Today’s Literacy Headlines

Samantha Honani’s son hasn’t completed a school assignment in months. After his high school on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona shut down in March, he finished about three weeks of distance learning via his family’s computer. Then, in April, he stopped hearing from his teachers. Caught up in the tumult of Covid-19 and the struggles of sharing one computer with subpar internet, academics faded to an afterthought. “There was a breakdown in communication in the school and the students,” said Honani, who works as a program manager for The Hopi Foundation. “There was no follow-up.” Federally run schools serving Native students were slow to shut and to offer distance learning. Millions in federal relief aid has yet to be disbursed.

In Chicago, as in cities across the country, summer school carries higher stakes this year. After the profound disruption to learning wrought by the coronavirus outbreak, summer instruction will give students a chance to catch up on school work — and credits — they missed this past spring. It will allow some students to get back on track for fall studies or to graduate. With an all-virtual format, it will be a summer learning season like no other. Leaders stressed the need for a more uniform approach across the district after a spring of remote learning in which schools had leeway to design their own plans — and saw mixed results. The district will use the same digital platforms and set requirements for all teachers providing instruction this summer.

School is out, summer is here, and many parents are looking for ways to keep children entertained during these long, hot months. Tackling a science project or exploring a science museum (virtually, of course) can help your child beat boredom and teach them some useful skills. If your kid loves hands-on projects, or if they just like making a mess, there is an array of free science experiment videos available online. Science museums all over the county are offering appealing virtual exhibits and activities around these topics. Your family can also check out science shows on YouTube or listen to a science podcast designed for younger listeners. We have rounded up a host of science resources to keep your child engaged and nurture their natural curiosity until school is back in session.

As schools and states develop plans for students to return to school during the COVID-19 pandemic, the AAP has updated interim guidance to reflect the growing understanding of the virus’ impact on children and adolescents.“COVID-19 Planning Considerations: Guidance for School Re-entry” stresses the fundamental role of schools in providing academic instruction, social and emotional skills, safety, nutrition, physical activity, and mental health therapy. Schools are critical to addressing racial and social inequity. School closure and virtual educational modalities have had a differential impact at both the individual and population level for diverse racial, ethnic, and vulnerable groups, according to the guidance. Evidence from spring 2020 school closures points to negative impacts on learning. “The AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school,” according to the guidance. These coordinated interventions intend “to mitigate, not eliminate, risk” of SARS-CoV-2.

Being exposed to diverse writers is a significant catalyst for growth for students from elementary school through college, regardless of their background. Gonzaga University’s Jessica Maucione and Michelle H. Martin at the University of Washington have both seen the impact firsthand. The classroom is a place for discussion, Maucione said, and books like Toni Morrison’s “Home” help prompt conversations about race, culture and the experiences of others. Moreover, Maucione cites several studies that find links between fiction reading and the development of human empathy. It’s important for readers to see themselves in books they read, Martin said, but they also need to glimpse the lives of others in order to develop an understanding of difference. “All kids need mirrors, they need windows, they also need sliding glass doors …”

A local 10-year-old who has launched two fundraising projects over the past three years to supply school libraries across the state with books representing people of color has already raised $4,100 toward her efforts. Draya Gohagon, created a GoFundMe drive, Books that Represent All Kids, this month and to date has garnered $2,605 of the $1,500 goal. Draya’s mother, Michelle Gohagon, director of instructional technology and professional development at Middletown Public Schools, is white, and her father, Darrell Gohagon, who works at the state Department of Children and Families, is Black. Her parents have talked with Draya about recent events taking place across the country dealing with racism, Black Lives Matter and related protests.

In a recent op-ed in The 74, Emily Solari, professor of reading education at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and Human Development, argued that the coronavirus pandemic has potential to amplify a critical and widening nationwide gap in reading. According to Solari, the good news is that a robust, evidence-based practice exists that can inform how best to teach reading and support students. Unfortunately, too much of that practice is not making its way to teachers and students. In this Q&A, Solari discuss how she sees the pathway to increasing literacy skills in American students – and how now is a critically important time for it to happen.

