Today’s Literacy Headlines

Freedom Fire, a new middle-grade imprint headed by Kwame Mbalia, bestselling author of the Tristan Strong trilogy, is in the works at Disney-Hyperion. The imprint will feature stories of Black resilience and Black joy, written by Black creators, and is tentatively scheduled to debut in spring 2024. Mbalia said that after his success with Tristan Strong and in editing the anthology Black Boy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood, he felt called to go beyond writing and help to nurture talent in other authors, particularly those of the African diaspora.

Children’s books — particularly picture books — that tackle the subject of war in sensitive and reassuring ways are rare. Figuring out how to explain such morbid business to children presents a serious challenge for authors and illustrators. If they truthfully depict death and destruction, they risk increasing children’s fears. If they offer false and improbable scenarios, they risk children’s mistrust. The encouraging news is that a growing number of publishers are finding effective ways to address this subject without diminishing its gravity.

Teachers sing songs about Teachers College Columbia professor Lucy Calkins. She’s one of the most influential people in American elementary education today. Her admirers call her books bibles. Why didn’t she know that scientific research contradicted reading strategies she promoted? This podcast is part of the American Public Media series Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong.

November is Native American Heritage Month, the perfect time to stock up on children’s books by Native American and Indigenous authors and to support Native American and Indigenous authors by buying, reading, and recommending their books, though to be clear, it’s always a good time to be reading children’s books by Native American and Indigenous authors. It is also so important to make sure the books you’re reading to kids with Native American characters are written by Native American authors. Too often, children’s books by non-Native and Indigenous authors depict stereotypes about Native and Indigenous cultures or suggest that Native and Indigenous culture is a thing of the past, not a living, breathing, growing present reality.

Los Angeles Unified schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho said that the district is working to “expand our implementation of the science of teaching reading,” emphasizing the need for early elementary teachers to be trained in evidence-based practices and for struggling students to have access to extra support. “I believe that if we are going to follow science, and we should, then we should really embrace all science, including the science of reading,” Carvalho said. He called on school districts to take action and on educator preparation programs to instruct teachers in evidence-based approaches.

It is common for my students to sit tall for long vowels and scrunch for short ones because acting out the syllable types cements their learning. Syllable types are spelling patterns that help the reader identify the pronunciation of the vowel. Students can see the patterns, and the addition of embodied learning helps them retain and recall the knowledge more efficiently. Research has shown that when students represent the information that they are learning spatially, like what happens with embodied learning, they use less working memory, making it easier to think.

A roomful of second graders spent a recent fall morning learning about a bossy mother named “Mama E” who follows her kids around reminding them to say their names. Peter and his classmates were learning a rule about the English language that they applied over and over that day — when reading and writing “hope,” “cute,” “tape,” and “slide.” Such lessons reflect both a districtwide and statewide shift in how children are taught to read in Colorado.

Now is the time for schools to again teach young people the fundamentals of what it means to be informed and engaged members of this self-governing society, and what is needed if the country is going to recover from the current polarization and discontent. The Civics Secures Democracy Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation, would infuse states with $1 billion annually over the next five years to enhance instruction in civics and U.S. history. The bill, reintroduced in the Senate this summer, would invest federal funds to improve social studies education, leaving to local districts and states decisions about what is taught, and how.

As a child, Cynthia Leitich Smith spent every Saturday at the public library in her Kansas City neighborhood. She would leave with stacks of books, but none of them reflected her culture. During Smith’s childhood in the 1970s and 1980s, that wasn’t unusual. Children’s books by Indigenous creators were hard to find, and books about Native people by white authors were often filled with stereotypes and factual inaccuracies. Part of Smith’s work with Heartdrum, a Native imprint of HarperCollins Children’s Books, is to find Native authors and illustrators and support them in preparing their work for publication.

The state of Mississippi has been slowly improving since a 2013 overhaul led to big changes in how schools teach reading. Mississippi’s success can be attributed to multiple efforts—a new state education leader, Carey Wright, who reorganized the entire education department to focus on literacy and more rigorous standards; a big investment in teacher training in the ‘science of reading’; and two 2013 laws, one appropriating state dollars to fund pre-k, and the other requiring all third graders to pass the “reading gate” assessment or risk being held back.

