Today’s Literacy Headlines

Test scores for students with learning disabilities improve after they are classified into special education, and the gains are greatest for students who entered special education before they reached middle school, a recently released report finds. The report, “The Effects of Special Education on the Academic Performance of Students With Learning Disabilities,” used data from the New York City schools to track the academic performance of more than 44,000 students with learning disabilities over seven years. Overall, students who began special education services in grades 4 and 5 “were more likely to be placed, and remain, in less restrictive service settings” than students who began later, the researchers found. The findings suggest that support services that help students remain in the general education classrooms may be “particularly effective” for students with learning disabilities.

A study of 26 states and their preschool programs finds that as of roughly two years ago, a mere 1 percent of Latino children and just 4 percent of black children in those states were enrolled in “high-quality” state-backed early-learning opportunities. That’s one main conclusion from a new report from the Education Trust, an education civil rights advocacy group. “Young Learners, Missed Opportunities: Ensuring That Black and Latino Children Have Access to High-Quality State-Funded Preschool” also says that “no state with a substantial percentage of black or Latino children provides high access to a high-quality program for both 3- and 4-year-olds.” In 11 of the 26 states, Latinos accounted for a smaller share of enrollment in these programs than their share of the state population as a whole. The same was true in three of those 26 states for black children. And having access means more than just having enough seats, the Education Trust stresses; it means having affordable, strong options without having to jump through unfair barriers.

Teenagers who read a lot of fiction do better on international reading tests, according to a recent study. But that doesn’t mean we can boost achievement just by encouraging kids to read more fiction. Fiction can’t be relied on to build the kind of knowledge students need to do well in school and in life. For that, they need systematic exposure to topics in history, science, and the arts, through a coherent curriculum that begins in the early grades. So whether or not there’s a “fiction effect,” we need to do more than encourage struggling readers to pick up a novel. We need to introduce them to the pleasures of reading by enabling them to listen to stories they can’t yet read easily on their own. We need to use the power of narrative to expand their knowledge of the world. And we need to prepare them to wrest meaning from text that doesn’t provide a storyline.

Millions of Americans struggle to read and it’s often because they have dyslexia. An estimated five to 20 percent of kids are dyslexic but some don’t realize it. These students’ dyslexia go unnoticed and they struggle in school with feelings of inadequacy. Others fight to get basic services required by federal law. There are countless stories of dyslexic students who feel frustrated by their struggles with reading and act out in schools. It’s so important for parents, educators and students to understand the signs of dyslexia and find ways to help. In this guide, you’ll learn about: How to recognize dyslexia in children, including multilingual English Language Learners; teaching techniques for educators; helpful technology aids; how parents can prepare for an Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting; and how adults with dyslexia managed their education experience.

Every time students pick up a new word or understand the deeper meaning behind a story, their passion for reading grows and prepares them for a future of rich literacy education. The end goal for educators is to instill passion in their students to keep reaching for books. However, getting students to that point can be difficult. No one learner is exactly like another, and every student comes with personal learning preferences and challenges, which pose a major hurdle when it comes to collective classroom learning. Research-based instruction strategies can help educators reach all of their students regardless of the differences among them. Not only do these strategies offer proven evidence for what does and doesn’t work, but they also propose ideas and tactics that educators may have never even thought of implementing in their classroom. We’ve compiled a list of research-based methods for maximizing literacy instruction.

A new study using sophisticated brain scans found an association between screen use and the development of young children’s brains, especially in areas related to language development, reinforcing the messages about minimizing screen time for preschoolers. So the message to parents, over and over and over, should not be either screens-are-bad, or you’re-a-bad-parent. The message should be: In the early years, you are so important, and good parenting involves being there, interacting, talking, playing, singing, asking and answering questions, and of course, reading.

Since 1952, we’ve convened a rotating annual panel of three expert judges, who consider every illustrated children’s book published that year in the United States. In 2017, we began partnering with the New York Public Library to administer the honor now called The New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Books Award. The judges select the winners purely on the basis of artistic merit. On the 2019 panel were Bruce Handy, a journalist and critic and the author of “Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult”; Jessica Cline, supervising librarian in the Picture Collection of the New York Public Library; and Jillian Tamaki, the Book Review’s By the Book illustrator and a past winner of the award. She is the author and illustrator of several graphic novels and the picture book “They Say Blue.”

