Today’s Literacy Headlines

Denver’s Green Valley Elementary school is educating students with disabilities in general education classrooms, as opposed to separate special education classrooms, nearly all of the time. Denver Public Schools wants to move all of its schools in the same direction. In June, the school board passed a resolution committing the district to becoming “a model … in the nation” for inclusive practices. The resolution was inspired by a task force of parents, educators, and advocates. Their overarching recommendation: Stop segregating students with disabilities when research shows including them benefits all students. Special Education Director Robert Frantum-Allen is tasked with shepherding the change at the district level. He is a former Denver teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing, and he has a disability — dyslexia — himself. He thinks most educators believe in inclusion, at least in theory. Rather than starting with a mandate that all schools adopt inclusive practices immediately, Frantum-Allen is focusing this year on changing educators’ mindsets.

In recent years, Louisiana and Mississippi have led the country in progress on the nation’s report card for our K-12 students. But the states have much further to go, and we’re starting with learners in the earliest years, from birth to age 5. The impact of high-quality early childhood education is well-established, especially for children in low-income communities: stronger reading and math skills and higher staying power at nearly every stage of education. A strong commitment, and a set of clear action steps, pays off in extraordinary ways for our kids. In Mississippi’s nationally recognized, innovative early learning collaboratives, more than three-quarters of children emerge as kindergarten-ready — up 18 percentage points from four years ago, and outpacing every other kind of childcare provider. Here are some lessons on early education, and what we did to improve our states’ approaches.

When children’s book author and illustrator Grace Lin visits schools, she often gets a lot of questions from students. “The one thing I always notice is there are always a lot of questions and never enough time to answer them all.” Often, answering questions and interacting with students is the most fun part, she said. “I thought, I’d love to answer them all.” Now, she’s gearing up to do just that. The Caldecott Honor winner and National Book Award Finalist is working on a new podcast, “Kids Ask Authors,” that she hopes to release next month. The weekly five- to 10-minute podcast will take on a listener question — which can be submitted online or by leaving a voicemail — with a guest author.

After examining our experiences at two well-known teacher training programs in Minnesota and looking at what we were—and were not—taught about the basics of literacy, we have come to the same conclusion: We were not prepared for the responsibility of the job. This failure to prepare teachers, we believe, should be a red flag for the current system in place for how we train and place teachers into classrooms. As we went through our respective teacher training programs, we noticed a common theme to our coursework. At every turn, it seemed that student interest was front and center. The idealized teacher should be passive, give minimal guidance, and certainly not talk for more than five minutes. Teachers should not be instructing so much as they should be prioritizing and facilitating student choice. Reading instruction was assumed to happen largely through osmosis and the now-dominant “workshop” model. The majority of early reading instruction revolved around “read-alouds” with picture books. There was minimal to non-existent training in effective whole-group instruction or the “Big 5” components of reading—phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension—although a consensus in research supports the effectiveness of utilizing these insights in reading instruction.

Question: What activity is done by most teachers in the United States, but has almost no evidence of effectiveness in raising student test scores? Answer: Analyzing student assessment data. This practice arose from a simple logic: To improve student outcomes, teachers should study students’ prior test performance, learn what students struggle with, and then adjust the curriculum or offer students remediation where necessary. By addressing the weaknesses revealed by the test results, overall student achievement would improve. Yet understanding students’ weaknesses is only useful if it changes practice. And, to date, evidence suggests that it does not change practice—or student outcomes. Focusing on the problem has likely distracted us from focusing on the solution.

Lagging student performance and newly relevant research, though, have prompted some educators to reconsider the ABCs of reading instruction. Their effort gained new urgency after national test scores last year showed that only a third of American students were proficient in reading, with widening gaps between good readers and bad ones. Now members of this vocal minority, proponents of what they call the “science of reading,” congregate on social media and swap lesson plans intended to avoid creating “curriculum casualties” — students who have not been effectively taught to read and who will continue to struggle into adulthood, unable to comprehend medical forms, news stories or job listings. The bible for these educators is a body of research produced by linguists, psychologists and cognitive scientists. Their findings have pushed some states and school districts to make big changes in how teachers are trained and students are taught. The “science of reading” stands in contrast to the “balanced literacy” theory that many teachers are exposed to in schools of education. That theory holds that students can learn to read through exposure to a wide range of books that appeal to them, without too much emphasis on technically complex texts or sounding out words.

Good news: the New York Times ran an article on reading instruction on its front page. Bad news: as with other recent coverage, the piece overlooks a huge and fundamental aspect of the problem. If we don’t make it clear that a vital part of teaching reading is building kids’ knowledge, we also risk having the pendulum swing, once again, away from phonics. Yes, there are signs of reading success at lower grade levels when phonics is taught well. But if schools don’t start giving kids access to knowledge beginning in kindergarten, that success will evaporate. The longer you wait to fill in gaps in knowledge, the harder it becomes. We may end up with teenagers who can read words but don’t have the background knowledge to understand what they add up to. And given the general confusion about what goes into reading, many will conclude that means we tried phonics, and it just didn’t work.