As part of Colorado’s ongoing effort to get more students reading well, state evaluators recently vetted more than 20 reading curriculums used in kindergarten through third grade. In April, they approved eight of them. But Benchmark Advance, the primary curriculum used in most Denver elementary schools, wasn’t on the list because it didn’t earn a passing score. Two months later, after the curriculum’s publisher, Benchmark Education, made changes to the product and appealed the state’s decision, its score rose enough to make the list for kindergarten through second grade. With new rules requiring Colorado schools to use reading curriculum backed by science, the state’s list of approved curriculum is a big deal. Districts using programs on the list won’t have to make expensive, time-consuming changes in the midst of a coronavirus-fueled budget crisis. Districts that use curriculum that didn’t make the cut — and lots of districts fall into this category — could face penalties if they don’t switch. Benchmark Education was the only publisher to revise its core curriculum during Colorado’s review process and the only one to win such a substantial reversal.

American parents spend more time and money on their children than ever — and that was before the pandemic. Now, with remote school ending for the summer and a far-from-normal fall expected, parenting is becoming only more demanding. It’s not just that children need more supervision, with their usual activities closed. Unlike previous generations of parents, today’s feel pressured to use time with their children for active engagement and continual teaching. Now that pressure is compounded by fears about missing months of education, and about widening gaps between children whose parents can provide significant at-home enrichment and those whose parents cannot.

“My interest and fascination with “The Little Mermaid” was also due to its setting, which bridges two worlds, water and land, for a day in which they become one world. I was especially drawn to the undersea with all its oddities and spectacular creatures. I found that the more I researched, the more I realized how overwhelmingly full of energy and life the oceans are, and I knew it would be challenging to capture the awesomeness found there. My aim was for my art to reflect that overwhelming feeling I experience when exploring these new territories. My research also yielded fascinating details about the various African mythologies around water spirits, or Mami Wata. It was rewarding to have the opportunity for me to paint a mermaid of color, give her a strong voice, and best of all, to experience the joy of giving her a new friend.”

As a former Los Angeles middle school teacher, I know firsthand what statistics show: schools are failing to prepare the majority of African-American students for success. Our Black teenagers are in a learning crisis. Covid-19 is about to make it much worse. African-American students are more likely to be missing out on instruction during this pandemic, since they’re more likely to lack the connectivity needed for remote schooling than their White peers. If we are to increase literacy among African-American youth we need to reach them at a young age, engage them in material that reflects their background, have smaller classrooms and create spaces in which everyone feels safe. Reading is still the best route to liberation. As Frederick Douglass counseled, “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

Today in partnership with the Education Development Center (EDC), we’re publishing, “Building Systems in Tandem: Maine’s State and Local Initiatives to Improve Outcomes for Children,” by David Jacobson. Maine is using Jacobson’s First 10 framework to guide and structure its work to improve the quality and coordination of early education for young children and their families.

Four educators share their—and their students’—favorite books, including song picture books and ones focusing on SEL skills, as well as emphasizing the importance of ones that represent “a wide range of experiences.”

Distance learning proved a difficult experiment for many students, teachers and parents this year. Its urgent adoption underscored gaps in access and income. Now, school districts are scrambling to figure out how to adjust plans for the fall. We hear from viewers about their own school experiences, and NewsHour talks to Mark Bedell, superintendent of Missouri’s Kansas City Public Schools.

Throughout the pandemic, many child care centers have stayed open for the children of front-line workers — everyone from doctors to grocery store clerks. YMCA of the USA and New York City’s Department of Education have been caring for, collectively, tens of thousands of children since March, and both tell NPR they have no reports of coronavirus clusters or outbreaks. As school districts sweat over reopening plans, and with just over half of parents telling pollsters they’re comfortable with in-person school this fall, public health and policy experts say education leaders should be discussing and drawing on these real-world child care experiences.

Dr. Sonja Santelises joins ExtraOrdinary Districts in Extraordinary Times to discusses the Black Lives Matter protests and the decisions she faces as superintendent of Baltimore in planning for the return of students in the fall — from what equipment she is having to buy to what changes in the curriculum she will have to make. Although it is clear that many children lost valuable learning time in the spring, Santelises said that for some children remote learning worked very well. One teacher who teaches in one of the hottest of the nation’s coronavirus hotspots has consistently had 95 percent of her students logging into lessons and doing standards-based grade-level work. “She has the relationship, she has the content,” Santelises said. Similarly, Santelises said, the schools that were most successful in engaging students were the ones where relationships and culture had been built before the pandemic

Four teachers discuss specific titles, and common elements, in books that students find popular, including the importance of being able to see themselves in the characters.

