Today’s Literacy Headlines

In the literacy world, there’s a perennial concern that focusing on foundational skills will come at the expense of giving kids opportunities to practice language and enjoy stories. But researchers and educators say that it’s not only possible to teach useful vocabulary and meaningful content knowledge to young children—it’s necessary. A body of research has shown that once students can decode, their reading comprehension is largely dependent on their language comprehension—or the background and vocabulary knowledge that they bring to a text, and their ability to follow the structure of a story and think about it analytically. Before students can glean this kind of information from print, experts say, they can do it through oral language: by having conversations about the meaning of words, telling stories, and reading books aloud.

Want to know if it’s time for phonics in Belinda Williams’s kindergarten classroom? Stand in the hall and listen. “I love phonics because it’s something that’s so easy to make fun,” Williams said. “We’re always doing something very active and very musical.” Williams said her Franklin Community Schools in Franklin, Ind., uses a 90-minute reading block each day, of which 55 minutes cover phonics instruction and practice. Yet she said she usually also dedicates her personal flex time later in the day to phonics, too, with different games everyday, using magnets and Slinkies, among other activities. There’s something to be learned from teachers who end a lesson with singing and dancing students, especially when covering skills some bemoan as the most boring part of early literacy.

Virtually all teachers—including those who have embraced the overwhelming evidence supporting phonics—have been unaware that their approach to comprehension conflicts with scientific findings. They have been trained to see comprehension as a set of discrete skills, like “finding the main idea.” The most commonly used elementary literacy curricula also adopt this approach. But studies have shown that comprehension isn’t a matter of abstract skills. It’s primarily dependent on how much knowledge and vocabulary a reader has relating to the topic. In an effort to boost reading scores, many elementary and even middle schools have virtually eliminated social studies, science, and the arts to make more time for practicing “finding the main idea” on disconnected texts that don’t enable kids to acquire much knowledge. Ironically, the subjects schools have marginalized are the ones that hold the potential to boost kids’ knowledge of the world—and, ultimately, their reading comprehension.

Young children need consistent exposure to high-quality, play-based early learning experiences at home and at school for literacy and language to flourish. This is especially true for pre-K children who are dual language learners (DLLs), cultivating these fundamental skills while acquiring a second language. With particular interest in how young DLLs’ language and literacy skills develop over time, a new study compares children’s development in both English and their home language over the course of one pre-K year.

With a clear research base to back them up, leaders at Ohio’s Mad River Local Schools have paired carefully structured phonics lessons in K-2 with related practices that are known to support good reading skills: helping students build content knowledge and strong vocabularies. As the project enters its fourth year, Mad River’s leaders are hopeful. State test scores in English/language arts have risen sharply in the buildings where children have had the most exposure to the new approach, and principals notice that more students—even the struggling ones—are better at tackling tough reading passages. “The difference between now and five years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it,” said Cory Miller, the principal of Virginia Stevenson Elementary, which dove into phonics in 2013-14, four years before Mad River adopted its new phonics curriculum, Fundations. “[Students’] fluency is much better, and they’re attacking words in systematic ways,” he said. “They’re not getting stuck on words.”

There’s a settled body of research on how best to teach early reading. But when it comes to the multitude of curriculum choices that schools have, it’s often hard to parse whether well-marketed programs abide by the evidence. And making matters more complicated, there’s no good way to peek into every elementary reading classroom to see what materials teachers are using. “It’s kind of an understudied issue,” said Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It. “[These programs] are put out by large publishers that aren’t very forthcoming. It’s very hard for researchers to get a hold of very basic data about how widely they’re used.” Now, some data are available. In a nationally representative survey, the Education Week Research Center asked K-2 and special education teachers what curricula, programs, and textbooks they had used for early reading instruction in their classrooms.