The Penn State University Libraries and the Pennsylvania Center for the Book have announced the 2020 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, presented annually to an American poet or anthologist for the most outstanding new book of poetry for children published in the previous calendar year. This year’s winner is “How to Read a Book” written by Kwame Alexander, illustrated by Melissa Sweet, and published by HarperCollins Children’s Books. The Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award was named for the internationally renowned educator, poet, anthologist and passionate advocate of poetry for young people.

Though how the brain learns to read has been well-established in the scientific community for years and is backed by thousands of studies, many teacher preparation programs don’t include the mountain of research on reading instruction in their programs. Sometimes they have actively resisted it. But recent attention from frustrated parent groups and the media has put the spotlight on asking why so many young American readers struggle, and has put pressure on teacher prep programs to re-evaluate how they prepare teachers heading into classrooms. Both the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) and universities recognize the role that teacher training plays in ensuring teachers are equipped with knowledge of the science. For many years, Mississippi ranked at the bottom of national rankings for state education, but the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress test scores showed that Mississippi was the only state to make big reading gains. Some have speculated that Mississippi’s big gains in reading are connected to a reboot of their teacher training programs. The NCTQ report rewards two Mississippi schools, Delta State University and the University of Mississippi, with an “A+” rating, and two more get an “A.”

What’s the secret sauce for academic success? A great teacher? More school funding? At-home support? This is a subject that generates impassioned debate in the halls of government as well as around kitchen tables across the country. Parents often think the key to their child’s academic success lies in which teacher they are assigned to and whether that person can identify children’s abilities, work to strengthen their core competencies and push them to be the best students they can be. At the same time, policymakers have focused on ensuring that teachers — especially at Title I schools — have the resources to ensure that no child is left behind. Of course, the answer is pursuing all of the above. But what I’ve found as leader of a charter school system in a disadvantaged urban area is that another key to success is alignment.

Two years ago, the Knowledge Matters Campaign visited public schools around the country — all of them serving large numbers of children living in poverty — that had chosen to tackle elementary literacy by very deliberately introducing students to a content-rich curriculum. These stories — of schools from California to North Carolina and points in between — were widely read by The 74’s readers. Given the abundant interest in literacy instruction that has taken place over the past year, we were eager to get back into schools to see what might have changed. This time we chose to focus on one state: Tennessee. We have asked school leaders to tell their own stories, since the voices of educators have proved to be particularly powerful in explaining this work. Over the coming six weeks, The 74’s readers will have an opportunity to hear directly from practicing educators about what their journey to improved results has entailed.

In the latest salvo in Wisconsin’s ongoing reading wars, a new coalition of educators, researchers, parents and advocates is calling for a fundamental change in the way the state’s children are taught to read. Calling themselves WI-Care, for the Wisconsin Call to Action for Reading Excellence, the proponents offer a road map for improving the reading proficiency of children in the state. It calls on the state Department of Public Instruction, parents, teachers, school board members — even the colleges and universities that train future teachers — to embrace “the science of reading,” shorthand for a back-to-basics approach that emphasizes, among other things, explicit phonics instruction and what’s known as “structured literacy.” The renewed push comes as pressure mounts on states and school districts across the country to address what many see as a crisis in reading education. Barely a third of U.S. students were deemed proficient in reading in the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card. Wisconsin fared only slightly better at about 36%, and has among the widest black-white achievement gaps in the country.

America’s schools are intended to be an equalizer, a way to launch students from low-income families up the economic and social ladder. But a new study finds that in most school districts, a child’s academic mobility is just as tied to where he lives as his economic and social mobility. Using 14 years of school district data across six states, a team of researchers with the National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, tracked the academic progress and graduation rates of 2.5 million children based on how they performed on 3rd grade reading and math tests compared to other students in their state. A student’s ranking in his state’s 3rd grade reading and math tests was 80 percent predictive of his 10th grade performance, after controlling for errors in state test measurements, the researchers found. That meant a student struggling in the bottom quarter of 3rd graders in her state was very likely to end up performing in the lowest 25 percent of 8th graders—and to end up in the same percentile in 10th grade.

Vanderbilt University neuroscientist James R. Booth is publicly releasing two large scale neuroimaging datasets on reading and language development to support other researchers across the world who are working to understand how academic skills develop in childhood. Available in the digital repository OpenNeuro, together the datasets include more than 3,000 magnetic resonance imaging scans that explore brain structure and function in school-age children. Booth and his colleagues have used the dataset on “Cross-Sectional Multidomain Lexical Processing,” which uses rhyming, spelling and meaning tasks to understand how children process features of both written and spoken language, to provide a deeper understanding of domain specific and domain general processes in the brain, and how this is related to academic skill. Through making these data publicly available, other researchers can extend the body of foundational research stemming from this dataset, which includes several tasks in both the visual and auditory modalities. For example, researchers could use network approaches to understand whether brain dynamics differ depending on task demands.