The realities of COVID-19 spreading in our communities without a vaccine or herd immunity means that a return to full schools without restrictions is simply out of our reach for many months. We will likely see students returning to school in shifts to classrooms that have been specifically designed to protect students and teachers. Cafeterias, gymnasiums, and libraries may be off limits. Practices we once took for granted, such as community supply stores, learning in groups and soft seating may be on hold for now. All of these things will stretch our ability to redesign our spaces so that students can explore, discover, and connect in meaningful ways. As the number of things that remain out of our control grows (spacing of desks, movement in and between classes, scheduling), there are still a number space design considerations that we can control and which can allow our students to truly benefit from where they learn. Consider these five ways to craft your classroom in these unique moments when we need to balance the health and humanity of our spaces.

A long, long summer is stretching ahead of us — many summer camps and programs are closed, kids are restless and parents and caregivers are stretched thin. But story time is always a little moment of escape. So this year, we want to hear all about your very favorite books for the littlest readers, specifically picture books and very easy chapter books. Is it something you loved as a kid? Something the kids in your life demand at Every. Single. Bedtime? Something they love to read by themselves? Something you gift to every kid you know? Tell us about it! And, of course, there are always those weird books, the ones not necessarily written for kids but that you or a kid you know glommed onto, something that obsessed or transformed you.

My autistic second grader thrived during remote learning. In the past three months at home, he’s moved up several reading levels, improved his writing stamina and conquered fractions. In a virtual session in April, his doctor couldn’t believe he was the same child she’d been seeing in her office. “Do you have to send him back to school?” she asked. At home during the pandemic, I’ve been almost solely responsible for teaching my son. After the first 15-minute weekly meetup with his class, he wasn’t interested in engaging with anyone online again. Instead, I relied on the paper remote learning packets we picked up each week from school and often solicited advice from my next-door neighbor — a special-education teacher — across the fence about how to teach the material. Because of his visual processing disorder, my son has difficulty with reading online and can get distracted when completing work there. So we stuck to paper, which his special-education teacher supported. It worked because my son isn’t overstimulated the way he can be at a school, with hundreds of kids, loud bells, a smelly lunchroom, whistles on the playground and rules, so many rules.

“I can help the next in line,” says Azalea Arredondo, leaning forward on her elbows and craning her neck to make eye contact with the next customer. He’s busy chatting with the person in line behind him. Arredondo signals again, more urgently, “Next in line!” Arrendondo, the all-business “IRS agent,” is in first grade. Her shoulders barely clear the top of the desk, and a giant rainbow-colored bow bounces on top of her head as she swings her legs. Her customers are third-graders queuing up to pay their taxes in Jaguar Valley dollars (JVD), the currency of Jaguar Valley, a Minitropolis site inside Gloria Hicks Elementary School in Corpus Christi, Texas. It’s one of the newest chapters of a program started in 1996 as an attendance incentive at Sam Houston Elementary School in McAllen, Texas. More than two decades later, Minitropolises have boomed to more than 30 communities throughout Texas and Oklahoma, driven by partnerships with the International Bank of Commerce and other local businesses. During that time, their mission has grown from providing old-fashioned encouragement to show up at school to teaching cutting-edge social-emotional and project-based learning skills.

I broke the rules. Under normal circumstances I won’t consider a children’s book for this podcast unless that title is less than 20 years old. But since I made that rule in the first place, I guess I’m the one who gets to break it. And today’s book is, in its blood, a rule breaker. In the course of this episode I attempt to encapsulate all of Jacqueline Woodson’s major awards (this is a difficult thing to attempt, by the way), Kate and I honor Juneteenth, and we try desperately to figure out why this book never won any Caldecott love (to add to its Newbery Honor love).

