Today’s Literacy Headlines

It’s a disservice to students, especially those who are historically disadvantaged, to center summer programming on remediating skills not learned during the school year, said speakers at a National Summer Learning Association conference session Wednesday. Rather, every day students spend in school over the summer months should include high quality instruction that engages students’ and teachers’ passions, aims for accelerating skills, and blends academics and enrichment, the speakers said.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) recently announced awards of nearly $120 million over five years under the National Professional Development Program (NPD) to support educators of multilingual learners. Professional development activities may include teacher education programs and training that lead to certification, licensing, or endorsement for providing instruction to students learning English.

Academic achievement in Massachusetts, historically the highest achieving state in the nation, fell so much during the pandemic that the state’s eighth graders now score below those in New Jersey in reading, and in math, an 11-point drop nearly ties Massachusetts with Utah. Meanwhile, students in the Department of Defense school system appeared not to miss a beat. Large cities – despite their poverty – were generally more resilient than the rest of their states, especially in middle school reading. Some states and cities fared better than others. Georgia, Iowa and Alabama, for example, lost a lot less ground than Delaware, West Virginia and Oklahoma. But there were no easy explanations and no clear connections between policy decisions on remote learning and how much academic achievement suffered.

Students’ reading achievement in both 4th and 8th grades fell three points during the pandemic, according to the tests known as the Nation’s Report Card. The decline put the nation’s students roughly on par with students’ reading achievement in the first state-level National Assessment of Educational Progress in 1992. Three takeaways: (1) young students show some signs of bouncing back this fall, but there’s a long way to go; (2) reading teachers are more comfortable with virtual instruction, but not closing learning gaps; and (3) intensive tutoring may not have gained as much ground as intended.

The pandemic has smacked American students back to the last century in math and reading achievement, according to the tests known as the Nation’s Report Card. Results for students who took the test in spring 2022—the first main National Assessment of Educational Progress administration for these grades since the pandemic began—show the biggest drop in math performance in 4th and 8th grades since the testing program began in 1990. In reading, 4th and 8th graders likewise are performing on par with students in the 1990s, and about a third of students in both grades can’t read at even the “basic” achievement level—the lowest level on the test. Academic declines on NAEP were sweeping, spanning low-income and wealthier students, boys and girls, and most racial or ethnic groups in both subjects and grades.

Math and reading scores for students across the country are down following years of disrupted learning during the pandemic. On Monday, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card, released a full report for the first time since 2019; the results show a slight dip in reading scores and a drop in math. While reading scores stayed more steady – dipping only about 3 points in both grade levels compared to 2019 – reading proficiency has been trending down in the past couple cycles.

Students who learned to read during the pandemic are still performing below those who were in early grades before schools closed — in some cases, well below, new data shows. Fifty-three percent of second graders are on track in reading this fall, compared to 57% in 2019, according to Amplify, a curriculum provider. In first grade, the decline is greater — 8 percentage points. There’s also some good news: The percentage of students in kindergarten through second grade reading on grade level is slightly higher than last year. But the rate in third grade dropped. And almost a third of those students need “intensive intervention,” like small group instruction or a double block of time on literacy during the school day, according to the results.

A focus on improving students’ critical reading skills, while essential, is missing from many conversations about student success. Even as the nation has focused growing attention on how to improve success rates for underserved students in general, and first-generation students in particular, I’ve been struck by the absence of any mention of students’ critical reading skills in these conversations. The need to help students better develop their critical reading skills in a more focused and sustained way is urgent and likely to become even more urgent in the coming years as students whose educations were interrupted by the COVID pandemic enter our classrooms.

Substantial research demonstrates the positive impacts of parent engagement on children’s academic achievement and social-emotional development. When family members model the social-emotional skills through their parenting practices, they help reinforce what children are learning at school. When surrounded by positive social-emotional support, students are much more likely to develop important skills that lead to improved peer relationships and social skills. But creating this sort of positive environment doesn’t just happen—it requires an intentional partnership among schools, families, and communities. And by investing in these multidirectional partnerships, schools have the opportunity to learn from families that are the experts in their children’s lives.

A new podcast from APM Reports investigates how an idea about reading instruction proliferated in classrooms even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast series, education reporter Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It’s an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn’t true and are now reckoning with the consequences — children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.

