Legislation that calls for providing all state teachers and aides with math and reading training passed its first legislative hurdle despite the uncertainty of funding and the skepticism of advocates for English learners who dislike the bill’s nod to instruction in the “science of reading,” including phonics.
Senate Bill 1115 has no secure source of money heading into a tight fiscal year, with Gov. Gavin Newsom all but ruling out money for new programs. His January budget includes $20 million for a designated county office to train coaches who would then train their own teachers in what they learned.
Neither the bill’s author, Sen. Monique Limon, D-Santa Barbara, nor its sponsor, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, offered a cost estimate at a hearing of the Senate Education Committee last Wednesday, though it would cost at least hundreds of millions of dollars to train 300,000 teachers. They said they were willing to phase in and focus funding, such as concentrating on early literacy and numeracy skills, and to look for federal and dedicated sources of money.
Thurmond said training teachers to enable all students to read effectively “is an issue of moral clarity.” Neither he nor Limon offered a cost estimate that could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.
“In an age when we have access to substantial brain science about how students learn, it should be unacceptable to train only some educators in the best strategies to teach essential skills,” he said.
School districts have received billions of dollars between federal and state Covid relief funding, including money to address learning loss — money that could be used for teacher training — but none of that has been earmarked for that purpose.
State budgets have set aside $50 million to hire and train reading teachers in the most impoverished 5% of schools. But Thurmond said training of trainers, however, does not substitute for providing sufficient funding to ensure training for all teachers and support staff in “high-quality” programs in math and literacy.
The bill calls for the Department of Education to identify and recommend those high-quality programs by Jan. 1, 2026. For transitional kindergarten through sixth grade, those should align with “the science of reading” by focusing on results-driven methods of teaching, which may include, but is not limited to, offerings such as Lexia LETRS and CORE Learning.”
Singling out those specific trainings in the bill were red flags for two nonprofits that advocate for English learners: Californians Together and California Association of Bilingual Educators (CABE). The science of reading refers to research from multiple fields of science that confirm or discount theories on how children learn to read. LETRS and CORE Learning are intensive programs that explain a systematic approach to teaching phonics and other elements of reading consistent with the science of reading.
Californians Together and CABE, however, complain that those programs overemphasize phonics and “structured literacy” at the expense of English learners’ need for more attention to oral language and vocabulary development.
Calling Californians Together’s position on the bill a “tweener,” legislative advocate Cristina Salazar testified at a hearing last week, “We agree that we need more professional learning for educators, but we do have concerns with the bill. Specifically, it mentioned the science of reading, and it also names commercial programs.”
CABE legislative advocate Jennifer Bakers said her organization shares the same concerns and “hopes to have a collaborative conversation about a path to move forward.”
Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Boch, R-Yucaipa, asked Thurmond whether the intent is to train existing teachers in the new standards that new teachers will be trained on.
“Yes, that is correct,” Thurmond said.
Opposition from Californians Together and CABE this month factored into the quashing of a bill that would have required school districts and charter schools to train all TK to fifth-grade teachers and literacy coaches in instruction based on the science of reading and to buy textbooks from a list endorsed by the State Board of Education. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Salinas, ordered Assembly Bill 2222 shelved without a hearing to give time for negotiations with opponents, including the California Teachers Association.
At the hearing, Thurmond acknowledged similarities between the two bills, although AB 2222 would have been a mandate, while AB 1115 would recommend the selection of trainings.
Along with mandating the science of reading approach to instruction, AB 2222 would have required that all TK to fifth-grade teachers, literacy coaches and specialists take a 30-hour minimum course in reading instruction by 2028. School districts and charter schools would purchase textbooks from an approved list endorsed by the State Board of Education.
Thurmond said the language of AB 1115 is well balanced in that it refers to both the science of reading and the state’s English Language Arts/English Language Development framework, which includes multiple strategies necessary for all students, including English learners, to learn how to read.
New math framework
July will mark a year since the State Board of Education adopted a revised California Mathematics Framework, which took four years and three revisions to pass. The drafters and supporters agree that the framework, with emphasis on tangible applications of math, as well as a deeper conceptual understanding of it, will require a shift in teaching and extensive training. But no significant money has been allocated yet, and the process of reviewing textbooks and materials has yet to begin.
In an interview, Limon said it is important to raise the issue of teacher training now, even if legislation is tied to a future appropriation.
Part of the public debate in committing public dollars should be, What would the program look like, and how will it serve diverse students? she said. “There is value to that discussion,” she said. Before her election to the Legislature, Limon served for six years on the Santa Barbara Unified school board.
In 2022-23, only 46.7% of California students met grade standards on the state’s English language arts test; the percentages were 36.6% for Hispanic, 29.9% for Black, and 35.3% for economically disadvantaged students. The scores were worse in math: 34.5% of students overall, with 22.7% of Latino, 16.9% of Black, and 22.9% of economically disadvantaged students meeting standards.
Nine years ago, Analilia Gutierrez gave birth to her son, a micro preemie who needed intensive care.
At the time, Gutierrez, an immigrant from Mexico, spoke and read little English. Filling out health forms and trying to keep up with her son’s care was an overwhelming experience. Interpreters, if available, sometimes created problems with misinterpretation.
“There were so many barriers,” said Gutierrez, a resident of Tulare, in the Central San Joaquin Valley.