Young children who are learning English require special consideration during virtual instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 1 in 6 children in kindergarten and 1st grade in the United States are learning English as a second (or third) language. As teachers grapple with the monumental task of providing remote instruction to English-language learners, it’s important that state and district leaders provide extensive support and clear guidelines for engaging their ELLs. As state and district leaders consider outreach through email, phone calls, and physical copies of instructional resources for providing equitable access to possible remote instruction when schools reopen, we offer the following evidence-informed suggestions for consideration.

f you’re a parent working from home with minimal or no help in the childcare department, this summer is likely going to be tough. Even getting an hour or two to focus on your work can seem like a dream when your kid is stuck inside and clamoring for attention. Michaeleen Doucleff is a reporter on NPR’s Science Desk, and she’s been feeling this stress big time. Up against a publishing deadline for a book she’s writing called Hunt, Gather, Parent about child-rearing traditions from other cultures, Doucleff was also fielding requests from her 4-year-old daughter, Rosy: “Draw me a narwhal!” “Read me a book!” “Bring me some milk!” Frustrated by Rosy’s interruptions, Doucleff decided she would retrain her daughter to occupy herself and demand less attention.

If the coronavirus pandemic placed issues of racial equity to the front burner, the historic weeks of protest have brought the topic to a rolling boil. Some districts have responded by reaffirming their commitment to racial equity, or by pledging to evaluate their teaching for bias. Others have severed ties with local police departments that have provided security in schools. But those who work to promote equity in schools see an opportunity to attack the deeper-rooted structures in school that perpetuate racial bias—if leaders are willing to see opportunity in the turmoil. Education Week asked six district leaders to share specific practices and processes they use in their school systems to promote equity. A common thread? All of them require deep, sometimes difficult reflection on district and school practices and assumptions that might otherwise go unexamined.

Working from home with small children, an ordeal and a privilege, has been de rigueur since agrarianism got going. Parents managed it for thousands of years — without day care, compulsory schooling or camps. What did children used to do all day? Short answer: They worked and and they played, often with minimal adult supervision. Unfortunately, as Steven Mintz, the author of “Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood,” told me, “The pandemic has exaggerated and intensified the worst features of children’s play today: adult intrusion; the decline of physical, outdoor and social play; and mediation by screens.” Ow. So, how do we adults ameliorate that while staying safe, employed and reasonably sane? Here are some ideas.

There is no one answer for what the coming school year will look like, but it won’t resemble the fall of 2019. Wherever classrooms are open, there will likely be some form of social distancing and other hygiene measures in place that challenge traditional teaching and learning. Future outbreaks will make for unpredictable waves of closures. Virtual learning will continue. And all this will happen amid a historic funding crunch. American education has long been full of innovators practicing alternatives to the mainstream. When the giant, uncontrolled experiment of the pandemic rolled across the country, certain approaches proved their mettle in new ways. Here are some ideas that seem newly relevant given the constraints of 2020 and beyond.

This essay, by Hayden Miskinis, is one of the top three winners in the middle school category of our Seventh Annual Student Editorial Contest for which we received 1,242 entries. “I look down at my book. I slowly read the first line of jumpy letters that won’t stay still. It takes me a minute to find the next line, as my eyes jump around. This is a repeating process until I’m at the end of the page. This doesn’t just happen to me; it happens to 70-80 percent of dyslexic students in schools, and yet schools aren’t providing resources, teachers aren’t getting trained and people don’t even really understand dyslexia. … What is dyslexia? I didn’t know until 2015 when I was faced with the truth as to why I wasn’t progressing in school. I had been given interventions through a program called Title I which helps kids who don’t have access to books or reading in their homes, but it wasn’t working for me. I had plenty of books; I just couldn’t read them. What I needed were interventions that would work for me.”

The so-called coronavirus- or “COVID slide” may be especially troublesome for English-language learners, the 5 million students still learning English in the nation’s K-12 schools. Many of them could fall farther behind because of a confluence of factors, including limited access to the internet and the language support services they often receive in school. Along with their native English-speaking peers, English-learners likely will face a battery of tests when school resumes to gauge what they’ve learned and lost during the extended school closures—but those assessments may not fully reflect what they know and can do in academic subjects, especially if they cannot demonstrate their knowledge in English. A new policy brief from the Migration Policy Institute explores the policy and practical questions for states considering implementing native-language assessments, tests that may be better suited to gauge what students know and what subjects they need support in apart from their English-language instruction.

The International Literacy Association (ILA), in partnership with Kwame Alexander, award-winning children’s book author and founding editor of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt imprint Versify, announced today “How to Raise and Teach Anti-Racist Kids,” a Facebook Live event starting at 7:00 p.m. ET this Thursday, June 18. The free event is a follow-up to June 4’s overwhelmingly successful KidLit Rally for Black Lives, hosted by advocacy group The Brown Bookshelf. The first half of Thursday’s event will be a panel discussion moderated by Alexander, followed by a 45-minute Q&A.

