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برچسب: Literacy

  • WCCUSD’s literacy task force to explore best ways to teach students how to read

    WCCUSD’s literacy task force to explore best ways to teach students how to read


    A student sounds out the word ‘both’ during a 2022 summer school class at Nystrom Elementary in the West Contra Costa Unfified School District.

    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    West Contra Costa Unified School District has set up a new literacy task force to answer long-held questions about the best ways to teach students how to read.

    The task force, which had its first meeting in September, is looking at academic research to examine literacy and the best ways to foster highly-literate students, according to former district spokesperson Liz Sanders.

    “It’s really important to us that our efforts to support students’ literacy are really rooted in building and generating community-wide best practices, and that we are looking at literacy instruction through a really holistic lens to make sure that we’re understanding what best practices are,” Sanders said.

    The task force is a small, internal team of 13 leaders who are developing initial recommendations for a comprehensive literacy plan, the district communications team said in an email. The main goal of the task force is to create a framework and make recommendations for WCCUSD that will guide the district’s Local Control and Accountability Plan and School Plan for Student Achievement. 

    The hope is that this will lead to improved student outcomes, especially for marginalized communities — specifically Multilingual English Language Learners, Black and neurodiverse students, who are currently being underserved, according to the district.

    WCCUSD has struggled with stagnant literacy scores for over a decade. Since 2014, no more than 17% of students read above grade level, according to Smarter Balanced results. But Superintendent Chris Hurst has named improving elementary reading test scores as a top priority. The district has primarily used a balanced literacy approach, which focuses on whole language instruction.

    One of the district’s schools, Nystrom Elementary, however, received funding in 2021 from the state’s Early Literacy Support Block Grant and replaced balanced literacy with the “science of reading” approach, which focuses on systematic phonics instruction.

    Sandrine Demathieu, a kindergarten teacher at Nystrom, is in her second year of using the science of reading approach. As a student teacher, she used the balanced literacy method, which, according to her, made her feel like there was “a missing chunk in our instruction.”

    Demathieu explained that balanced literacy focuses more on experiential learning and getting students excited about reading, leaving less time for data tracking on student progress. Meanwhile, the science of reading specializes in progress tracking, and offers a predictable curriculum with specific instructions for both students and teachers. 

    “They don’t have to even think twice about what they need to do,” Demathieu said. “They don’t have to put any energy into it. They can focus on the academic piece.” 

    For students with gaps in their learning in particular, Demathieu said the science of reading approach is “life changing” because of its predictability and organized structure. 

    In 2022, WCCUSD also introduced Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics and Sight Words, or SIPPS, in all of its elementary schools. SIPPS is a “research-based foundational skills program” which provides a structured-literacy approach through explicit routines. 

    Gabby Micheletti, who taught at Verde Elementary for seven years and is now on-release to work full time for the United Teachers of Richmond, said it was “simultaneously remarkable and distressing” to see how quickly kids picked up on reading when using SIPPS as opposed to the previous curriculum. 

    “Just like the difference in the reading growth I had using SIPPS versus trying to use Teachers College — it’s one of those things where you’re just like, man, I feel bad about those days and those kids, when I was trying to follow the curriculum faithfully,” Michelletti said. “They were trying really hard and it just wasn’t working.”

    Michelletti said she hopes the task force re-evaluates the curriculum and pushes the use of SIPPS. She said the current curriculum is “extra non-responsive” to students, especially for English Language Learners. This is particularly important for WCCUSD, where 34% of students are English Language Learners. 

    The literacy task force will be using data and effective research to make recommendations to the district. The development of the framework is guided by a set of principles and beliefs:

    • “Schooling should help all students achieve their highest potential.
    • The responsibility for learners’ literacy and language development is shared. 
    • ELA/literacy and ELD curricula should be well designed, comprehensive, and integrated.
    • Effective teaching is essential to student success. 
    • Motivation and engagement play crucial roles in learning.”

    The implementation of the task force’s framework and recommendations is currently projected for the 2024-2025 school year. 





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  • Early literacy funding raises reading scores of California’s lowest performing schools

    Early literacy funding raises reading scores of California’s lowest performing schools


    An elementary student reads on his own in class.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    Research by Stanford University found that 75 of the lowest-performing California elementary schools that received funding from an out-of-court settlement made significant progress on third-grade state Smarter Balanced tests this year.

    The results indicate that the $50 million the schools received for effective reading instruction in the primary grades carried over to third grade after two years of funding. 

    “The fact that we were able to budge third grade comprehension assessments with a grant that was focused on TK, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, with a light touch on third grade, is amazing,” said Margaret Goldberg, literacy coach at Nystrom Elementary in West Contra Costa Unified, one of the schools that received the Early Literacy Support Block Grants, or ELSBs.

    The 75 schools had the lowest scores in the state in 2019 on the third-grade Smarter Balanced test. They received the money, averaging $1,144 per year for the 15,541 K-three students, under the settlement in the lawsuit, Ella T. v. the State of California, brought by the public interest law firm Public Counsel. It argued that the state violated the students’ constitutional right to an education by failing to teach them how to read adequately.

    Eligible schools were chosen from various districts, including Los Angeles Unified, San Francisco Unified, West Contra Costa Unified and others. The funding promoted the literacy instruction known as the “science of reading,” which includes explicit phonics instruction in kindergarten and first grade, along with the development of vocabulary, oral language, comprehension and writing.

    Schools had the flexibility to choose to fund literacy coaches and bilingual reading specialists, new curriculum and instructional materials, expanded access to libraries and literacy training for parents. Schools were encouraged to participate in professional development in the science of reading and seek guidance on their literacy plans from the Sacramento County Office of Education, which oversaw the grants.

    Released Monday, the study concluded that the block grants “generated significant (and cost-effective) improvements in English language arts achievement in its first two years of implementation as well as smaller, spillover improvements in math achievement,” wrote researchers Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, and Sarah Novicoff, a Stanford doctoral candidate in educational policy.

