Imagine a cross-country road trip using outdated maps. What are the chances you’ll take the best routes or even get to your destination?
This is what’s happening in California classrooms. Teachers receive outdated tools to teach reading; consequently far too few students become motivated, competent readers and writers.
Our most disadvantaged students pay the steepest price. Only 2 in 10 low-income Black students in third grade are at least on grade level in English language arts. The same is true for 3 in 10 low-income Latino students, 2 in 10 English learners, and 2 in 10 students with disabilities. Overall, only 4 in 10 California third graders read on grade level.
Many factors, in and out of school, influence reading achievement. Schools cannot affect what they cannot control. But they can control how reading is taught. AB 2222, introduced by Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, seeks to update how schools teach reading. It would require that instructional reading materials, teacher preparation reading courses, and in-service teacher professional development all adhere to reading research, which the bill refers to as the “science of reading.”
English learner advocacy organizations opposing AB 2222 — the California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE), Californians Together and, most recently, the Center for Equity for English Learners at Loyola Marymount University — have voiced extreme objections to the bill with no hint of attempting to find workable solutions.
Yet when Assemblymember Rubio, formerly an English learner and a teacher, called upon CABE and Californians Together to help draft legislation to serve every child in California, including English learners, the groups refused, citing a “philosophical difference.”
Philosophies aside, existing research could help teachers of English learners do a better job. Why would self-described advocates for these students walk away from developing solutions, choosing instead to deprive teachers and teacher educators of research knowledge to help students attain higher literacy levels? Whose interests are served? Certainly not students’.
Vague, misleading language and misinformation plague the field, most perniciously about the “science of reading.” The term is cited repeatedly in the bill but poorly defined.
Moreover, opponents of the bill are fond of labeling science of reading as one-size-fits-all, rigid, or a “magic pill.” It is none of these. Nor does it “isolate” phonics.
Anyone who knows anything about reading research over the past half-century knows these characterizations are simply wrong.
Many districts have indeed implemented poor practices such as excessive phonics instruction and insufficient attention to language, comprehension, vocabulary and knowledge development, all in the name of “science of reading.” This can’t be blamed on reading science. The culprit is misinformation, which opponents of the bill perpetuate.
I’ll try to clarify.
The science of reading — just as the science of anything — is a body of knowledge that informs how students develop reading skills and how we can most effectively teach reading (and writing) in different languages to monolingual or multilingual students. This science, based on decades of research from different disciplines and different student populations worldwide, shows that:
While a first language is typically acquired naturally by being around people who speak it, written language (literacy) must generally be taught, learned and practiced. This is true for a first, second or later language.
Literacy is extremely difficult, if not impossible, without foundational skills connecting the sounds of the language with the letters representing those sounds, what is typically called “phonics” or “decoding.”
The best way to help children acquire foundational literacy skills is through direct, explicit and systematic instruction to help them develop accurate and automatic word reading skills. The practice known as “three-cueing,” where students are taught to recognize words using some combination of “semantic,” “syntactic” and “grapho-phonic” cues, is far less effective for most students, including English learners: It’s insufficiently explicit about how the sounds of the language are represented in print.
Some students will require a great deal of explicit instruction; others will require much less. Instruction building on individual students’ strengths and addressing their needs is necessary.
As they develop these foundational skills, and throughout their schooling, students need instruction and other experiences to develop oral language, vocabulary, knowledge and other skills. Accurate and automatic foundational literacy skills merge with these other skills, leading to skilled fluent reading and comprehension, both of which must be supported and improved as students progress through school.
Although all this is true for students in general, some require additional considerations. For example, English learners in English-only programs (as most of these students are) must receive additional instruction in English language development, e.g., vocabulary, as they’re learning to read in English. English learners fortunate enough to be in long-term bilingual programs, continuing through middle and high school, can become speakers and readers of two languages — English and their home language.
Unfortunately, AB 2222 undermines its own cause by failing to articulate clearly what science of reading actually signifies. With some improvements, the bill could acknowledge what we know from research that is relevant to meeting the needs of English learners:
How to help English learners having difficulty with beginning and early reading get on track, either in Spanish or English;
How to help older English learners make better progress in their reading achievement by providing comprehensive advanced literacy instruction; and;
How long-term bilingual education can pay dividends in terms of bilingualism, biliteracy and generally enhanced English language achievement.
