Today’s Literacy Headlines

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.

When I was a classroom teacher, the return from winter break offered an annual opportunity to help my students reflect on their fall reading experiences and set personal reading goals for the year ahead. Partnering with school librarians and language arts teachers over the years, we looked for engaging ways to rejuvenate our students’ enthusiasm—challenging everyone in our school community to commit to another year of reading. Teachers often need ways to maintain student interest in reading. Blah winter days at school seem more bearable when you can travel someplace else in a book or talk about books with a friend. Strong reading communities make time for not only discussing and sharing the books we finish and the ones we are currently reading but also ones we might read in the future.

Neuroscience has given educators a new way of thinking about how students change and grow as they learn. Now one research partnership is teaching them how to see it happen in real time. The Haskins Global Literacy Hub, a research lab associated with Yale University, partnered with two independent schools to study students as they learn to read over several years. But rather than just receiving feedback from the researchers, teachers at the Windward School in New York and AIM Academy in Philadelphia—each of which serves students with language-related disabilities like dyslexia—are learning to monitor and understand their own students’ brain activity, to identify neurological markers of progress or problems.

School districts across the country are offering students a broad array of target languages to learn in dual-language programs. Schools now offer dual-language education in 18 languages, according to newly released data from the U.S. Department of Education. The report from the office of English language acquisition lists the number of states that offered programs in each language during the 2016-17 school year. Spanish, by far the most common home or first language of the nation’s English-language-learner students, topped the list with 30 states. Mandarin Chinese was next on the list, with programs in 13 states, followed by French in nine states, German in six states, and Vietnamese in four states. A desire to preserve native languages has driven demand for programs for decades. Economics play a role too, with a growing number of states seeing foreign language as the key to accessing the global economy. There’s also a growing recognition among educators that dual-language learning has shown great promise for increasing achievement for English-learner students.

Mi papi tiene una moto/My Papi Has a Motorcycle by Isabel Quintero, illustrated by Zeke Peña, and translated by Andrea Montejo, has won the first-ever gold medal for Best Spanish Language Picture Book from the Center for Children’s Literature at Bank Street College of Education. The exuberant book, which was also named an SLJ Best Picture Book of 2019, centers on the story of a young girl and her papi as they zig and zag on his motorcycle, enjoying each other’s company and the vibrant sights and sounds of their California community.

It looks like 2020 will be a big year for graphic novels—especially graphic novels for young people. Random House Graphic, the new graphic novel line led by publishing director Gina Gagliano, will roll out its first four books in the first four months of the year. Gagliano started her career as marketing director of First Second Books, where she promoted not only her company’s books but the medium as a whole. Here’s a look at some of those coming out in the first few months of the year.

A review of the research on how to teach critical thinking by University of Virginia professor Daniel Willingham concluded that generic critical thinking skills don’t translate from one subject to another but that subject-specific critical thinking skills can be explicitly taught as you go deep into a lesson, be it history or math, as students need to learn a lot of information to process it. A large study on teaching science to middle school students was published afterwards and it adds more nuance to this debate between critical thinking skills and content knowledge. A team of researchers found that students who learn to think like a scientist (more on what that means later) learn many more of the facts and figures in their science classes and absorb the content better.

Jason Reynolds wants kids to love his stories, but he wants them to love their own stories more. The award-winning author, whom the Library of Congress announced Monday will be the seventh National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, plans to use his two-year appointment to listen as kids and teens — especially those in small towns — share those stories. Reynolds, a Washington-area native and author of 13 books — including “Ghost,” “Long Way Down” and “Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks” — said he’s excited about taking the role in a new direction. “What I don’t want to do is be another mouthpiece that says kids need to read,” he said. “I realize that literacy is important. I don’t think telling them [that] works.” Reynolds prefers promoting reading and writing by encouraging kids to talk. At school visits, he lets them ask questions — whatever they want.

