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  • Soon-to-be retired California reading instruction test gets high marks in national analysis

    Soon-to-be retired California reading instruction test gets high marks in national analysis


    Kindergarten students at

    in Robin Bryant’s class at West Contra Costa Unified’s Stege Elementary School are learning how to add and subtract.

    Photo: Andrew Reed/EdSource

    This story was updated on Nov. 15 to correct information received from a source.

    Most exams to prove teachers are prepared to teach reading are ineffective, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality. Only six of the 25 licensure tests currently used in the U.S. are considered to be strong assessments, including the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment, which California will do away with in 2025.

    Fifteen of the 25 reading licensure tests being used in the U.S. were “weak” and four were “acceptable,” according to the analysis. One state does not require a reading licensure test. 

    Council researchers based their rankings on whether the licensure exam adequately addresses the five core components of the science of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. They also took into consideration whether the tests combined reading with other subjects and tested teachers on methods of reading instruction already debunked by researchers.

    “The science of reading or scientifically-based reading instruction is reading instruction that’s been informed by decades of research on the brain and research on how people and how children learn to read,” said Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonpartisan research and policy organization.

    California will replace the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment, or RICA, with a literacy performance assessment that allows teachers to demonstrate their competence by submitting evidence of their instructional practice through video clips and written reflections on their practice.

    “The state really needs to ensure that this new assessment is aligned to the science of reading and can provide an accurate and reliable signal that teachers have the necessary knowledge and skills to teach reading effectively,” Peske told EdSource.

    The RICA addresses more than 75% of the topics in each of the five components of the science of reading. The state also gained points for not combining reading and other subjects in the examination, according to the analysis.

    In California, the reading instruction assessment is required of teacher candidates seeking a multiple-subject, a prekindergarten to third grade early childhood education or an education specialist credential.

    The RICA has not been popular in California in recent years. Critics have said it does not align with current state English language arts standards, is racially biased and has added to the state’s teacher shortage. 

    Between 2017 and 2021, more than 40% of teachers failed the test the first time they took it, according to state data. Black and Latino teacher candidates overall have lower passing rates on the test than their white and Asian peers.

    “I think that when you have a test that is aligned to the research like the RICA and …  a third of candidates are failing, it signals that they’re not getting the preparation aligned to the assessment, aligned to what’s on the test,” Peske said. 

    Low student test scores nationwide have most states reconsidering how they teach literacy. Fewer than half of students who took the California Smarter Balanced Tests met or exceeded state standards in English language arts in 2023.

    California Senate Bill 488, passed in 2021, called for new literacy standards and a teacher performance assessment that emphasized teaching foundational reading skills that include phonological awareness, phonics and word recognition, and fluency. The new standards also included support for struggling readers, English learners and pupils with exceptional needs. The California Dyslexia Guidelines have been incorporated for the first time.

    The California literacy performance assessment that will replace the RICA on July 1, 2025, is based on new literacy standards and teaching performance expectations approved by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing last year. The standards and teaching expectations are derived from state literacy policies and guidance, including the state’s English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework and the California Comprehensive State Literacy Plan.

    The performance assessment was designed by a team of teachers, professors, researchers, nonprofit education advocacy organizations and school district administrators. It will be piloted in next spring, said Nancy Brynelson, statewide literacy co-director at the California Department of Education, who serves as a liaison to the assessment design team.

    “There was a view that a performance assessment would do a better job of showing what a teacher can really do, how a teacher can apply their knowledge about literacy to a classroom situation and to particular students who need support,” Brynelson said. “And there had been a call for changing that test for quite a while.”

    The assessment will be revised in the summer and field-tested with a larger number of teacher preparation programs in the 2024-25 school year, said Mary Vixie Sandy, executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

    “High-stakes standardized tests evaluate whether prospective teachers know enough about a subject, while performance assessments measure whether students can apply the knowledge appropriately in various contexts,” Sandy said. “As such, performance assessments serve to strengthen and deepen a prospective teacher’s knowledge and skill based on authentic practice in real classrooms.”