It is difficult to pack all this into a piece of legislation clearly and precisely. But try we must if we’re serious about improving reading achievement rather than winning the latest reading wars skirmish.
We should get past the squabbling, turf protection and unhelpful language and instead do the right thing for all students. AB 2222’s introduction is an important step forward on the road to universal literacy in California. We must get it on the right track and take it across the finish line.
•••
Claude Goldenberg is Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education, emeritus, in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and a former first grade and junior high teacher.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Teacher Jennifer Dare Sparks conducts a reading lesson at Ethel I. Baker Elementary School in Sacramento last year.
Credit: Randall Benton / EdSource
California’s largest teachers union has moved to put the brakes on legislation that mandates instruction, known as the “science of reading,” that spotlights phonics to teach children to read.
The move by the politically powerful California Teachers Association (CTA) puts the fate of Assembly Bill 2222 in question as supporters insist that there is room to negotiate changes that will bring opponents together.
CTA’s complaints include some recently voiced by some advocacy organizations for English learners and bilingual education that oppose the bill and have refused to negotiate any changes to make the bill more acceptable.
The teachers union put its opposition to AB 2222 in writing in a lengthy letter to Assembly Education Committee Chairman Al Muratsuchi last week. The committee is expected to hear the bill, introduced in February, later this month.
The letter includes a checklist of complaints including that the proposed legislation would duplicate and potentially undermine current literacy initiatives, would not meet the needs of English learner students and cuts teachers out of the decision-making process, especially when it comes to curriculum.
“Educators are best equipped to make school and classroom decisions to ensure student success,” the letter said. “Limiting instructional approaches undermines teachers’ professional autonomy and may impede their effectiveness in the classroom.”
Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice, an advocacy nonprofit co-sponsoring the bill, said he was surprised that CTA would oppose legislation that would ensure all teachers are trained to use the latest brain research to teach children how to read.
“Unfortunately, a lot of folks in the field haven’t actually been trained on that, and a lot of the instruction materials in classrooms today don’t align with that,” Tuck said.
Tuck said CTA appears to misunderstand the body of evidence-based research known as the science of reading. It “is not a curriculum and is not a program or a one-size-fits-all approach,” he said. “It will give teachers a foundational understanding of how children learn to read. Teachers will still have a lot of room locally to decide which instructional moves to make on any given day for any given children. So, you’ll still have significant differentiation.”
A nationwide push
California’s push to adopt the science of reading approach to early literacy is in sync with 37 states and some cities, such as New York City, that have passed similar legislation.
States nationwide are rejecting balanced literacy as failing to effectively teach children how to read, since it trains children to use pictures to recognize words on sight, also known as three-cueing. The new method would teach children to decode words by sounding them out, a process known as phonics.
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.
Along with mandating the science of reading approach to instruction, AB 2222 would require 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.
The legislation goes against the state policy of local control that gives school districts authority to select curriculum and teaching methods as long as they meet state academic standards. Currently, the state encourages, but does not mandate, districts to incorporate instruction in the science of reading in the early grades.
“It’s a big bill,” said Yolie Flores, president of Families in Schools, a co-sponsor. “We’re very proud that it’s a big bill because that means it is truly consequential in the best way possible for children. It’s not a sort of tweak around the edges kind though, it’s the kind of bill that really brings transformation. So we are hoping that the Legislature sees beyond the sort of typical pushback and resistance, and in the end, I think, teachers will see that this was a huge benefit for them.”
Seeking compromise
The bill’s author, Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, said she took CTA’s seven-page letter not as an outright rejection but as an opportunity for negotiations.
“I’m glad they sent this letter,” she said. “They outline their objections and the reasons why, and that’s something I can work with. It’s not a flat, ‘No, we don’t want you to do it.’ They gave me specific items that I can look at and have a conversation about.”
She said that Assemblymember Muratsuchi asked her to work with the CTA on a compromise. She is also meeting with consultants for Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Salinas, “to look at the big picture,” she said.