EdReports, the nonprofit curriculum reviewer, is shining a spotlight on early reading—the group announced that it will start releasing evaluations of foundational phonics skills programs. The first set of reviews will be released in November. This is a departure for the organization, which historically has only reviewed reading and English-language arts materials that are meant to be used as year-long, comprehensive curricula. Along with ELA programs, EdReports also evaluates K-12 math materials and science materials for grades 6-8. These new reviews will focus on supplemental programs, designed to teach beginning readers how to crack the code that is written language. The list of K-2 materials currently under review teach alphabet knowledge, sound-letter correspondences, decoding written words, and other skills that help readers recognize the words on a page.

The bookmobile has a history of bringing the written word to people who can’t get to a library building. Queens has taken that ethos further, parking its mobile library at homeless shelters in the borough. As Denecia and her 9-year-old daughter Elianna browse through the rows of books in this special branch of the Queens Library, both begin to beam. She’s actually kind of “old school” when it comes to books, Denecia says. Ever since she was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, she found the local library a special place, an escape both from digital noise and some of the other tumult in her life. “I want them to be in awe when they go into the library, I want it to be an experience, so even if they go to a smaller branch, they’ll already have libraries on a pedestal in their minds,” Denecia says. Today’s library is particularly small. A combination of factors, including the loss of her job and the costs of finding child care, left Denecia and her two children, including her 6-year-old Elise, without a home over a year ago. Today the Queens mobile library has come to her, parking outside the family shelter where she and 254 other families now live.

The nation’s largest literacy celebration is about to get bigger. In an effort to attract more educators and boost school participation in Children’s Book Week, the Children’s Book Council and its charitable arm, Every Child a Reader, have developed a brand-new initiative designed to reach teachers, school librarians, and students. From November 4–10, the Fall Children’s Book Week will help extend the centennial anniversary celebration that kicked off this past spring.

Some people lost their minds on social media last week after a video with the ABC song went viral. They really did not like how “LMNOP” was sung, but there’s a good reason behind the slowdown.

It can be dangerous to draw conclusions on the basis of NAEP data. But the consistently bad news about reading scores—which have been stagnant since 1998—is a pretty clear indication we’re doing something wrong. Indeed, the last time NAEP scores were released, in April 2018, the board that administers the tests convened a panel of experts to discuss the lack of progress in reading. The consensus was that we’ve been teaching reading comprehension in a way that doesn’t correspond to scientific evidence. The experts explained that the vast majority of American schools approach reading comprehension as though it were a set of generally applicable skills, like “finding the main idea” and “making inferences”—the skills the tests appear to measure. In fact, cognitive scientists have found that the most important factor in comprehension is how much background knowledge readers have relating to the topic: the more you have, the easier it is to understand a text and retain the information. So if schools want to boost reading comprehension, especially for students who are unlikely to pick up academic knowledge and vocabulary at home, the key is to expand knowledge through a curriculum that includes lots of history, science, and the arts—the very subjects that are being marginalized to make room for more practice in comprehension “skills.” The reason many students score poorly on tests is not that they haven’t learned the skills; it’s that they can’t understand the reading passages in the first place.

The latest scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation’s report card, were just released—and things aren’t looking good for the country’s young readers. Reading performance has dropped significantly among both 4th and 8th graders since the last release two years ago. Just 35 percent of 4th graders are considered proficient by NAEP standards as of this year. That’s down from 37 percent in 2017. And 34 percent of 8th graders scored at the proficient level or higher for this year, down from 36 percent in 2017. But that’s only part of the story. In what should be very worrisome to literacy experts, teachers, and anyone concerned with inequity in education, the lowest performers showed the biggest declines. In fact, the highest-performing students were the only ones to hold steady over the last two years—all other groups did worse.

On October 30, 2019, federal officials released results from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, in reading and mathematics for grades 4 and 8. Education Next asked a series of education-policy thinkers to share initial reactions to the results and thoughts about their implications. “Shame on us,” “Return to accountability,” “Focus on the low-performing students,” and other reactions to the NAEP results.

No one in children’s literature illuminates the interplay of heartbreak and hope like the two-time Newbery medalist Kate DiCamillo (“Because of Winn-Dixie”; The Tale of Desperaux”). Her latest novel, “Beverly, Right Here,” the third in a kind of trilogy that began with “Raymie Nightingale” and continued with “Louisiana’s Way Home,” may be her finest yet. [The story] sounds extremely sophisticated for a book aimed at fourth graders and up — kindness, brilliant color and scraps of poetry as salvation — and that’s the key to DiCamillo’s genius. She dares sophistication, trusting her readers to understand. She doesn’t sugarcoat, and she never compromises the truth.