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  • Foster, homeless youth lose disproportionately more instruction to suspensions

    Foster, homeless youth lose disproportionately more instruction to suspensions


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

    Students in precarious living situations — especially foster and homeless youth —are much more likely to be suspended and lose instructional time vital to their academic success, according to a report released by the UCLA Civil Rights Project and the National Center for Youth Law. 

    In the 2021-2022 academic year alone, California students lost more than 500,000 days to out-of-school suspensions, where students are sent home as a form of discipline, the study said. 

    Across the state, foster youth were disproportionately at the receiving end of the punishment, and they lost more time than “all students” across the board to suspensions — about 77 days of instruction for every 100 students. 

    Specifically, for every 100 African American foster youth enrolled, 121 days were lost while, African American homeless youth lost 69 days of instruction, according to the report which was released Oct. 30. Meanwhile, homeless students overall missed 26 days per 100 students. 

    Regardless of whether they are in foster care, students with disabilities lost 23.8 school days per 100, a rate higher than the general population. Dan Losen, senior director for the National Center for Youth Law and co-author of the report, said that missing a day of instruction could result in loss of these students’ access to disability-specific supports, such as counseling.

    “A regular day might be one of the most important days of the week for the students with disabilities,” Losen said. “So, in some sense, they’re getting a harsher punishment and being denied more.” 

    Challenges for foster youth and homeless students 

    K-12 students across the state have already lost a lot of ground academically since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic; Losen said that missing even more days to suspensions is detrimental.

    Losing instructional time “is harming their educational outcomes, not just in the immediate, but it makes it less likely they’re ever going to graduate,” Losen said. “It puts their academic and personal futures at greater risk.” 

    According to the report, suspending a student — even once — is associated with diminished chances of graduating from high school and attending college, as well as an increased probability of being arrested later in life. 

    Losen added that suspensions are more likely to cause delinquent behavior than curb it. 

    “Suspending a student out of school is really a non-intervention. It’s no guarantee that anything will happen. They’re just going to come back to school three days or two days later,” Losen said.

    “Not that you should put up with misconduct, but there’s got to be a way to support these kids, especially those from these unstable home environments.” 

    To make matters worse, these students who are being disproportionately suspended are already likely to have experienced trauma outside of school, Losen said. 

    “The more (adverse experiences) you have, the more likely it is you’ll have a form of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and that definitely affects behavior. … Some of them might withdraw into a shell, but others might act out in ways that they might normally not act out,” Losen said.

    Discrepancies across districts 

    The report shows records varied from district to district — from Kern High School District where 23.3 days of instruction have been lost per 100 students to Los Angeles Unified School District, where only 0.7 days of instruction per 100 students were lost. 

    “Racial biases (in student discipline) are prevalent, and they don’t have to be intentional,” said Losen, noting that homeless and foster youth are disproportionately Black and brown. 

    That implicit bias “means you’re not aware of how you may be biased in not just how you punish, but who you’re looking at, who you’re expecting to exhibit problem behavior, whether shouting in the hallway is interpreted as a bullying event, or just kids roughhousing,” he said.

    Kern High School District — based in Bakersfield with more than 42,000 students — had the highest rate of instructional time lost among African American students, totaling 80 days per 100 students.  

    EdSource reached out to the Kern High School District regarding the study’s findings, but district spokespeople did not respond by EdSource’s deadline.

    Kern’s number is disappointing, said Ashley De La Rosa, the education policy director for the Central Valley-based Dolores Huerta Foundation, which previously sued the Kern High School District over its disciplinary methods. But she said she’s “not surprised either.” 

    “The current board of education seems more focused on monitoring and policing students than actually seeing what the teachers or the administrators are doing,” De La Rosa said. “… When students are not in class, they’re not learning, and our educational attainment in Kern County is one of the lowest.”