For students who struggle with dyslexia, a language-based learning disability, this approach is the most effective to help them develop literacy skills. Dyslexic brains have a hard time recognizing and manipulating the sounds in language, ultimately making it difficult for a child to grasp reading, writing and spelling. Thanks to new legislation, students with dyslexia are getting help. It requires all public schools to screen kindergarten through second-grade students for dyslexia. Those who show risk factors, at any grade level, may also be tested. The law also calls for one authorized reading specialist who has completed training in a dyslexia program for each school corporation. The specialist is responsible for training teachers and helping district officials administer and analyze the dyslexia screening results. They also help determine the appropriate intervention for students whose results suggest they may have traits of the learning disability.

With a roomful of rapidly developing children with wildly different needs in their care, early childhood educators will inevitably observe a host of behavioral and learning challenges among their students over the course of a school year. In any preschool classroom, some children may struggle to communicate, have a hard time making friends or experience separation anxiety from a parent. Others may struggle to learn new concepts, or exhibit aggressive tendencies. That challenges will arise in a classroom is a given. How teachers address these challenges—and with what training and resources—is the variable. Early childhood educators in Union City—one of the most densely populated cities in the United States, located just across the Hudson River from Manhattan—are better supported than most. At Union City Public Schools, and at a couple dozen other districts in New Jersey, teachers are assigned specially trained coaches who offer instructional guidance and model interventions for developmental issues that arise, including physical, behavioral or linguistic challenges.

The New York Public Library has been loaning books for a long time — the institution turns 125 this year. To celebrate, the library dug into its records and calculated a list of the 10 books that have been checked out the most in its history. The most-wanted book? The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. The Caldecott Medal-winning tale of a young boy’s encounter with snow has been checked out 485,583 times from the NYPL since it was published in 1962. It shares qualities with many of the other most-borrowed titles: The beautifully illustrated book has been around a long time, it’s well-known and well-loved, and it’s available in numerous languages.

Author Jason Reynolds has been named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature for 2020-21. Like his predecessors, he will travel around the country to visit young people. He will expand the mission, however, and not only try to inspire kids to read but also tell their own stories through his platform “GRAB THE MIC: Tell Your Story.” “My mission is to take a different approach: Instead of explicitly encouraging young people to read, my goal is to get them to see the value in their own narratives—that they, too, have a story, and that there’s power not just in telling it, but in the opportunity to do so,” the National Book Award finalist and recipient of a Newbery and Printz Honor said in a statement announcing his appointment. “I’m excited to create spaces around the country for this to happen—spaces where young people can step into their voices and become their own ambassadors.” Reynolds succeeds Jacqueline Woodson in the post and is the seventh National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

Educators think it’s important to teach science and social studies to young children. But few spend much time on those subjects—and often waste a lot of time when they do. Significant majorities of kindergarten-through-3rd-grade teachers—along with school and district leaders—believe that spending time on science and social studies sets kids up for success later on, according to a recent survey. Among the benefits they saw were improved reading comprehension and learning; a better chance of developing interests in those subjects; and the ability to explore topics in greater depth. Over 50% of those surveyed thought daily instruction in science was important in the early elementary grades, and around 45% thought the same of social studies. And yet, for decades, little time has been devoted to anything other than reading and math at early grade levels.

There’s magic in the act of reading, says Kelly Kennedy, a youth and family engagement librarian at Bartholomew County Public Library. Once a month, Kennedy partners with a community member to film a video of the individual reading their favorite book and talking to young viewers about their jobs and how reading inspired them to become who they are. The reading series, called “Lead, Read, Succeed,” kicked off in May 2019 with a story from Hope librarian Dave Miller, prior to the launch of the library’s summer reading program. Kennedy said the guest readers are not only telling one of their favorite stories with local youth, but they’re also sharing experiences and personal stories that could inspire young people to think about how reading could impact their own futures.