Children account for roughly a third of the world’s population. But the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that a full 41 percent of people forcibly displaced by violence, human rights violations, environmental disasters or other serious disturbances are children. Five new picture books explore glimmers of their experiences.

Learning new vocabulary is a fundamental part of understanding math concepts. Math class doesn’t seem like the most obvious choice for word walls, glossary lists, and word of the day games. But a strong understanding of math terms is essential for mastering concepts—meaning strategies for building robust vocabulary are surprisingly useful.

Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to literacy practices across content areas, there are small, but effective shifts teachers can make to get students practicing the domain-specific skills they need. For example, literacy strategies in a science class should focus on getting students to use precise vocabulary, compose in a passive voice, and favor exactness over elaboration. Meanwhile, students in history class should prioritize learning how to efficiently synthesize information from multiple sources, organize ideas, facts, and evidence, and write in an argumentative manner that prioritizes meaningful connections between disparate information over the sort of evocative, figurative writing that might be prized in an ELA classroom.

Gene Luen Yang is the winner of the 2023 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature, World Literature Today has announced. He is the first graphic novelist to win the prestigious award. Yang’s 2006 release American Born Chinese was the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the Printz Award.

The average U.S. student lost more than half a year of learning in math, and nearly a quarter of a year in reading since 2019. Children in low-income areas were most affected, but advocates hope this data can direct funding to students facing the largest setbacks.

President George W. Bush made improving reading instruction a priority. He got Congress to provide money to schools that used reading programs supported by scientific research. But backers of Marie Clay’s cueing idea saw Bush’s Reading First initiative as a threat. This podcast is part of the series Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong.

Sixty years ago, Marie Clay developed a way to teach reading she said would help kids who were falling behind. They’d catch up and never need help again. Today, her program remains popular and her theory about how people read is at the root of a lot of reading instruction in schools. But Marie Clay was wrong. This podcast is part of the series Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong.

Last year, one of the biggest figures in U.S. literacy instruction announced plans to revise her curriculum program that would mark a significant shift in how the materials guide teachers to approach early reading. Now, the new version of the program is here. And while the materials have undergone large-scale changes, reading researchers and educators who have reviewed excerpts offer mixed reviews on their potential to shift classroom instruction — some worry that the new version doesn’t explicitly distance itself enough from disproven practices. The literacy leader in question is Lucy Calkins, the Teachers College, Columbia University professor whose well-known Units of Study for Teaching Reading are used by about 16 percent of K-2 teachers.

Outdoor play is linked to improved outcomes in children’s social-emotional, cognitive, and physical development as well as academic gains. Outdoor learning environments (OLEs) where educators use their training, professional development, and technical assistance to engage young children help these spaces promote structured and unstructured physical activity, play, and discovery. Improving OLEs in child care centers and homes is a low-cost and high-impact strategy for improving program quality, educator well-being, and children’s learning and health. Yet few child care programs receive the funding, guidance, or support to improve their outdoor settings beyond minimum health and safety requirements.

More than half of the 2,500 students in the small Russellville city school district, located in northern Alabama, now identify as Hispanic or Latino, and about a quarter are English language learners, or EL students. But the district at times has struggled to find the people and funding necessary to help EL students achieve. Russellville leaders now are using a historic amount of COVID-19 relief money to fund a bold experiment. They’re using the temporary funds to hire and certify more local, Spanish-speaking staff, like Ms. Alfaro. She was previously a Spanish teacher, but took a new role as an EL teacher. In addition to helping more local students succeed, Russellville aims to be a model for the rest of the state.

A set of new literacy standards and teaching performance expectations, approved by the California commission that issues teaching credentials, should ensure all universities are on the same page when it comes to training future educators. The literacy standards, mandated by state legislation, put a greater emphasis on teaching foundational reading skills that include phonological awareness, phonics and word recognition, and fluency. The new standards also included support for struggling readers, English learners, and pupils with exceptional needs. The California Dyslexia Guidelines have been incorporated for the first time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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