The average eighth-grade reading score on a nationally representative test declined among public school students in more than half of the states, according to data released Wednesday by the National Center for Education Statistics, the research arm of the Education Department. The dismal results were part of the release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the “nation’s report card.” The test assesses a sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students — more than 290,000 in each subject in 2019 — every other year. Fourth-grade reading scores dropped in 17 states, with New Jersey having the largest decline, 6 points; only one state, Mississippi, improved, the data showed. The losses on the national exam were steepest for students who had been struggling the most, a segment that is the focus of many school reform policies. The Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of large urban school systems, said it saw a hopeful story in the new data. Over the past two decades, students in cities have moved closer to national achievement averages in both math and reading.

The average performance of the nation’s fourth and eighth graders mostly declined in math and reading from 2017 to 2019, following a decade of stagnation in educational progress, according to the results of a test released on Oct. 30, 2019. The one exception was fourth-grade math, with the average score rising by one point between 2017 and 2019. This was not the first drop in national test scores since the biennial test, called the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP, was first administered in the early 1990s. Scores also dropped between 2013 and 2015. But federal statisticians described the current 2019 drop as “substantial,” particularly in eighth-grade reading achievement with 31 states posting lower scores. Demographic shifts were not responsible for the 2019 declines because test score drops were seen among white students. In fact, scores improved for English language learners, a category that includes many Hispanic students.

Two new large-scale reports provide convincing empirical evidence that problem- or inquiry-based learning is effective and that teachers, students and parents prefer it as an instructional method - along with other active, immersive techniques. The basic ingredients of problem-based learning are that students work together to solve real-life problems or answer questions, using available information or data they collect themselves to come up with solutions. Unlike traditional instruction where teachers explain or demonstrate a concept and then students practice or memorize it, teachers serve more as guides or content elaborators in problem-based exercises.

While your students are focused on optimizing their trick-or-treat routes in order to get as much candy as possible, keeping their attention in the classroom can be difficult. But don’t let that spook you—take advantage of their Halloween excitement! This list of candy-coated classroom activities, terrifying tales, and phantasmic prompts are sure to keep things from getting “boo-ring.” A Teachable Teacher’s guide to Halloween books provides descriptions for each book and some accompanying activities so you can make the best pick suited for your students whether they prefer witches or mummies. Scholastic’s list of writing prompts offers 11 “spooktacular” story starters to get your students to express their excitement for Halloween through creative writing. Halloween coincides with the Mexican holiday Día de Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. EduHup’s resource roundup features ways to immerse your classroom into the holiday’s rich history and traditions, which will not only broaden your students’ knowledge but also help them develop an appreciation for other cultures.

Steve Graham, ILA member and the Warner Professor in the Division of Leadership and Innovation in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, delivered the Research Address at ILA’s 2019 Conference in New Orleans titled, “The Dos and Don’ts of Writing Instruction.” Graham’s address covered the importance of encouraging students to write for multiple purposes, teaching them the necessary writing and process skills, and providing a stimulating writing space for free expression. Here are effective resources for achieving Graham’s “Dos” of writing instruction and encouraging students to love writing in your classroom.

When the writer Jason Reynolds speaks to young people, he rarely starts by talking about books. “They’ve been hearing that all day, all year,” he said. Instead he talks about ramen noodles, Jordan 11s, the rapper DaBaby, “whatever it takes to get them engaged.” Earlier this month, when Reynolds’s “Long Way Down” was selected as Baltimore’s “One Book Baltimore” pick, he came to the city to field questions about the book and sign copies for hundreds of middle school students. They listened to him as he compared hip-hop to poetry — “There’s a direct connection between Tupac and Langston Hughes” — and said that early rappers should’ve been considered “teenage geniuses.” These events — he’s done about 50 this year — are a driving part of his work as a writer: to make black children and teenagers feel seen in real life as well as on the page. “I can talk directly to them in a way that I know they’re going to relate to because I am them,” Reynolds said, “and I still feel like them.”

A school librarian’s education can expand beyond the MLS. This curated a list of 18 programs can help new and established librarians expand their knowledge and sharpen or diversify librarians’ tools and talents. These virtual and in-person opportunities provide certification in a variety of school library-relevant subject areas, from STEAM to media literacy to anti-bias education.