A trip to Disney World. A few days over at Grandma’s house (over the course of a year) to bake cookies. Letting your kid stay home because, well, it suits your schedule better. And then there are the actual sick days. At the end of the day, it equates to a lot of time not spent in the classroom and a lot of missed learning. How many days off are too many for your child? How many days off are too many for your child? For an answer, UVA Today turned to Robert C. Pianta, dean of the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and Human Development, who, along with fellow researchers, followed 1,300 children from birth through high school, examining trends in school attendance. The findings showed primarily that missing 10 or more days of school in a given year and across years can add up in ways that have negative impacts on students’ achievement and social adjustment by eighth and ninth grade.

Reading is challenging for most of the students at Cascade Middle School in Vancouver, WA. More than 60 percent of the nearly 1,000 students who attend Cascade are classified as striving or reluctant readers. But this doesn’t deter Michelle Annett, the school’s teacher librarian. Annett, who’s been in the role for the last eight years, firmly believes that there’s a book out there for everyone, and she’s determined to help her students find it. Annett has had success with the Project LIT Community initiative, a national grassroots program designed to encourage students to read. The Project LIT Community includes educators and kids who work to promote literacy and make sure students have access to “culturally relevant” titles.

Parents have gotten the message that reading with their children can help instill lifelong literacy skills. A new study adds to the evidence that parents can be providing the same boost to numeracy skills by making sure their preschool children have an enriching math home life, too. A new study in the journal Child Development tracked nearly 370 Spanish-speaking Chilean children and their families over two years, from the start of preschool through the end of kindergarten. Regardless of families’ socioeconomic background, the study found preschoolers whose parents gave them frequent opportunities to do simple math problems and games at home showed better arithmetic growth and performance by the end of kindergarten than children with less-engaging early math environments at home.

Planet Word– a museum dedicated to everything language in Washington D.C.– has announced that it is expected to open May 31 with 10 immersive galleries that will explore language in informative and entertaining ways. The museum will host a variety of exhibitions designed to inform and delight. In the large Great Hall, the museum will have 31 language ambassadors who will bring together spoken and signed languages from across the globe, including Navajo, Amharic, Zulu, and Iranian Sign Language. Through tongue twisters, folk songs, sports chants, words of affection, and other fun, culture-specific phrases, ambassadors like Kainoa, Mariko, Sebi, and Cesar will introduce you to their languages—and teach you how to speak or sign a few phrases too. A one-of-a-kind sound sculpture will greet future visitors to Planet Word: a 20-foot weeping willow tree designed by contemporary artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Walking under its branches will trigger unique audio from some of its 500 hanging speakers — each of which will contain an archive of recordings in a distinct language.

As researchers focusing on education technology, we see this often: interactive whiteboards covered in posters, desktop computers holding up plants, older devices that do not work with a newer assessment system. The list goes on. Our work at the nonprofit Education Development Center’s Center for Children and Technology focuses on how education technology can be used to support learning. The truth is edtech products that foster more learning than would happen in analogue settings can be difficult to find. When we get to see effective edtech products in practice, the view is exciting: We see kids engaged, teachers energized about the kinds of thinking their students are generating and strong learning outcomes that result from well-made tools matched to the students and educators using them. So naturally, one of the big questions we face is, how can we help ensure effective edtech happens more often? The key lies in helping educators to look at the available evidence and make careful decisions.

Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey have been “making stuff” together since they were kids. Their latest project is a particularly special one, because it’s the first time they’ve created a book that they both authored and illustrated. Inspiration for The Old Truck came when Jerome was driving through central Texas, on his way to visit Jarrett. As he passed farm after farm, he saw old, aging trucks sitting out in the fields. “It’s such an iconic image,” Jerome says. “But it makes you wonder: What’s the story that could be behind that truck or the family that lives there?” So the brothers decided to write and illustrate a story about a family and a farm — all centered around a pickup truck that more or less stays in one place throughout the book. Around the truck, seasons change, years pass, and before long, the little girl from the beginning of the story has taken over the family farm.

For both boys, the struggles at school started in the first grade. Both families ultimately realized their sons needed support the public schools could not provide, particularly when it came to the all-important task of teaching them to read. But that’s where their similarities ended. Isaac and Landon grew up just 15 blocks from each other in Harlem, but they inhabit very different worlds. Isaac, whose parents make a six-figure income through work as a consultant and liquor distributor executive, goes home each afternoon to a newly renovated brownstone. Landon, whose mother Yolanda immigrated from the Dominican Republic as a child and is raising her three children alone, shares a bedroom with his siblings in a public housing complex. Both families set their sights on an option known as “private placement”: a federal guarantee that school districts must pay for tuition at a private school if they can’t meet the needs of a child with a disability. That set both families on an arduous and circuitous path – one biased toward wealthier families who have the money to hire pricey lawyers and the time and savvy to do extensive research on how private placement works.

Increasing book access for young people improves their chances for both personal and academic success. Unfortunately, too many children in the United States— disproportionally indigenous children, children of color, and poor children in urban and rural communities—live in “book deserts” without consistent access to engaging, current books to read. For many kids, school libraries provide their primary gateway to books. So our collections must be as relevant, representational, and engaging as possible. Even in communities that support libraries and librarians, school or district policies may unintentionally hinder students’ access. We educators must identify such obstacles and work to reduce their negative impact on young readers.