Students progress faster when they are challenged to read difficult texts—but doing so may be a daunting task for teachers working with students who are struggling to read. In a recent online discussion with the nonprofit Read Washington, Tim Shanahan, the founding director of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Center for Literacy, and a distinguished professor emeritus, highlighted tactics to avoid and offered better alternatives for teachers to support students as they tackle difficult texts. Recommendation #1: Don’t focus on meeting a students ‘at their level’.

Alongside tall tales about lumberjack Paul Bunyan and cowboy Pecos Bill, new reading lessons for Denver second graders will include the story of Doña Flor, a giant woman living in the American Southwest. Denver district officials have made a series of changes to the new reading curriculum rolling out in kindergarten through second grade at nearly 90 schools this year., including adding books in each grade intended to add a wider variety of voices. The idea was to take a curriculum that had earned high marks for teaching kids to read and expanding their knowledge of the world, and ensure that it reflects the diverse histories and identities of students in Denver classrooms and the wider world.

About 20% of Hawaiʻi’s population struggle to learn because they have dyslexia, according to the Hawaiʻi Branch of the International Dyslexia Association. Among the local resources available for children living with learning difficulties is Assets School on Oʻahu. In recognition of National Dyslexia Awareness Month, the school has an in-person seminar this week about accommodating and supporting a child with dyslexia. The Conversation sat down with the Assistant Head of School Sandi Tadaki to discuss how early intervention and acceptance can help students avoid years of emotional and educational struggles.

The Russellville school district is using federal pandemic funds to train and certify new English language teachers for its growing student population of Spanish speakers, and encouraging the state to invest too. More than half of 2,500 students in the small Russellville city school district identify as Hispanic or Latino, and about a quarter are still learning English —known as EL students. It typically takes five years of intensive, small-group instruction, on top of regular classes, to help a student learn English and perform well in a regular classroom. In addition to helping more local students succeed, Russellville aims to be a model for the rest of the country.

As Connecticut public schools returned to in-person learning last year, early childhood education Commissioner Beth Bye was “blown away” by the gaps in the earliest grades. Of the 15,000 students who didn’t show up for class, 8,000 were preschoolers and kindergartners—and students who did show up showed significant delays in school readiness. Last year the state launched a statewide, app-based screening tool to help parents identify potential red flags in their children’s development and behavior. Schools are struggling to separate students with true learning disabilities from those with delays caused by pandemic-related stress, disruptions, and social isolation. Moreover, limited access to early special education services in recent years means students who do have disabilities are often coming in with higher needs.

The vast majority of Colorado’s early elementary teachers have completed training on the science of reading — a milestone in the state’s ongoing effort to boost reading proficiency rates among Colorado schoolchildren. Around 20,600 of the state’s approximately 23,000 kindergarten through third grade teachers met the 45-hour training requirement as of October, according to state education officials. The science of reading is a large body of research about how children learn to read.

Spooky tales and entertaining explorations of the supernatural and paranormal await eager young ears as Halloween and Día de los Muertos approach. Research shows that reading and listening to thrilling stories, myths, and mysteries can help people cope with difficult situations in a safe context so they can develop resilience, control, and self-confidence. Although most of the podcasts in the horror and thriller genres skew toward older children and adults, we have compiled a collection of episodes that can entertain children and their families at any age.

This fall, the students at Broad Rock Elementary School in Richmond are learning to read using their fingers to break down words sound by sound and mirrors to watch how their mouths move when they say specific letters. The central Virginia school district is placing a big bet on an evidence-based approach to teaching children to read, one that many districts and states are embracing this fall. The approach, known as the “science of reading,” relies on helping students decode the words on the page by understanding the sounds that letters make. For the moment, at least, this is the method that researchers, educators and classroom teachers, especially, seem to agree on. And there seems to be growing consensus, and evidence, that this is a solid path to improving literacy at an early age.

The National Book Foundation named its National Book Award (NBA) finalists on Tuesday, and author Kelly Barnhill was “flabbergasted” to be among the honorees in the Young People’s Literature category. For Barnhill, 2017 Newbery winner for The Girl Who Drank the Moon, the prestigious honor comes amid a health struggle that has created professional uncertainty. When the winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature is announced on November 16, Barnhill will be nearly a year into her recovery from a severe concussion. She does not know if she will ever write another book. This is not the typical creative’s crisis of confidence, it’s the very real result of the injury.