After teaching for more than 20 years, Kahlil Mwaafrika said he’s used to being an anomaly in urban Indianapolis schools. As an adjunct professor of early childhood education at IUPUI, only a handful of his hundreds of students are Black men. “There’s very few people who look like me in buildings,” he said. So in early 2018, he started working on a program to recruit, train, and place Black men as Indianapolis preschool teachers. Mwaafrika brought his idea to Blake Nathan, CEO of the Educate ME Foundation, an organization that works to diversify the national teaching population by recruiting and retaining educators of color. Earlier this year, Mwaafrika and Nathan formed the idea into a program called Educate ME Early and partnered with Early Learning Indiana to create 50 two-year fellowships for men of color.

Seven educators explain the importance of tapping students’ background knowledge in order to learn new content, and they describe ways to do just that, including through the use of surveys and anticipation guides.

When it comes to parenting students with learning differences, every family’s experience is unique. And that reality has never been more true than it is now as millions of students are out of school due to the coronavirus pandemic. As they juggle remote learning on top of already full plates, parents of these students offer a window into their world— what their challenges are, how they’re adapting, what their schedules look like, and the trauma they’re seeing in their kids.

Almost everything researchers know about what affects learning—time on task, online learning, summer learning loss, and chronic absenteeism—indicates that many students will come in with significant deficits from the 2019-20 school year. Just how much students could regress remains a matter of some debate; one estimate put it at a half or more of a year of learning. And every district must devise ways to diagnose and respond. But how do you start getting that gauge? Part of the problem, educators say, is that the term “diagnostic” in K-12 is a slippery, ill-defined one. So-called diagnostic tests may not provide as much helpful information as leaders think, and some of the most powerful strategies are also the simplest, though they will involve detailed work before school begins: Putting teachers in touch with one another, and going through what was actually taught from March onward with a fine-toothed comb. Here are their five tips for grasping what students know and don’t for the 2020-21 school year, and how to respond.

When Montgomery County Public Schools in southwestern Virginia transitioned to remote learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the district used school buses to deliver daily meals—and reading material—to students’ homes. But now that the academic year is over, the county has adopted an alternative delivery method: drones. The Montgomery County school system is located in Christiansburg, where Google’s drone delivery division, Wing, launched its services last October. Offered as a commercial service in partnership with such businesses as FedEx and Walgreens, Wing soon found a satisfied customer in Blacksburg Middle School librarian Kelly Passek, who petitioned the company to help send students library books. Wing’s Virginia head of operations, Keith Heyde, enthusiastically agreed.

When actor Melissa Victor thought about where she learned the stories that shaped her—important things about life, and how to braid hair—she realized that a lot of that education took place on the Baltimore stoop where she grew up. Victor is deeply spiritual, and at a certain point, as her theater parts started to dry up, she asked God for guidance. His advice, she says: Create a podcast for children of color. Create stories for them because they need to be represented. Victor published the first episode of Stoopkid Stories in January 2020 so that young Black children could hear themselves reflected in audio stories. This Black Voices playlist includes voices from Stoopkids Stories and other Black kidcasters, storytellers, authors, poets, activists, musicians, and leaders.

Teachers across California are worried that students who are learning English will fall behind in their language skills due to the school closures and are trying various approaches to connect with those students and their families. Even as concerns have been raised about the quality of instruction for native English speakers, those who are still new to the language face an even greater hurdle. “The big missing element is that we learn language, usually, in a face-to-face context,” said Leslie Hubbert, who teaches 3rd grade in the small agricultural town of Boonville in Mendocino County. “And English language learners are not getting as much face-to-face contact as they need. It’s just another way that this gap is widening more and more.”

The Detroit literacy lawsuit, a four-year legal battle that sought to establish a constitutional right to literacy for all students, is officially over. When the seven student plaintiffs in the case agreed to a settlement with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last month, they also agreed to drop their complaint that the state had denied them a basic education. The settlement includes roughly $40,000 for each of the seven students, $2.7 million for the Detroit Public Schools District, and a promise from Whitmer to pursue legislation that would bring an additional $94 million to the district. There is still no legal precedent for a constitutional right to literacy. When the Sixth Circuit decided to review the case, it vacated the court’s April 23 opinion, written by Judge Eric Clay, that a right to read is implicitly guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Still, Clay’s opinion will likely be cited in other cases that seek to establish a federal right to read.