Teachers have been led to believe it’s good practice to have students work in groups or pairs, to boost learning and critical thinking. But too often, students get little or no benefit. One potentially powerful and underused interactive technique that reaches all students is writing. Instead of repeatedly having students turn and talk—and running the risk that the talk will lead nowhere or not even happen—teachers could sometimes ask them to take a few minutes to reflect and write.

Late last month, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction took a stand on a long-debated method of teaching reading to students, ruling that phonics has a place in literacy education after all. This announcement has some in the world of education rejoicing, saying this is a step in the right direction. John Humphries is one of them. Humphries is superintendent of the School District of Thorp, which is about an hour west of Wausau, and educates about 650 students in grades K-12. The district has spent thousands of dollars on new programs, professional development and consultants to steer staff at toward this type of research-based teaching, he said. And by the district’s own measurements, it’s working. When Thorp tested 40 second-graders in the fall of 2018 on their ability to do specific reading-related tasks, nearly half were at high risk for reading difficulties. A year later, those numbers were drastically lower.

On February 5th, Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva introduced the Supporting Young Language Learners’ Access to Bilingual Education (SYLLABLE) Act in the House of Representatives. The bill helps establish high-quality dual-language immersion programs in communities with high numbers of low-income families and supports those programs from pre-K to 5th grade. “Today, bilingualism is an asset in our multicultural society and provides our students with more job opportunities in the economy of the future,” said Rep. Grijalva. “The SYLLABLE Act recognizes that importance, supports dual language programs in low-income communities, and ensures that every child has access to new educational opportunities that prepare them for a successful future.” Studies show both native English speakers and English Learners in dual-language immersion programs benefit from bilingual education and experience substantial gains in language, literacy, and math. While these programs remain in high-demand across the country, they tend to cluster in affluent communities that provide limited access to low-income students.

Why did I decide to curate a series of books entitled “Freedom’s Promise” for ABDO publishing? “Freedom’s Promise” is a new line of 36 books that I have curated for 4th–12th graders. These books cover African American topics. Some are familiar, such as the March on Washington. Others are not as readily known. For instance, young people aren’t exposed to the idea that Europe has influenced Black Americans and that Black Americans have influenced Europe. I hope that there will now be books in libraries that transform how we see the world and how we see ourselves in it. I was born with an active imagination. With the gift of an innovative publisher, I have been able to write stories that reflect imaginings between the world, and me.

Schools across the country are celebrating in different ways this week. Some planned activities throughout the week, and others celebrated just one day, with activities including staff reading to students, older students reading to younger ones, and plenty of author visits. Kate Messner used her website to connect fellow authors to teachers and librarians at elementary, middle, and high schools, who set up Skype visits during the week. Messner, who just started a book tour for her latest title, Chirp, was in schools reading herself. Public libraries also took part, with events over the weekend and during the week. But the biggest celebrations are happening in classrooms and school libraries, where schedules have been changed to set aside time for read alouds. “We get caught up in scheduling and getting so many standards taught, so it’s just a really great day to celebrate reading,” says Lana Lozure, library and information technology educator at Northwood Hills Elementary School in Dallas. Lozure, who is in her first year at the K—6 school, asked fourth through sixth graders to volunteer to read to the younger students. Lozure’s day combined WRAD with Multicultural Children’s Book Day, which was the previous week, and organized a Monday program during which the older students chose from a list of diverse titles.

As the Newbery and Caldecott Medals call out the best new children’s titles, several books are being honored for telling stories of those with autism and other disabilities. The American Library Association named three winners and three honorees of its Schneider Family Book Awards late last month. The awards, which recognize authors and illustrators for the portrayal of the disability experience, are given annually in three categories. The winner in the young children’s group is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s book “Just Ask! Be Different, Be Brave, Be You,” which shows kids that differences make us stronger. “A Friend for Henry” by Jenn Bailey — a story about friendship told from the perspective of a boy with autism — received the young children’s honor title.

World Read Aloud Day is Wednesday, February 5! To celebrate the occasion, Pam Allyn, the founding director of LitWorld, shares some ways to create a home or classroom environment for more impactful read-alouds.

In a move that already has the governor’s support, the Tennessee department of education is proposing major legislation that will require all current and new K-3 teachers—and those who train them—to know about evidence-based reading instruction. Gov. Bill Lee said he was setting aside about $70 million in his fiscal 2021 budget to support the suite of early literacy requirements. More states are getting interested in—and instituting—requirements that their teachers have mastered reading instruction that’s solidly grounded in research. Among other things, decades of cognitive science research have shown that young students need explicit, systematic instruction in phonics to learn to decode words. And they need strong vocabulary and background knowledge to comprehend what they read. But even on a landscape of rising interest and action, the changes Tennessee is proposing are among the most comprehensive and far-reaching.

Of all the booklists that I like to produce, this one might be my favorite. And why not? With a newly minted Newbery Award going to a COMIC for the very first time, librarians are knocking down the last barriers between these lovely amalgamations of text and image and young readers. World domination is imminent. Breathe it in. It’s a new day. This particular list consists of all the 2020 comics I’ve seen so far that made me inordinately happy. The best news is that it’s only February and we have so many more months of comics to come! Please note that a lot of these aren’t out quite yet. Consider them something to look forward to then.