If pre-K and elementary teachers are going to be better equipped to teach science, they need better training during teacher preparation programs — and that training should be followed by long-term support. That’s one of the main findings of a new report by the American Institute for Research, which looks at strategies to improve science teaching in the early grades. Researchers sifted through more than two dozen studies of programs that aimed to improve science teaching from pre-K through elementary school, and found several key strategies that enhanced teacher content knowledge, boosted the quality of science lessons and led to better student outcomes in science. Among these approaches were making sure aspiring teachers have a strong grasp of science concepts, giving science training to mentor teachers (who often support new teachers), and offering educators long-term guidance as they roll out science lessons in the classroom.

A new study explored whether adherence to American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for diet and physical activity had any relationship with toddlers’ ability to remember, plan, pay attention, shift between tasks and regulate their own thoughts and behavior, a suite of skills known as executive function. Reported in The Journal of Pediatrics, the study found that 24-month-old children who spent less than 60 minutes looking at screens each day and those who engaged in daily physical activity had better executive function than those who didn’t meet the guidelines.

Indiana’s literacy rate is on the decline. Just a decade ago, students taking the state’s third-grade reading exam, IREAD-3, passed at a rate of 91.4%. This year, the pass rate was just about ten percentage points lower, at 81.6%. As with other areas across the country, the COVID-19 pandemic spurred some of this decline—scores are about 6% lower than they were during the 2018–2019 school year. To combat the state’s shrinking literacy rate, Indiana governor Eric Holcomb announced in August that the state will be investing $111 million as part of an initiative to improve and further develop reading and literacy programs in Indiana schools. To do this, the initiative will focus on teaching literacy with a more scientific approach—beginning in the coming school year, the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) will launch a pilot program to employ instructional coaches who specialize in the science of reading to support reading teachers at 54 different schools throughout the state.

At a time of rising interest nationwide in phonics-focused reading instruction, few California districts are using so-called “science of reading” curricula as their basis for teaching elementary reading, according to a new report. The California Reading Coalition, which advocates for phonics-based reading instruction, analyzed the 2020-21 English language arts curriculum for 331 of the largest districts in the state to find that 81% of them used the same three core reading programs from the State Board of Education’s 2015 list of pre-approved ELA curricula, and only five districts adopted core curricula that the coalition deemed to be aligned with the “science of reading” movement.

Some call it the Mississippi miracle, but as in so many cases, the miracle didn’t just happen — it was made. The miracle — Mississippi’s rise from having some of the nation’s lowest-performing reading scores to its most improved — required nearly a decade of new laws, strategic planning and fresh thinking. Led by former State Superintendent of Education Carey Wright — with assistance from local education reform groups such as Mississippi First — the effort to improve reading proficiency included statewide reading mandates, millions of dollars in funding and material support, and clearly defined standards for student advancement.

Creating a classroom culture that shows students and families that you value independent reading along with classroom assignments and activities can provide the motivation, accountability, and encouragement students need to establish consistent reading habits without a need for reading logs. Reading logs facilitate a culture around reading that promotes the idea that reading is such a chore that students can’t be trusted to do it without getting an adult’s signature. Independent reading is a consistent focus in my classroom, and I’ve found various ways to hold students accountable and promote a love of reading without using reading logs.

Diwali is the Indian festival of lights, a holiday celebrated in Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and by some Buddhists. Bring little readers into the festivities with these 7 titles.

There’s no litmus test for dyslexia and education experts say the diagnosis covers a range of reading problems. Orton-Gillingham is one of the oldest approaches to help struggling readers, dating back to the 1930s, and it explicitly teaches letters and sounds, and breaks words down into letter patterns. It also emphasizes multisensory instruction. But two recent academic papers, synthesizing dozens of reading studies, are raising questions about the effectiveness of these expensive education policies. A review of 24 studies on the Orton-Gillingham method, found no statistically significant benefit for children with dyslexia. Instead, a review of 53 reading studies found that much cheaper reading interventions for children with a variety of reading difficulties were also quite effective for children with dyslexia.

Even as some states have increased their investment in civics education in K-12 schools within the last year, there’s still not nearly as much research on what happens during social studies instructional time as there is for subjects such as reading and math. It’s why the RAND Corporation surveyed a nationally representative sample of U.S. public school teachers last fall to get a sense of how these educators approach civic and citizenship education in their classrooms. The RAND study found that 68 percent believed that promoting students’ critical and independent thinking was the top aim for civics education. The survey also found that elementary grade teachers were more likely to say that civics education was integrated into all subjects taught at a school. The subject, like social studies more broadly, lends itself to a cross-disciplinary approach.