Artful Thinking is a pedagogical approach to critical thinking that the National Gallery of Art has been sharing with local teachers for more than 10 years. In January 2019, the museum rolled out Teaching Critical Thinking through Art, a free online course making Artful Thinking available to everyone. A year later, it had been used by 9,800 people in 149 countries, 80 percent of them educational professionals, including classroom teachers. “Critical thinking is a huge, but reachable, endeavor,” says Julie Carmean, manager of national teacher programs at the Gallery. She also hosts the course, which includes lesson plans, zoomable views of artwork, discussion boards and videos modeling critical thinking techniques. Artful Thinking was developed by Project Zero, a Harvard Graduate School of Education program focused on enhancing learning through the arts.

In the fall of 2018 our school made a big shift. After twelve months of planning we launched a new daily schedule based on brain science and designed to encourage deeper learning and student wellbeing. Three months ago, COVID-19 closed our school, along with nearly every other school in the country, and we realized we’d have to start over. Once again, we turned to research. We realized we could teach less content as well as give less homework by focusing on essential questions and core competencies. We elevated project-based learning that didn’t revolve around screens. But we also made sure we took a research-informed approach to project-based learning. We taught our content better by making informed choices of when and where to use edtech tools. Before choosing any tools, we decided on our learning objects and matched them to science of learning objectives.

Teachers from across the country reflect on their experiences teaching during the COVID-19 outbreak. In this post, seven teachers describe the emotional experience of recent months and share some of the successes and challenges of emergency distance learning. From Larry Ferlazzo: “I would have preferred to be able to spend more time with the English language learner newcomers because those are the students — That’s one of the vulnerable populations that’s going to take the biggest hit from missing these last few months of school. I think most students are going to be fine, right. But ELLs, special ed students and students who face other academic challenges, they’re going to take a hit. So I hope that next year, whatever we do, that we look beyond equality and focus on equity so we can provide extra support to the students who need it the most.”

Colorado’s largest teacher preparation program hasn’t done enough to change how it trains future educators on reading instruction. That’s the conclusion of state evaluators who recently reviewed the University of Northern Colorado’s teacher prep program, a year after they first delivered a harsh critique of the program for its failure to adequately prepare students to teach children how to read. The state’s crackdown on teacher preparation programs, specifically their approach to reading instruction, is part of a larger push by lawmakers, state education officials, and parents of students with dyslexia to get more Colorado children reading at grade level. Despite millions of state dollars spent on struggling readers since the passage of a major 2012 law called the READ Act, only about 40% of third-graders are reading proficiently — and many experts fear changes related to the coronavirus pandemic could make things worse.

As unrest over the killing of black Americans and police brutality continued across the country, Jessica Grose, the lead editor of NYT Parenting, asked experts how to talk about the protests with kids. In the interest of keeping an open dialogue about racism, she heard from pediatricians and childhood psychologists about the importance of making sure your home library has books with black people at the center of their stories. To start, children’s book authors and Times staffers gave us their favorites. We also heard from nearly a hundred readers with more recommendations of books that their kids have loved over the years. Here are 12 of the most popular suggestions we received, including books with black protagonists, plots centered on racism and activism, and beloved gems by black authors.

While schools are shuttered in response to COVID-19 and have transitioned to distance learning, how can we make sure that teachers get the professional development and mentoring they need. Schools, especially those that serve large percentages of students experiencing poverty, may struggle to adapt teaching practices to online learning; vet and deploy new tools; and identify and meet students’ varying needs during this time, so it is important for state and district leaders to put in place structures that support teachers. One of the best ways to provide that support is coaching, which can significantly improve teachers’ instructional quality and boost student achievement. Instructional coaching can be much more effective than the traditional “workshop” model, which often doesn’t lead to meaningful changes in teacher practice. And research shows that coaching doesn’t have to be in-person to work. There are additional benefits of virtual coaching models, which allow instructional coaches to work with a larger number of teachers and make it easier to match teachers with coaches who have expertise in their content area and grade level.