But Flores says the state’s budget problems, with predictions of no money for new programs, may be a bigger hurdle to getting the bill passed than the CTA opposition. The cost of paying for the required professional development for teachers would total $200 million to $300 million, she said. Because it is a mandate, the state would be required to repay districts for the cost.
“That is a drop in the bucket for something so transformational, so consequential,” Flores said. “I hope that the Legislature really comes to that realization. We’re in a budget deficit, but our budget is a statement of priorities.”
Advocates say that it is imperative that California mandate instruction in the science of reading. In 2023, just 43% of California third graders met the academic standards on the state’s standardized test in 2023. Only 27.2% of Black students, 32% of Latino students and 35% of low-income children were reading at grade level, compared with 57.5% of white, 69% of Asian and 66% of non-low-income students.
“It’s foundational,” Flores said. “It’s not the only thing teachers need to know. It’s not the only thing that teachers will need to do and to adhere to, but it’s sort of the basic foundational knowledge of how children’s brains work in order to learn to read.”
The bill would sunset in 2028 when all teachers are required to have completed training. Beginning in July, all teacher preparation programs would be required to teach future educators to base literacy instruction on the science of reading.
Needs of English learners
The CTA and other critics of AB 2222 charge that it ignores the need of English learners for oral language skills, vocabulary and comparison between their home languages and English, which they need in order to learn how to read. Four out of 10 students in California start school as English learners.
Tuck disputes this. “We actually emphasize oral language development,” he said. “This would be the first statute that would say when instructional materials are adopted, and when teachers are trained in the science of reading, they must include a focus on English learners and oral language development.”
Representatives from Californians Together, an advocacy organization for English learners and bilingual education, applauded the CTA’s opposition to the bill. They oppose the bill, rather than suggest amendments, because they disagree with its overall approach.
“We just don’t think this is the right bill to address literacy needs,” said Executive Director Martha Hernandez. “It’s very restrictive. We know that mandates don’t work. It lacks a robust, comprehensive approach for multilingual learners.”
Instead, Californians Together and the California Association for Bilingual Education have both said they would prefer California fund the training of teachers and full implementation of the English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework.
The framework was adopted in 2014 and encourages, but does not mandate, explicit instruction in foundational skills and oral language development for English learners.
The California Language Teachers Association has requested the bill be amended to include information about teaching literacy in languages not based on the English alphabet, such as Japanese, Chinese or Arabic, according to Executive Director Liz Matchett. However, the organization has not yet taken a position on the bill.
“I agree that we want to support all children to be able to read. If they can’t read, they can’t participate in education, which is the one way that is proven to change people’s circumstances,” said Matchett, who teaches Spanish at Gunn High School in Palo Alto. “There’s nothing to oppose about that. I’m still a classroom teacher, and all the time, you get kids in high school who can’t read.”
Education Trust-West urges changes in the bill to center the needs of “multilingual learners” — children who speak languages other than English at home — and to include more oversight and fewer mandates, such as those that may discourage new teachers from entering the profession.
“If our recommended amendments were to be accepted, EdTrust-West would support it as a much-needed solution to California’s acute literacy crisis.”
Claude Goldenberg, professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, said “it was disappointing” to see CTA’s opposition, particularly because the union did not suggest amendments. He said he had met with representatives from CTA and urged them to identify what could be changed in the bill.
In a recent EdSource commentary, Goldenberg urged opponents to “do the right thing for all students. AB 2222’s introduction is an important step forward on the road to universal literacy in California. We must get it on the right track and take it across the finish line.”
Referring to the CTA’s opposition, Goldenberg said, “Obviously my urgings fell flat. They identified why they’re opposing, but there’s no indication of any possible re-evaluation.”
Goldenberg, who served on the National Literacy Panel, which synthesized research on literacy development among children who speak languages other than English, has called on the bill’s authors to amend it to include a more comprehensive definition of the “science of reading” and include more information about teaching students to read in English as a second language and in their home languages.
The CTA has changed its position on bills related to literacy instruction in the last two years. It had originally supported Senate Bill 488, which passed in 2022. The legislation requires a literacy performance assessment for teachers and oversight of literacy instruction in teacher preparation. The union is now in support of a bill that would do away with both.