Tim Shriver, a leading figure for three decades in social and emotional learning, is optimistic about the burgeoning interest in the field. “This is the most opportune time I’ve seen for us as educators to make significant improvements in the quality of life for children and the quality of learning outcomes for all children,” he said in an interview. “At a very basic level, social and emotional learning can be defined as the processes, the skills and the outcomes that come from attending to the emotional development of children and the social development of children. … I started as a teacher counselor in a program called Upward Bound doing afterschool education, moved to study child development and work on the culture of school and the relationships with families. All those things pointed me in the same direction: that the big reason why children aren’t learning isn’t the quality of the textbooks, isn’t the time on task, isn’t the discipline structures in the school necessarily. It’s the fact that so many children do not feel emotionally or socially connected to the content, to the teachers, to the school, to the mission, to their own purpose.”

Nearly 80 parents and their young children took part in a recent study that used learning apps to create foundations for literacy. With interactive features and colorful visuals, the educational programs looked like standard fare but differed in one important way: The lessons are aimed as much at moms and dads as the kids. Developed by FableVision, a Boston media production studio, the apps were designed as part of the Reach Every Reader project at the Graduate School of Education (HGSE) and were based on research on children’s early language and literacy development. The apps aim to elicit interactions in which parents can help their children learn how to sustain back-and-forth conversations, understand the concept of time by talking about things that happened in the past, and develop their vocabulary. All of these practices promote children’s literacy development.

“Talking is Teaching: Talk, Read, Sing” is a campaign with support in Bethlehem, that empowers parents to talk, read and sing to their babies with creative messages so children from all socioeconomic backgrounds read at grade-level. According to United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley, students who do not read at grade-level by the end of third grade are 13 times more likely to drop out of high school. In many cases, these students come from low-income backgrounds, said Akshara Vivekananthan, the assistant director of Early Childhood and Summer Learning ⁠— a department of United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley. “By just parents starting to talk, read and sing ⁠— something really simple that they can do with their two-month old or within a month they are born ⁠— it starts to build their brain development, which then helps to build a stronger foundation for becoming school-ready later on in life,” said Celeste Hayes, the school readiness coordinator of United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley.

With a bevy of classic tales being updated for a contemporary audience, why did you choose Little Women to work from and what were you excited to do with it? “I thought of the idea several years ago. It stemmed from my intense love for Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and the strong connection I felt to the story and its characters. When I was growing up, I reread my sister’s copy of the book until it was coming apart; I found something about the sisters and the whole March family intensely comforting and familiar. I recognized many of the norms in the book as part of my own Pakistani American culture—things like family expectations, societal rules, and even traditions around dating and marriage. I was excited about the idea of writing a modern Pakistani American version of the book I adored, one that kept the essence of the story but left out my least favorite things.”

An ILA2019 panel discussion on What Research Really Says About Teaching Reading was led by David Pearson and featured literacy experts Nell K. Duke, Sonia Cabell, and Gwendolyn Thompson McMillon. The group discussed the important role of early oral language where the emphasis is on meaning, the pros and cons of scripted curriculum, texts for beginning readers, and explicit teaching of comprehension strategies using a gradual release of responsibility model. The panel also addressed the concern that the literacy field is usurping content instruction in school districts. “For too long, literacy has been a bully and pushed science and social studies off of the stage,” Pearson said in his final comments. “Literacy should be a buddy, not a bully, for science and social studies.”

Methodically, teacher Tammy Kennington and her students narrated each step of the decoding process as the children penciled in slashes, accents, circles, or stress marks on all 13 words in the sentence. Three minutes and 20 seconds later, they put it all together: “For her birthday in April, we gave her a blue and white apron.” This is what learning to read looks like for the 122 second- through fifth-graders who attend the Academy for Literacy, Learning & Innovation Excellence in Colorado Springs. Run by School District 49 and commonly referred to as ALLIES, is the state’s only public school for students with dyslexia.

In US schools, there is an epidemic of reading failure. Despite increased funding through Title I and IDEA, according to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, millions of students lack rudimentary reading skills essential for academic or occupational success. Over the last few decades, research has allowed us to make significant progress in our understanding of the neurobiological and environmental factors that lead to reading failure, as well as interventions that can lead to improved reading outcomes. There is ample research that demonstrates that the factors that ultimately cause reading failure begin well before a child enters kindergarten. This research has shown that in infancy and early childhood the precursors to reading failure can be identified in the form of slow, inconsistent auditory processing. This auditory processing constraint cascades over the early years of life, disrupting the development of distinct phonological representations in the brain, oral language, and ultimately, reading.