In California, an estimated 28% of adults have such poor literacy in English that they struggle to do anything more complicated than filling out a basic form or reading a short text, according to a survey, the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). California’s rate is worse than any other state except New Mexico, where the estimated rate is 29%.
The U.S. version of the survey was conducted only in English, and many immigrants, unsurprisingly, tend to struggle more with what is often not their home language: 19% of adults in California say they speak English “less than very well,” according to 2022 American Community Survey data.
Not being able to read English well doesn’t just make life difficult — it can be dangerous.
As the CEO of the Central San Joaquin Valley-based Clinica Sierra Vista, Dr. Olga Meave routinely sees patients who struggle to read in any language. Sometimes it’s a patient who doesn’t know how to sign their name. Other times, patients can’t read the directions. One patient ended up in the emergency room after taking the wrong dose of blood thinners, which caused their stomach to bleed.
Low literacy is particularly acute in heavily agricultural regions, such as the Central San Joaquin Valley and the Central Coast, that rely on a largely immigrant labor force that may have little formal education, even in their home languages. More than 4 out of 10 residents in Imperial, Tulare, Merced, Madera, Kings and Monterey counties struggle with basic English literacy.
But signs of adults who struggle to read are in every community in California: job seekers unable to get jobs or promotions; business owners who cannot complete paperwork for loans and grants; prisons with a disproportionate number of struggling readers and parents who cannot help their children with homework or even read bedtime stories.
No state has more immigrants than California: Over a third of adults over 25 are immigrants, according to 2022 American Community Survey data. Most are from Mexico and other Latin American countries, but an increasing number hail from Asian countries. Nearly half of children in the state have at least one parent who is an immigrant.
Immigrants make up a huge share of workers in key industries in California. While highly educated immigrants bring their in-demand skills to the tech industry, those who work in agriculture may have little or no formal education.
Experts say programs aimed at addressing poor literacy reach only a fraction of those who need help, such as courses that improve English skills, help students get a GED or their citizenship or even a basic education. In California, that is largely adult immigrants. In 2021-22, adult schools served over 480,000 students in California, while the state says more than 10,000 adults were served through library tutoring programs in 2022-23.
Those numbers are dwarfed by the need for adult education from immigrants alone: 5.9 million Californians don’t speak English “very well” and 2.9 million immigrants lack a high school education, according to 2022 American Community Survey data.
Programs that serve adult students are often plagued by long wait lists, a lack of funding or a lack of accessibility. Advocates say that one of the biggest problems is simply that adult education seems to fly under the radar in a way that TK-12 schools and colleges don’t.
“We are the best-kept secret in education,” said Carolyn Zachry, education administrator and state director of the Adult Education Office for the California Department of Education.
As a new immigrant, Gutierrez didn’t have time to take classes while she was focused on raising young children. Now that her children are school-aged, she has been able to attend Tulare Adult School, and her world has opened up.
Gutierrez has since become an American citizen and she has earned a GED. Her newfound English skills recently helped her land a job at Chipotle. She is now able to help her son and daughter with their homework and read to them in the evenings, a ritual she treasures. She thinks about how much easier it would have been to navigate the hospital during her son’s traumatic birth with the education she has now.
“I would now have the knowledge,” Gutierrez said. “It’s so much different.”
‘Their circles are small’
Research has found that an adult’s literacy skills are strongly connected to their income and civic engagement, as well as their health. The effects of low literacy are felt not just by individuals and their families but by local and national economies. That’s why researchers say adult education is a worthy investment.
Going Deeper
Unlike the data measuring students in TK-12 schools or college, surveys of adult skills in reading and math occur only sporadically in the U.S.
The most recent data comes from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), an international survey of adults’ basic skills of literacy, as well as numeracy and digital problem-solving. In the U.S., the survey was offered only in English, although background questions were offered in Spanish.
Between 2012 and 2017, the National Center for Education Statistics administered the first cycle of the PIAAC survey to 12,330 U.S adults ages 16 to 74 in all 50 states.
The second cycle of PIAAC surveys was conducted in 2022-23, and results are expected later this year.
Level 1 is the lowest literacy level in the PIAAC survey. Adults at this level struggle to understand written material or may be functionally illiterate. Level 2 means that an adult is approaching proficiency in literacy, while Level 3 signals the minimal proficiency an adult needs to function well. It means being able to understand and interpret information across complex written texts. Levels 4 and 5 represent advanced literacy skills.
A 2020 Gallup study, conducted by economist Jonathan Rothwell, estimated that if everyone in the U.S. was minimally proficient in English literacy, according to the standards of the international PIAAC survey, it would increase the gross domestic product by 10%. This study looked at the literacy levels of both immigrants and native residents.
The Gallup study noted that areas with concentrated low literacy would see the biggest financial gains from this kind of improvement. One of those places is the Merced Metro Area, in the Central Valley. It would stand to gain an estimated 26% of its GDP, largely because 72% of its adults are not proficient readers, the report said.
The study estimated that those at the lowest level of literacy made on average $34,127 in 2020 dollars, while those who scored proficient made on average $62,997.
Immigrants tend to earn less than natives, but a Migration Policy Institute analysis of PIAAC survey data found that immigrants and native workers with similar literacy and math skills tend to earn the same amount. This report says that immigrants “need higher levels of English competency to be paid well — and on par with natives — for their work in the U.S. labor market.”