A common misapprehension about effective reading instruction is that we learn to do by doing — that students learn to read by reading and teachers learn to teach by teaching. It is painfully clear, as evidenced by our national reading rates, that this is not the case. Some non-educators propose that we consider addressing our national reading crisis by removing barriers to teacher credentialing. That’s the equivalent of saying that to fix the criminal justice system, we should eliminate law school and the bar exam and ask attorneys to learn on the job. On the contrary, teachers need and deserve training on par with that of legal and medical professionals. We need pre-service instruction that covers theory and research, internships that provide intensive supervised practice and ongoing professional development and support once we are in the classroom. Every teacher leaving a preparation program should be able to answer basic questions like: How do children learn to read? What are the prerequisite skills of reading comprehension? What are the signs that a child is at risk of reading failure?

The number of California students who cannot read is shocking. Results from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress show that only 32% of fourth graders are reading proficiently. These results put California below the national average and behind 25 other states. While the ranking is cause for concern, the difference in absolute performance exposes a reading crisis in California. Our students are over a year and half behind Massachusetts, the top-ranking state. The key to developing strong readers is providing teachers with the preparation and knowledge they need for excellent instruction. By making teaching practices based on the science of reading a budgetary and policy priority, California can intentionally invest in the science of what works and give all new and existing teachers the resources they need to help early and struggling readers reach their full potential in life.

For 25 years, teaching children how to read has been Sarah Odom’s priority. “It’s just very important to see children have the opportunity to succeed,” Odom said. That success starts in settings like the Hattiesburg Public School Early Childhood Center in downtown Hattiesburg, where Odom is a pre-K parent-educator. She teaches parents how to work on reading skills with their children, so early on the child can do things like identify upper and lower case letters and know the sounds they make. There are everyday methods Odom teaches parents to use to make learning fun for the child. Odom tells parents while they are reading to their child, ask their child questions about the story, retell the story, and find numbers around the room. “That helps the children to build background knowledge and expand on ideas, and understand and make inferences that they need to be able to do when they reach that third-grade reading gate,” Odom said.

What if a short digital game for young children could help lower the high school drop out rate? That’s a long-range goal of a new effort by a team from Boston Children’s Hospital in collaboration with Florida State University, which has developed a 15 to 20-minute game that tests children’s early literacy skills and generates a red flag for those in need of extra support. Research shows if a child is not reading by the end of third grade, they are far more likely to drop out of high school, which means early support can be critical. Called the Boston Children’s Hospital Early Literacy Screener, the new game is administered on a touchscreen tablet. Kids as young as 4-years-old do tasks geared at assessing their literacy skills with the help of on-screen cartoon animals. Those include touching the picture that matches the word that is said out loud, identifying rhyming words, and finding the picture that matches a spoken sentence.

All of us obviously want to help our students become better writers. But are there ways we can “double-dip,” too—in other words, help them improve their writing AND also use writing instruction to improve reading skills? We’ll explore that question today with Tony Zani, Mary Tedrow, Mary Beth Nicklaus, Colleen Cruz, and Pam Allyn. Zani says, “Writing directly benefits students’ reading skills. For example, if you have students write about what they’ve read or learned (for nearly any content or age), you’ll dramatically improve reading comprehension. Students are often forced to reread and think more deeply about what they’ve read. When students have to consider a controversial question and use texts they’ve read to defend their point of view, reading comprehension is off the charts. In our school, we’ve emphasized writing about what we read. It took about two years for most teachers, and students, to really embrace the concept. It was about that time that our end-of-year reading scores had a huge jump. Our highly impacted Title I school made enormous growth just because students were better at thinking about what they read.”

At the heart of a sweeping plan to improve education in Maryland with billions in added funding is the goal of addressing inequities in schools that serve high numbers of children in poverty — a problem experts in education say is a fundamental one in the United States. A state commission that has spent three years studying how to make Maryland schools competitive with the world’s best found a common problem: the state invests more in schools serving affluent communities than it does on schools in areas with high poverty. “Kids growing up in poverty need more resources, and so a major portion of our recommendations are aimed at putting the resources into the schools where there are lots of low-income kids and providing them support,” said William Kirwan, who chaired the 25-member commission.

