worth the trouble to run a program for? Look at what they are offered. Why stick around?

I was lucky. 

Carried along by the persistence of that first group of students, I stumbled upon the concept of evidence-based methods for teaching reading — to children. I got certified and brought the program back to my tutoring center. Through the years I kept tweaking the curriculum to better serve both adult students and volunteer tutors until I finally re-wrote the whole thing, making a simple, scripted structured phonics curriculum that volunteers can be trained to use and that follows the evidence to the best of my ability. 

Those two men I mentioned were in my program too early to reap the full benefits. They were subject to the low end of my expertise curve. But they did learn. Nelson, the younger man, told me he’d never known there was anything to reading besides memorizing all the words. He learned slowly and painstakingly to tap and blend the sounds of simple words. He came in one day trying not to smile as he told us that his uncle had left him a note, and he’d read it. Another time he told me he’d gotten lost and started reading street signs. His ex-wife, on the phone with him trying to help, started shouting, “You can read!” He told me, “Words jump out at me everywhere I go.” He was a volatile young man, often disappearing for weeks on end and then shaking his head slyly when I’d ask what he’d been up to. One day he never returned. 

Joseph learned, too, also slowly. He later said that the entire first year of tutoring gave him an excruciating headache. It was worth it. From all of our students I hear the same thing: “Why didn’t they teach us this when we were young?”

If the numbers of children currently reading below grade level are correct, we are heading into an even worse adult literacy crisis than we have now. The rallying cry for effective instruction methods for children is loud and clear. But it is time to sound the bell for the refugees of the broken reading education system as well: all those children who didn’t learn and are now adults, still not reading.

With more than half of the state’s third-graders failing to meet reading benchmarks, education stakeholders across the state agree that existing strategies must change in order to boost student scores.

How to go about that change is where the consensus ends.

State education officials are doubling down on their support of a piece of legislation that they believe will provide equal opportunity for all children learning how to read, despite local school leaders’ misgivings about the implementation of the law.

Officials at the state Department of Education have embarked on a “myth”-busting tour recently, arguing that school superintendents’ public complaints about the process created to carry out the Right to Read law are rife with misinformation.

According to data from the department, over 19,500 students in the third grade are not reading on grade level. That figure represents about 54.5% of third graders statewide, where even in Connecticut’s highest performing districts, about 25% of students are trailing benchmark goals.

“The bottom line is this is something that we have to work on consistently across the state and across all school districts,” said Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker at the state Board of Education meeting earlier this month. “If we do nothing different, these are the numbers we’re [going to continue] producing year after year, and that is not acceptable. We’ve got to do something about it.”

During the 2023 legislative session, lawmakers passed the Right to Read bill, which will require that all Connecticut school districts shift to a reading program aligned with the Science of Reading — a body of research that shows the best way to teach reading is through five pillars of skill development: phonemic awareness, phonics, oral reading fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

The legislation outlined that the state Department of Education would choose a number of programs that adhere to the Science of Reading for districts to choose from and fully implement by 2025. Eighty-five districts and charter schools applied for a waiver, arguing that their existing curriculum met state standards or that they wanted to try a different program.

Only 17 of the 85 school systems fully met the state’s standards, which prompted a vocal reproach from many district leaders who were denied waivers.

Superintendents from Greenwich, Westport and Southington — all of which requested but did not receive waivers and have some of the highest reading scores in the state, between 64% and 74% proficiency — said they do not oppose the evidence-based reading models but are critical of the department’s mandates and processes.

“We have been implementing new resources for the past five years. We have invested heavily in resources, teacher training, and a commitment to all students finding the highest level of success,” said Greenwich Superintendent Toni Jones. “The concern is that the review of district programs already on this pathway for several years is being threatened by ‘approved’ box programs required by the CSDE instead of evaluating outstanding instructional practice and materials in use right now. The legislation is strong, supported by educators, and scientifically supported, [but] the process for evaluation is severely flawed.”

Several district superintendents shared similar sentiments and added that the waiver requirements changed midway through the process and that the application was confusing.

Teachers across the state agree with the legislation’s intent to improve reading scores for all students, but they’ve also voiced frustration about being left out of the conversation.

“Where’s the emphasis on developing plans that can be modified to meet the kids? Where is the conversation about building our capacity around literacy, making sure that our teachers have the opportunity to build really dynamic lessons, and that they have the opportunity to learn from one another?” said Kate Dias, president of the Connecticut Education Association, the largest teachers union in the state. “We’re not having those conversations, [instead] we’re talking about which workbooks are the children using.”

Mainly in response to some superintendents who had spoken to news outlets following the waiver decisions in December, representatives from the Department of Education held a ‘Myth versus Fact’ presentation at the recent state Board of Education meeting where they emphasized the implementation process was unbiased, unchanged and aligned with legislation. The state also held a three-hour panel on Jan. 25 with national, statewide and local stakeholders about the importance of aligning evidence-based reading programs and curriculum.