One of the most challenging aspects of properly addressing the different brains of dyslexic children is recognizing them in the first place. Dyslexia occurs on a continuum and there is no “sharp dividing line” between having dyslexia and not having it. In the early years of elementary school, all children are learning to read, and all are developing their reading skills at different rates. Though dyslexia can take on many forms, two common areas where differences can be clearly seen and heard are slow reading and difficulty with handwriting and spelling. Also, in some cases, certain speech patterns can be an early indicator of dyslexia, like mispronouncing familiar words or using “baby talk.” For schools, teachers and parents, diagnosing dyslexia in English learners can present an extra set of hurdles.

The performance of American teenagers in reading and math has been stagnant since 2000, according to the latest results of a rigorous international exam, despite a decades-long effort to raise standards and help students compete with peers across the globe. And the achievement gap in reading between high and low performers is widening. The disappointing results from the exam, the Program for International Student Assessment, were announced on Tuesday and follow those from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an American test that recently showed that two-thirds of children were not proficient readers. About a fifth of American 15-year-olds scored so low on the PISA test that it appeared they had not mastered reading skills expected of a 10-year-old. There were some bright spots for the United States: Achievement gaps between native-born and immigrant students were smaller than such gaps in peer nations.

The Award for Innovative Literacy Promotion in Europe is presented at the European literacy conferences every other year The recipient this year was Invito alla Lettura - Rai Scuola for its aim of improving the professional development of teachers in Italy in the field of literacy. Invito alla Lettura is a distance learning program addressed to teachers of kindergarten, primary, and secondary school, and it includes three TV and web series of 30 episodes. Its main goals are improving the quality of teaching literacy and promoting good reading practices that can be replicated by classroom teachers. The program can reach a wide audience and those areas of the country where there is greater need for training, disseminating the new knowledge of literacy achieved today through international research.

The most notable picture books, middle grade and young adult books of the year, selected by The Times’s children’s books editor.

Four years ago, when the staff at Danville Primary School found out they were going to learn a new way to teach reading, Mary Levitski thought: Here we go again. The 2015 training was different. Inspired by a tutoring center for kids with dyslexia in nearby Bloomsburg, Danville adopted a new approach that involved training every teacher using a somewhat old-fashioned method. Instead of buying glossy texts, it made its own workbooks. And it worked. Danville’s method relies on new reading science. It has roots in an old way of teaching but is based on new cognitive neuroscience research that has revealed how brains process sounds and symbols. It borrows from linguistics, the study of language and its structure. Students do not memorize lists of words for spelling tests, yet the average Danville fourth grader is spelling at the sixth-grade level.

As you read this sentence, your brain is making a series of rapid choices. As it processes each word, it’s matching it to one of tens of thousands in most adults’ vocabularies — about 60,000 for a skilled reader. “When you hear a word, you somehow magically, instantly come up with the meaning of that word,” said Bob McMurray, a professor in the University of Iowa’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. All readers — and listeners — do this, McMurray said, even first-graders who typically are choosing from a mental word bank of just 3,000 to 5,000 words. Just how children learn to make such quick determinations while reading and hearing words is the focus of a new research study of McMurray’s called Growing Words.

Every year, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) throws a luncheon at its annual convention to announce the winners of two prestigious children’s book awards: the Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for Children and the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children. Authors Kate and Jol Temple and illustrator Terri Rose Baynton were named winners of the 2020 Charlotte Huck Award for their novel Room on Our Rock), a story about sharing and compassion that can be read forward and backward, revealing two narratives. The Charlotte Huck Award was established in 2014 to promote and recognize fiction that has the potential to transform children’s lives by inviting compassion, imagination, and wonder. Author Barry Wittenstein and illustrator Jerry Pinkney were named winners of the 2020 Orbis Pictus Award for their nonfiction book, A Place to Land: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation. The Orbis Pictus Award, established in 1989, is the oldest children’s book award for nonfiction.