    She noted that the Kern High School District made some progress after a 2014 lawsuit alleged its higher rates of suspension for students of color were discriminatory. 

    According to an announcement released by the Dolores Huerta Foundation, a 2017 settlement had required Kern High School district to “implement positive discipline practices to address disparate discipline outcomes and provide discipline-related training to all staff and personnel operating within the school environment.” 

    But after the terms of the settlement expired and the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020, the district took a major step back and out-of-school suspensions began to increase once again, De La Rosa said.

    But following the 2017 settlement, the district said in that “certainly, KHSD has not engaged in intentional systemic racist student discipline practices against African-American and Latino students.” 

    “Rather (Kern High School District), like most public school districts nationwide, has been reviewing its student discipline data as it impacts minority students, and reframing its student discipline practices in order to address the statistically disproportionate suspension and expulsion of students of color,” the district’s statement noted. 

    By comparison, LAUSD’s rate of lost instructional days for African American students was 40 times lower than Kern’s, and no single demographic group lost more than three days per 100 students, according to the report. 

    A district spokesperson and community activists have attributed LAUSD’s reduction in out-of-school suspensions to the elimination of  “willful defiance” suspensions 10 years ago, which was achieved through a School Climate Bill of Rights. 

    Willful defiance suspensions, advocates argued, were used as punitive disciplinary practices for small, subjective infractions such as talking back to a teacher or refusing to spit out gum. 

    Since the bill of rights passed, the district’s suspension rate has dropped from 2.3% in the 2011-12 academic year to 0.3% in 2021-2022, according to a district spokesperson. Meanwhile, LAUSD has worked to incorporate alternative disciplinary methods rooted in restorative justice. 

    “I’m proud of the progress LAUSD has made and the recognition in this report, and I also know that our progress resulted from years of community pressure and advocacy to treat students like the learners they are. As they learn literacy and mathematics, they also learn behavior expectations, conflict resolution skills and restorative practices,” LAUSD board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin said. 

    “If we can shift the hearts, minds and skills of nearly 70,000 employees in LAUSD, then surely other districts can too,” she said. 

    Still, LAUSD remains “far from perfect” and has reported students to the police at higher rates than average, according to the report. 

    “We’re often punishing those that need the most support. So this is a (really) important opportunity … to do more radical listening, making sure that we have the right wraparound support necessary for students to thrive, particularly those students who are often in the shadows, often neglected and nothing more,” said Ryan J. Smith, the chief strategy officer at Community Coalition. 

    He also stressed that the district should prioritize support services, including psychiatric social workers and counselors, to uplift more vulnerable students who often make transitions from one home and community to another. 

    Looking ahead 

    According to the California Compilation of School Discipline Laws And Regulations, suspensions, regardless of whether they are out-of-school suspensions, should only be used as a last resort — and can only be used if a student exhibits certain behaviors, including causing physical injury to others or possessing illegal drugs. 

    Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 27, which aims to halt all suspensions for one of those categories, willful defiance, for middle and high school students across the state. 

    Losen said that despite statewide attempts to end willful defiance suspensions, he is still concerned that “violence with no injury” suspensions could take its place as another subjective, umbrella category that could disproportionately harm marginalized students. 

    “California has made some progress, but there’s a great amount of work to be done, and much more that could be done. I don’t want to lose sight,” Losen said. “Modest progress shouldn’t kill the initiative to really make more lasting, substantial changes.”





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  • California should follow Mississippi’s lead on reading instruction

    California should follow Mississippi’s lead on reading instruction


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource (2017)

    Parents of young kids starting to learn to read in California should consider moving to Mississippi. No doubt, this advice is jarring. Decades ago, Southern families migrated to California in search of better opportunities. Mississippi’s child poverty rate today is nearly twice that of California. 

    Yet, when it comes to teaching children to read, Mississippi is a bright spot, one of three states whose gains in reading achievement put their schools ahead of where they were before the pandemic. California is one of ten states where reading scores continue to fall.