“This is a basic civil right, and we’re going to make sure that regardless of background, everybody has that skill,” Gov. Ned Lamont said at the panel. “I think [reading] gives every one of our kids a little bit more of a head start in life. I think that’s what we’re trying to do here with this legislation and trying to get that implemented. … This is best practices, what Charlene is trying to do is say, ‘Look, these are the very best ideas, this is what seems to be working in other jurisdictions. Try this out in your community.'”

Lawmakers and other representatives from the education department continue to argue that narrowly-focused criticisms about the implementation of the law has distracted from its true purpose, and instead, the focus should be on celebrating the shift in curriculum as “a win for the entire state of Connecticut.”

“If we can demonstrate that we are providing the necessary tools for our students to have a high-quality learning experience and to get them proficient in reading and learning how to read from pre-K to three, then we’ve done our job,” Rep. Jeff Currey, the co-chair of the Education Committee, told The Connecticut Mirror.

The Science of Reading

The Science of Reading refers to decades of research in education, psychology and neuroscience and its findings on how children best learn reading skills.

Most states have shifted toward or implemented some type of legislation regarding evidence-based reading instruction, most notably in the south, including Mississippi, which has garnered national attention for significant reading scores improvement in the last decade.

“Mississippi went from being ranked the second-worst state in 2013 for fourth-grade reading to 21st in 2022,” The Associated Press reported in May 2023. Louisiana and Alabama, two other states that have implemented similar legislation, “were among only three states to see modest gains in fourth-grade reading during the pandemic, which saw massive learning setbacks in most other states.”

Russell-Tucker told members of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus at a meeting in mid-January that Connecticut is one of at least 32 states that implemented policy related to evidence-based reading instruction.

“However, by our count, we’re up to about 19 states, including D.C., that are actually doing very specific mandates of evidence-based reading instruction that must be implemented by school districts,” Russell-Tucker said. “So, Connecticut is not alone in this regard.”

The legislation’s goals

Melissa Hickey, the reading and literacy director for the state Department of Education, told the CT Mirror that the Right to Read legislation was a collaborative effort with the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus.

“There has been many pieces of legislation in place around reading and supporting literacy with professional learning and having coaches go into districts and support,” Hickey said. “This ‘Right to Read’ actually brought it to a newer level where programs, curriculum models and compendium were included in the legislation. So — really looking at the core comprehensive materials that schools are using and ensuring that they are research-based.”

Of the 19,500 Connecticut third-grade students who are reading below proficiency, 12,900 are students of color and over 14,500 are high-need students — meaning they qualify for free or reduced lunch, are English language learners or are students with a disability.

“A child learning to read is a civil rights issue,” said Sen. Patricia Billie Miller, D-Stamford, the chair of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus. “We have a responsibility … to make sure that children in this state can read. Frederick Douglass said that when you can read, you’re forever free.”

“An Act Concerning the Implementation of Reading Models or Programs” passed as part of omnibus education bill Senate Bill 1 and lays out that local boards of education must partially transition to a state-approved reading program by 2024 and fully by 2025.

“We’re leaving behind 19,000 of our learners, and this [legislation] is about applying the findings of what we know about how our little ones’ brains work to learn how to read and ensure every district is teaching in that way, even districts that believe that they’ve got some special sauce already,” said state Board of Education chair Karen DuBois-Walton. “This is about ensuring that every district is equipped with what we know is the right way to teach kids to learn to read.”

The approved programs were required to be evidence- and scientifically based and “focused on competency in the following areas of reading: Oral language, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, rapid automatic name or letter name fluency and reading comprehension,” according to the legislation. The department ultimately provided over a handful of programs for districts to choose from.

As implementation continues, Dias said, she hopes the conversation will shift from what programs were chosen to how it’s actually working in the classroom.

“Currently, the entire conversation is focused on ‘What are the materials?’ and for me, the materials are the last piece of the puzzle, not the first. The first piece, to me, is what are the intentional outcomes we want from our literacy programs? Have we all agreed universally of what that is, and did we rebuild a curriculum to guide us to that pathway?” Dias said. “The real solution of how do we get to the end game, for me, is, I’m looking for the opportunity to bring talented educators to the table and give them the space to build a model curriculum that could be utilized within the state of Connecticut.”

Similarly, Charles Hewes, the state deputy commissioner for academics and innovation, said that on paper, aligning statewide reading curriculums may look like the first step toward improving literacy rates in Connecticut but that the results will begin with teacher support and resources.

“First step is to support our teachers with resources that are aligned with the Science of Reading. Another step is to make sure that they have the professional learning support as needed to implement those resources,” Hewes said. “Third, sustainable leadership and community support. Fourth, they need appropriate assessments that really draw on student needs. … These are all pieces of a bigger picture of implementation.”