In learning to read, the brain performs an amazing feat: it creates a specialized circuit that’s just for reading, forging a new circuit by combining parts of the brain that were originally designed to serve other functions, such as retrieving names. This new “reading circuit” combines processes from different areas of the brain and then runs at a speed so fast it’s nearly automatic. But not all brains forge a flowing reading circuit easily. This is the case with dyslexia. Rather than being a disease or a medical condition (the common misperception), dyslexia is a different brain organization—one in which the brain’s reading circuit has been disrupted or re-routed in at least one way, and sometimes in two or three ways. This re-routing slows down critical parts of the reading process: attaching the right sound to a letter happens more slowly and forming words or sentences takes longer, then comprehending what was just read also takes longer. Dyslexia can additionally affect memory, especially working memory, making it harder for students to remember what they just read, or directions and learning sequences.

Research shows that children whose parents are involved in supporting their learning do better in school. For English-learners, educators think that parent involvement can be especially important for supporting successful language development. But a new U.S. Department of Education fact sheet shows that English-learner families—most of whom are Latino—are far less likely to volunteer or serve on school committees and attend school or class events, important opportunities to communicate about students’ academic progress. Maria Estela Zarate, a professor in the department of educational leadership at California State University, Fullerton, has found that schools and Latino families have different perceptions of what constitutes good parental involvement. Zarate found that teachers and school administrators felt that traditional back-to-school nights, open houses, and parent-teacher conferences were important venues to communicate about students’ academic progress. The Latino families that took part in the study didn’t; they viewed educators as the experts and deferred the educational decisionmaking to them. With that in mind, here are five ideas to help schools better connect with English-learner families.

It can be hard to stay relevant in the ever-changing world of children’s entertainment, but Highlights For Children magazine has lasted for generations by sticking to the formula of mixing fun with learning. As Emily Burkhalter’s third grade class at Evening Street Elementary School in Worthington, Ohio, is enjoying a free reading period, a top choice among the students is Highlights. The kids are quick to list off their favorite parts of the magazine, from the articles to the puzzles. The most popular feature among the students is “Hidden Pictures,” the visual puzzle that challenges kids to find small pictures inside a larger scene. “Part of its appeal to young children is its lack of ambiguity,” says editor-in-chief French Cully. “I mean it’s a little black and white. It’s practice for the big, harder moral decisions that are going to come later.”

A small, kindergarten-through-8th-grade district in rural Oklahoma, Lane was identified by Sean Reardon, Professor of Poverty and Inequality at Stanford University, as one of the few districts in the country that “grow” its students almost six academic years in five calendar years. Since he identified it, Lane has improved its absolute achievement considerably. When Karin Chenoweth visited she heard from teachers and administrators that its improvement process started when its former superintendent visited a nearby high-performing high-poverty district and realized that he hadn’t understood how important early learning and early reading instruction is. He began sending teachers to learn from nearby Cottonwood and they upped their reading instruction game. Today, years later, the two districts, both located in the Choctaw Nation, continue to learn from each other. Hear directly from teachers and administrators in both Lane and Cottonwood as they talk about what they have learned from each other and how improvement takes place.

Six-year-old Kaleb Gonzalez-Muniz carried his electronic reader to a visitor in his first-grade classroom at Walter Caldwell Elementary School and announced he was reading a book about the Loch Ness monster. “This woman thought she saw one, but what if she actually saw the last plesiosaurus?” he asked, pointing at the page of the Epic! digital library book. “I love this program because of that” enthusiasm, said his teacher, Jennifer Burnett. She was Caldwell’s 2017 teacher of the year and a finalist for the Polk County school district’s top teacher that same year. Burnett was one of nine Florida teachers chosen as a Master Teacher and brand ambassador for Epic!, a company that provides unlimited in-school access to a digital catalog of more than 40,000 books, audiobooks, quizzes and educational videos in a kid-friendly platform. Epic! for Educators is provided free of charge for elementary school teachers and school librarians.