    Students in the funded schools were scoring at the bottom of the scale in 2019, and, despite significant progress, few had achieved reading at grade level in 2023. Dee and Novicoff credited the early education grant for increasing third graders’ achievement by 0.14 standard deviation, the equivalent of a 25% increase in a year of learning, compared with demographically similar students who did not receive the funding. Researchers also found a similar gain by comparing the scores of third graders in the schools with the grants with third-grade scores of fifth graders from the same schools who had not benefited from the funding.

    The Smarter Balanced reports results in four performance bands: standard not met, standard nearly met, standard met and standard exceeded. The schools with the grants succeeded in raising scores by 6 percentage points from the lowest category to standard nearly met, significantly reducing the number of students requiring intensive help. Still, after two years of funding, only 13.5% of students are proficient in reading, having met or exceeded standard. That’s 3 percentage points higher than in 2018, and 1 percentage point above pre-pandemic 2019. Schools with similar students not receiving the grants remain below where they were before Covid, according to the research.

    Dee and Novicoff were unable to analyze why some schools performed better than others, which could be useful in shaping the state’s policy on early literacy. Unlike some states with comprehensive literacy plans, California does not collect any assessment data that school districts collect from TK to second grade. And, under the rules that the state negotiated in the settlement, participating schools were not required to submit their assessment data to the California Department of Education; most voluntarily did in the second year, but many did not in the first year. It’s also unclear how many schools adhered to their literacy plans or focused on less effective or ineffective strategies for improvement. 

    Researchers used the only complete set of state-level data to which they had access — third-grade reading comprehension assessments. Those scores may have understated the progress in reading that many schools made on district assessments in the first and second grades.

    Public Counsel filed the Ella T. v. the State of California lawsuit in 2017, and the settlement went into effect during the height of the pandemic. Dee said the early success of the program during Covid, amid teacher shortages and extremely high chronic absences, made the results even more striking. 

    The third graders who took the Smarter Balanced test in 2023 “were the hardest hit by the pandemic. They were in kindergarten when it was interrupted by Covid,” Goldberg said. “They attended first grade remotely. In second grade, in schools like mine, which chose to adopt new curriculum, their teachers had never taught the curriculum before.”

    Dee noted the academic gains from the grant were relatively large compared with the cost, making the program quite cost-effective — an effect size that is 13 times higher than general, untargeted spending.

    Goldberg said the grant was efficient “because early intervention is cheaper and it’s more effective than waiting until third grade or later grades to provide reading support.”

    The grant funding ends in June 2024. Dee said whether schools can sustain improved scores without specific funding support is an open question. Novicoff mentioned that the grant schools may be able to continue receiving support for literacy coaches and reading specialists if they receive funding from the new Literacy Coach and Reading Specialist Grant program. 

    Instead of being based on performance, the literacy coach grants are awarded to schools with high unduplicated pupil percentages, or the number of students who are eligible for free or reduced meals, are English language learners or are foster youth. Schools eligible for an early literacy grant may also qualify for a literacy coach grant. 

    Dee said design and implementation are key if the state hopes to continue or scale this success. This means paying close attention to school-based literacy action plans, oversight and resources with some flexibility. “This is a story about how schools that get money tend to do better — money does matter in schools, and this is another piece of evidence into that bucket,” Novicoff said, “but it also shows that what we can do with the money and how you structure that funding really does matter.”





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  • Early literacy grants work, but three years is not enough

    Early literacy grants work, but three years is not enough


    A student holds a flash card with the sight word ‘friend’ during a class at Nystrom Elementary in the West Contra Costa Unified School District in 2022.

    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    I once believed that improving reading at a failing school could be a finite job. I thought it meant bringing in a new curriculum, showing teachers how to use it and then lingering long enough to ensure that students receive consecutive years of high-quality instruction.

    I was terribly wrong, but my misbelief brought me to work on California’s Early Literacy Support Block (ELSB) grant, and for that I’m grateful.

    The early literacy grant resulted from a class-action lawsuit. Students sued California for lacking a plan to address low reading achievement. The result was a $53 million settlement to provide the state’s lowest-performing schools with supplemental funding and guidance. A recent evaluation by researchers at Stanford University found the focus on early literacy turned out to be worth more than the grant’s dollar amount — the program was 13 times more effective than general increases in school spending.

    During an EdSource Roundtable on literacy, Mark Rosenbaum, lead attorney in the lawsuit noted, “If this is a pilot program, it has succeeded. We don’t need a task force; we don’t need more studies; we just need a commitment to expand it to every kid, every teacher and every school.”

    Improving reading instruction requires a literacy plan backed by strong leadership. It means coordinating resources, monitoring progress, and changing course when needed. It demands making decisions based on evidence, not adult preferences, and prioritizing early literacy so that every child gets off to a good start reading.

     I was on a team that helped eligible schools draft literacy action plans for the grant funding. I’d hoped this work would inform statewide planning, but despite the program’s success, California is no closer to a literacy plan.

    And worse, in a few months, schools like mine will lose the funding and support that made us briefly successful.

    When the program launched, I joined Nystrom Elementary, in West Contra Costa Unified, as a literacy coach. At the time, 91% of our second-graders needed to learn kindergarten phonics, as did 65% of upper graders. Working fast, we created a “walk-to-read” block in which grade level bands (e.g., first and second grades) pooled their students and sorted them into groups according to assessment data. Each teacher taught two of the groups. Our plan required collaboration and created peer accountability for teaching a new curriculum.

    In the second year, teachers led. They facilitated professional development, refined instruction and analyzed student data. We began to pick up momentum. By the middle of the year, the need for second grade intensive intervention was cut almost in half (from 86% to 46%). By the year’s end, according to the district’s reading comprehension assessment, Nystrom Elementary had the highest growth.

    This year, we turned our attention to improving writing and language instruction. We’ve forged a partnership with SAiL Literacy Lab to bridge the divide between what researchers know about language development and how we teach our students.

    Each year, we’ve adjusted our literacy action plan, incorporating what we’ve learned from research, practice and our student data. We’ve spent our literacy block grant funds on curriculum, coaching and intervention to strengthen classroom instruction, but our staff’s commitment to the plan is what improved achievement. 

    Good literacy plans in California are rare, and wasted opportunities abound. Walk into any school and you are likely to see curriculum (some of it brand new) collecting dust. Our literacy coaches often say they are kept busy with subbing, yard duty and other tasks that don’t improve classroom teaching. Reading interventionists often feel isolated in their work, unsure how much they are contributing to their school’s overall success. Most rare in California are strong literacy plans that are backed by secure funding.