Laws and programs to address dyslexia are among the best hopes for students who struggle to learn to read. Legislation focused on dyslexia has been passed in at least 47 states. However, there is a downside that is not understood: Some dyslexia laws and practices exclude or neglect many struggling readers, even though most of them suffer from similar learning difficulties and require similar evidence-based instruction.

Ashley Hosbach, the University of Virginia’s education and social science research librarian and liaison to the School of Education and Human Development, found an influx of books were published as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but were hard to find. Some of the children’s books focus on death and illness of loved ones. Some cover reactions to disturbing news or the fear of vaccines. Schools, teachers and parents are still dealing with the pandemic and its effects on children, and that’s where Hosbach hopes this project can help. She and her team developed the first and most comprehensive pandemic-related children’s book collection in the country, with more than 300 titles.

To create life-long readers, ditch quotas, calendars, and logs—and replace them with strategies that get students talking about books and keeping track of the joy they experience reading. To get students excited about independent reading, make them feel they’re part of a community of readers, try devoting regular instructional time to book discussions, allowing young readers to chat about what they like about a book, what they don’t, and even whether they’d recommend the title to others. To ensure that reading is actually occurring—without resorting to bean-counting—Allie Thrower, a former elementary school teacher, suggests a practice she calls “accountability partners.” Teachers set aside 5-10 minutes of class time each day to have students pair up with each other and discuss the reading they did the previous night at home.

A national group that seeks to curb student absenteeism is sounding an alarm after finding that the number of chronically absent students continued to surge even as pandemic closings abated. The organization, Attendance Works, believes that the number of students missing at least 18 days* of school a year doubled to 16 million in 2021-22 from 8 million students before the pandemic. If correct, this means that one out of every three public school children was chronically absent during the second full school year of the pandemic, when most children were learning in person and should have been catching up from the disrupted year of 2020 and the first half of 2021. Before the pandemic, only about 16 percent of U.S. school children were chronically absent.

The only things to scream at in this neck of the woods are bland scary stories — those hollow works of splatter, puns and plastic that miss the real message pumping through the Dripping Heart of Halloween. I won’t be tricking you with those here — I’m offering a trio of genuinely ghoulish treats instead. You see, horror stories are a map, a key, a recipe.

Giving students a peek into the lives of brown bears is a fun way to shake up science and math lessons and spark interest in animal conservation. Fat Bear Week is an annual event that was created by Katmai’s park rangers to help bring attention to this rich yet remote Alaskan ecosystem and its most well-known predator, the brown bear. Here are 4 ways to incorporate the event into class class lessons.

An 11-year-old boy writing a fifth-grade book report on “The Cat in the Hat,” a book meant for kindergartners. A second-grade girl stuck at a preschool reading level. Students who break down in tears when asked to read aloud in class. While some might blame teachers or schools for such woeful reading skills, the attorneys who represented these children in the groundbreaking 2017 lawsuit known as the Ella T. case blamed the state of California. They argued that the state had long known of the literacy crisis, and its grim impact on the lives of children, but had done little to solve it, essentially denying these children their civil right to literacy under the state constitution. The state eventually agreed to a 2020 settlement that created $50 million in Early Literacy Support Block (ELSB) grants for 75 of the state’s lowest-performing schools, those with the lowest scores on Smarter Balanced tests administered in the spring of 2019. At some of these high-poverty California schools, fewer than 10% of the children were reading at grade level.

Reading teachers have started the school year already in a crunch, with students’ reading skills at a 20-year low. As educators look for ways to help students gain ground academically, research suggests refining traditional classroom reading groups could help. Special education professor Matthew Burns talked about how to improve the effectiveness of small-group instruction. Burns said effective small-group reading instruction can cut across different grades and subject areas, but students should be arranged based on the specific skills they need to hone in comprehension, fluency, phonics, and phonemic awareness—rather than overall reading levels.

A child’s ability to succeed in the classroom is powerfully influenced by their home environment. Giving parents the support they need could be key to fixing American education. Over the past two decades, government officials have made various attempts to improve the state of American education—ramping up standardized testing, expanding charter schools, and urging states to adopt uniform benchmarks for student achievement—to little avail. But less attention has been given to another profound influence on our educational system: our nation’s family policy. [The Atlantic] reporting suggests that many of the elements fostering children’s academic success have roots outside of school—and that if America wants to help teachers, it will have to do a better job of supporting parents.