Fourth-grader Lainey Rogers put in her coin and pushed the letters and numbers on the dial pad. What Lainey did get was a surprise – a book she had never read before, and one she could call her own. The machine, called Inchy, the Bookworm Vending Machine, is the only one of its kind in the Sioux Falls School District. The vending machine doesn’t cost money, but it does take gold coins given to students for being “Hurricane Heroes,” for exhibiting kindness and good behavior. “It’s an amazing engagement tool we can use for kids. What’s been really fun to watch unfold is the investment our kids have in not only wanting to meet those Hurricane behavior expectations, but also the way they’re having conversations around books and authors.”

Glynnis Fawkes’s graphic biography of Charlotte Brontë opens with the 20-year-old aspiring writer receiving a letter from the poet Robert Southey. He warns her, “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life.” Find yourself a husband, he says; write poems on the side if you must. But creative aspirations? Forget about it. Thankfully, today’s shelves are filled with stories about and by women who wouldn’t oblige. And, as everyone knows, extraordinary women start as girls — smart, determined and chafing against society’s notions of what they should be. So it seems fitting that two new graphic novels examine what happens just before the blockbuster moment where childhood makes way for nothing less than iconhood in the making.

On the heels of a troubling “report card” on reading and math skills among American students, a global test of adult skills suggests older generations may echo those problems. The 2017 results of the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies finds that America’s adult workforce is no more skillful in reading, math, or digital problem-solving than it was five years ago, even though more students are graduating from high school. Every three years, the PIAAC measures the literacy, numeracy, and digital problem-solving skills of “working age” adults, 16 to 65, in 38 countries, including 23 in 2011-12, and another nine in 2014-15. In both math and digital problem-solving skills, U.S. adults scored significantly below the international average:

It’s official—the book world can’t get enough of audiobooks. Like everyone else, I love listening to a good story while finishing household chores. But one time, I ticked off my to-do list too fast. So, I decided to fire up my Kindle Paperwhite to read along with the narrator. Guess what, it was a eureka moment for me. After weeks of doing this, I think it facilitated my reading comprehension and made me understand the story better.

We are enjoying the early stages of a surprising and encouraging curriculum moment in education marked by robust attention and interest in scientifically-sound reading instruction. Among veteran advocates for knowledge-rich curriculum, it feels like a long overdue and welcome change in the weather. If I may offer some unsolicited advice to my fellow disciples in the cause of research-based teaching and knowledge-rich curricula: widen your lens, embrace complexity, forget top-down initiatives, counsel patience, brace yourself for years of struggle, identify your allies doing the actual work, and prepare to protect their flank. In sum, abandon single-issue curriculum advocacy, which is naïve, unrealistic, and self-defeating. It paves the way for more of the wild, fad-prone gyrations that we see over and over in this field.

Any way you say it, the latest scores from the Nation’s Report Card were bad, with trends getting worse over time. In particular, America’s lowest-performing students, who also tend to be our lowest-income children, are faring particularly poorly, especially in eighth grade, and especially in reading, but pretty much all across the board. Meanwhile, our higher-achieving students are mostly holding steady or even making gains — cause for celebration, to be sure, but also a clue as to what might be happening in schools and beyond. What might explain all this? Let me dig into three hypotheses: It’s the economy, it’s the pixels, or it’s our shift in attention away from basic skills.

Mississippi is delivering, and its students are the beneficiaries.The state proved a bright spot on the most recent Nation’s Report Card. Mississippi’s gains came as students in many states did worse in 2019 than they did in 2017 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — to the disappointment of leaders, educators and parents across the United States. Mississippi’s progress in reading, at a time when many other states’ scores are stagnant or falling, is a prime example of how a state’s long-term commitment to its goals can pay off. In 2003, the state began requiring future K-6 teachers to take two early literacy courses in their teacher-preparation training. These courses ground all new Mississippi teachers in what it takes to teach young children to read. A decade later, the state’s 2013 Literacy-Based Promotion Act focused on K-3 literacy professional development for teachers and funded literacy coaches in schools with the most students performing at low levels on the state’s literacy assessment.