    Data shown above from Stanford and Harvard universities’ Education Recovery Scorecard reveals the stark contrast. Mississippi’s students were below California’s in 2016, and half a year behind the national average in reading. Mississippi made steady progress until 2019, but both states suffered similar-sized learning losses during the pandemic. 

    Their paths to recovery have diverged sharply: Mississippi students now read above average while California students are worse off than those in 2016. A student in Jackson now reads a quarter of a school year ahead of a similar student in Sacramento. This is the result not of a short-term fix but from a decade of intensive focus on reading throughout the state.

    California policymakers may be angered by the comparison, but they can’t ignore or dismiss the data. There are three things they could learn from Mississippi’s progress:

    First, Mississippi’s leaders, from governors to district superintendents, have articulated a common mission to improve reading achievement. A decade ago, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant set a reading improvement goal for the state, in support of legislation passed by his predecessor. Then in 2015, he said, “If we confront dyslexia aggressively, we can see a dramatic decrease in our state’s dropout rate and help turn around our reading scores.”

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has dyslexia, has not mentioned reading once in his State of the State speeches, nor did his predecessor Jerry Brown. To be fair, Newsom has talked about reading in his budget remarks, and the state has approved a new screening tool for dyslexia, but leaders across California lack a common goal to improve reading.

    Second, Mississippi has placed reading curriculum at the center of its reform efforts. Like California, Mississippi has an approved textbook list, with the difference being that the choices in Mississippi are all highly rated for alignment to college and career-ready standards by EdReports. One of those curricula, Wit and Wisdom, is also well-regarded for its knowledge-building features. Students read whole texts of fiction and non-fiction that showcase diverse perspectives and topics.

    California last released a textbook adoption list in 2015. Districts aren’t required to pick from California’s current list, nor does the state keep track of which curricula are being used. The California Reading Coalition has carried out the most comprehensive review to date and finds that one of the more popular series used in California districts is poorly rated and negatively correlated with student achievement. 

     In the last nine years, publishers have created high-quality English language arts curricula that are well aligned with college-ready standards. Now, there are also well-regarded curricula such as Bookworms and EL Education, whose publisher has made them openly accessible to districts and schools. This helps districts save on costs and frees up resources to support teachers’ implementation.

    Third, Mississippi has worked to strengthen the professional expertise of teachers. 

    Mississippi added literacy coaches in its 75 lowest-performing schools to help teachers learn how to implement new curriculum and offer feedback to improve instruction. California added the exact same number as part of the settlement in the civil rights lawsuit. Research from Stanford found the coaches had a positive effect on early reading achievement. But California’s coaches only reached 1% of schools. If the policy had operated at the same scale as Mississippi’s, the state would have added 800 coaches, not 75. 

    Historically, most university teacher preparation programs have had a high amount of autonomy, with tenured faculty highly resistant to change. Mississippi redesigned its teacher prep program requirements so universities must offer three common courses for all aspiring early literacy teachers. Last year, the National Council of Teacher Quality gave high ratings to two-thirds of Mississippi’s nine colleges training teachers, as their courses now address all five components of scientifically based reading instruction. In California, 60% of university programs scored an “F” for not addressing any of the five components. 

    California has taken some important steps on teaching quality. It has created a new PK-3 teaching credential based on new literacy standards and is developing a performance-based reading licensure test for new teachers. But a world of minimal oversight of teacher preparation programs, which are allowed to teach anything they want, fails to ensure all students have expert teachers.

    Some policymakers and journalists dismiss Mississippi’s progress because the state has a third-grade promotion gate. Students have three attempts to pass the state test but are retained a year if they score below the state’s threshold. But those students don’t receive more of the same the next year. Instead, they are provided with an extra 90 minutes a day of intensive reading instruction, an individualized plan, and are guaranteed a high-quality teacher. A recent Boston University study found that students who repeated third grade scored higher on the state reading exams by sixth grade than fellow students who barely passed the third-grade test.