    The money from the Early Literacy Support Block Grant is drying up, but my school’s work is not done. It never will be.

    More than 95% of our students are from low-income households and our non-stability rate (students who enroll and disenroll, often due to unstable housing) is over 26%. Our school will always have intervention needs, teachers requiring support and data demanding analysis and action. These needs are not problems, as long as they are met with a plan and funding.

    As Rosenbaum noted in the EdSource Roundtable: “This grant is only for three years. … That was the best we could get in the settlement, but that makes no sense if you care about kids. I wouldn’t say about my kids, ‘I will do what you need for three years, and then we’ll do the best we can afterwards.’ These schools, these educators, need what they need forever.”

    This year, California spent over $225 million on coaching and intervention, but a literacy plan was not a condition for schools receiving the funds. Another $248 million was recently added to bring in a new cohort of schools, but those with expiring literacy plans were not prioritized.

    Because California lacks a strategic plan to improve literacy (the very reason for the lawsuit years ago), effective literacy plans may soon become dreams deferred. The irony of this cuts deep.

    •••

    Margaret Goldberg is a literacy coach in West Contra Costa Unified School District and co-founder of The Right to Read Project, a group of teachers, researchers and activists committed to the pursuit of equity through literacy.

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





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  • Solving California’s early literacy crisis is a social justice imperative

    Solving California’s early literacy crisis is a social justice imperative


    Kindergarten teacher Jana Herrera at Booksin Elementary in San Jose discusses a story written by Casandra Lopez Monsivais.

    Liv Ames / EdSource

    Believing in the future of California’s most vulnerable students demands an urgent focus on early literacy. Nearly 178,000 economically disadvantaged third graders are not meeting state standards for English language arts, and the vast majority of those falling behind are disproportionately Black and Latino children. Early learning gaps all too often turn into lifelong opportunity gaps. If we as a state are failing to teach a significant number of students from low-income communities to read, then we are failing to be the progressive leaders we profess to be.

    According to the latest data from California’s standardized tests, only 3 in 10 third grade students from low-income communities are at grade level in English, compared with 6 in 10 of their higher-income peers. These educational inequities follow a child through to their adult life. Research shows that adults with limited literacy, which includes 28% of Californians, are more likely to be unemployed or earn an income that falls below the poverty level. According to the World Literacy Foundation, illiteracy can also lead to poor health, disenfranchisement and even crime. Among youth involved in the juvenile justice system, up to 85% are functionally illiterate.

    This is not just an education issue, it’s a social justice issue.

    There are a number of factors, both in and outside the classroom, that have contributed to this achievement gap. We are calling on the state Legislature to address those within their control, which include a combination of the public school system not prioritizing academic outcomes for low-income students enough, no requirements for school districts to teach reading based on evidence-backed practices, a lack of accountability to ensure statewide reading efforts are being implemented with fidelity, and an outdated state-approved instructional materials list.

    We now know so much more about how to effectively teach children to read than we have in the past. A large body of interdisciplinary research known as the science of reading informs us of the methods proven most effective in ensuring elementary students develop strong literacy skills. A focus on language development and building background knowledge along with direct and systematic teaching of phonics, word recognition, fluency, and other critical foundational skills benefits students, including English learners.

    In recent years, one-third of states have committed to implementing comprehensive literacy policies grounded in the science of reading with encouraging signs of success. Mississippi, one of the leaders in comprehensive research-based literacy reform, went from being ranked 49th in the country in 2013 for fourth grade reading to 21st in 2022, and has made steady progress in reading scores for Black and Latino students and students from low-income communities.

    The science of reading is not a panacea for all student reading challenges. But, based on historical research and positive implementation outcomes, it can dramatically improve the lives of California students, particularly those who are most vulnerable.

    Given the urgency of this educational crisis, we implore our elected leaders to pass a comprehensive literacy policy agenda based on the science of reading in 2024 so that all children will have the best chance to become proficient readers by the end of third grade.

    Anchor components of the agenda should include:

    1. All English language arts, English language development and reading instructional materials used in California public schools must adhere to methods supported by research.
    2. Investments in statewide educator training programs for both the science of reading and implementing evidence-based literacy instruction.
    3. Additional accountability measures and professional development that will help ensure newly certified teachers are prepared to effectively teach reading based on the principles and practices of the science of reading.

    Details of these policy recommendations may be found in the California Early Literacy Coalition’s early literacy policy brief.

    If there is one primary responsibility of public elementary schools, it is to teach children how to read so they are set up for future success. It is time that we prioritize unlocking reading potential and future opportunities for all of California’s children.

    •••

    Megan Potente is co-state director for Decoding Dyslexia CA, a grassroots movement dedicated to improving literacy outcomes for those with dyslexia and all struggling readers.

    Marshall Tuck is CEO of EdVoice, a nonprofit organization seeking to change state policy so that children from low-income communities receive high-quality educations.

    The opinions expressed in this piece represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • The solution to California’s literacy problem needs to go beyond third grade

    The solution to California’s literacy problem needs to go beyond third grade


    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    Third grade students in California’s lowest performing schools are doing better at reading, thanks to the Elementary Literacy Support Block Grant funding and a new focus on curriculum materials based on the science of reading.

    That funding focused on improving education for students primarily in the youngest classrooms (K-2), with a stated goal of having all students reading by third grade.

    While many California districts that received grants have been praised for providing student support such as tutoring or after-school programming, they are still focused on K-3. None of them have developed a comprehensive plan to address illiteracy among the older grades.

    The most recent National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) stated that 68% of fourth graders lack key literacy skills. In California, the latest assessment of student performance shows fewer than half of eighth graders are proficient in English language arts. Many of these tweens and teens still have reading skills between a first and fourth grade level.

    With literacy instruction traditionally focused in elementary school, middle and high school teachers are unequipped to support more than half of the students in their class who don’t yet have the literacy skills to access grade level text. The core problem is twofold: Educators are not trained to teach structured literacy in secondary school, and they do not have the right content for their older students reading far below grade level.