Hewes and Hickey both added that the department has begun meeting districts one-on-one to help plan for their needs. The state Department of Education has also met with members of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents and continues to partner with the University of Connecticut, HILL for Literacy and others to provide free professional learning.

Districts raise concerns

Much district dialogue has been centered on the waiver process rather than the Science of Reading, which most districts agree is a successful way to teach early literacy skills.

Districts including Hartford, Waterbury and New London public schools were approved for waivers, despite only reporting 14.5%, 19.1% and 26.1% of their respective third-graders were able to read proficiently.

The majority of districts that applied for waivers were rejected, and the decisions triggered confusion for superintendents in towns that have a higher percentage of students meeting reading proficiency scores.

Hewes said, however, that reading scores were not considered in the waiver process and that some districts — such as Hartford — plan to implement new and innovative reading programs that are different from what they’ve been using.

“Hartford took advantage of the waiver process to have what they wanted to implement reviewed by experts before they made any shift,” Hewes said. “It’s really important to emphasize that we were looking for alignment to the areas of reading in the legislation, and that was the function of the waiver process. It was not an evaluation of the performance of a district.”

Hartford, specifically, was approved to use a core curriculum called Wit and Wisdom, which the district said was the best fit to “meet the unique needs of our students and satisfy the guidelines outlined in the new legislation based on the Science of Reading.”

“Now that the waiver has been approved, we are excited to implement the new core curriculum on behalf of our students and teachers,” said Hartford Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez. “This new compendium of curriculum resources, in alignment with scientific research, will benefit our students and improve early childhood literacy across the district.”

But other superintendents, who weren’t successful in the waiver process, said the state’s process was confusing and inconsistent. Some superintendents also consider the new legislation overbearing.

“My concern has less to do with shifts to our programs or curriculum to purposefully align with the Science of Reading and more to do with the state mandating curriculum and programs from the top down,” said Southington Superintendent Steven Madancy. “Connecticut has always been a local control state, and recent actions fly in the face of that.”

In Greenwich, the superintendent called the evaluation rubric “frustrating and minimalistic.”

“The waiver was a very confusing process, with many moving finish lines,” Jones said, adding that the state’s evaluation team changed during the process, and they implemented a new evaluation criteria that “nobody knew about.” She also said that the rubric commented on old materials from 2018 that were not relevant to the practices the district has currently been using.

Westport Superintendent Thomas Scarice shared similar sentiments, as he felt the process was “ill-defined from the beginning.”

“Whether districts were approved for the waiver had little to nothing to do with their actual program, alignment to the research or outcomes for students,” Scarice said. “The implementation by the state Department of Education was convoluted, inconsistent and most importantly not aligned to the actual statute, leaving our district, and perhaps a number of other districts, confused. The response provided by the CSDE to our waiver was incomplete, portions were left blank and the narrative responses were difficult if not impossible to comprehend.”

Representatives from the state Department of Education called several superintendents’ criticisms “myths” at a recent state Board of Education meeting and presented a slideshow that countered the allegations.

“A myth: the waiver review tool changed throughout the process. We heard this multiple times, please know that the actual fact is it did not change. … The waiver tool remained the same. The waiver tool aligned to the legislation and the guidance that was provided to districts aligned to legislation,” Hickey said. “Another myth: the process was biased. Please, know again, … it was double blind. It was conducted by experts in literacy with no ties to Connecticut or to any districts in Connecticut.”

Hewes added that some claims “can be harmful,” to both the people “trying to execute the legislation but also education as a whole and what we try to do for our kids.”

“If we know the Science of Reading research tells us how to instruct students, wouldn’t we all want to be finding a way to make sure that we’re as closely aligned to that research in the materials and curricula that we use?” Hewes told the CT Mirror.

Scarice and Jones both said that their reading curriculums are aligned with the Science of Reading and that they’ve requested the department’s reconsideration.

Russell-Tucker presented a similar ‘Myth vs Fact’ slideshow to the leaders of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus on Jan. 16 where lawmakers asked Russell-Tucker and her team for a follow up meeting to “take a deeper dive” into where the legislation is and existing criticisms and pushback.

Last week, the Department of Education also held a panel at the Legislative Office Building called the “Education Forum on Literacy: A State & National Conversation.” The panel was made up of several lawmakers who are part of the Education Committee, national advocates and a handful of local education leadership, including a principal and reading specialist from an elementary school in Plainfield and the Hamden superintendent.

Prior to the event, there was criticism from CEA, which said it wasn’t approached about having educators be a part of the conversation. Nevertheless, Dias said, she remains optimistic about the partnerships working to improve literacy throughout the state.

“We have a lot of people who feel passionately about improving our literacy in the state of Connecticut, and that is a good thing,” Dias said. “And while things might feel a little uncomfortable today, because we don’t all feel in the same place, the fact is, we all want the same thing, and that is really positive. We’ll get there, and today this [change] is uncomfortable, and it’s difficult, but I remain optimistic.”

This story was originally published on Connecticut Mirror