    Assembly Bill 2222, recently proposed by Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, would initiate important changes in how reading is taught in California. A new textbook cycle would adhere to research-based methods for teaching reading. All current teachers, specialists and literacy coaches would have nearly a week of training to bring them up to speed on the latest research-based teaching. Most importantly, the bill borrows ideas from Colorado — a state whose policies are also rated highly by the National Council on Teacher Quality — on how to strengthen accountability for teacher prep programs that have not taught effective reading strategies. 

    Some policymakers have expressed concern that the proposed legislation infringes on local control of schools. Look at where local control has gotten California: only 43% of third graders read proficiently, while other states taking a stronger role show dynamic growth. It’s worth remembering that the responsibility for ensuring educational equity and excellence resides not in the Covina Valley or Chula Vista school districts but in California’s state constitution and the plenary power of the Legislature.

    •••

    David Scarlett Wakelyn is a consultant at Upswing Labs, a nonprofit that works with school districts and charter schools to improve instruction. He previously was on the team at the National Governors Association that developed Common Core State Standards. 

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Teaching performance assessments strengthen instruction and improve student outcomes; let’s not change that  

    Teaching performance assessments strengthen instruction and improve student outcomes; let’s not change that  


    A kindergarten teacher helps a girl and boy with a class activity.

    Photo by Allison Shelley for EDUimages

    Learning the art and skill of effective instruction starts long before a teacher’s first job in the classroom. Aspiring educators begin honing their craft in preparation programs that tie clinical practice to coursework on best teaching methods, including how to teach students to read.  

    Since 2002, this process has been reinforced in California by an embedded teaching performance assessment (TPA) as a key measure of professional readiness. A TPA directs teacher preparation candidates to provide evidence of their teaching knowledge and skills. This is accomplished through classroom videos, lesson plans, student work, and analysis of teaching and learning for English learners, students with disabilities, and the full range of students they are teaching.  

    The tasks TPAs require are the core work of teaching. Studies over the last two decades show that TPAs are educative for candidates and predictive of future effectiveness. Furthermore, the feedback they provide focuses educator preparation programs on preparing teachers in ways that are formative and learner-centered.  

    Thus, it is deeply concerning to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) and many in the field that this rich measure of teacher preparation would be eliminated with the passage of Senate Bill 1263, which would repeal all requirements relating to teaching performance assessments, including that future teachers demonstrate their readiness to teach reading.   

    The TPA is California’s only remaining required measure of whether a prospective teacher is ready to teach prior to earning a credential. All other exam requirements for a teaching credential have been modified by the Legislature to allow multiple ways for future teachers to demonstrate basic skills and subject matter competence. These legislative actions have been supported in large part by the requirement that student teachers complete a TPA to earn a credential. 

    Elimination of the TPA would leave California with no consistent standard for ensuring that all teachers are ready to teach before entering our classrooms. We would join only a handful of states that have no capstone assessment for entry into teaching. Passage of SB 1263 would also result in the state losing a key indicator of how well educator preparation programs are preparing a diverse and effective teaching force. 

    In 2021, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 488, which revamped how teacher preparation programs will instruct candidates to teach reading. As a result, the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment (RICA) is slated to be replaced by a newly designed literacy performance assessment currently being piloted for incorporation into the TPA by July 1, 2025.  

    Participant feedback on the new literacy performance assessment (LPA) piloted this spring is optimistic. One teaching candidate shared that the LPA “was a vital learning experience when it comes to implementing foundational literacy instruction with young learners. I enjoyed that it’s a more hands-on experience for the students to be engaged and promotes full participation of the student and teacher.” A teacher said that the LPA “provided multiple opportunities for my candidate to reflect and observe exceptional moments as well as missed opportunities in the lesson. It encouraged conversations about how to implement direct, explicit instruction.” A university faculty member observed that the LPA pilot “has been a learning experience for the candidates and the program. … It shows what we are doing well and what other areas we need to create or enhance to support our candidates’ knowledge and skills in teaching literacy.” 