    As one eighth grade teacher said, “I came here expecting to teach literature, but I soon realized I had to learn how to teach literacy first.”

    Today’s middle and high school curricula assume that students beyond the fourth grade no longer need to learn how to read — instead, they should be able to read to learn. The reality is that many cannot.

    Without the phonics and fluency skills, or background knowledge to make meaning from text, how can students analyze things like the author’s purpose and point of view, or use primary sources to write historical essays, or lab reports?

    Students who struggle with reading end up falling behind across all subjects — from social studies to science to math — contributing to increased dropout rates.

    The second problem is a deep lack of age-appropriate “learn-to-read” books for tweens and teens.

    We cannot support and empower adolescent readers when their only choices for practice are stories like Dr. Seuss’s “Hop on Pop.” While these books are on their reading level, they are misaligned entirely with their interests. The content is boring and juvenile, even embarrassing, to a sixth or 10th grader, and the characters are not representative of students’ range of diverse backgrounds and identities. As a result, these students become disengaged and often stop reading altogether. For effective literacy instruction, we need to provide students with engaging opportunities for meaningful practice.

    So how do we extend literacy instruction beyond the third grade, systematically? 

    1. Equip teachers in higher grades with the skills and knowledge to support literacy growth. With additional training on literacy instruction, and access to resources to empower student reading practice, we can equip today’s middle and high school ELA teachers with the tools they need to drive growth for students, beginning wherever they are.
    2. Rethink the choices students have for reading practice. Until just a few months ago, there were no suitable or effective “learn-to-read” books written for older students. As more age-appropriate content becomes available, we need to create a new shelf in the library filled with books that are culturally inclusive, intriguing and accessible for students at any intersection of age and reading level.

    We can transform literacy and access if we apply the science of reading in a relevant way to older students. They can catch up, but to help them do so, we must meet them where they are: reengaging reluctant readers with texts they can read and want to read — books that reflect their identities and experiences — and help them discover the joy of reading.

    Instead of holding students back in grade three, as some districts have proposed, let’s think about how to propel them forward, starting wherever they are.

    ●●●

    Louise Baigelman is a former literacy teacher and CEO of Storyshares, a literacy organization dedicated to inspiring a love of reading across the globe.

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





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  • Teachers alone can’t address the literacy crisis

    Teachers alone can’t address the literacy crisis


    Credit: Alison Yin/EdSource

    Improving literacy instruction is once again in fashion among America’s policy circles. Between 2019 and 2022, state legislatures passed more than 200 bills that sought to push and pull public schools to embrace the “science of reading.”

    But one year into closely following a big city school district’s effort to remake literacy instruction as part of a project with the Center on Reinventing Public Education, I can’t help but think these well-intended legislative efforts ignore the larger problem: teachers working alone in their classrooms are ill-positioned on their own to provide the support children most need to learn to read. 

    CRPE’s report on this project suggests that addressing the literacy crisis requires more than papering over the harms of bad curricula. It means rethinking the traditional teaching model, long a hallmark of public education in the United States, that leaves one adult in charge of supporting 25 or more children who arrive with wildly different levels of preparation and uneven or absent literacy support at home.  

    Thanks to the work of organizations like The Oakland REACH and the Oakland NAACP, the Oakland Unified School District started quietly overhauling its approach to literacy instruction two years ago. That work involved familiar investments in new curriculum and professional development.

    But the real stars of the strategy were early literacy tutors, community members — including parents and grandparents — who were trained and paid to support small groups of students working to develop foundational literacy skills. 

    Thanks to the investment in early literacy tutors, Oakland schools were able to offer significantly more targeted and differentiated instruction than they would have otherwise. One school we visited used an “all hands on deck” approach that leveraged eight classroom teachers, two tutors, and two non-classroom educators to ensure that every student was getting the targeted literacy instruction they needed. Another school described using tutors to support literacy instruction in a first-second combination class, where students’ instructional needs varied by multiple grade levels. 

    In interviews, teachers and principals alike described the importance of having an additional adult to support reading instruction. A teacher we spoke to said having a trained tutor in her classroom meant she could support five literacy groups instead of two and provide extra support to children who were furthest behind. Without the tutor, this teacher said she would have had to rely more on whole-group direct instruction, pushing children who didn’t yet know their letter sounds to learn alongside those already reading. 

    A parent contrasted her child’s experience in an Oakland school supported by a tutor with her own experience: “I think back to when I was in school. If you were behind where the class was, you were really left behind, or if you were ahead, then maybe you were bored and your mind was wandering and you weren’t paying attention. I feel like with (early literacy tutors) … (students) get special time with an adult who is working with them. And I think that is really impactful.”

    Importantly, in shouldering some of the work of literacy instruction, early literacy tutors provided a critical well of support for beleaguered educators, whose jobs have become ever more difficult coming out of the pandemic. Increasing behavioral challenges, an attendance crisis and larger variation in students’ learning needs are putting extraordinary demands on teachers at a time when public attitudes about work and the prestige of teaching are also evolving and eroding teachers’ commitment to their jobs. 

    Early literacy tutors could meaningfully help shoulder the load of reading instruction in large part because they were fully integrated into the district’s larger strategy around literacy. Unlike other tutoring programs that largely operate on the periphery of schools, Oakland’s early literacy tutors worked hand-in-hand with school staff charged with supporting literacy instruction. 

    Two years after they embarked on the new strategy, Oakland can’t yet claim to have solved the literacy problem, but there are glimmers of hope. Our study found that students who had access to evidence-based, differentiated literacy instruction — whether tutor- or teacher-provided — made statistically significant learning gains in reading and these gains were especially large in kindergarten. These results were achieved despite the fact that schools told us they needed additional tutors to fully optimize small-group reading instruction. Imagine what might be possible if every child had access to differentiated instruction that met their individual needs.

    Expecting teachers, working alone in their classrooms, to provide both all the individualized support students most need was probably always a fool’s errand; continuing to embrace it as students struggle and deal with the lifelong consequences of illiteracy is simply irresponsible. As schools look to make up ground lost during the pandemic, those that support them should understand the limitations that come with investing too little into the effort. 