The coronavirus school building closures that swept the country this spring and led to purchases of new laptops and tablets for remote learning have also forced districts to make tough decisions now—instead of years down the road—about 1-to-1 computing programs for their youngest learners. Putting devices in the hands of elementary students, sometimes as early as kindergarten, remains a somewhat unsettled approach. Although intended to boost students’ tech skills and empower more creative work, education experts worry about too much screen time at a young age. Some worry that too much device use can affect brain development and take away from more age appropriate hands-on teaching approaches. This spring’s national remote learning experiment, and the lingering uncertainty of what instruction will look like next year—in particular if coronavirus ravages the country again—have changed some perceptions, however. Experts who viewed 1-to-1 programs at elementary schools as optional now say it’s worth another look because of the need to keep students and teachers connected during distance learning.

The author of more than 50 books for children and young adults, Carole Boston Weatherford writes stories that fill in some of the many gaps she saw in the books from her childhood. Her books often depict the stories of African American leaders, explorers and artists, many of whose stories are seldom told. They also navigate ugly pieces of American history like slavery, the 1963 Birmingham bombing and police brutality against black communities. She puts an intentional spotlight on the arts, and incorporates her love of jazz and her passion for artists like Billie Holiday into her work. Weatherford keeps her finger on the pulse of young peoples’ interests as a professor of English at Fayetteville State University. Host Frank Stasio talks with Weatherford about her childhood in Maryland, her growth as a writer and the themes of history, race and music that thread their way through her literature.

The summer is a time when many children’s reading skills decline. This will be more pronounced this year since children have not had in-person instruction for several months. This makes this summer a time parents need to focus on reading. Fortunately, there are several resources available online that can give parents the support they need to help their beginning readers. Advances in reading now will make beginning readers more prepared for the upcoming school year.

In recent years, we’ve seen graphic novelists take on increasingly complex topics, and this year’s Will Eisner Comic Industry Award nominations reflect artists’ willingness to push the format to its limits. From a poignant tale of racist microaggressions to an exploration of childhood anxiety to dynamic reimagining of a misunderstood supervillain, these comics are bold, fearless, and bound to resonate with readers. See below for a full listing of the nominations for children and teens, with links to their SLJ reviews.

Susan Lambert, VP of early literacy instruction at Amplify and the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast, shares her thoughts on key points in the reading education debate. She tackles questions like these: Does reading really matter that much now that we’re in the digital age? Can kids teach themselves to read if they have access to materials that really interest them? What new methodologies are there to help dyslexic learners overcome reading difficulties? How can educators make the most of mother-tongue literacy when teaching English learners to read in English?

Children are like sponges. They soak up news headlines and images of unrest on TV and social media. They may also be keenly attuned to conversations about current events happening at home. Parents and educators alike (and those of us now wearing both hats) should address questions about racism that arise and maintain an open dialogue with children. To help navigate the best way to do this, I asked Christiana Cobb-Dozier, a school counselor in Los Angeles, and Christian Robinson, a Sacramento-based author and illustrator of children’s books, about how to talk to children about racism. Here’s what they said.

Studies show that babies under one year old recognize differences in skin color. Just like for any other age group, it’s important that babies see people of color in their books. So how do we bring diverse titles to the littlest readers, when the characters in most board books are animals—if there are characters at all? These 50 books—many of which are by #OwnVoices creators—show Indigenous, Black, and people of color learning new skills, fighting for justice, and simply living their lives—and they’re all appropriate for ages 0–3. From simple images to more complex narratives, and classics to upcoming titles from Lin, Vashti Harrison, and Ibram X. Kendi, these titles can help grow your board book collection.

For many students, the coronavirus pandemic drained much of the joy from the last months of the 2019-20 academic year. Summer shouldn’t end up the same way, say organizers of programs devoted to offering enrichment during out-of-school time. This year, however, many organizations devoted to summer learning will have to figure out how to engage students in enrichment programs provided remotely—if they’re offering them at all. But drastically scaling back or cutting summer enrichment is likely to hurt the students whose learning has already been set back the most by the haphazard shift to remote schooling: students from low-income families who rely on free or low-cost enrichment options, said Aaron Dworkin, the chief executive officer of the National Summer Learning Association.