Struggling to read as an adult can be a shameful, lonely experience for those who grew up speaking English. But for immigrants, the experience of not being able to read well can be even more isolating when they cannot speak English or are not a citizen. Christine Spencer, a Tulare Adult School instructor, wishes that many more immigrants in her community were taking advantage of these classes.
“My students tell me that they have no friends,” said Spencer. “Their circles are small.”
Bringing literacy into workplaces is a ‘secret sauce’
When Marcelina Chamu emigrated from Mexico decades ago, she longed to do more than just get by. She hoped to become a citizen, learn English, all while creating a better life for her family in the U.S.
But getting the education to achieve those goals wasn’t easy. Chamu, 58, is part of a vast, largely immigrant, labor force of custodians who begin their work shifts in office buildings just as the sun is going down. For the last 25 years, she has clocked in at 6 every night. Because of her work schedule and raising four children, she put off her own education for decades.
“It is very difficult for someone who works through dawn to get up and start studying,” Chamu said, in Spanish. “But it’s not impossible.”
Advocates say that the best way to target immigrants is by reaching them wherever they are in the community — whether that’s at their child’s school or workplace.
Immigrants with low English literacy skills tend to have jobs — more so than U.S. natives with low literacy and more so than immigrants in other nations, according to the Migration Policy Institute. That means they’re busy, but it also means they are easy to reach at work.
One program in California is doing just that, and it helped Chamu.
A few years ago, Chamu learned that her union, SEIU-United Service Workers West, had a partnership with a nonprofit called the Building Skills Partnership, which aims to improve the lives of property service workers in low-wage jobs along with their families.
Chamu has done her best to take advantage of all the programs she could: citizenship, English courses, free tax preparation and nutrition courses. She has become more confident going to the grocery store and filling out forms in the doctor’s office.
The California-based Building Skills Partnership estimates that it reaches 5,500 workers and community members each year through in-person courses, and another 20,000 through online classes throughout the state.
“Part of the secret sauce of why we’re so effective is that we’re able to take our programming into where workers are at,” said Building Skills Partnership executive director Luis Sandoval.
An instructor with Building Skills Partnership teaches a class of custodians in Orange County.Credit: Courtesy of Building Skills Partnership
Property workers, who tend to be clustered around large metro areas in the Bay Area and Southern California, can take part in programming before they head into work or during their lunch hour, which might be at 10 p.m.
Reaching immigrants at their workplaces isn’t just convenient, it allows these programs to cater to workers’ language and job needs, said Jeanne Batalova, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
She points to the Welcome Back Initiative, which focuses on tapping the talents of internationally trained health care workers who need help with specialized English skills or acclimating to a different type of health system to fill staffing shortages in California’s health care sector.
But work-based programs are rare in the U.S., where employers often view workers in low-skilled positions as easily replaceable. The Migration Policy Institute report says these work-based programs could be expanded through subsidies or other incentives, which exist in Canada and other European countries.
Tulare Adult School instructor Yolanda Sanchez, right, assists her student Mariana Gonzalez.EdSource/Emma Gallegos
Building Skills Partnership offers English paired with vocational training. Many workers in the program take English classes with an eye on switching to a more desirable daytime shift. Custodians who work during the daytime are expected to interact more with office workers, so their English skills matter more.
Rosa Lopez, 55, a custodian in a downtown San Diego building, is taking vocational English classes. That allows her to more easily communicate with security guards, a supervisor who only speaks English or just to direct a guest to the elevator.
Lopez said, “I’m more confident and secure in my position.”
Adult schools run on ‘dust’
Sometimes Beatrice Sanchez, 35, a stay-at-home mother of six, comes home from the store with the wrong items because she can’t read the labels in English. She is eager to take the English courses offered at her local school district, Madera Unified, but the program doesn’t currently offer child care. She said she will have to wait to take the courses until her youngest two children are in kindergarten.
Many of those most in need of adult education, like Sanchez, don’t have the time or resources to attend. Adults find it hard to squeeze in time between raising children and working. Even if they have time, transportation can be tricky — particularly in rural areas that lack an extensive public transportation system.
Some Americans used to view poor literacy as an individual’s failure to study during childhood, said Sarah Cacicio, the director of the Adult Literacy and Learning Impact Network (ALL IN), a national nonprofit focused on adult literacy. Now, she said, there is an increasing understanding that systemic factors — never-addressed learning disabilities, a chaotic home life, obligations to care for family or simply a poor education system here or abroad — may mean reaching adulthood without knowing how to read English well.
Most states rely entirely on skeletal funding from the federal government. In 2021-22, the federal government spent less than $800 per student on adult education classes aimed at English language, civics skills, and basic or high-school level education.
California provides robust additional funding. During the 2021–22 years, the state spent roughly $1,200 on each student who enrolled in adult education classes — primarily adult schools or community colleges. But adult educators say it’s not enough to meet the great needs of its students.
Adult schools, said John Werner, president-elect of the California Council for Adult Education “do it on dust. I don’t know how we pull it off.”
In California, adult education receives a fraction of the funding per pupil that TK-12 schools do. Werner said that more funding would allow programs serving adults to get rid of wait lists, improve their technology and facilities, and increase access by offering the child care so many of its potential students need.