    ●●●

    Ashley Jochim is a principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, where her research focuses on identifying opportunities and obstacles to addressing systemic challenges in K-12 schools. She co-authored a report on the organization’s work in Oakland Unified School District.

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





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  • Newsom promises funding to jump-start early literacy

    Newsom promises funding to jump-start early literacy


    Gov. Gavin Newsom displays the Golden State Literacy Plan, a compilation of actions he has taken to improve reading in early grades, during an appearance at Clinton Elementary School in Compton on June 5.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom confirmed Thursday that the state budget will include hundreds of millions of dollars to fund legislation needed to achieve a comprehensive statewide approach to early literacy.

    Assembly Bill 1454, which passed the Assembly on Thursday with a unanimous 75-0 vote, would move the state’s schools toward adopting evidence-based literacy instruction, also known as the science of reading or structured literacy. 

    Although phonics, the ability to connect letters to sounds, has drawn the most attention, the science of reading focuses on four other pillars of literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, identifying distinct units of sounds; vocabulary; comprehension; and fluency. It is based on research on how the brain connects letters with sounds when learning to read.

    “Learning to read is life-changing for a child,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Salinas, said in a statement. “And strong reading skills are the gateway to academic success, lifelong confidence, and opportunity. With this legislation, we take a clear and necessary step toward ensuring every child in California learns to read, and read well. This bill is supported by a broad and growing coalition all united in one belief: That we can and must do better for our students.”

    Rivas forged a deal for AB 1454 after ordering the sponsors of the bill, which included advocacy groups Decoding Dyslexia CA, EdVoice, and Families In Schools, to settle their differences with advocates for English learners and the California Teachers Association.

    The compromise legislation would provide funding for optional teacher training in evidence-based practices, require that all TK-5 textbooks that districts adopt be aligned to in this approach, and ensure all newly credentialed administrators are trained to support evidence-based instruction.

    Assemblymembers Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, and Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, co-authored the bill. 

    “We attached that bill to the budget, so we mean business,” Newsom said during a press conference at Clinton Elementary School in Compton. “We wanted to get that done, and we got it done. We hope we’ll get it done with an additional $200 million attached to it.”

    Advocates of a comprehensive statewide approach to early literacy say the bill would fill in significant gaps in the state’s current policy of local control over instructional decisions. It completes a comprehensive plan to improve literacy in the state, said Newsom, introducing the Golden State Literacy Plan.

    “This Golden State Literacy Plan is a step-by-step plan to make real what we are promoting,” Newsom said, holding up the nine-page document — a compilation of actions the state has taken, culminating with additional funding for literacy-related programs and actions.

    While states like Mississippi, Tennessee and Colorado have started with a framework grounded in the science of reading and a comprehensive plan for early literacy, California, over the past five years, adopted disparate parts: new evidenced-based reading standards for teacher preparation programs, state funding of an early grade diagnostic screening system for reading challenges like dyslexia, and funding reading coaches in the state’s lowest-performing schools. It also included the expansion of transitional kindergarten and expanded bilingual programs.

    Newson talked about his personal experience with dyslexia and how it has motivated him to improve literacy in the state.

    “There’s not a day where my dyslexia does not expose itself,” he said. “If anyone’s seen my writing, they can attest to how it exposes itself. So this has been an imperative for me to do more and do better in this space.”

    Newsom also took the opportunity Thursday to talk about some of the state’s successes, including improved scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading in both fourth and eighth grades between 2011 and 2022.

    The Compton Unified School District was selected for the press conference to highlight the district’s increased test scores and graduation rates. 

    “Today’s event reflects a shared purpose, ensuring literacy for all,” said Compton Unified Superintendent Darin Brawley. “The governor’s emphasis on literacy is both timely and essential. Research and experience tells us that if students are not reading by grade three, it’s going to be a struggle. Thereafter, their academic path becomes increasingly difficult.”

    Compton Unified has worked to eliminate the opportunity gap by expanding access to early literacy programs, multilingual education and STEAM pathways, he said.

    “Compton Unified is proof that demographics do not determine destiny,” Brawley said. “With the right investments, the right leadership, the right vision, the right partnerships, we can transform outcomes and unlock the full potential of every single child.”

    Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, which advocates for English learners, said the state literacy plan supports a diverse student population. The organization, which had opposed the original bill, was satisfied that the materials and training in the new bill would incorporate the specific literacy needs of English learners.  

    “The recently launched literacy and biliteracy resources, the literacy content blocks and the preschool through third-grade learning progressions provide critical guidance to help educators support young learners in both English and their home language,” Hernandez said. “Thank you, Governor Newsom, for ensuring that multilingual learners are at the center of California’s literacy promise.”

    The Golden State Literacy Plan also highlights the state’s investments in literacy in the governor’s upcoming budget, including $1.7 billion for a block grant to fund professional development for teachers, $500 million for TK-12 literacy and math coaches, $387.6 million for additional Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant funding, $40 million to support literacy screenings, and $25 million to support implementation of math and literacy initiatives, elevate best practices, and establish a clearinghouse for state-developed math and literacy resources.

    The increased state funding for literacy comes amid criticism of Newsom’s spending plan for education, which the Legislative Analyst’s Office has said will create new debt and rely on one-time funding to pay for ongoing operations.

    John Fensterwald contributed to this report.





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  • LA arts education group fights falling literacy rates through poetry

    LA arts education group fights falling literacy rates through poetry


    A student performs a poem at the quarterfinals of the 12th annual Get Lit Classic Slam.

    Photo Credit: CJ Calica

    Salome Agbaroji wrote her first poem, a rap, in the second grade, and she’s been crafting rhymes ever since. Now the 18-year-old Harvard student is best known as the nation’s youth poet laureate. 

    “I have always loved poetry,” said Agbaroji. “Even before I knew it was poetry, I started loving rap music, so I’ve always loved poetry and using words creatively. That’s always just been what I gravitated to, even as a young, young child.”

    A Nigerian-American poet from Los Angeles, Agbaroji has performed spoken word poetry for the Golden Globes, an NFL halftime show, and she’s talked poetry with President Joe Biden at the White House. Her passion for spoken word performance began back at Gahr High School in Cerritos, where her love of words was further fueled by the arts education nonprofit Get Lit-Words Ignite. 