When Tim Shanahan, a leading literacy and reading expert, taught first grade, he used the leveled reading approach with his students. Shanahan has devoted his career to literacy and was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame in 2007. Later, he became a vocal critic of leveled reading. What changed? Among other factors, while researching aspects of reading effectiveness, Shanahan discovered that a key study used to promote the benefits of having children read books within their prescribed reading level contained data that was not backed up by direct evidence. With the old research discredited, other studies are filling the gap of how best to match readers with books. One is Alisa Morgan’s work, published online in The Journal of Educational Research in 2010, that randomly put second graders in one of three groups: reading on grade level, reading two grades above their level, or reading four grades above their level. After a period of time, that research showed, students reading on their instructional level learned less than those reading two levels above, according to Shanahan. Future studies, mostly with elementary students, backed up this finding. Another issue with leveling, Shanahan adds, is that the system leaves some students short of where they should be when they graduate high school. “Literacy demands have gone up. Sending kids out with the same level we used to isn’t enough.”

In a remote region of Appalachia, a preschool on wheels offers a vehicle to improved life outcomes for young children and their families. If it weren’t for the Rosie Bus (and Rosie’s counterpart, the Sunny Bus), many children wouldn’t have the opportunity to receive any formal preparation for kindergarten. In the past two years, overseen by Berea College, the Sunny and Rosie buses have served nearly 100 preschoolers, ages 3 and 4, and their families. The buses offer a free, low-stress way for families to check out what school for 4-year-olds is really all about. Not counting the kids served by the buses, only 29 percent of Kentucky’s 4-year-olds attended publicly funded preschool in 2018, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research. And only 51 percent of the state’s children enter kindergarten prepared to learn the curriculum, according to Kentucky’s 2018 kindergarten readiness results. The effects of this lack of preparation can persist into adulthood.

When a pupil pays conscious attention to, say, a foreign-language word that the teacher has just introduced, she allows that word to deeply propagate into her cortical circuits, all the way into the prefrontal cortex. As a result, that word has a much better chance of being remembered. Unconscious or unattended words remain largely confined to the brain’s sensory circuits, never getting a chance to reach the deeper lexical and conceptual representations that support comprehension and semantic memory. This is why every student should learn to pay attention—and also why teachers should pay more attention to attention! If students don’t attend to the right information, it is quite unlikely that they will learn anything. A teacher’s greatest talent consists of constantly channeling and capturing children’s attention in order to properly guide them.

In 2014, New York City launched a $52 million effort to launch 45 “community schools,” part of a nationwide movement to transform schools into neighborhood hubs offering a range of social and health services to students and their families. That investment, which eventually grew to more than 200 schools, is starting to be paying off, according to an independent evaluation of the schools released this week by the RAND Corporation. The evaluation found that community schools are having a positive impact on student attendance in all grades. The results also showed a rise in on-time grade progression, high school graduation rates, and math scores for elementary and middle school students. But it didn’t lead to significant changes in reading achievement in elementary and middle schools.

The characters in Lesa Cline-Ransome’s books are familiar with movement; it’s not always voluntary and sometimes it’s painful, but it often leads to exciting personal growth. In Leaving Lymon, Cline-Ransome’s companion novel to 2018’s Finding Langston, an unfamiliar path shapes a whole new set of circumstances for the boy readers know only as Langston’s classmate and bully. In their picture book Overground Railroad, the husband-wife, author-illustrator duo brings the Great Migration to dazzling life through poetry and collage. The pair teamed up once again to discuss Southern roots, messy workspaces, and the value of keeping abundant inspiration close by.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has awarded a grant to Boston Children’s Museum to launch a new initiative, Building a National Network of Museums and Libraries for School Readiness. The goal is to create a coalition of museums and libraries and address the needs of children so they enter schools prepared and set up to succeed. The program is a three-year expansion of one of Boston Children’s Museum’s existing programs. Boston Children’s Museum, in collaboration with the BUILD Initiative, a national effort that advances state work on behalf of young children, their families, and communities, will expand the existing project over a three-year timeline. Together with participating museums and libraries, they will maintain and improve existing networks in Massachusetts; scale pilot efforts in South Carolina and Virginia; launch new grassroots museum and library networks in Iowa, Mississippi, and New Mexico; and develop methods for network sustainability within and among the states.

Early-reading advocates in California have raised concerns about a forthcoming state literacy plan, arguing that some of the instructional approaches to be included aren’t sufficiently aligned to research and won’t lead to success for many students. California was one of 13 states recently awarded a federal grant to develop a comprehensive literacy program for children from birth through 12th grade. As part of the grant, the state is creating a literacy plan with guidance and recommendations for school districts. For now, the plan is still in development. But some groups in the state have taken issue with two instruction and intervention approaches California called out in its application for the grant: Reading Recovery and reading and writing workshop.