If literacy education is on track in a school, that building has an opportunity for everything else to go well. Success in literacy spills over into success in science, social studies, math, and anything else students are learning. It’s the key to everything schools do. To gain insights into this keystone academic skill, What Kids Are Reading, the largest annual survey of student reading habits, dives into data collected from the millions of students using myON and Accelerated Reader, with the ultimate goal of supporting teachers as they, in turn, support students in doing more reading. With a data set this large and comprehensive, our challenge is not data but what questions we should ask of it. This year, we decided to focus on the reading of nonfiction because, over the last few years, there has been a growing interest in the role of prior knowledge in reading comprehension. It has become increasingly clear through multiple studies that the amount of prior knowledge students have on a topic is a powerful predictor of how well they can read texts on that topic.

As protests over the killing of George Floyd (and Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor) spill into a second week, many parents are wondering how to talk about the deaths and unrest with their children. But just as important in the long run, especially for nonblack parents, is how to keep the conversation about race and racism going when we’re not in a moment of national outrage, and to make sure all children see black people as heroes in a wide range of their own stories, and not just as victims of oppression. In addition to keeping an open dialogue about racism, make sure your home library has books with black people at the center of their stories. Christine Taylor-Butler, the prolific children’s author and writer of The Lost Tribes Series, said that she got into children’s literature because she wanted to see more stories of black joy. “I want stories about kids in a pumpkin patch, and kids in an art museum,” she said. “Not only do we want our kids to read, but we want white kids to see — we’re not the people you’re afraid of.”

Quick quiz: What share of black students graduate high school? By the most recent count, 4 out of 5 black students graduate in four years with a regular diploma, according to federal figures. But after watching coverage of test scores focused on racial achievement gaps between black and white students, people tend to think black students’ graduation rates are much lower. The way the education media and policymakers frame education debates can have longer-term effects on how the public thinks about black students and the kinds of policies it will support to improve their learning.

As part of an effort to boost persistently low reading proficiency rates, Colorado education officials will soon require 25,000 K-3 teachers to have completed 45 hours of training on reading instruction. While there are several ways for teachers to comply with the new rule, which came out of a 2019 update of Colorado’s landmark reading law, the state is providing educators two free options. Both adhere to the state’s more than 50 criteria for teaching elementary reading, including direct and sequenced phonics instruction. The new teacher training requirement is among a raft of recent state changes meant to ensure teachers know and use approaches to reading instruction backed by science. Officials have also cracked down on teacher preparation programs to ensure their literacy courses adhere to state standards. And starting next year, the state will require schools to use reading curriculum backed by science in kindergarten through third grade.

Figuring out how to manage IEP meetings from afar and agreeing on what services students are entitled to in an online learning environment emerged as one of the many challenges for families of special education students and the teachers who serve them. In response to requests for help from educators and parents, a group of U.S. Department of Education-backed organizations developed a six-step guide to hosting and participating in virtual IEP meetings, with the acknowledgement that conducting the meetings may happen more often now, even after students return to brick-and-mortar schools. Designed for a 60-minute meeting, the infographic provides a sample agenda and tips on how to keep meetings focused and on-schedule. To learn more about the project, Education Week interviewed Tessie Rose Bailey, the project director of the PROGRESS Center, one of the organizations that helped develop the guide.

A surprising number of school librarians still have no access to their building or school library. For those who do, however, it’s a valuable opportunity to offer summer checkout and get books into the hands of readers. It’s not too late! Here’s how I organized my checkout while ensuring safety for staff and families.

Best-selling YA author Jason Reynolds has grappled with racism personally and in his writing. The National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature also recently co-authored a book for young people on fighting racism: Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You. We’ve asked Jason Reynolds to join Kojo For Kids to help us understand what has led to the tensions we’ve seen over the last week, and to talk about why racism persists and what we can do to build a less racist society.

A blog, no matter what its subject, no matter how large or small its reach, is a platform. You use it to make your thoughts and feelings known. What can a white librarian do to help, even a little, when injustice is so blatant? You can be an ally. You can work to actually actively fight racism when you hear it, see it, and you can acknowledge it. You can listen. Project Ready, a free online professional development curriculum by UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science (and that my library has been using to regularly educate its employees), created a rundown of what allyship entails. Yesterday, I was asked to create a booklist for my city’s patrons of some antiracist titles. I was immediately helped by about eight of my colleagues and, together, we created the following list of links. Please use this where it is most needed.