HarperCollins Children’s Books will launch a Native-focused imprint, Heartdrum, in 2021. The imprint, which will be led by author Cynthia Leitich Smith and HarperCollins Children’s Books vice president and editorial director Rosemary Brosnan, plans to bring “a wide range of innovative, unexpected, and heartfelt stories by Native creators, informed and inspired by lived experience, with an emphasis on the present and future of Indian Country and on the strength of young Native heroes” to young readers, according to the publisher’s announcement. The launch list includes Ancestor Approved, an anthology edited by Smith, and The Sea in Winter by Christine Day.

A national report card finds reading proficiency for American fourth-grade and eighth-grade students is declining. We go behind the numbers to understand why, in this discussion with Liana Loewus, assistant managing editor for Education Week, Emily Hanford, senior producer and education correspondent for APM Reports, part of American Public Media, Kelly Butler, CEO of the Barksdale Reading Institute, and Nell Duke, professor at the University of Michigan School of Education focused on early literacy development.

The most successful K-3 teachers I’ve observed use small groups sparingly. That’s because their whole-class instruction consistently incorporates the most proven (but rarely implemented) elements of successful teaching. They master simple methods for ensuring that all students are attentive, and they conduct frequent, ongoing assessments of the class’s progress throughout the lesson—and then re-teach accordingly. In a two-hour reading block, five groups of students will receive about 20 minutes of reading instruction per day. In a classroom that uses small groups more sparingly, students will receive about 80 minutes—three to four times as much. This would allow for huge infusions of instructional time into the essential components of literacy.

The use of science to inform learning and development can have profound results for children, particularly those in their first few years of life. So say the experts—among them Randa Grob-Zakhary, a resident of Switzerland who holds doctoral degrees in neuroscience and medicine from Johns Hopkins University. Trained as a physician and neurosurgeon, Grob-Zakhary came to the education industry when she was pregnant with her first child, a time during which she “became acutely aware of the massive gap between what we know about children’s learning and development, and what we’re actually using,” she says. She’s currently in the process of launching Insights for Education, a consulting company to help organizations apply the evidence-based practices that we know work well. “The whole purpose is not to develop new research but to make much more use of what’s there already,” she explains. One of the many areas Grob-Zakhary wants to zero in on in her new role is early childhood education, which studies show is the most critical time in a person’s development.

East St. Louis, one of the country’s poorest cities, has been labeled the worst-performing school district in the nation. Only 73 percent of students graduate high school — compared to 89 percent in Illinois and 93 percent just across the river in Missouri. The lead poisoning and asthma rates here are some of the nation’s highest, and 43 percent of East St. Louis residents live below the poverty line. In a place where some neighborhoods have been labeled child care deserts because there are no child care centers, community leaders hope that improving early childhood education will reverse the city’s fortunes. Top-notch early learning environments have been shown to improve academic outcomes for the most vulnerable children — even years later. However, most U.S. cities and towns, including East St. Louis, still lack the funding to provide high-quality programs for all the young children who need them.

Content knowledge is coming back into vogue, and while there are plenty of cognitive science-heavy explanations out there, the basic idea is easy to grasp. If you know a lot about dinosaurs, you have an easier time reading and comprehending a book about dinosaurs. If you are trying to sound out an unfamiliar word on the page, it’s easier if you already know the word by sound. If you learn and store new information by connecting it to information you already have banked, that process is easier if you actually have plenty of information already stored away. So if we restore rich content to education and provide students with a wealth of background knowledge, will that revitalize education and fix some of the issues that have plagued us?

Our series section is a popular place for students to be. They’re going to find favorites like Dork Diaries, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Big Nate (none of which need any boosting help from me here—I’m guessing you’re all familiar with these titles) . There are older series that are still popular, such as Horrible Harry, Animal Ark, 39 Clues, Geronimo Stilton/Thea Stilton, A-Z Mysteries, and Hank Zipzer. I’m going to run down a dozen series here that see a lot of interest and may be newer and/or less well known.