    “Get Lit is an amazing organization, giving you the space and the opportunity to share your voice and to be creative and to be wild and to be heard,” says the eloquent teenager who believes in the power of poetry to combat rising illiteracy and injustice. “They shined a light on me. They made such a big impact on my whole journey.”

    2023 national youth poet laureate Salome Agbaroji performs a poem at the 12th Annual Get Lit Classic Slam.
    Photo Credit: Unique Nicole

    Amid a deepening literacy crisis, Get Lit spreads a love of literature through spoken word poetry and performance. Founded by actor/writer Diane Luby Lane in 2006, Get Lit, which recently received $1 million from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, teaches classical poetry as well as empowers children and teens to write their own poems in over 150 Los Angeles schools, instilling a love of language in a generation often struggling with literacy.

    “Spoken word really helps with literacy,” said Lane. “It really helps when you put your body on the line, when you’re not just listening passively, but you’re actually memorizing, you’re performing, you’re responding with your own words. It’s such an interactive experience.”

    Get Lit reaches out to roughly 50,000 students a year, ranging from fourth grade to high school, through its school-based programs. The curriculum is a deep dive into great literature, from T.S. Eliot to Maya Angelou, that culminates in a three-day Classic Slam, the largest classic youth poetry competition in the country. 

    The Classic Slam “is really worth attending if you can, it is mind-blowing and so inspiring to witness,” said Malissa Feruzzi Shriver, co-founder of Turnaround Arts: California, a nonprofit that works in elementary and middle schools. “Students who participate benefit in so many ways; they gain confidence and poise and become empowered to use their voice in a unique way.” 

    Along the way, they teach the power of recitation, as well as how to amplify your own voice amid the noise of the social media age. The students come to hear the echoes in the ancient, putting the past in dialogue with the present.

    “We always say a classic isn’t a classic because it’s old, a classic is a classic because it’s great,” Lane said. “We’re redefining what the canon is.”

    Finding the joy in literacy can be a powerful message for children who don’t always feel celebrated in the school system, some say. Roughly 85% of Get Lit’s students are from under-resourced communities and 92% are students of color. 

    “Kids are sitting in school for eight hours a day, either being bombarded by facts and information or being asked to regurgitate those facts and information,” said Agbaroji, who has written poems that explore race, community and history. “Writing is like the one space, the one little pocket in an eight-hour school day where students actually can do something themselves, create something that they can say is mine and no one can take it away from me.”

    Ironically, Lane says that while some adults dismiss the study of poetry as a stilted and staid pursuit, most youths have far more open minds. 

    “It’s an easy sell with the kids. Very easy,” she says with a smile. “The elementary schools have been begging for it. You know how good young kids are at memorizing things. And sometimes their own responses are so deep. It’s unbelievable.” 

    Get Lit tries to respond to each child’s distinctive needs, experts say, tapping into what makes that student unique, how to help them shine.

    “They are doing amazing work,” said Merryl Goldberg, an arts advocate and veteran music and arts professor at Cal State San Marcos. “One of the things that I really like about what I know about them is that they incorporate community and student needs into their mission focused on poetry.”

    Lane says she knows just how to frame poems so that Tennyson and Tupac have equal pull with students and tries to shed light on the universality of poetry to capture the human experience.

    “We say, claim your poem, claim your life,” said Lane. “Because I am approaching it as an actor, I can pull Wordsworth pieces that make the kids raise their hand and fight over poems, and we’re mixing this with a lot of contemporary voices. Tupac is a great poet. The mixture allows for students to find themselves however they want to.”

    Cleveland High School students Robert Lee Shelton, Mateo Vejar, Heidi Lopez and Ashley Tahay perform a group poem at the 12th annual Get Lit Classic Slam.
    Photo Credit: Unique Nicole

    Parsing one word at a time, the way a poem requires, may be most ideal for struggling readers, Lane adds, who prefer to savor each syllable instead of speeding along the page.

    “My daughter, she was diagnosed with dyslexia. It was really hard for her to get through a whole book. It just was,” says Lane. “So many children in our school districts, their reading skills are not great, but their emotional IQ is high. So a poem gives them the opportunity to study something short but deep. It’s an absolute game changer. It changes the entire culture of a school.” 

    She’ll never forget teaching poetry to her daughter’s fourth grade class. She had them learn Angelou’s iconic “Still I Rise” by heart and watched the fourth graders light up with pride.

    “Here’s a kid that struggled with reading that doesn’t feel like they’re smart, but now they have this whole poem memorized,” she said. “They learn to perform it really well. They write their own response back to it. It’s deeply empowering. And they do it for the whole grade or class or school. And they get to feel really powerful by mastering short form content. That’s deep.”





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  • Why knowledge matters for literacy: A Q&A with Natalie Wexler

    Why knowledge matters for literacy: A Q&A with Natalie Wexler


    Credit: Andrew Ebrahim / Unsplash

    Amid a deepening literacy crisis, there’s been a focus on how to close the achievement gap, but Natalie Wexler sees the key problem undermining the American educational system a little differently.

    The education author maintains that we can’t truly reach equity in achievement unless we first close “The Knowledge Gap.” 

    Natalie Wexler, literacy expert and author of “The Knowledge Gap.”
    Courtesy photo

    She also argues that, in the rush to embrace the science of reading, some have focused so intently on the need for phonics in the early years that they have overlooked the need for systematic knowledge-building, which is also a core part of structured literacy, as is vocabulary. There’s more to the science of reading than phonics, experts have long suggested.

    Wexler is best known for her book “The Knowledge Gap,” but she also has a podcast and newsletter on the subject. The frequent Forbes contributor recently made time to discuss with EdSource why background knowledge is so fundamental to reading, why it’s crucial to teach kids about the world, from science to history, if you want them to become deep readers.

    A rich sense of context is key to fueling both vocabulary growth and reading comprehension, the ability to make inferences and connections while reading, paving the way for critical thinking and analysis, cornerstones of higher education. 

    Why do you think there are so many misunderstandings about the science of reading, and why is it often getting boiled down to just phonics? 