Many people might think the main benefit of a high-quality preschool program is the academic boost it gives young children when they enter elementary school. But the strongest positive effects may show up years, and even decades, later and have little to do with test scores and grades. Researchers at Georgetown University have been studying the impact of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s program for two decades. In a new set of working papers, the researchers found long-term positive outcomes for children who were enrolled in preschool in 2005: Compared to their peers, the children who attended preschool were more likely to take advanced courses and graduate high school on time, more likely to enroll in a higher education program and more likely to vote in elections after turning 18.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama are arguably two of the most significant spiritual leaders of the last century. Both leaders have faced enormous strife — whether in apartheid in South Africa or in the Tibetan Uprising or the aftermath — and through it all, both have tirelessly worked towards peace. The two leaders met in 2015, and in a series of conversations, tried to answer a seemingly insurmountable question: “How do we find joy in the face of life’s inevitable suffering?” These conversations became a guidebook for adults in 2016, and now they’re adapted for a children’s book. San Diego artist and muralist Rafael López’s illustrations are as beautiful, captivating and empowering as the book’s message.

A new charter school opening up in Grand Rapids next fall is focused on boosting low literacy rates in the southeast side of the city. Gerald Dawkins Academy, a K-5 school, will have an “intensive” focus on literacy instruction, particularly during early grade levels, with trained reading interventionists helping students who are falling behind. The goal is to have students reading at grade level by third grade.

Our bodies don’t come in neat, one-size-fits-all packages, so of course neither do our brains. Start to think outside the box with these titles for the tween and younger set that feature neurodivergent characters and celebrate the extensive ways our minds can come up with ideas, solve problems, and learn new things.

On Sundays from September to May we post an intriguing photograph without its caption and ask students to think critically about what they see. What’s going on in this picture? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can you find? In this teachers’ guide, we walk you through how and why a variety of teachers across subjects use our “What’s Going On in This Picture?” feature with their students, and we help you get started using it in your own classroom.

Neurodiversity can be seen in every classroom, but not every teacher incorporates the needs of neurodiverse students into their pedagogy. Our neurodiverse students are often great at hiding how overwhelmed they are in the classroom. As a neurodivergent teacher who has worked with neurodivergent students for many years, I’ve found that the following strategies help make sure these students feel less anxious and help them stay engaged in class. All of these strategies can be used and modified for K–12 students.

Parents walking their young children into school for the first time may get excited at the books lining classroom walls – but those collections of books aren’t necessarily a guarantee their kids are going to learn to read them. According to cognitive scientist and reading expert Pamela Snow, parents may be surprised to learn that they are “buying a lottery ticket” when it comes to the kind of reading instruction their child will get at school. One major reason kids struggle is that many schools don’t teach in a way that’s supported by scientific evidence on how the brain learns to read. “Some will align strongly with the scientific evidence,” Snow wrote in a 2019 blog post. “Lucky you, if that’s the kind of school your child is attending. Others, however, use a mixed-bag of approaches.”

When students can’t understand what they’re reading, it may be because they’re unfamiliar with the complex syntax of written sentences. Teaching them how to write complex sentences about what they’re learning can help. As reading researcher Timothy Shanahan has pointed out, there’s lots of research on how students learn to decipher individual written words, and lots on how they comprehend whole texts—but comparatively little on “the seemingly unloved sentence.” And yet, difficulty understanding the sentence can be a major obstacle to comprehension.

It was a good book, the student told the 14 others in the undergraduate seminar I was teaching, and it included a number of excellent illustrations, such as photographs of relevant Civil War manuscripts. But, he continued, those weren’t very helpful to him, because of course he couldn’t read cursive. Had I heard him correctly? Who else can’t read cursive? I asked the class. The answer: about two-thirds. And who can’t write it? Even more. All of us, not just students and scholars, will be affected by cursive’s loss. The inability to read handwriting deprives society of direct access to its own past. We will become reliant on a small group of trained translators and experts to report what history—including the documents and papers of our own families—was about.

After honoring International Literacy Day and its theme of changing literary spaces, we need to take a closer look at where and how we learned during the pandemic, and what we can do to improve literacy going forward. One way is to reimagine the places where reading happens, such as homes, schools and community spaces. We should also reimagine how we learn, by encouraging learning that isn’t one-size-fits-all, but gives support that is based on the needs of individuals — especially those who are most vulnerable to being left behind. Here are some examples of how educational innovation can make a real difference.