The Smithsonian Institution is teaming up with IDW Publishing on a series of educational graphic books that will start to be released this fall. One series will include books for middle-school readers inspired by “Time Trials,” a set of videos from the National Museum of American History that introduces figures from the past, like the traitor Benedict Arnold and the abolitionist John Brown, and encourages the audience to discuss their actions. Other series will draw upon the cultural and scientific knowledge of the Smithsonian, the behemoth of an educational and research complex that includes the National Zoo and 19 museums.

Books have broad vocabulary and diverse language structures that are important for developing the ability to understand content. “Long, continuous texts with diverse and colorful vocabulary improve the skill to understand the content of the text,” says associate professor Minna Torppa. With other researchers of education and psychology from the universities of Jyväskylä, Turku, and Eastern Finland, she participated in a large project that studied children’s free-time reading habits and their effects. “In addition to books, we also wanted to study other text types such as newspapers, magazines, and digital texts,” Torppa says.

Spanish remains the language most frequently spoken by English-learners in U.S. schools by a wide margin, with roughly 76 percent of the nation’s 5 million English-learners speaking Spanish, but the numbers for several other languages are surging. Overall, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Somali were the top five languages spoken by English-language learners in the nation’s K-12 public schools during the 2016-17 school year, according to recently released data from the U.S. Department of Education. Roughly 1 in 6 of the Arabic-speaking English-learners, about 21,000 students, attend schools in Michigan, which has a large Arab-American population. Altogether, almost 83 percent of the nation’s English-learners are native speakers of one of the five top languages, but there is plenty of linguistic diversity among the nation’s English-learners: The Education Department report found that 50 languages were represented among individual states’ top five most commonly spoken languages.

I’m going to try something a little different with the Final Prediction Edition this year. Last year was … well, frankly it was lamentable. A poor showing. An embarrassment of prediction-ish-ness. Quite frankly, my finger was so far away from the pulse of the award committees that I might as well have been across the sea. My one and only successful prediction was for The Book of Boy and that wasn’t even on my final prediction list. I got bupkiss. Not even a Caldecott. So! I’m changing things up. This year I’m splitting my predictions into three categories: Best Chances, Maybes, and Probably Nots, in a desperate attempt to improve on 2019’s worst prediction year ever. Now let’s get started!!

Why aren’t our children learning to read? At its debut, the Common Core gave hope that we could improve the reading, writing, and math outcomes of American children being outpaced by their international peers. While there isn’t one single reason why Common Core hasn’t affected literacy outcomes as significantly as hoped, a glaring shortcoming is the inefficient way students are taught to read. We have not done enough to educate our teachers, school leaders, and policymakers about what it actually takes for a child to learn to read. Our youngest readers — in prekindergarten through second grade — need reading instruction rooted in science to build a foundation. By the time students leave third grade they are no longer learning to read, but reading to learn. If they do not have the basic skills to break the code, they will struggle to acquire vocabulary and background knowledge from text, and to comprehend more complex text and ideas.

Several times a week, Rebecca Mettler makes a 92-mile round-trip to Springfield to take her 4-year-old son to preschool. Mettler, a journalist who lives in Sarcoxie, worried that without the preschool, her only son — diagnosed as deaf — would not gain the social, academic and communication skills needed to learn and succeed in school and life. Enrolled in Missouri State University’s Preschool for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the boy has been thriving. Tara Oetting, a clinical professor at MSU, said the preschool helps children, ages 3-5, develop language, speech, academic development and early literacy. “There are a lot of different teaching strategies that we have to use that are not necessarily in normal hearing programs.”

Everyone agrees civics education needs redefining, but the concept is becoming too broad—and some new initiatives may lead to further polarization. Instead of rethinking civics, we need to rethink basic assumptions about teaching and learning. There may be another way of engaging kids in civic activities that also helps address a different but equally serious civics-related problem: the precipitous decline of local journalism. In the last 15 years, more than 1,800 local print outlets have gone out of business, and at least 200 American counties have no newspaper at all. In some areas, college newspapers are filling the void, covering city council and school board meetings. Why not have high school students do that too? True, there are obstacles—not the least of which is that our deeply flawed approach to writing instruction has left many teenagers unable to express themselves well in writing. But with the right kind of support from adults, perhaps including laid-off journalists, they might acquire crucial writing skills while performing a public service—and gain an understanding of how government works.