    A large part of it is that the phonics issue is more familiar. We’ve been hearing about it for decades. Since the 1950s, if not before, and it’s less complicated than the whole comprehension message. Not to say it’s simple, but it’s easy to grasp. You want kids to be able to read, you have to help them sound out words, and you have to teach that explicitly, and you can see results pretty quickly when you do. Right? Whereas building knowledge is this very gradual process. The way we measure progress is mostly through the standardized reading comprehension test. And it takes a long time, years sometimes, to see the fruits of your labors reflected in standardized test scores. 

    Has the phonics debate overshadowed other aspects of how the brain learns how to read?

    I do think that the focus on just the problems with phonics instruction or decoding instruction has given rise to the assumption that the other aspects of reading instruction are lined up with science, that they accord with what scientific evidence tells us will work. And with comprehension, that’s actually not the case. 

    Why is there so little understanding of cognitive science in the classroom? What do we need to know about working memory, for example?

    I certainly didn’t know about working memory being only able to hold maybe four or five items of new information for about 20 seconds before it starts to become overwhelmed. And that’s the scientific explanation, but I also think once you give people concrete examples, it starts to make sense at a gut level. The goal is for kids to acquire enough general academic vocabulary and familiarity with the complex syntax of written language to enable them to read and understand texts on topics they don’t already know about. 

    At some point you have built up enough understanding of the world to learn through reading, is that right? 

    If you’re a proficient reader, that’s a very efficient way of learning, through reading. That’s the goal. But how do we enable students to acquire that kind of general knowledge? Really the only way is through teaching them about a lot of specific topics, because the vocabulary, the syntax, doesn’t stick in the abstract, it needs a meaningful context. But there are different ways for kids to acquire that general knowledge. 

    Why is background knowledge so important to reading comprehension?

    Vocabulary and background knowledge are inextricably linked. So, if you’ve got baseball vocabulary, you’re going to have a better chance of understanding a text on baseball. If you’re practicing finding the main idea and you’re reading a text about the solar system and you have no idea what the solar system is, your ability to decode the words is probably not going to be enough. You need to have some background knowledge in place in order to acquire more knowledge from that text. To understand a word like “dynasty,” you need to have some idea of monarchies. You can’t just memorize the definition and really understand it, right? But you could acquire that understanding by learning about African dynasties, Asian dynasties, European dynasties, indigenous dynasties. There are lots of different paths to that goal.

    Why is this an equity issue? Is it because we’re not really spending as much time on history and science in the classroom these days but you don’t notice that as much with higher income children because those families are better able to fill in the gaps outside of school?

    That’s right. But I’ve heard from educators and administrators these days that even higher-income kids are coming in with poor oral language skills because people are on their phones so much, and even more-affluent, more highly educated parents are not engaging in that kind of dialogue with kids that leads to rich oral language abilities. This has long been a problem with kids from less highly educated families. I think it really has to do with the level of parental education more than with socioeconomic status or race. If you have a poor kid whose parents both have Ph.D.s, but they’re struggling because they’re adjunct professors, that kid’s probably going to be exposed to a lot of academic language and vocabulary at home. But other kids rely on school for that. I’m not saying that education can completely level the playing field, but it could be doing way more than it is currently doing to give all kids the kind of exposure to academic knowledge and vocabulary that kids from highly educated families acquire more or less naturally.  

    So it’s more related to education than income. Is part of the issue also that schools prefer inquiry-based learning to direct instruction? We let the kids try to figure things out on their own instead of explaining it to them.

    Where this belief in discovery and inquiry has really taken hold is at the elementary level. I do think that this focus on comprehension skills and strategies, whether consciously or not, it’s connected to that idea that we shouldn’t be the ‘sages on the stages’ just pouring information into kids’ brains. If you teach them a skill, like finding the main idea or making inferences, then they can use that skill to discover knowledge on their own, acquire knowledge on their own. That’s the theory. But it often doesn’t work in practice. It’s hard to make an inference if you don’t really understand the subject matter. Some of these skills do need to be taught, but others really are just sort of natural outgrowths of knowledge. I want to make it clear, it’s not like you have to choose between building knowledge and teaching skills and strategies. It’s a question of what you put in the foreground. 

    Why are deep dives into a topic, say dinosaurs or mummies, more compelling for children than randomly chosen abstract passages, to drive comprehension?

    If you get deeply into a topic, it’s much more interesting than if you just skim the surface. … The power of narrative is really important. It doesn’t have to be fiction, it could be a story from history. I’ve seen second graders fascinated by the war of 1812. Teachers are like, how are second graders going to be able to deal with that? Well, if they’ve learned about the American Revolution and they have the background knowledge, they get fascinated by it because they understand what’s going on. They understand the issues, but they don’t know who won. They’re like, oh, no, America’s going to lose!

    Everybody loves a cliffhanger.





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  • No cuts for schools, more funding for early literacy, in Newsom’s revised budget

    No cuts for schools, more funding for early literacy, in Newsom’s revised budget


    Gov. Gavin Newsom presents his revised 2025-26 state budget during a news conference in Sacramento on May 14, 2025.

    Credit: AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli

    TK-12 schools and community colleges can expect the same funding in 2025-26 that they received this year, plus a small cost-of-living adjustment, and there will be a big boost for early literacy, Gov. Gavin Newsom revealed Wednesday in the revision to his January state budget plan.

    Schools and community colleges will be shielded from the pain facing other state services because of the revised forecast of a $12 billion drop in state revenues that Newsom blamed on the “Trump slump” — the president’s erratic tariff and other economic policies that are affecting California.

    For the University of California and California State University, the news was better than anticipated. The systems would face a 3% cut for 2025-26, notably less than the nearly 8% reduction Newsom proposed in January. The smaller cut may provide some relief at a time when higher education in California and across the nation is worried about losses in federal research grants and other funding under Trump administration policies. 

    The 2.3% cost-of-living adjustment in 2025-26 for most TK-12 programs is determined by a federal formula that does not factor in the cost of housing, the biggest expense facing teachers and other employees.

    In his May budget revision, Newsom keeps significant money for TK-12 programs that he proposed in January for fully rolling out transitional kindergarten for 4-year-olds, along with additional funding to reduce class sizes, and for expanding summer school and after-school learning to more districts.