    If the TPA and RICA are eliminated, California will no longer have an assessment of new teachers’ capacity to teach reading, and we will have lost a valuable tool that can inform programs about how they can improve. 

    Recent Learning Policy Institute research demonstrates that TPA scores reflect the quality of teacher preparation candidates have received in terms of clinical support and preparation to teach reading and math (for elementary and special education candidates). Most programs support their candidates well. The study found that nearly two-thirds of teacher preparation programs had more than 90% of their candidates pass a TPA and showed no significant differences in passing rates by race and ethnicity. 

    As Aaron Davis, teacher induction director at William S. Hart Union High School District in Santa Clarita noted, “The TPA serves a very necessary purpose in creating a sound foundation for which a new teacher’s practice can grow with the mindset of having a positive impact on every student.”  While the TPA requires time and effort to implement, it ensures that new teachers are prepared to start their career as an educator on day one, he said. 

    While the pandemic made it challenging to administer TPAs, most programs now ensure that more than 90% of candidates pass the TPA. The CTC is working with the small number of programs that struggle to adequately support their candidates.  

    The elimination of TPAs would unravel decades of progress to focus teacher education on clinical practice and ensure programs consistently meet standards for preparing teachers who are ready to teach.  

    Rather than eliminate the last common measure of an aspiring teacher’s preparedness, we recommend the Legislature uphold the future of a well-prepared teacher workforce by supporting the commission’s commitment to continuously review and update the TPA and to work to support program improvement. Doing so will maintain the quality and effectiveness of new teachers as they embark on their journey to provide the most effective and equitable learning experiences for all students. 

    •••

    Marquita Grenot-Scheyer is chair of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and professor emeritus in the College of Education at California State University, Long Beach.

    Mary Vixie Sandy is executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, an agency that awards over 250,000 credential documents per year and accredits more than 250 colleges, universities, and local education agencies offering educator preparation programs.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Legislative deal on reading instruction reached in the nick of time

    Legislative deal on reading instruction reached in the nick of time


    Credit: Allison Shelley / American Education

    KEY TAKEAWAYS
    • The new bill will offer state-approved training and textbooks to all TK-5th-grade teachers.
    • State-sanctioned training will be voluntary, part of the compromise.
    • A shift toward in evidence-based strategies, including phonics, moves away from local control.

    Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas has nudged parties at odds on how early literacy should be taught to agree to legislation that could significantly advance reading proficiency in California.

    After weeks of intense talks following months of stalled negotiations, a new bill that Rivas, D-Salinas, will co-author will have a hearing April 30, the deadline for an initial committee vote on new bills. Assembly Bill 1454 will call for providing potentially all transitional kindergarten through fifth-grade teachers with training and textbooks that stress what’s known as structured literacy, starting with phonics in the early grades. (The bill, which will be co-authored by Rivas, Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, and Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, had not yet been published as of Wednesday; it will soon replace the current AB 1854, an unrelated bill.)

    The bill won’t end the resistance of critics who argue that structured literacy, with an emphasis on foundational skills, is too narrow and can set back the progress of English learners who need more vocabulary and oral language strategies.

    But passage of the bill would move California toward a consistent statewide approach to reading instruction. The legislation will also follow the lead of other states whose adoption of evidence-based strategies, known as the science of reading, have contributed to wide gains in proficiency on both state tests and the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP in the early grades.

    By contrast, on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the 41 percentage point gap in proficiency between economically and non-economically disadvantaged students in California was among the widest in the nation, and growing. Only 8% of Black and 23% of Hispanic fourth graders in California were proficient in reading, compared with 56% of white and 67% of Asian students.