Adult educators see the work of their field as an investment not just in individual adult students but in their families and greater communities.
“If we can pull (adult students) in,” Zachry said, “we can raise the economics of that family.”
Werner, director of the Sequoia Adult Education Consortium, said he’s proud of the work being done by the consortium that serves Tulare and Kings counties, which he calls the “Appalachia of the West.” But he is frustrated to see that adult schools are reaching just an estimated 8% of the adults in the region who need it.
“If we could just invest in this,” Werner said. “The greatness that would come out of this.”
For many years, “Balanced Literacy ” was considered the gold standard of reading instruction; it encouraged students to use context clues, Then came the fervor for the “Science of Reading,” which emphasized phonics. The reading wars dominated the education world for nearly two decades. Reading instruction across the nation changed to reflect the pro-phonics emphasis.
But then a group of parents went to court to close down the teaching of Balanced Literacy, and they sued Dr. Calkins. They blamed her for students’ test scores and their poor reading skills.
Sarah Schwartz of Education Week reported:
A first-of-its-kind lawsuit against three influential reading professors and their controversial literacy curricula has been dismissed, after a U.S. District Court declined to wade into the murky landscape of curriculum quality and education research.
Last year, a group of parents filed the lawsuit, which alleged that the professors and their publishers used “deceptive and fraudulent marketing” to sell their popular reading materials.
The case, brought by two parents from separate families in Massachusetts, centers on two sets of reading programs, one created by Lucy Calkins, an education professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the other by reading researchers Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, of Lesley University and The Ohio State University, respectively.
The parents argued that the creators, publishers, and promoters of the curricula—Calkins’ Units of Study for Teaching Reading and a suite of Fountas & Pinnell branded materials—violated consumer protection law in the state by making false claims about the research supporting their programs.
Publishers said that the programs were backed by research even though, the plaintiffs claimed, they omitted or diminished the role of phonics instruction, which decades of reading research has demonstrated is a key component of teaching young children how to decode print.
On Thursday, a judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts determined that the court could not grant a decision in the case, because it would require passing judgement on the quality of the reading programs in question—a task that the court said it is not equipped to perform.
By June 30, California schools must choose one of four screening tests recommended by a state panel.
Most other states already have a universal reading screening test for early grades, but California has lagged behind.
West Contra Costa went through an intensive 18-month process before selecting mCLASS DIBELS as its screening test of choice.
After a 10-year push from reading advocates, California schools are on the verge of requiring every student in kindergarten through second grade to get a quick screening test to detect challenges that could get in the way of them becoming proficient in reading.
Under 2023 legislation approved by the Legislature, every school district in the state is required to select the screening test it prefers by June 30. They can choose from among four options recommended by a state panel — and then begin administering the test during the coming school year.
California will be one of the few remaining states to introduce a universal screening test like this in K-2 grades. “This is something we have been fighting for for 10 years,” said Megan Potente, co-state director of Decoding Dyslexia CA. Her organization co-sponsored four prior bills, which did not make it through the state Legislature, until it was included in the 2023 education budget bill.
The screening test had a powerful champion: Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Newsom was diagnosed with dyslexia in elementary school and still copes with it as governor. He has become a national spokesperson on the issue, even writing a children’s book about it, titled “Bill and Emma’s Big Hit.”
Districts will only be required to administer the screening test in the K-2 grades, in part because substantial research shows that reading mastery by the third grade is crucial for a student’s later academic success.
The test is not intended to provide a definitive diagnosis of dyslexia or other reading difficulties. Instead, its goal is to be a guide for parents and teachers on whether further diagnosis is necessary and to prompt schools to provide other support services.
However, Potente, a former teacher in San Francisco Unified, pointed out that the screening test could prevent students from being placed in special education classes unnecessarily. She said her 16-year-old son, who had reading difficulties, didn’t get any intervention until after the crucial third-grade milestone.
“If we had caught his challenges earlier and addressed them with the intensive instruction that he got later, he would not have needed special education,” she said.
“Screening is just the first step. How the districts respond to the needs of students is really what’s most important,” she said.
How West Contra Costa Unified decided
West Contra Costa Unified School District’s process for choosing what test to adopt offers a window into the intensive process that at least some districts have gone through.
The 30,000-student district in the San Francisco Bay Area, serving large numbers of low-income and English learner students, first established a 20-member task force — made up of its superintendent, teachers, principals, board members, school psychologists, and community representatives — 18 months ago.
The district enlisted 150 teachers to try out mCLASS DIBELS and Multitudes, two of the four options offered by the state, and to provide detailed feedback. The district ruled out the two other options for a range of reasons.
After examining all of the information they received, district administrators recommended to the board of trustees at its May 14 meeting to select mCLASS DIBELS. (DIBELS, pronounced “dibbels,” is an acronym for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills.)
“mCLASS DIBELS was the overwhelming choice of our teachers,” Sonja Bell, the district’s director of curriculum instruction and development, told the board.
The screening test is already in widespread use in many districts, notably in Los Angeles Unified.
One feature that appealed to West Contra Costa teachers and parents is that the DIBELS test is quick — only taking between 1 and 7 minutes. Another plus is that it can be administered by the teacher while sitting with the student. The teacher can observe the student during the screening, which provides valuable information that might not be available if the test were taken on a computer or online.