The change of course was attributed to a survey of 1,300 CTA members, who said the assessment caused stress, took away time that could have been used to collaborate with mentors and for teaching, and did not prepare them to meet the needs of students, according to Leslie Littman, vice president of the union, in a prior interview.
Veteran political observer Dan Schnur said he’s not surprised CTA would oppose the bill since some of its political allies are against it; the question is how important CTA considers the bill.
“If it becomes a pitched battle, CTA will have to decide whether it is one of its highest priorities in this session,” he said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t indicated his position yet, but Schnur, the press secretary for former Gov. Pete Wilson, who teaches political communications at UC Berkeley and USC, said, “This is not the type of fight Newsom needs or wants right now. If he has strong feelings, it’s hard to see him going to war for or against.”
A bill that would have required California teachers to use the “science of reading,” which spotlights phonics, to teach children to read has died without a hearing.
Assembly Bill 2222, authored by Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, will not advance in the Legislature this year, according to Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, who described the state’s student reading and literacy rates as “a serious problem,” adding that the bill should receive a “methodical” review by all key groups before there is a “costly overhaul” of how reading is taught in California.
“I want the Legislature to study this problem closely, so we can be sure stakeholders are engaged and, most importantly, that all students benefit, especially our diverse learners,” Rivas said in a statement to EdSource, referring to English learners.
The bill, which had the support of the California State PTA, state NAACP and more than 50 other organizations, hit a snag two weeks ago, when the California Teachers Association — the state’s largest teachers union — sent a letter stating its opposition to the bill to Assembly Education Committee Chairman Al Muratsuchi.
The union claimed that the proposed legislation would duplicate and potentially undermine current literacy initiatives, would not meet the needs of English learner students and would cut teachers out of decisions, especially on curriculum.
Rubio, who could not be reached late Thursday, told EdSource last week that Muratsuchi asked her to work with the teachers union on a compromise.
Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice, an advocacy nonprofit co-sponsoring the bill, said he was surprised the bill didn’t get a hearing considering the importance of the issue.
“We understand it’s a tough budget year, but we also believe that the most important priority for the education budget is helping our kids learn how to read,” he said.
But he called the move to table the bill a “bump in the road.”
“When we launched with Assemblymember Rubio and the sponsors behind this, we knew it might be a multi-year effort,” he said. “So you get up tomorrow and keep it moving forward.”
Advocates say that it is imperative that California mandates this change in reading instruction. In 2023, just 43% of California third-graders met the academic standards on the state’s standardized test in 2023. Only 27.2% of Black students, 32% of Latino students and 35% of low-income children were reading at grade level, compared with 57.5% of white, 69% of Asian and 66% of non-low-income students.
“The California NAACP was right, this is a civil rights issue,” said Kareem Weaver, a member of the Oakland NAACP Education Committee and co-founder of the literacy advocacy group FULCRUM. “And you don’t play politics with civil rights. The misinformation and ideological posturing on AB 2222 effectively leveraged the politics of fear. We have to do better, for kids’ sake, and can’t give up.”
What is the science of reading?
Science of reading refers to research-based teaching strategies that reflect how the brain learns how to read. While it includes phonics-based instruction that teaches children to decode words by sounding them out, it also includes 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.
The legislation would have gone against the state policy of local control that gives school districts authority to select curriculum and teaching methods as long as they meet state academic standards. Currently, the state encourages, but does not mandate, districts to incorporate instruction in the science of reading in the early grades.
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.
English learner advocates opposed bill
It appears lawmakers heard the pleas of advocates for English learners who opposed the bill.
“We know that addressing equity and literacy outcomes is a high priority for California and that our state is not yet where it needs to be with literacy outcomes for all students,” said Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, one of the organizations that opposed the bill. “AB 2222 is not the prescription that is needed for our multilingual, diverse state.”
She said she is willing to work with lawmakers for a literacy plan that is based on reading research, but that “centrally addresses” the needs of English learners.
California’s proposed legislation to adopt the science of reading approach to early literacy would have been in sync with other states that have passed similar legislation. States nationwide are rejecting balanced literacy as failing to effectively teach children how to read, since it de-emphasizes explicit instruction in phonics and instead trains children to use pictures to identify words on sight, also known as three-cueing.