    Until now, California had avoided controversy by ceding control over reading instruction to local schools. The state did not collect information from districts on the reading strategies they used and the textbooks they purchased. Newly credentialed elementary grade teachers who were trained in the science of reading could be hired by districts using textbooks that conflicted with what they had just learned in credentialing programs.

    “This legislation is essential, important progress, and it reflects agreement and robust consensus on ways to provide educators the evidence-based tools they need to support California’s diverse students,” said Rivas in a statement. “We must make sure every child, no matter their background, has the opportunity to become a confident and thriving reader.”

    Also supporting the compromise is Californians Together, a nonprofit organization that advocates for English learners and biliteracy programs. It had opposed the original bill, Assembly Bill 1121, authored by Rubio. But in the statement that Rivas released, Hernandez said, “We appreciate Speaker Rivas’s leadership in bringing this legislation forward, and we remain committed to ensuring that any new literacy policy fully supports English learners.”

    A year ago, amid opposition from the California Teachers Association, the California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE), and Californians Together,  Rivas pulled Rubio’s bill and asked critics and supporters to come back in 2025 with a compromise. When that failed to happen, Rivas got involved and directly pressed for a deal. The opponents met with Rubio and advocacy nonprofits  EdVoice and Families In Schools,  Decoding Dyslexia CA and the California NAACP, the organizations co-sponsoring AB 1121.

    Rubio, who had expressed frustration with the opponents, thanked Rivas for his leadership and called AB 1454 “a significant step toward addressing very real concerns with our student outcomes while supplying teachers with the tools to ensure success in their roles.”

    CTA has not yet decided its position on the new bill, said CTA President David Goldberg, while noting that it “is in a far better place thanks to the leadership of Speaker Rivas and the coalition of educators working on behalf of students to ensure a viable and responsible approach to a truly important issue.”

    Jeffrey Freitas, the president of the smaller California Federation of Teachers, meanwhile, gave the new bill a full endorsement. “CFT members have been calling for more robust and improved literacy training and support to better meet the needs of our students,” he said. “We urge Governor Newsom and the Legislature to fully fund this important legislation, so that California teachers can immediately access the training.”

    What’s in the bill

    Although AB 1454 had not yet been released as of Wednesday morning, a 13-page analysis by staff of the Assembly Education Committee for the hearing had been posted.

    The main elements of Rubio’s bill, calling for a state-vetted choice of teacher training, along with materials aligned with instruction that the State Board of Education will approve, are in AB 1454. However, one key difference is that the teacher instruction, mandated under AB 1121, will be voluntary.

    “It is no longer required, but we feel good about it,” said Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice. “We believe districts will want to take advantage of it and get the professional development they need.”

    Also, language was added that satisfied Californians Together. There is more emphasis on aligning training with the California English Language Arts/English Language Development framework, Hernandez said, and the bill will explicitly call out “linguistically and culturally responsive” strategies. It will also highlight dual language instruction. “That’s a step in the right direction,” Hernandez said.  

    The bill will require the California Department of Education to consult with a range of groups, presumably including the English learner community and advocates for dyslexics, who strongly support phonics-based instruction.

    According to the Assembly analysis, the bill will require:

    • CDE to identify effective professional development in TK to grade 5 by Sept. 1, 2026 and for districts receiving funding for training to report to the state how many teachers received the training by 2029.
    • the State Board of Education to update its list of acceptable English language arts and English language development instructional materials;  
    • the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to update school administrator standards to include training on how to support effective literacy instruction. Muratsuchi, who chairs the Assembly Education Committee, had proposed this idea in his own literacy bill this year. He also participated in the negotiations.

    Funding for the training and materials is unresolved, for now. Gov. Newsom proposed $250 million for literacy instruction in his initial 2025-26 budget. Money is expected to be tight, but Rivas, as speaker, will be at the table with Newsom for final budget talks in June.