A state task force submitted recommendations to Iowa lawmakers Monday aimed at improving instruction for students with dyslexia and other struggling readers. Five to 17 percent of the population is estimated to have dyslexia. “Across Iowa, students with the characteristics of dyslexia, their families, and their teachers face many challenges, including lack of resources, lack of consistency in services across the state, and misinformation,” the task force report begins. The task force is recommending that Iowa adopt specific policies related to dyslexia, partly by building on existing policies for struggling readers. Katie Greving, a task force member and president of Decoding Dyslexia Iowa, said the group wants state education regulators to develop a dyslexia-specific teaching endorsement.

Barbershop Books is a community-based literacy program that aims to encourage young boys of color to read. The program puts a colorful book-shelf in a local barbershop that holds books curated to young boy’s tastes and provides a safe space for them to come and read in a positive environment.

Diversity, understanding bias, and the power of human kindness were main themes in all three conference keynote speeches at the recent Association of American School Librarians (AASL) National conference. Ellen Oh, author and co-founder of We Need Diverse Books, educator Adolph Brown, and graphic novelist Jarrett J. Krosoczka also spoke of the profound influence libraries had on their childhoods and lives. Brown, the former dean at Hampton University, took the stage with a swagger, dressed as “Undercover Brother,” in baggy clothes and a droopy backpack, and a floppy dreadlock wig. “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” he reminded the audience, describing how, that morning, a guard didn’t believe Brown was the AASL keynote speaker.

Records obtained by the Houston Chronicle show that thousands of elementary and middle school children in the Houston Independent School District rarely take home books from their campus library, limiting opportunities to hone literacy skills and a love for reading at a critical time in their development. In at least seven HISD schools, all of which serve predominantly low-income students, a majority of children did not check out a single book in 2018-19, the records show. The paltry checkout rates are indicative of HISD’s relatively low investment in library services, which has drawn criticism for more than a decade from librarians, literacy advocates and some district leaders.

Bright Beginnings, a nonprofit preschool in Washington, DC, was founded in 1990 by the Junior League of Washington to help children who were growing up in families experiencing homelessness. Today, Bright Beginnings embraces a two-generation approach that directs as much attention at Mom and Dad as at the child. And at grandparents, aunts and uncles, too.

In celebration of World Kindness Day, Pittsburghers — including adorable newborn babies — are wearing cardigans to honor Mister Rogers. And at Magee-Womens Hospital, it was red letter day. More accurately, it was a red sweater day. Each bundle of joy in the maternity ward was decked out in a hand-crocheted red sweaters and blue sneaker booties in honor of Fred Rogers for World Kindness Day. Mister Rogers’ wife Joanne got to meet the six adorable newborn babies.

Monique Fields has published essays touching on race and identity for mediums including NPR’s “All Things Considered” and Ebony Magazine. But “Honeysmoke,” published in January, was her first book. The book centers around the journey of a biracial girl searching to find answers to questions about her identity and ultimately concluding that though her mother is black, and her father is white, she is neither one – she is honeysmoke.

EdReports, the nonprofit curriculum reviewer, released its first reviews of foundational reading and writing skills programs on Wednesday — and none of the materials met the evaluator’s highest standard. This release marks EdReports’ first foray into reviewing supplemental materials. Traditionally, the organization has only reviewed year-long, comprehensive curricula — in math, English/language arts, and science.

Memorabilia and objects have long inspired the work of writers and artists. In interviews, conversations, or emails, Daryl Grabarek of School Library Journal has learned how particular items kept close, shared, or spotted in a museum, have stirred their imaginations or brought a period, person, or idea into sharper focus. Here are some of those stories, including one about an artifact “that got away.”

Educators in search of engaging new chapter books to read aloud to their students need go no further. From titles that will ignite discussions about contemporary issues, highlight little-known true stories, or tug on the heartstrings, these books will find a place on classroom shelves.

One preschool in Spokane Valley is breaking barriers, as they hold class outside in the Dishman Hills Natural Area. This is part of a pilot project the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families is testing out.