Muratsuchi had until the end of the day Thursday to put the bill on the calendar for the April 17 meeting of the Assembly Education Committee. It would then have had to be heard by the Assembly Higher Education Committee before the April 26 deadline for legislators to get bills with notable fiscal impacts to the Appropriations Committee. Now, the bill will have to be reintroduced next year to get a hearing.
“It’s really too bad. Lots of kids are not being well-served now. But on the other hand, I hope this will be an opportunity to regroup and present a more robust version of the bill,” said Claude Goldenberg, a Stanford University professor emeritus of education, who supported the bill.
Goldenberg said a future version of the bill should include a “more comprehensive definition” of the “science of reading” and should make clear that this includes research on teaching reading to all students, including English learners.
“English learners, for example, would benefit if teachers knew and used research that is part of the science of reading and applies whether they’re learning in their home language or in English. Same for children with limited literacy opportunities outside of school and children having difficulty learning to read,” Goldenberg said.
‘Backroom politics’
Lori DePole, co-state director of Decoding Dyslexia CA, one of the supporters of the bill, expressed frustration Thursday evening over the decision to table it.
“It is shameful that when more than half of CA kids aren’t reading at grade level that our legislators are okay with the status quo, and they have killed this literacy legislation without even allowing it to be heard,” she said in a statement.
“… CA kids’ futures are too important to allow backroom politics to silence this issue. We will no longer accept lip service in addressing our literacy crisis. It is time for action, and we aren’t going away.”
Advocates for students with dyslexia support the phonics-based teaching methods as especially effective for children with the learning disability.
Muratsuchi said he supports the science of reading. “However, we need to make sure that we do this right, by serving the needs of all California students, including our English learners,” he said in a statement to EdSource. “California is the most language-diverse state in the country, and we need to develop a literacy instruction strategy that works for all of our students.
“I thank Speaker Robert Rivas for his decision to pursue a more deliberative process involving all education stakeholders before enacting a costly overhaul of how reading is taught statewide,” he said.
EdSource reporter Karen D’Souza contributed to this report.
CLARIFICATION: The article was revised on April 24 to clarify that the Committee on Accreditation, by law, has the power to accredit programs. The Commission on Teacher Credentialing responds to complaints about the committee’s decisions but does not hear appeals. As a new program, Mills College of Northeastern received a provisional accreditation; it can seek full accreditation in 2026.
Now, advocates are charging that the Commission on Teacher Credentialing and its oversight body, the Committee on Accreditation, have failed their first test to stand behind those new standards. Instead, after a one-hour hearing Friday, the commission backed the accreditation of Mills College at Northeastern, which critics argue is ignoring critical new standards.
More on the issue
The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing agenda item on the accreditation complaint can be found here.
It includes a summary of the issue, the complaint, and the response from Mills College at Northeastern University. The nine written comments for and against the complaint can be found here.
The Literacy Standard and Teaching Performance Expectations for Preliminary Multiple Subject and Single Subject Credentials, adopted in October 2022, can be found here
This approval, say critics, will set a bad example for other programs facing a fall deadline to overhaul their literacy instruction and begin teaching the revised standards.
“Clearly, the commission is unwilling to uphold the state’s own curriculum framework and its guidance for new teacher prep programs, as outlined” in state law, said Yolie Flores, president and CEO of Families in Schools, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that advocates on behalf of parents. “Given that, what chance is there that literacy instruction will ever change, and what chance is there that our children will be successful in learning to read?”
The answer may become clearer as other programs come up for review. But the credential commission’s unanimous vote to reaffirm Mills College at Northeastern’s accreditation found support not only among the peer reviewers for the Committee on Accreditation but also from leaders of other teacher prep programs who submitted comments and testimony.
The hearing and the commission’s decision revealed ongoing disagreements over how California’s new literacy standards should be interpreted and implemented and raises the question of whether the Legislature’s intent in ordering a different approach to literacy instruction will be followed with fidelity.
The credentialing commission’s decision was in response to a complaint that Families in Schools and the nonprofits Decoding Dyslexia and California Reading Coalition filed. The organizations hoped that the commission would investigate the accreditation approval for Mills College at Northeastern or order that the program get technical help to bring it into compliance with the new standards.