According to the National Council on Teacher Quality, the majority of the nation’s teacher prep programs had not actually acknowledged the science of reading until a few years ago. And according to a survey by Education Week, the five most popular reading programs used in American schools aren’t backed by science. Jenny Lind Elementary is working to change that. Two years ago, the school started working with the Institute for Professional Learning at Groves Academy. The school introduced a new reading curriculum, gave teachers training in the science of reading and began a three-year process of intensive one-on-one literacy coaching for instructors. Teachers constantly assess their students to see how well they’re doing. And they don’t move on to a new area of reading instruction until 80 percent of their students have mastered the material. This approach is getting results.

Our classroom libraries can become an effective gateway to our building libraries. With the right guidance from someone who sees students every day and knows them well, students can make good choices. When a teacher has conferred with readers several times over weeks and months, that teacher can help students successfully narrow the vast menu of options or broaden it to include new choices. Reluctant readers, in particular, might need a “just right” suggestion to locate a “just right” book. A teacher who has listened to a student’s stories about his or her family might be able to pull something off a classroom shelf and invite that student to “try a few pages to make sure this is for you.” A teacher who knows a student’s traveling basketball team record might have the perfect picture book for him or her. Likewise, a teacher who knows a student likes Gordan Korman, or David Lubar, or Stuart Gibbs will be able not only to point that student to those shelves but also to introduce him or her to similar authors. Both building and classroom libraries are crucial to the reading success of our students, with each providing a different menu of options and services. Let’s make sure our readers can make use of both.

For the last couple of decades, I’ve been wrestling with the complicated challenge of getting kids to read more — especially boys, who are more likely than girls to turn away from reading books as a pastime. When desperate parents, teachers and librarians ask me how to get their “reluctant readers” to open a book, I’ve found that the best short answer is: Help kids choose something they’ll want to read. Not surprisingly, what many of our 21st-century, image-bombarded, constantly visually stimulated kids want to read more than ever is graphic novels. They like stories told through a combination of text and pictures. And now, thanks to the huge success of text/picture hybrid stories like Dav Pilkey’s Dogman series, Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and Raina Telgemeier’s books, including the memoirs “Smile,” “Sisters” and “Guts,” publishers are offering books that employ all kinds of graphic storytelling, for all different ages.

This year I tried a new writing practice in my 8th grade English class, and it led me to an important realization about writing development. Like many great classroom moments, this one happened by accident: I rediscovered a canvas bag of my old writing journals that I’d stuffed in a classroom closet when I moved a year ago. Just before I found it again, I’d been introducing a new writing structure—the “daybook”—to my students. I learned about it in Write, Think, Learn: Tapping the Power of Daily Student Writing Across the Content Areas by Mary Tedrow. She suggests that students have a physical notebook to write in daily for themselves, guided by their experiences and interests. Keeping a daybook is different from taking regular class notes. Daybook writing can be personal, is graded only for completion, and read only with an invitation. Tedrow shares many ways to build on the daybook idea, such as having students categorize and index their entries, and develop some into longer pieces.

Most Americans have likely never heard of Lucy Calkins, but their children’s teachers probably have. Calkins, a professor of education at Columbia University, has created one of the nation’s most widely used reading instruction programs, and, according to a groundbreaking new report, the program is deeply flawed. Calkins’ Units of Study series, which thousands of American teachers are using to teach children to read, “would be unlikely to lead to literacy success for all of America’s public schoolchildren,” the report concluded. “Children who arrive at school already reading or primed to read … may integrate seamlessly into the routines of the Units of Study model and maintain a successful reading trajectory. However, children who need additional practice opportunities in a specific area of reading or language development likely would not.” The report was released by the nonprofit educational consulting group Student Achievement Partners (SAP). The group asked prominent reading researchers to review Calkins’ Units of Study, more commonly known as “reading workshop.” It appears to be the first time a group of reading researchers has reviewed a curriculum and determined whether the lessons reflect more than 40 years of scientific research on how reading skill develops.

Teacher preparation programs are getting better at helping teachers equip students with the skills to become good readers, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality’s latest review of more than 1,000 undergraduate, graduate and alternative pathway programs. Compared to 2013, at least 10% more programs “now provide adequate instruction in each of the five components of scientifically based reading” — phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, the report said. NCTQ gave an A or B to more than half of the traditional programs reviewed, but phonemic awareness, the authors wrote, still gets the least attention in teacher education programs. NCTQ’s process for evaluating teacher prep programs has long been controversial, and this report isn’t likely to be an exception. The organization reviewed reading course syllabi, lecture topics, assignments, assessments and textbooks, but critics say the organization’s review of documents is not a true reflection of programs.

The writer and illustrator Jerry Craft won this year’s John Newbery Medal for “New Kid,” the first graphic novel to receive the prize for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature. “New Kid” is about a 12-year-old boy named Jordan who lives in New York City’s Washington Heights and dreams of going to art school, but his parents instead enroll him in a prestigious private school where he is one of the few students of color. Published by HarperCollins, “New Kid” marks a shift from Craft’s previously self-published work and reflects changing attitudes about the literary merits of graphic novels. “The Undefeated,” illustrated by Kadir Nelson and written by Kwame Alexander, won the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children. An ode to African-American life and accomplishments, it includes references to slavery, the civil rights movements and black heroes such as Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks and others. Children’s books over the past several years have been at the forefront of shifting conversations around diversity and inclusion in literature and publishing. Alexander published “The Undefeated” under his new diversity-focused imprint Versify, one of a number of new mission-driven imprints, including Kokila, Rick Riordan Presents and Christopher Myer’s Make Me a World, that are making waves in the industry.