Behind the seemingly straightforward details of history in Kwame Alexander’s new novel-in-verse, “The Door of No Return” — the first book in a trilogy following a Ghanaian boy caught in the praxis of the Atlantic slave trade — there lurks complexity. The fact that the slave ship transporting Kofi flies the U.S. flag when the novel is set in September 1860, months before the outbreak of the American Civil War and decades after the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in the United States, speaks to the clandestine nature of the enterprise and its persistence despite the laws against it. In truth, these issues are never explored. Alexander understands how to select a suitable context for what could be viewed as a study in writing, publishing and marketing a popular work on slavery in our time for young readers.

Indiana high school students with disabilities who spent more time in general education classes scored higher on state reading and math assessments and were better prepared for college and career than their peers in less inclusive settings, a study from Indiana University found. The research builds on a 2020 study from IU that examined outcomes for Indiana students in grades 3-8 whose primary disabilities included cognitive, learning and emotional disabilities, autism spectrum disorder, blindness, and deafness. Findings from that study showed students in more inclusive settings — regardless of their disability category — achieved significantly higher on state assessments than students in more restrictive settings.

For 50 years, her books have educated, entertained and connected young readers. Whether you want to revisit a classic or inspire a new fan, here’s what to read.

If we know that shared knowledge is essential to language proficiency, and that reading comprehension cannot be reduced to an all-purpose suite of “skills and strategies,” then our reluctance to build knowledge in a systematic and coherent way is not merely a poor choice, it’s choosing to impose illiteracy on disadvantaged children. Initiatives like the Knowledge Map project being undertaken at Johns Hopkins, which evaluates the content knowledge that an English language arts or social studies curricula reinforces or omit, might offer a way forward to schools, districts, and states squeamish about answering the question of “whose knowledge” is to be taught.

Heejae Lim channeled her Korean immigrant upbringing in founding a communication app that aids multilingual and underserved families connect with teachers.

Teachers can promote cultural literacy in the classroom by honoring the contributions of people from a wide spectrum of traditions. Here are some ideas for celebrating diverse cultures through music, the arts, history and literature, and holidays and celebrations.

The National Book Foundation announced its longlist for the 2022 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. The 10 titles chosen this year include two previous honorees: Traci Chee was a finalist in 2020, and Anna-Marie McLemore was longlisted twice before in 2016 and 2021. Here are SLJ’s reviews.

According to 2019 data, there are nearly 5.1 million English learners enrolled in public schools in this country, and that number has steadily increased in the past two decades. Many students are taken out of class and placed in separate ESL learning rooms. Often parents are faced with a choice that involves investing more in English language learning than their heritage language. It’s a common experience for recent immigrants to the U.S. or children of immigrants. But it does not come without a cost, and in the case of many people who haven’t been able to keep up with their heritage language, or who never learned their family language in the first place, it can have a significant impact on identity.

On Sept.1, the U.S. Department of Education released disastrous test results. Based on a sample of more than 7,000 9-year-olds around the country, two decades of academic progress in reading and math were erased from 2020 to 2022. But the scores also raised many questions. I will try to answer six of them here.

It’s been years since I was a Los Angeles middle school teacher, but I still remember my students as if they were in my classroom yesterday. Francisco was a big kid. He was bigger than most of the other sixth graders, since he was a year older. His personality was equally large. You always knew when Francisco had entered the classroom. Low literacy plagued Francisco back then, like it does most American middle and high schoolers today. We can change this by giving upper-grade teachers the reading-instruction training that they need, and which most, myself included, never got.

The importance of guaranteeing universal free, full-day kindergarten has perhaps never been more obvious. The pandemic exposed the dire consequences of isolating families from care communities: Parents’ mental health plummeted, kids fell worryingly behind, and mothers left the workforce in staggering numbers. Kindergarten enrollments dropped to levels not seen since the 2000s, and public kindergartens lost 340,000 students from 2019 to 2020. And the U.S. doesn’t have ground to lose; according to a 2020 UNICEF report, America ranks near the bottom of developed countries on child wellness, which includes socialization and achievement in math and reading.

Nontraditional books can help students make connections to content at the word level and deepen understanding by providing visual context. The visual nature of comics leads to both verbal/word-level vocabulary and meaning-making about the larger illustrated world, including inferencing with character expressions and between panels.

No matter what the emotions surrounding a new school year, one thing is for sure: No kid is alone in how he or she is feeling. This list of children’s books has been curated from both classic and contemporary literature to reflect a variety of school-related themes. Children’s book creators, who often make the books they wish they themselves had when they were kids, use a wealth of memories they’ve stored from their own school experiences to craft their stories. In doing so, they remind us of an essential life lesson: The most important part of school is discovering who you are, one grade at a time.