Joan Spoerl scurried out from behind her book-lined table in Outhwaite Community Center, where parents and children lined up to make snow globes and take photos with Santa. She steered an expectant mother over, with the promise of another gift: free books for her little one, mailed to her home every month. Spoerl’s mission this December day — and every day — is to sign up more children for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which provides books for children from birth to age five. Parton started the program nearly 25 years ago in her home county in Tennessee. The country singer has said it was her father, who couldn’t read or write, who inspired her. Imagination Library came to Greater Cleveland close to 3 years ago, one of several programs aimed at bolstering early childhood development and kindergarten readiness, which are key to success in school and beyond. Managed locally by the non-profit Literacy Cooperative, the program mails books to more than 9,500 kids, enrolled at libraries and events by a network of partners, and Spoerl, who directs the effort.

Cynthia Leitich Smith checked a stack of books out of her local public library almost every Saturday morning as a little girl growing up in the ’70s near Kansas City. She read practically everything she could get her hands on, with one exception. “If I saw books that had Native people on the cover, I wouldn’t pick them up,” Smith said. “I was opening up those books, and I was maybe seeing this really stilted speech, or girls and women being completely erased from the narrative.” Stereotypical misconceptions about Native people in the land of the Kansas City Chiefs prompted Smith to keep her identity as a citizen of Muscogee (Creek) Nation away from other kids. That changed by 2000, when Smith published her first of many bestselling children’s and young adult books featuring Native American characters. HarperCollins Children’s Books recently tapped Smith to lead Heartdrum, a new imprint set to launch in early 2021 emphasizing contemporary Native characters and genre fiction.

When they look back on their own careers as children’s book authors and illustrators, Grace Lin and Jarrett J. Krosoczka are both struck by one theme in particular: creating their early artwork at a family kitchen table, and wondering how they might ever be published themselves. In addition, Lin, who is Taiwanese-American and grew up in upstate New York, doesn’t recall ever seeing Asian faces in the stories she read as a kid (and there were almost none in her own community and schools, she adds). So even though she loved art from an early age and developed real ability as a young teenage illustrator, she had a hard time imagining herself becoming a professional. But in fact those possibilities do exist. That’s why Lin and her good friend Krosoczka, also of Florence, have co-curated a new exhibit at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. “Now & Then: Contemporary Illustrators and their Childhood Art” pairs examples of childhood art and professional work by Lin, Krosoczka and 17 other artists, in some cases showing some notable stylistic connections between the early and later work.

Mississippi received high praise this fall for the state’s results on a national assessment that measures fourth- and eighth-grade students’ proficiency in reading and math. While the rest of the country stagnated or declined in reading proficiency, Mississippi was the only state to see improvement. But before those children ever sit down to take that test, they have to master the foundational principles of reading. This process begins in kindergarten for many students, where teachers work to set students up for success for the rest of their academic lives.

The ASD Nest public school program places students alongside neurotypical students in classrooms led by specially trained teachers. ASD Nest, which is named after its goal of giving kids with ASD a nurturing place to learn and grow, is a collaboration between the New York City Department of Education and NYU. It launched in 2003 with four teachers and has since expanded to 54 elementary, middle, and high schools in New York City. ASD Nest places two certified and specially trained teachers in each participating classroom, which allows one of them to provide one-on-one social, emotional, or academic support whenever the need arises, without disrupting the lesson or pulling a student out of the classroom. On top of that, each classroom’s two co-teachers meet weekly with occupational, speech, and physical therapists to discuss each student’s progress and share observations about what’s working and what isn’t.