History was made at the 2020 Youth Media Awards in Philadelphia. A graphic novel has won the John Newbery Medal for the first time in its nearly 100-year history as Jerry Craft earned the honor for New Kid. Kadir Nelson won the Caldecott Medal for The Undefeated, written by Kwame Alexander. That book was also named a Newbery Honor title. Craft earned the Coretta Scott King Author Award for New Kid as well. The Printz Medal was awarded to A.S. King for Dig. It was a huge day for graphic novels beyond the historic Newbery win. Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell was named a Printz Honor book. In awards other than the Big Three, graphic novels continued to collect accolades. The Asian/Pacific American Awards honored two graphic novels: Stargazing by Jen Wang won for Children’s Literature and They Called Us Enemy written by George Takei, Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott and illustrated by Harmony Becker won in the Young Adult Literature category. In Waves by AJ Dungo and Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe won Alex Awards and Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett J. Krosoczka won the Odyssey Award for best audiobook.

Amid alarming reading problems for the state’s youngest students, Louisiana ranks sixth in the nation in adopting scientific methods for instructing prospective teachers how to teach reading, a national report released Monday says. Nine traditional undergraduate and graduate programs earned an A grade. Programs at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux and the University of New Orleans were singled out. The results were issued at a time when reading problems — a longtime education challenge in Louisiana — are getting renewed attention. A state report earlier this month said only 43% of kindergarten students scored at or above the needed benchmark, compared with 54% of first graders, 56% of second graders and 53% of third graders.The review was done by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., that promotes what it calls a modernized teaching workforce.

New data and analysis from the National Council on Teacher Quality finds significant progress on the science of reading instruction in teacher preparation. For the first time since NCTQ began publishing program ratings in its 2013 Teacher Prep Review, the number of programs in the nation to embrace reading science has crossed the halfway mark, with 51 percent of 1,000 evaluated traditional elementary teacher preparation programs across the country now earning an A or B grade for their coverage of the key components of the science of reading—up from just 35 percent seven years ago.

More than 60 percent of students with disabilities spend most of their time in general education classrooms, but general education teachers are often not equipped with the tools to meet their needs. Teacher preparation programs have failed to help teaching candidates develop the necessary skills and knowledge to serve all students because they “do not center students with disabilities in their curriculum,” a new report from the Center for American Progress concludes. That lack of focus has led to wide gaps in high school graduation rates, standardized test scores, and access to college and career opportunities between students with disabilities and their non-disabled peers, the report argues. The report cites a survey from the National Center for Learning Disabilities and Understood.org that found that less than 1 in 5 general education teachers feel “very well prepared” to teach students with mild-to-moderate learning disabilities, including ADHD and dyslexia.

A strong concern around readiness assessments is the lack of acknowledgement of multilingual students, who represent nearly one in four children in our nation’s public schools. Monolingual assessments often fail to accurately capture the abilities of DLL students, incorrectly presuming that a child’s inability to understand English is reflective of their overall skills. Many competencies, such as phonological awareness and mathematics, transfer easily between languages and needn’t be retaught if already mastered. Misunderstanding the full scope of DLL children’s abilities can potentially impede their academic growth.Furthermore, English-only screening assessments may fail to identify students with disabilities at a time when early intervention is crucial. Some states have already taken steps to create assessments that more accurately capture young DLL student’s knowledge.

Pura Belpré was the first Puerto Rican librarian in New York City. Once upon a time, long before she roamed the stacks of the New York City Public Library, she grew up in Cidra, Puerto Rico. Even as a child, she loved sharing stories – many had been first told to her by her abuela. In a 1992 profile published in The Library Quarterly, Belpré was quoted as saying: “I grew up in a home of storytellers…during school recess some of us would gather under the shade of the tamarind tree, and then we would take turns telling stories”. That affinity for stories would take her far from the tamarind trees and eventually to the streets of 1920s New York City.

Decades of research have shown that teaching explicit, systematic phonics is the most reliable way to make sure that young students learn how to read words. Yet an Education Week analysis of nationally representative survey results found that professors who teach early-reading courses are introducing the work of researchers and authors whose findings and theories often conflict with one another, including some that may not be aligned with the greater body of scientific research. For example, nearly the same number of professors say they introduce the work of Louisa Moats as the ones who cite Gay Su Pinnell. But the two are in different camps on reading instruction. Moats advocates for systematic, explicit phonics instruction, while Pinnell and her frequent collaborator Irene Fountas have written curriculum that includes some phonics instruction, but also encourages students to guess unfamiliar words based on context. “It really reflects two very different approaches to teaching reading,” said Susan B. Neuman, a professor in early childhood education and literacy development at New York University’s school of education. “Do I think that preservice people are getting a mixed message? I think very definitely they are.”