Another attractive feature was that DIBELS has a Spanish component called Lectura, which will be essential for assessing the reading skills of the district’s large English learner population.
Among the many teachers already using the DIBELS test is Barbara Wenger, a second grade teacher at Nystrom Elementary in Hercules, one of several communities served by the district. The largest is the city of Richmond.
Like many teachers in West Contra Costa and other districts around the state, Wenger has been using the test voluntarilybefore the task force was set up —sometimes administering it monthly to assess a student’s progress. “I can’t emphasize how important this is to our instruction,” she said.
She recounted to the board at the May 14 meeting how DIBELS helped her identify a student who could only read four words a minute, instead of the expected 50 words. She put the student in an “intervention group” and gave her structured exercises. The student, she said, is now reading 104 words a minute, making it unnecessary to place her in a special education class.
“This is something we could only have done by identifying her at the beginning,” she said.
Having selectedDIBELS as the screening test, the district will turn to a District Implementation Team to oversee a multiyear rollout plan.
The district has decided to go beyond the once-a-year screening called for in the legislation and to administer it three times during the yearto assess a student’s progress more regularly. A three-year professional development plan for teachers will be phased in.
Crucially, the district says it will notify parents about the results of the screening shortly after it is administered.
Multitudes, the test developed by the Dyslexia Center at UC San Francisco, received some support from teachers because it is also a one-on-one test, is free to school districts, and was created by well-regarded practitioners at UCSF. It will launch in both Spanish and English in the fall of 2025. But reviewers had concerns that Multitudes is only administered once a year and that teachers aren’t familiar with it.
Like many districts, West Contra Costa is already using i-Ready, a screening test for early readers. But the test was not on the list of the four approved by the state. In addition, there were concerns that i-Ready is an online assessment, and just accessing it electronically presents some challenges to students, especially incoming kindergartners.
Nystrom Elementary’s Wenger said that DIBELS takes significantly less time to administer than i-Ready. It also shows how far a student is from their grade level, she said, but doesn’t flag kids in kindergarten who would benefit from intervention early on.
DIBELS also has a clearer way of communicating results to parents, Wenger said. I-Ready, by contrast, “has a very complicated, confusing, and ultimately overwhelming, report home.”
Although supportive of the test, West Contra Costa board member Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy expressed concern that the test would add to the testing burden students are already experiencing. “We have so many tests already,” he said.
Bell, the director of curriculum instruction and development, reassured him that the DIBELS test is brief, and that teachers will be careful not to overtax students or push them beyond their ability. “They’ll stop when they see students have had enough,” she said.
As part of its implementation, the district collaborated closely with GO Public Schools, an advocacy organization, to get broad community input, especially through the organization’s Community-Led Committee on Literacy.
Natalie Walchuk, vice president of GO Public Schools and a former principal, said the process of choosing a screening test has become “a catalyst for meaningful instructional improvement” in the district. She praised the district for “going far beyond the minimal requirements” in the legislation.
Potente pointed out that the screening test could prevent students from being placed in special education classes unnecessarily. She said her 16-year-old son, who had reading difficulties, didn’t get any intervention until after the crucial third-grade milestone.
“If we had caught his challenges earlier and addressed them with the intensive instruction that he got later, he would not have needed special education.”
I’m really excited to share our newest video clip–a great example of of one of the most important techniques in the TLAC library, FASE Reading. FASE Reading is a technique that supports student fluency and engagement in reading, topics we discuss extensively in the forthcoming TLAC Guide to the Science of Reading.
The clip comes to us from Jessica Sliman’s 4th grade classroom in Whitefish, MT. It shows 3 and a half minutes of Jessica and her students reading aloud from Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars.
I suspect you will love it as much as everyone on Team TLAC did.
First, here’s the clip:
Now some things we loved:
We love her initial framing, “I want you guys to notice moments of suspense.” This shapes student attention. Learning always starts with attention and directing students to attend to a ‘most important’ thing is one of the most important things a teacher can do. Jessica does a simple and elegant job of it here
Then they’re off reading. Jessica goes first. Her reading is beautifully expressive. She’s bringing the story to life modeling how to read meaningfully so that students will copy her. This will them to build the habit of infusing their reading with expression. Research suggests that this assists with meaning and is likely to translate into better and more expressive silent reading for students.
Izzy is the first student to read. she does a really nice job but Jessica pushes her to bring a bit more expression to her reading in a lighthearted and positive way: “How would she say that?” She’s making a norm of expressive reading that models her own. And happily this just increases her students’ enjoyment. Their laughter at Izzy’s portrayal underscores this.
Hadrian goes next. THere’s a great moment where Jessica drops in a quick definition of the word “prolong”–she’s recognized that students may not know the word and that it’s important. She provides the key knowledge without distracting from the story.
Hadrian is a pretty good reader but he’s also still developing his expressiveness. So it’s lovely the way she praises him for his “extra expression on “very very frightened.” Again the key is to cause students to practice reading aloud with expression and in so doing improve their fluency and infuse maximum meaning into their reading. She builds that culture intentionally.
Next Jessica reads again- moving the story along a bit, keeping it alive and fresh with her own expressive reading–she is after all, the best reader in the class–and modeling again for students how to express meaning as you read. Notice that she’s reading slightly more slowly than her natural rate might be. She’s reminding her class that fast reading isn’t good reading. Expressive reading is.