Hands waved eagerly in the air as students at Joe Michell K-8 School hoped to be picked to have their favorite animal drawn by children’s book illustrator, Christian Robinson. Robinson, a graduate of California Institute of the Arts, is an acclaimed illustrator of 14 children’s books, including “Gaston” by Kelly di Puchhio, and the New York Times bestseller “Last Stop on Market Street” by Matt de la Pena, which won the John Newbery Medal as well as a Caldecott Honor.

Joseph S. Renzulli is a distinguished professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut and co-founder, with Sally M. Reis, of the Renzulli Learning System. In this editorial, he writes, “History is replete with men and women who were not superstars in school but who made notable contributions to their respective areas of interest and strengths when given opportunities and support.”

In the wake of falling reading scores on the test known as the Nation’s Report Card, 12 major education groups are calling on schools to adopt evidence-based reading instruction, joining the growing number of education groups publicly advocating for the “science of reading” — the decades of psychology and cognitive science research that demonstrate best practices in teaching children how to comprehend text.

Currently only one in four Illinois children shows up to kindergarten prepared, according to results of a state kindergarten readiness assessment. One reason: While the state has invested in quality programs, they reach too few children. A September analysis by the group Illinois Action for Children illustrated vast inequities in how preschool seats are distributed. Some communities have no seats for children from low-income families, while others have an overabundance. How Illinois can fortify its system, which is recognized nationally for its high quality but only reimburses centers between $24 and $32 a day to care for preschoolers, is one of the questions facing the administration of Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

In an era of tight library budgets, grants can make the difference between standard and great programming. Librarians use grants for everything from dramatically expanding services to modestly boosting technology. The good news is that funding opportunities abound, whether that means pursuing a large, federally funded grant package or finding a few hundred dollars through local channels. Still, librarians need to know where to look for grants, and how to shape a compelling proposal, implement an initiative, and follow up effectively. Here’s what some librarians have dreamed up, and how they are following through on their winning proposals.

Thousands of educators and researchers converged on New Orleans, LA, last month for the ILA 2019 Conference. Interactive panels, casual conversations, and thought-provoking sessions led to new themes emerging from the conference that sparked fresh ideas. For our next #ILAchat on 11/14 at 8pm ET, we will be discussing a theme that continues to generate conversation: how early childhood writing instruction can help improve literacy.

American students have never had more access to digital devices for reading in and out of school. Now emerging research and troubling results on the test dubbed the Nation’s Report Card raise questions about what effect all this digital access could have on students’ longterm reading skills. An Education Week analysis of NAEP background data found that in both grades 4 and 8, spending more time using a computer or digital device for English and language arts work was associated with lower reading proficiency on the test. In three separate meta-analyses in the last two years, researchers have found the habits associated with reading digitally can decrease students’ skills in following a narrative, and comprehending text deeply—exactly the skills measured under NAEP’s literary experience content.

An alarm sounded last week when results from the Nation’s Report Card showed faltering reading levels for America’s young people. The release from the National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP) revealed a decrease in student achievement in 17 states in fourth grade reading and 31 states in eighth grade reading in the last two years. With all of the “breaking news” in our day to day lives, this headline is worthy of real reflection. Our students and our schools need and deserve our help. This week, more than ten leading education groups have issued an urgent call to action to focus on five critical areas, including these: embracing the science of reading; pushing for use of high-quality, standards- aligned curriculum; and advancing the capacity of teachers in teaching literacy by way of teacher preparation programs.

For many families, reading is a pleasurable activity when kids are young, but becomes a battle as kids get older. Parents are more aware than ever that strong reading skills are fundamental to academic success. Teachers also feel pressure to make sure students are reading on or above grade level, often with their evaluations and salaries hanging in the balance. On top of it all, parents are increasingly finding that it’s hard to tempt kids to read when there are more alluring entertainment options like video games, social media and TV to occupy their time. All of this has turned reading into a battleground, when it should be a joyful experience.