“Commissioners, it is up to you to make sure the letter and intent of the law is followed. If you don’t do it, it won’t be done, and these terrible results won’t change,” testified Todd Collins of the California Reading Coalition, referring to the low reading proficiency rate of California third graders: 43% overall, and less than a third for Black and Latino children.
Credentialing commissioners instead took the third option — referring the complaint to the Committee on Accreditation without comment.
Under state law, the Committee on Accreditation authorizes program accreditation. The credentialing commission, which appoints the committee’s members, handles complaints about accreditation decisions but not appeals from the public. Because Mills at Northeastern was technically a new institution, created by the merger of Mills College, a former women’s college in Oakland that closed in 2022, with Northeastern University in Boston, it sought and received provisional accreditation. It can pursue full accreditation in 2026.
Commissioners made clear they trusted the accreditation committee’s judgment and peer-review process, which relies on an evaluation by professors of teacher prep programs. Credentialing Commission Chair Marquita Grenot-Scheyer and others said they found no basis for further inquiry or technical help.
Commissioner Ira Lit, a professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, agreed, adding that he sees “no indication that attention to those frameworks, guidelines and standards of review were amiss in this particular case.”
The Legislature’s mandate in Senate Bill 488 directed the commission to incorporate evidence-based methods of teaching foundational reading skills in its programs for multiple-subject credentials and reading specialists. The literacy skills that teacher candidates would learn to teach include not only phonics, which correlates sounds with letters in the alphabet, but also vocabulary, oral language, fluency, reading comprehension and writing. The commission appointed two dozen reading experts to recommend research-based literacy practices aligned to the state’s existing curriculum frameworks that all teacher preparation programs would adopt.
Collins, Flores and others praised the final package of teacher performance expectations, known as Standard 7 in the program requirements. They said it would meet the needs of all students, including English learners and students with dyslexia.
So did two members of the work group of experts who were skeptical of Mills College at Northeastern’s literacy instruction: Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist who directs the UCLA Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice, and Sue Sears, a professor of special education at CSU Northridge.
They called Standard 7 “a rigorous and comprehensive set of requirements which reflect current reading research and practice.” After examining Mills College at Northeastern’s course syllabi, reading lists, and materials for literacy instruction, they said the program fell far short of the requirements.
In testimony and written comments, they said the school paid “lip service” to foundational skills and failed to document how prospective teachers would teach phonics explicitly and effectively. Among other flaws, the program didn’t mention the importance of screening for dyslexia and how to provide additional help for struggling and multilingual students, Wolf and Sears wrote.
Mills at Northeastern, formed from the merger of Mills College, a 170-year-old former women’s college in Oakland that closed in 2022, with Northeastern University in Boston.
Structured versus balanced literacy
In expressing confidence in a thorough accreditation review process, while not commenting on the substance of the complaint, the credentialing commission dodged the underlying issue. The state had taken a stand in the debate over “structured literacy” versus “balanced literacy.” Standard 7 incorporates structured literacy. Taught under the banner of “science of reading,” it stresses evidence-proven reading strategies using, in the early grades, direct and sequential instruction of phonics and decodable texts.
Balanced literacy, an outgrowth of the once-popular “whole language” approach, downplays phonics, which it views as just one of several strategies in teaching reading. Other methods include “three-cueing,” the technique in which readers use pictures in a book, the first letter of a word and other contextual clues to determine words. It’s grounded in the belief that reading more books tied to the skill level of a child’s fluency and comprehension will make them better, more engaged readers.
Mills College at Northeastern stresses balanced literacy and three-cueing. Its reading assignments include multiple chapters by Fountas and Pinnell, the publisher most identified with balanced literacy.
Approving credential programs like Mills “to provide contradictory instructional practices, some of which are supported by research and others that have been debunked by cognitive scientists years ago, will only serve to create confusion for teaching credential candidates,” Decoding Dyslexia CA co-directors Lori DePole and Megan Potente wrote.
Matthew Burns, a University of Florida reading researcher who said he had studied the effectiveness of Fountas and Pinnell instructional programs and intervention strategies, was blunt. “The three-cueing system should have no place in public education, and should not be part of any preservice training,” he wrote.