Steven reads next. Notice by the way that she calls on students unpredictably to read and that every student she’s called on is ready to read right away. This tells her something critical. Her leverage is high–meaning that she knows now that her students are not just listening but reading along.
Steven does something really interesting. He self-corrects, re-reading a sentence of his own volition not because he read it wrong but because he didn’t express its meaning as well as he could have. It’s a very meta-cognitive moment. “Oh, i didn’t capture that quite right.” Interestingly, Jessica doesn’t have to ask him whether he understands this passage. the way that he reads it SHOWS her this. So they can simply keep reading.
But what a statement about the culture of error Jessica has created! Students willingly and unselfconsciously improve their reading as they go.
Weston is next. We love the rhythm of the reading she’s established. Burst of reading are just long enough to allow students to take real pleasure in expressing the text but short enough to allow them to read with maximum success and attention. The switching feels lively but not disruptive. It balances the need to keep students on their toes–I might be next!--and locked in to the story. Beautiful.
Gracefully, Jessica steps in on the word cautiously and reads through to the end herself, again with beautiful expression.
It’s pretty clear that this reading–and that of her students–has had a real effect of her class since they plead to keep reading at the end. “We have to read the next chapter!” one student says urgently. They don’t want to stop!
As many readers probably know, we have written and published a middle school reading curriculum built around the science of reading.
And now we’re writing a high school curriculum as well!
We think this is a hugely important project. There’s very little high-quality curriculum out there for high school English teachers that supports them with knowledge-rich and adaptable lessons to ensure deep study of important books.
Having been working on this project for a year or so, we’re excited to share some of the work we’ve done.
Let us start by telling you about two foundations of the high school curriculum—both of which will be familiar to those who know our middle school work.
First, our HS curriculum is book based. Statistics show that the amount of time kids spend reading at home doesn’t amount to the time they should be reading to develop and maintain their reading comprehension, according to research. To address this, we seek to build students’ love of books by centering units on full texts, not excerpts or selections, so students have time to engage deeply with the protagonist’s plight and with an author’s writing style. Additionally, we build students’ fluency by ensuring that class time (even in high school!) includes shared reading, so students read aloud and hear text pages come to life.
Second, the curriculum is knowledge-driven. As research shows, reading comprehension is directly tied to knowledge, so knowledge is infused throughout the unit where it most supports comprehension. Thinking well requires facts, and nonfiction readings and explicitly-taught vocabulary words help students unlock the deeper meanings in the anchor text. As in our middle school curriculum, dedicated retrieval practice helps students encode vocabulary, text details, and unit knowledge to strengthen their analysis of the text.
emphasis on books and knowledge is crucial for students across all grades, we recognize that there are some specific needs of high school students as they develop maturity and independence. And so a few aspects of our high school curriculum are new and different.
One hallmark of maturity is the ability to grapple with “big ideas,” those questions and issues that have reverberated through time, so in addition to daily discussion questions, the high school curriculum also includes opportunities for more extended and student-driven discussions. We’ve designed specific lesson plan formats that help teachers confidently run extended Discussion Seminars over the course of the unit, and developed and included supporting documents for teachers and students that outline the purpose and some best practices for leading and participating in discussions.
All that rich thinking and learning from discussion needs to be captured–so our curriculum supports teachers and students in intentional note taking, using the Cornell notes method. Lesson plans include spaces throughout the lesson where students can pause to recap class discussion or reflect on their learning in ways that intentionally support note taking and using notes more effectively.
Our first unit, John Steinbeck’s Mice and Men, is ready for purchase, and we’ll keep you informed as additional units are planned. In the meantime email us at ReadingCurriculum@teachlikeachampion.org if you’d like to know more or see a sample.
Reading aloud both to and WITH students is one of the most important things teachers can do in reading class. Doing so helps build accuracy and automaticity in a way that silent reading can’t. And when students are socialized to read with a bit of prosody, to capture the intended meaning in their expression–we get double value because prosodic oral reading leads to prosodic–and therefore better–silent reading. This is a point Colleen Driggs, Erica Woolway and I make repeatedly in our forthcoming book The Teach Like a Champion Guide to the Science of Reading.
But teachers are often reluctant to ask students to read aloud. They’re worried students won’t want to read or that they will struggle. Or they think they’re “not teaching” when students read aloud.
Yes it’s important to build systems to cause all students to be attentive when read aloud happens. FASE Reading is a great tool for that. Yes, it’s important to have a plan for student who will struggle. But it’s also important to understand that those are solvable problems. Especially if you are attentive to building a positive reading culture.
A phrase we sometimes use is “celebration is as important as correction.” And you can see that clearly in this beautiful video (one of our longest serving in the TLAC library) of Hannah Lofthus.
Hannah celebrates Cartier’s expressive reading beautifully: His classmates get to talk about “what’s so great” about his fluent prosodic reading. Hannah rewards him by letting him read a bit more. [Note that Cartier punches it up a bit on the second read; he knows he’s got it and he’s proud]. And then it’s Mahogany’s turn and she’s NOT going to be outdone.
Yes, there is also correction and deliberate practice. Those are critical factors. But this video is a beautiful example of how we can make effective oral reading go viral in the classroom by attending to the culture of reading.
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.”
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.”
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.
Students at Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School in the Burbank Unified School District practice their reading skills.