    And Newsom would add $200 million to his earlier $543 million proposal for early literacy instruction, with money to buy instructional materials, hire literacy coaches and train teachers in “evidence-based literacy instruction,” which is code for teaching phonics and word decoding as well as other fundamental reading skills.

    That funding would take a significant step toward creating and funding a comprehensive early literacy strategy and coincides with compromise legislation, pushed by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, on spelling out what the instruction and reading materials should look like.

    “We’re thrilled. We’re excited,” said Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice, which pushed early literacy legislation. “In a really tight budget year, prioritizing reading for California kids and investing $200 million is real leadership.”

    Newsom would also add to past efforts to recruit teachers by including $64.2 million in one-time funding for the Golden State Teacher Grant Program, under which teachers receive college tuition in exchange for agreeing to teach in underserved districts and in subjects facing critical shortages, and $100 million to pay stipends to student teachers. Unpaid student teaching has been cited as one of the primary reasons teacher candidates fail to complete their credentials. 

    The Legislature has a month to reshape Newsom’s budget before the June 15 constitutional deadline to pass a budget for the fiscal year that starts on July 1.

    What the budget doesn’t include, however, is any funding to backfill for the potential loss of billions of federal dollars in Medi-Cal funding for school physical and mental health services, cuts for Head Start programs, training grants for new teachers and research grants for the University of California and California State University, and the dismantling of the AmeriCorps program, which supplies teachers aides and tutors in hundreds of low-income schools.

    “Our ability to backfill all these federal cuts — no, we’re not going to be in a position to do that, we just are not in that position,” Newsom said. “It’s the old adage, you can’t do everything but you can do anything. There may be areas where we can make adjustments.”

    “I think we should be cautious about eliminating consideration of x, y, and z until we see the totality of the challenges as they present themselves.”

    In one cost-cutting measure, Gov. Newsom is proposing to roll back California’s health insurance program for undocumented immigrant adults, by charging premiums and freezing new enrollment, a move that advocates said will affect their children, many of whom are U.S. citizens. One in 10 California children are estimated to have an undocumented parent.

    “When a parent or family member is sick and unable to work or provide care, kids suffer as a result,” said Mayra Alvarez, president of the nonprofit organization The Children’s Partnership.  “Ripping away these family members’ access to health care, while they are also under threat of cruel immigration enforcement and other anti-immigrant policies, in turn puts the well-being of our children at risk.”

    Higher education

    State funding for the state’s system of 116 community colleges would change little from last year, receiving 0.6% less, at $8.9 billion. However, some of its important funding — $531.6 million from Proposition 98 revenues — would be deferred for a year under the proposal.  

    UC would have its funding cut by $129.7 million, while CSU would lose $143.8 million. In January, Newsom’s administration had proposed deeper cuts of $396.6 million and $375.2 million, respectively. 

    The revised budget maintains a proposal to defer previously promised 5% budget increases until 2027-28 for both systems. Those deferrals, which were part of Newsom’s multiyear compact agreements with the systems, were also included in Newsom’s January budget proposal. 

    The compacts, originally agreed to in 2022, promised annual budget increases for UC and CSU in exchange for the systems working toward goals such as increasing graduation rates and enrolling more California residents. 

    “We were able to hold strong to that over a two-year period. And we’re struggling now with some challenges,” Newsom said during a news conference Wednesday, though he added that the compacts are “sacrosanct” and that the systems would get their deferred dollars in 2027-28.

    By reducing the proposed cut to UC’s budget for 2025-26, the 10-campus system will be able to minimize cuts to student support services and preserve “critical investments like affordable student housing construction,” President Michael V. Drake said Wednesday in a statement.

    CSU Chancellor Mildred García in January warned that a nearly 8% state budget reduction would result in larger class sizes and fewer course offerings for the system’s more than 460,000 students, hampering their prospects for graduating on time. With those cuts now dialed back to 3%, García praised the May revision as a “thoughtful and measured approach to addressing the state’s fiscal challenges.”

    Proposition 98 maneuvers

    In total, the May revision proposes $45.7 billion for the state’s higher education institutions and the California Student Aid Commission.

    The minimum funding for 2025-26 for Proposition 98, the formula that determines the portion of the general fund that must go to TK-12 and community colleges, would be $114.6 billion, down from $118.9 billion in 2024-25 because of shrinking state revenues.

    Newsom proposes to make up the difference by shifting numbers around, depleting what was left in the Proposition 98 rainy day fund. Among other maneuvers, he would:

    • Drain the remaining $540 million from a fund that was $8.4 billion only two years ago, when the state faced a fiscal crisis.
    • Defer $1.8 billion that would be due to schools in June 2026 by a month, to July 2026. Schools should notice little difference, although the maneuver does create a state obligation that must be repaid.
    • Withhold $1.3 billion due to schools and community colleges in 2024-25 in anticipation that the revenues for the rest of the year might come up short because of the further decline in state revenues.

    This last maneuver grabbed the attention of the California School Boards Association, which filed a lawsuit over a similar effort last year and is threatening to do so again.

    “Even in lean times, investing in public schools is California’s best economic strategy, so we cannot sidestep constitutional protections for public education nor underfund Prop 98 to offset shortfalls in other sections of the budget,” association President Bettye Lusk said in a statement.

    The immediate reaction to the budget proposal was positive, with some caveats.

    “The bottom line is that amid a budget crisis, the governor is protecting every major investment in education,” said Kevin Gordon, president of Capitol Advisors, a consultant for school districts. “We want to make sure Prop 98 funding is accounted for. As long as that’s the case, there’s not much to complain about.”

    Scott Moore, head of Kidango, a nonprofit that runs many Bay Area child care centers, praised the commitment to universal transitional kindergarten (TK) while criticizing Newsom’s decision to suspend a cost-of-living adjustment for child care providers for low-income children and freeze funding for emergency child care services for foster and homeless children. 

    “We know that small class sizes and highly qualified teachers are two of the most important quality standards to ensure children benefit from pre-K. This budget invests wisely in TK,” he said. “The proposed cut to the COLA (cost of living increase) for child care providers must be restored. Now is the worst time to eliminate a small, but very much needed and deserved COLA for those who take care of our youngest and most vulnerable children.”





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