Education Week’s most-read special education stories of 2019 examined the past and future of special education, the aftermath of the lead crisis in Flint, Mich., teachers’ lack of confidence in their abilities to meet the needs of special education students, and how ‘twice-exceptional’ students are often overlooked in gifted education.

To talk about the lessons we can learn from Valley Stream 30 (episode #6), Ed Trust brought together Jeffrey Howard, founder of The Efficacy Institute, Natalie Wexler, author of The Knowledge Gap, and Josh Anisansel, a Long Island school administrator who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Valley Stream 30. In a wide-ranging conversation moderated by podcast creator Karin Chenoweth, Josh Anisansel described Nassau County as highly segregated with tremendous inequities. Jeff Howard responded that these kinds of inequities are deeply woven into American society but that schools and districts that are fully mobilized are able to operate as if they didn’t exist. “Educators who get this right…reach a kind of state of grace where they come to a firm conclusion that there ain’t nothing wrong with these kids. These kids can learn at the highest levels.” Natalie Wexler argued that all children need a carefully sequenced curriculum that builds knowledge systematically both to help children learn about the world and ensure that they can read at high levels. Panelists grappled with whether programs and curricula are more important or the beliefs and systems educators bring to the enterprise and worked through a number of related issues.

Betsy Bird —collection development manager at Evanston (IL) Public Library— completed an end-of-year marathon on her blog, “A Fuse #8 Production. IIn what has become an annual tradition, Birdposts a booklist a day in December, representing her accounting of the year in children’s literature, in categories ranging from American history and funny books to picture book readalouds and comics and graphic novels.

The huge and largely unreported story is that American educators are trained to believe in ideas and methods that have little or no evidence behind them—and often conflict with what scientists have discovered about the learning process. Classroom materials rest on similarly flawed assumptions. The disjunction between evidence and practice makes it unnecessarily difficult for teachers to do their jobs and for all but the ablest and most advantaged students to learn. The glimmer of hope is that a growing number of teachers—along with some administrators, policymakers, philanthropists, and parents—are beginning to push for change. The leading edge of this movement has focused on reading, and primarily on the aspect of reading commonly known as phonics. The same goes for the other aspect of reading, comprehension. Teachers spend hours every week believing they’re teaching comprehension “skills” –think “finding the main idea”—when in fact they’re wasting precious time. As cognitive science has demonstrated, comprehension depends far more on how much you know about the topic than on generally applicable “skill.” This is an even more complex and insidious problem than phonics—and it’s not just about “reading.” It’s woven through the entire K-12 system, not just early grades. And the solution—switching to a curriculum and instructional approach that builds kids’ knowledge directly and explicitly, beginning in kindergarten, instead of focusing on illusory skills—flies in the face of what teachers have been told about how learning works.

This op-ed is part of a series of reflections on the past decade in education technology. Chip Donohue is the founding director of the Technology in Early Child Center at Erikson Institute, and a senior fellow at the Fred Rogers Center. As I reflect on the intersection of child development, early learning and technology over the past 10 years, I am reminded of a decade of polarizing arguments for and against young children using technology. In particular, I remain discouraged by 10 years of continuing debates about screen time that miss the importance of content and context in determining what uses of technology are beneficial for young children. My work has focused on always putting the child before the technology, identifying what we have learned while acknowledging what we still need to understand, and balancing the benefits while embracing concerns about children’s health and well-being in the digital age.

Valley Stream 30 is just over the Nassau County line from Queens, New York, and has attracted a diverse population of African Americans, Hispanics, and relatively new immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It is in many ways a classic “white flight” district. Twenty years ago, 40 percent of the elementary school district was white. Today, only 5 percent. Superintendent Nicholas Stirling says that the fact that the district “celebrates” its diversity and sees it as a strength has allowed it to build the systems that support excellence and continual improvement. One of the things its diversity forces educators to think about is the wide diversity of background knowledge students bring to lessons. In this ExtraOrdinary Districts podcast, listeners will hear how, in addition to their careful attention to instruction, Valley Stream 30 educators have built system after system to support the learning of the adults in the system.