Credit: Jordan Strauss/AP Images
A panel of reading experts has designated the tests that school districts can use to identify reading difficulties that kindergartners through second graders may have, starting next fall.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement Tuesday of the selection of the reading risk screeners marks a milestone in the nearly decadelong campaign to mandate that all young students be measured for potential reading challenges, including dyslexia. California will become one of the last states to require universal literacy screening when it takes effect in 2025-26.
To learn more
For Frequently Asked Questions about the screening instruments for risk of reading difficulties, go here.
For more about the screeners selected for district use, go here.
For the letter on screening sent to district, county office and charter school superintendents, go here.
For more on the Reading Difficulties Risk Screener Selection Panel, go here.
Between now and then, districts will select which of four approved reading screeners they will use, and all staff members designated as the testers will undergo state-led training. The Legislature funded $25 million for that effort.
“I know from my own challenges with dyslexia that when we help children read, we help them succeed,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
Students will be tested annually in kindergarten through second grade. In authorizing the screeners, the Legislature and Newsom emphasized that screening will not serve as a diagnosis for reading disabilities, including dyslexia, which is estimated to affect 5% to 15% of readers. Instead, the results could lead to further evaluation and will be used for classroom supports and interventions for individual students. Parents will also receive the findings of the screenings.
“This is a significant step toward early identification and intervention for students showing early signs of difficulty learning to read. We believe that with strong implementation, educators will be better equipped to support all learners, fostering a more inclusive environment where every child has the opportunity to thrive,” said Megan Potente, co-director of Decoding Dyslexia CA, which led the effort for universal screening.
A reading-difficulty screener could consist of a series of questions and simple word-reading exercises to measure students’ strengths and needs in phonemic awareness skills, decoding abilities, vocabulary and reading comprehension. A student may be asked, for example, “What does the ‘sh’ sound like in ‘ship’”?
Among the four designated screeners chosen is Multitudes, a $28 million, state-funded effort that Newsom championed and the University of California San Francisco Dyslexia Center developed. The 10 to 13-minute initial assessment will serve K–2 grades and be offered in English and Spanish.
The other three are:
Young-Suk Kim, an associate dean at UC Irvine’s School of Education, and Yesenia Guerrero, a special education teacher at Lennox School District, led the nine-member Reading Difficulties Risk Screener Selection Panel that held hearings and approved the screeners. The State Board of Education appointed the members.
The move to establish universal screening dragged out for a decade. The California Teachers Association and advocates for English learners were initially opposed, expressing fear that students who don’t speak English would be over-identified as having a disability and qualifying for special education.
In 2015, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation requiring schools to assess students for dyslexia, but students weren’t required to take the evaluation.
In 2021, advocates for universal screening were optimistic legislation would pass, but the chair of the Assembly Education Committee, Patrick O’Donnell, refused to give it a hearing.
“Learning to read is a little like learning to ride a bike. With practice, typical readers gradually learn to read words automatically,” CTA wrote in a letter to O’Donnell.
Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-Glendale, reintroduced his bill the following year, but instead Newsom included funding and requirements for universal screening in his 2023-24 state budget.
The Newsom administration and advocates for universal screening reached out to advocates for English learners to incorporate their concerns in the requirements for approving screeners and to include English learner authorities on the selection panel.
Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, an organization that advocates for English learners statewide, said Wednesday it was clear that the panel considered the needs of English learners and she is pleased that the majority of the screeners are available in Spanish and English.
“Their commitment to addressing the unique needs of English learners was evident throughout the process,” Hernandez said.
However, she said it is important for the state to provide clear guidance to districts about what level of English proficiency is required in order for students to get accurate results from a screener in English.
“The vast majority of English learners will be screened only in English, and without evidence that these screeners are valid and reliable across different English proficiency levels, there is a risk of misidentification,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said Californians Together emphasized to the panel that it is important for students who are not yet fluent in English to be assessed for reading in both their native language and English, “to capture the full scope of their skills.” In addition, Hernandez said it is crucial for the state Department of Education to offer guidance to districts on selecting or developing a screener in languages other than English or Spanish.
The article was corrected on Dec. 18 to note that the initial Multitudes assessment takes 10 to 13 minutes, not 20 minutes, depending on the grade; a followup assessment can take an additional 10 minutes.
Like most of the nation, California students were stuck in low gear again in 2024. On the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), they performed significantly below their pre-pandemic scores in math and reading.
The gaps between the lowest-performing students, between low-income and well-off students, and among some racial and ethnic groups continued to widen overall, an ominous sign that many students are unprepared for high school and beyond.
“Our nation is facing complex challenges in reading,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers NAEP, noting that nationwide, the percentage of eighth graders reading Below Basic, the lowest achievers, was 33% and the highest in the assessment’s history. The 40% of fourth graders scoring Below Basic was the highest in 20 years.
On the fourth grade reading assessment for NAEP, scores in five states, in light blue, declined compared with 2022, no states’ scores improved, and 47 states, including California, saw no statistically significant change.Credit: National Assessment of Educational Progress
Also known as The Nation’s Report Card, NAEP is the only assessment that a representative number of students in fourth, eighth, and 12th grades in every state and Washington, D.C., take every two years—and thus, the most reliable measure of performance among states. The results for fourth and eighth graders were released today.