In defense of Mills College
Other leaders of teacher preparation programs and advocacy groups in California urged the credentialing commission to uphold the approval.
Stating that a comprehensive literacy curriculum includes background knowledge, multilingualism motivation and diverse text and assessments — not just phonics, Nancy Walker, a professor of literacy education at the University of La Verne, said, “By limiting our focus to the claims made by the popular press and media, we have underrepresented other pieces of reading pedagogy. The Mills College program represents the broad range of literacy as represented in the California literacy frameworks and standards.”
Karen Escalante, an assistant professor of teacher education and foundations at CSU San Bernardino and president of the California Council on Teacher Education, warned that “efforts to pick and choose select elements of teacher preparation syllabi undermine the teaching profession and aim to deprofessionalize a professional workforce.”
Mimi Miller, a professor and literacy teacher educator at CSU Chico, said, “The complaint against Mills privileges one line of research over another. It has inaccurately cited research in order to confirm a set of beliefs about reading instruction.”
“The science of reading is not settled and will never be settled,” she added.
Both the California Teachers Association and Californians Together, which advocates for English and expanding multilingual education, also urged commissioners to uphold the accreditation approval.
“I call on the commission to not make any decisions that would restrict reading instruction in California,” said Manuel Buenrostro, director of policy at Californians Together.
Wolf used her two-minute comment to refute what opponents said regarding the state of research. “Of course, there is the unsettled, but there is far more of the settled neuroscience of reading,” she said.
Mills College at Northeastern “fails to meet the standards that you asked us to bring to every teacher so that every teacher could be prepared to teach every child,” she said.
“I am worrisomely seeing in California that there is becoming more loyalty to past methods that have been shown to be ineffective for our most struggling readers. We can never put loyalty to past methods over loyalty to our children.”
SB 488 under attack
Several commissioners indicated they too support a “balanced” approach to reading instruction, tied to research. Others said the key to improved instruction is understanding socioeconomic and cultural differences among children.
“Culturally responsive teaching practices are what’s going to work to teach those children how to read,” said Commissioner Christopher Davis, pointing to his own experience as a Black child in Los Angeles who did not read an entire book until he was a high school junior. Davis, a middle school language arts teacher in the Berryessa Union School District in San Jose, said, “I want to encourage the public to stop using Black and brown children to prop up their misguided views of what’s happening in schools, because I am one of those people.”
SB 488 requires that all teacher candidates, starting in the spring of 2025, take a performance assessment demonstrating they can effectively teach the new literacy instruction standards. The law also requires the Committee on Accreditation to visit all teacher prep programs in 2024-25 to verify they are employing the new literacy strategies.
But a bill that would remove those provisions before they take effect is moving forward in the Legislature. Senate Bill 1263, sponsored by the California Teachers Association, would eliminate the California Teaching Performance Assessment, known as the CalTPA. And that would include the performance assessment in teaching reading now being developed. The bill, authored by Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, would also drop the on-site visits to verify that teacher prep programs are adhering to the literacy standards. The periodic general accreditation and re-accreditation process, like the one that Mills College passed, would be the one accountability check that California’s new teachers know how to teach structured literacy and the science of reading.
Another bill, which would have extended the same training in structured literacy for new teachers to all elementary school teachers, also would have strengthened the credentialing commission’s literacy expertise. Assembly Bill 2222 would have required that at least one member of the Committee on Accreditation be an expert in the science of reading. And it would have funded several literacy experts for the commission staff.
The same adversaries that fought over Mills College at Northeastern battled over AB 2222. Decoding Dyslexia CA, Families in Schools and California Reading Coalition sponsored the bill. Opposition by CTA, Californians Together and the California Association of Bilingual Educators led Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas to pull the bill without a hearing.
Collins of the California Reading Coalition said he wasn’t surprised by the credentialing commission’s decision. The view of those involved in teacher preparation programs, which is not unique to California, is, ” ‘Let us professionals do our job. We are the ones who can arbitrate whether we’re doing a good job or not. No one else can do that,’ ” he said.
“To the extent that the credentialing commission defers to the process and defers to the people in the higher ed institutions, then change is going to come very, very slowly, if at all,” he said.
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.