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  • Better writing instruction comes from studying student work more closely

    Better writing instruction comes from studying student work more closely


    Credit: Katie Schneider Gumiran and Rosa Gaia for Conway Elementary

    An instructional leader in a Bay Area school district told me last week that while they are a bright spot in improving reading for the last three years, they still haven’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels. “Our biggest pain point is writing. Our gaps start in ELA, but we see them in science and social studies too.”

    This district isn’t alone; schools throughout California are struggling to improve writing across the curriculum. What might we do differently?

    In their new book, Learning Together, Elham Kazemi and colleagues suggest school leaders work with teachers to analyze student writing more regularly. Reviewing a set of informational essays, or an extended project in biology, could be the center of more grade-level planning meetings or districtwide professional learning days.

    The pioneer in this approach has been Ron Berger, one of the co-founders of EL Education, a national non-profit that partners with K-12 educators to transform their schools. Berger has been a mainstay of High Tech High’s Deeper Learning conferences in San Diego and has taught more than 300 workshops around the country, all of them closely examining examples of student work.

    In Leaders of Their Own Learning, the instructional guide he co-authored, Berger tells the story of coaching a high school physics teacher who says, “The students’ lab reports are terribly written and it’s driving me crazy.”

    Ron asks if she’s ever shown her students a model of a good lab report and she replies that she has not.

    When given the chance to closely study an exemplary lab report, her students are surprised at the vocabulary and level of precision in it. A number laughed at how low their own standards had been.

    “For all the correcting we do, directions we give, and rubrics we create about what good work looks like,” writes Berger, “students are often unclear about what they are aiming for until they actually see and analyze strong models.”

    Ron Berger used to lug around a giant black bag of student essays, labs, and video presentations to discuss at workshops. Eventually, with support from the Hewlett Foundation, and collaborating with Steve Seidel at Harvard University, Berger built an online museum for displaying student work.

    Models of Excellence showcases 500 examples of great student writing and other projects from around the U.S. and the world. California students have contributed sixty pieces, including a Kids Guide to California National Parks created by 2nd graders from Big Pine, and an analysis by 6th graders on the water quality of Lake Merritt in Oakland. 

    Here are three ways districts and schools across California can improve writing by studying their own student work:

    First, form a study group. In grade-level meetings or working across the district, teachers and a coach can assemble their own models of excellent student writing. The group can link the models to criteria which guide students’ efforts; the more concrete, the better. The study group can use the rubrics and student checklists developed by the Vermont Writing Collaborative for all genres of writing at all grade levels.

    After teaching a lesson where third graders critiqued a fantasy story, Berger reflects, “It’s much more powerful to bring in models of great work. Then have the kids be detectives and have the excitement of discovering and naming the qualities of great writing — humor, powerful words, well-drawn character — in their own words.”

    Second, get the feedback right. Dylan William writes in Embedded Formative Assessment that most feedback in schools is accurate, but falls short of showing the learner how to move forward. He tells of a science student who reads he needs to be more systematic. “If I knew how,” the student tells his teacher, “I would have done it the first time.”

    Students can resist revising their work, so Berger suggests teachers and peers follow this mantra about feedback: “Be Kind, Be Specific, Be Helpful.” Keeping this in mind, writing three or four drafts of an essay becomes a part of the school culture.  

    Finally, make the writing visible. Tina Meglich, principal of Conway Elementary in Escondido, transformed her school by displaying curated student work throughout the library and hallways. “Kids will ask, ‘Who wrote that essay on Esperanza Rising?’ They’re fascinated by each other’s work, and they inspire one another to do better because of it.”

    Analyzing student writing in this way not only raises the quality of the work, but it also instills in students a vision of what’s possible.  “I believe that work of excellence is transformational,” Berger writes. “After students have had a taste of excellence, they’re never satisfied with less; they’re always hungry.”

    •••

    David Scarlett Wakelyn is a consultant at Upswing Labs, a nonprofit that works with school districts and charter schools to improve instruction. He previously was on the team at the National Governors Association that developed Common Core State Standards. 

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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