On NAEP’s 500-point scale, where one or 2-point gains are common, and movement of 3 or more points are notable, California’s scores have consistently trailed the nation in both reading and math, although the gap in reading has narrowed. That had been especially so for eighth graders, whose score equaled the nation’s in 2022.
But that result was the exception in a year in which scores fell sharply nationally and to a lesser extent in California in the aftermath of the pandemic and slow recovery. Nationally, math scores in 2022 dropped 8 points in eighth grade and 5 points in fourth, the largest drop in NAEP’s 25-year history.
The latest scores show mostly no progress. Scores in fourth and eighth grade reading fell again, leaving California 9 points and the nation 8 points below 2017. Math was mixed — up in fourth grade, but not enough to catch 2019, with eighth grade taking another dip.
The average scores, however, mask widening disparities between the highest and lowest-performing students. On fourth grade reading, student scores at the 90th achievement percentile fell 1 point between 2019 and 2024, and scores at the 75th percentile fell 3 points. However, scores for students in the 10th percentile fell 10 points, and for students in the 25th percentile, they fell 8 points.
The pattern looks about the same throughout the nation, with a serious long-term impact, said Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, who also was provided an early peek at the scores. “The top scorers are coming back, and the bottom is doing worse, which will affect income distribution over a lifetime,” he said.
On fourth grade reading, California scored higher than three states (West Virginia, New Mexico, and Alaska), statistically about the same as 35 other states and behind 13 states. Only two states, Louisiana in reading and Alabama in math, scored above pre-pandemic levels of 2019.
NAEP scores fall within four bands of achievement: Advanced, Proficient, Basic and Below Basic. The differences by race and ethnicity remained stark on all the tests. For example, on the fourth grade reading test, 7% of Black students and 19% of Latino students scored Proficient and Advanced, while 50% of Asian and 44% of white students scored that high.
For all students, only 31% of California’s fourth graders scored Proficient or Advanced, compared with 32% nationally.
NAEP defines students performing at the Basic level as having partially mastered knowledge and skills required to perform at a Proficient level. Proficient students have demonstrated a grasp of challenging material and can apply the knowledge to real-world situations and analytical skills. Advanced students showed superior performance.
Scoring Below Basic doesn’t mean students in fourth grade can’t read. “We’re saying that they’re unlikely to be able to determine the meaning of a familiar word using context from the text. That’s a critical skill that students will really need for entering middle school,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, an independent body that Congress created to set policy for NAEP.
Once education experts and advocates have had a chance to review the results and findings of surveys that the National Center for Educational Statistics conducted of students and teachers, there will be theories for the low scores and calls for efforts to address them.
In The 74 earlier this week, columnist Chad Aldeman evaluated a half-dozen explanations for declining scores nationwide. They include less reading and more TikTok; the abandonment of federal accountability for school performance, starting in the latter years of the Obama administration; the adoption of Common Core state standards a decade ago; and soaring student absenteeism rates post-Covid. While they have come down, the rates remain disproportionately high for the lowest-performing students, contributing to widening gaps in achievement.
Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research and one of a few education experts who got an early look at the NAEP results, would add another cause to the mix: emerging evidence of grade inflation, connected to the pandemic, and perceptions parents have of their own children’s learning.
“So the most immediate information that parents get is not state or NAEP tests. It’s (high) grades that are not showing parents where their kids stand in real time, to allow them to provide feedback to their kids and encourage them.”
Goldhaber said there is evidence that teacher quality is largely what moves students; he’d focus on the inequitable distribution of schools with less qualified and credentialed teachers.
Not comparable to Smarter Balanced
Students also take annual state tests in math and English language arts, but NAEP officials warn not to make comparisons since each state’s measurements and standards are different. California aligns its tests to the Common Core standards, while NAEP’s tests are based on what experts say students in each grade should know. It’s harder to score Proficient or above on NAEP than on most state tests. In 2024, 44% of all California fourth graders students scored at or above Proficient on the Smarter Balanced test.
About 11,000 students in California took NAEP, and only portions of it. That’s too few for individual students, schools, and districts to receive scores, with one exception. Annually, a representative number of students in 25 large districts, including Los Angeles Unified and San Diego Unified, take the Trial Urban District Assessment or TUDA. They provided one of the few bright spots in 2024.
Los Angeles was one of three districts whose fourth grade math scores didn’t drop during the pandemic; it rose slightly from 2019 to 2024, and San Diego’s fell less than 2 points, a statistically insignificant amount. In eighth grade, Los Angeles dropped less than a point, and San Diego’s 8-point drop was lower than the national average for the districts. Los Angeles’ reading scores in fourth and eighth grade didn’t decline at all post-pandemic; San Diego’s increased a statistically insignificant amount in fourth grade, and its decline of 3 points was about the average for the TUDA districts.
California’s low percentage of students scoring Proficient or better on fourth grade reading and math (34% Proficient in fourth grade, 29% in eighth grade) will likely lead to calls for funding for teacher training on the new standards and evidence-based practices in kindergarten through second grade.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed allocating $500 million in the 2025-26 budget for teacher training and to encourage districts to use discretionary funding on summer programs and tutoring to make up for lost Covid learning. Some states whose scores exceeded California’s on fourth-grade reading, including Mississippi, Connecticut and Colorado, adopted comprehensive reading plans grounded in the science of reading.