Reading performance has remained virtually stagnant for decades, with nearly two-thirds of the country’s fourth- and eighth-grade students reading below levels deemed “proficient” on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Why is this happening? Gail Lovette, an assistant professor in the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and Human Development took a deep dive into the issue. Lovette theorized that the problem extended beyond teachers, so in the fall of 2019 she and UVA graduate student Kenni Alden surveyed the regulations of 51 state educational agencies. Lovette—who spent 10 years as a teacher and administrator before coming to Curry as doctoral student in 2010—wanted to see what, if any, expertise in reading development and instruction was required in each state to receive initial or renewed licensure as administrators.

Family child care, or licensed home-based care, is a critical component of the child care landscape. Family child care (FCC) is a common care environment for infants and toddlers, children from diverse linguistic backgrounds, children from families with low incomes, and children in rural communities. One promising program that strengthens FCC providers’ knowledge while encouraging their continued participation in the workforce is the Early Educator Apprenticeship Program in California, highlighted in a new report from the Learning Policy Institute (LPI), which builds on much of the work New America has done on early childhood apprenticeships. The trilateral program operates a Head Start Apprenticeship, an Early Educator Center-Based Apprenticeship, and a Family Child Care (FCC) Apprenticeship, specifically designed for FCC providers.

A new report released today by the International Literacy Association (ILA) reveals that only 34% of teachers surveyed felt equipped by their teacher preparation programs with the skills needed for effective early reading instruction. Early literacy skills and equity emerged as top critical topics from those surveyed; access to high-quality books and content, professional learning opportunities and effective instructional strategies for struggling readers rounded out the top five.For example, though the majority of teachers reported that both phonics and phonemic awareness were covered in their preservice programs, the percentage who said their program did an “excellent” or “very good” job of preparing them to use these methods was low—27% for phonics and 26% for phonemic awareness.

News Literacy Project (NLP) and the E.W. Scripps Company have partnered to launch National News Literacy Week (NNLW) from January 27 to 31. Calling news literacy a “fundamental life skill,” the partners aim to educate the public about the importance of news literacy and the role of the free press in America. All next week, educators and the public will have free access to lessons from the NLP’s Checkology virtual classroom and its lessons and resources. Each day focuses on a different theme. “News literacy education helps young people become active participants in their communities,” NLP’s founder and CEO Alan C. Miller said.

The winners of the 2020 Walter Dean Myers Awards for Outstanding Children’s Literature are Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell in the teen (age 13-18) category and The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman in the younger readers (age 9-13) category. In these fifth annual Walter Awards—which honor diverse authors whose work features “diverse main characters and address diversity in a meaningful way”—there were also two honor books in each category. For teens: Pet by Akwaeke Emezi and With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo. For younger readers: A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramée and Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga. The awards will be presented at a ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, in March.

To teach a love of reading, Corrina Reamer starts by writing. Each fall, she pens a letter to her 11th grade English class at T.C. Williams High School International Academy in Northern Virginia. She tells the students who she is: where she’s from, the jobs she has held, which TV shows she favors. Then, she asks for a reply. “I read all of those letters,” Reamer said. Over the next few weeks, “I think about it. I come up with three-to-five books for each kid, and we sit down, face-to-face, to read the jackets.” She picks the possibilities from a meticulously curated library of almost 1,000 books she houses on shelves painted turquoise and burnt-orange in her third-floor classroom — a library she paid for through online fundraisers and grants. Reamer, 45, offers the teens texts meant to feel familiar: The characters might resemble her students, practice their religion, speak their language.

A new player has moved into the curriculum review market: Nonprofit consulting group Student Achievement Partners announced this week that it is going to start evaluating literacy curricula against reading research. The group released its first report on Thursday: an evaluation of the Units of Study for Teaching Reading in grades K-5, a workshop style program designed by Lucy Calkins and published through the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. The seven literacy researchers who reviewed the program gave it a negative evaluation, writing that it was “unlikely to lead to literacy success for all of America’s public schoolchildren.” Children who come to school “already reading or primed to read” could likely stay on track with the program, the researchers write. “However, children who need additional practice opportunities in a specific area of reading or language development likely would not.” They found that Units of Study doesn’t provide enough systematic, explicit instruction in foundational reading skills, and that there weren’t consistent opportunities for students to experience complex text and build background knowledge.

If publicly available data are any indication, English learners (ELs) are perpetually lagging behind their native English-speaking peers academically. Indeed, report after report show that ELs consistently under-perform when it comes to statewide tests, graduation rates, course grades, and more. Notably, though, new research suggests the bleak tale of the languishing EL may be misguided. One study of EL students in Chicago Public Schools, recently published by the University of Chicago Consortium of Research, found that ELs who achieved English proficiency by eighth grade actually fared as well as their peers who had never been classified as ELs on reading tests and that they fared better than these peers on math tests, attendance, and course grades. This study is notable because it maps the performance of the same group of ELs over time, from kindergarten until after the majority of students in the group had achieved English proficiency and exited out of EL services. This is a novel and nuanced way of looking at the achievement of ELs. Typically, media and education agency data only report on the performance of current ELs who are still in the process of learning English.