Earlier this month, I shared a bunch of recent picture books that focus on community, caring, inclusivity, and connections. Today, I’m looking at graphic novels that are popular in the elementary library where I work. Just like I firmly believe picture books are for people of all ages, and have value and usefulness for people beyond the “recommended” age group, graphic novels also have wider appeal than their suggested ages may indicate. Even if you just work with older teens, it’s useful to know about these books that may be more widely read by younger readers, but will certainly find older audiences.

There was somber news released last week on the state of education in America. The independent benchmark called the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), known as “the Nation’s Report card,” released its 2019 results, and the signs of progress we all were seeking simply weren’t there. In fact, the scores show a decrease in student achievement in 17 states in fourth grade reading, and 31 states in eighth grade reading in the last two years. If you’re not knee-deep in the education world, you may be unaware about the significance of NAEP, but this data is something we should all pay attention to.

A growing body of research suggests that DLLs’ academic and language development is well supported by dual language programs that provide instruction in English and the home language with the goal of bilingualism and biliteracy. A new study from the Urban Institute (funded by the Foundation for Child Development) extends this literature base by examining the impact of dual language on the English and Spanish oral proficiency of DLL children in Head Start. Notably, the study was conducted in 153 Head Start and Migrant Head Start classrooms across southern and central California and southern Florida with over 800 children.

November marks the 50th anniversary of public television’s “Sesame Street,” a cultural landmark widely praised for its approach to children’s programming. But beyond the songs and fun, “Sesame Street” does some serious work for those in need, providing special support and guidance for military families and addressing topics like autism and addiction.

The poor quality of student writing is a common lament among college professors. But how are elementary, middle and high school teachers supposed to teach it better? Unfortunately, this is an area where education research doesn’t offer educators clear advice. “What’s very odd about writing is how small the research base is,” said Robert Slavin, director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education at the Johns Hopkins School of Education. “There’s remarkably very little high-quality evidence of what works in writing.” One broad lesson that emerges from the 12 tested programs was that students benefit from step-by-step guides to writing in various genres. Argumentative writing, for example, is very different from fiction writing. The What Works Clearinghouse, a federal government website of scientifically proven ideas in education, also highlights the importance of explicit writing instruction that varies by genre for both elementary and high school students. Another lesson is that students also need explicit grammar and punctuation instruction but it should be taught in the context of their writing, not as a separate stand-alone lesson.

There’s new evidence that girls start out with the same math abilities as boys. A study of 104 children from ages 3 to 10 found similar patterns of brain activity in boys and girls as they engaged in basic math tasks, researchers reported Friday in the journal Science of Learning. “They are indistinguishable,” says Jessica Cantlon, an author of the study and professor of developmental neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University. The finding challenges the idea that more boys than girls end up in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) because they are inherently better at the sort of thinking those fields require. It also backs other studies that found similar math abilities in males and females early in life.

Teaching methods and ideologies matter — a lot. For students with ADHD or learning disabilities, who learn outside the box, it can make all the difference in the world to have an enlightened educator who understands that process trumps outcome, that anxiety impedes learning, that every child has innate strengths, and these four additional educational truths.

Author Brad Meltzer lives in South Florida, but he’s in Washington, D.C., this weekend. A new PBS children’s series, Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum, based on Meltzer’s Ordinary People Change the World picture-book biographies, had its premiere at the Library of Congress and will debut on PBS channels and the PBS Kids digital platforms on Monday. He writes novels for adults, nonfiction, television and comic books, but his children’s books have a special place in Meltzer’s heart. He and his wife have two sons and a daughter, and, he says during a phone interview, “I want my kids to get off their screens, off their phones, so I have to give them something better to look at. We want to give kids better characters to look up to.” So he began the Ordinary People series in 2014 with I Am Abraham Lincoln, I Am Amelia Earhart, I Am Rosa Parks and I Am Albert Einstein. The books, for kids ages 5 to 8, focus not on the well-known accomplishments of historical figures but on their childhoods.