It is the power of the poem that we turn our attention to this week. In particular, we highlight Kwame Alexander’s powerful and prodigious body of work. A poet whose mastery of verse form and rhythm has allowed him to deftly weave action with emotion, figurative language with concise control, he has won the Newbery Award, been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, been a National Book Award finalist, and won a Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award, among other prestigious honors. And despite these literary accolades, he remains committed to his prime reason for writing: to use words to reach out to the child or adolescent reader. As he explained in an interview for Reading Rockets, “I’ve tried to make my poems and my prose, which are very personal, I’ve tried to make it your business, and I believe that’s so important, especially when we talk about getting young people engaged with reading.”

Education journalist Natalie Wexler has an argument to make on why kids often don’t comprehend what they read. “There are really two different aspects to reading,” said Wexler on KQED’s Forum program. “One is decoding, just matching sounds to letters. That really is a set of skills that you need to be taught directly. But reading comprehension skills are different.” Wexler contends that most elementary schools teach reading comprehension as free-floating skills, detached from the content a child is reading. The teacher is focused on teaching students how to make inferences or find the main idea, regardless of the topic. For her book, “The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System–and How to Fix It,” Wexler dove deeply into the cognitive science of reading. She found that cognitive scientists have agreed for decades that the most important element of reading comprehension is knowledge and vocabulary about the topic.

Penguin Random House Education launched a new elementary website today that highlights its titles and offers teachers resources, including curated collections, teaching guides, and the ability to search titles by grade, reading level, and subject area.

In classrooms, labs, and libraries where student discussion is encouraged, many may be talking—but not all may be participating. Students speak less for a multitude of reasons. They may be shy, introverted, or struggling to master a new language, for instance. All of those who are silent in a discussion-based classroom lose valuable opportunities to grow—and the class misses out on their insights. A range of strategies can be used to include students in the conversation, from highlighting the contributions and competence of quieter students to using technology to enable participation. A stimulating subject often spurs high-quality conversation. For Tracey Wong, a school library media specialist for Yonkers (NY) Public Schools, that means starting with an irresistible project. Students in Wong’s elementary school classes created Braille versions of classic children’s titles, which Wong then brought to a school for blind students in the Bronx. Wong taught her students Braille and told one class about the concepts others had come up with. There was high buy-in from the students, Wong says. They were excited that the project, “Build a Better Book,” had a positive, real-world impact. It provided “a chance for children [who] normally don’t lead to begin to lead,” she says.

Have you ever been frustrated by how quickly students seem to forget what you’ve taught them? Or by their struggles to use what they’ve learned in one context in a new, but related context? When we intentionally help students build schema, we can solve both problems. Schema is a mental structure to help us understand how things work. It has to do with how we organize knowledge. As we take in new information, we connect it to other things we know, believe, or have experienced. And those connections form a sort of structure in the brain. If a hallmark of expertise is organized thinking, how do we help students to see the structure of the subject we are teaching? Enter the noble index card. This low-tech tool has the power to revolutionize your teaching practice. Post-it notes work, too. They allow students to physically build and manipulate schema as they learn. Let me show you.

EducationSuperHighway has only been around since 2012, but this morning they issued a report with a simple message: the classroom connectivity gap has been closed. That’s not entirely a surprise; last year’s annual report from the non-profit reported that 98% of US schools had high-speed internet access. This year the number is squeaking past 99%, with the vast majority also meeting the FCC 1 Mbps per student standard. Along the way, EducationSuperHighway managed to involve around 80 governors from all 50 states, recast some federal regulations, and approach an unheard-of milestone–become a non-profit organization that will close up shop because it did what it set out to do. How did they manage all that? I talked to founder Evan Marwell about the secrets of his success.

Congressman Elijah Cummings, in this brief clip, recalls the time he spent as a child at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. “The people who helped me the most were the librarians,” Cummings told Steve Kroft in a 60 Minutes interview broadcast in January of this year, adding that the public library was the only integrated institution in his neighborhood. Speaking about the librarians, whom he credited with staying past their regular working hours to help him with his schoolwork, enabling him to get out of special ed, the longtime Baltimore congressman and chair of the House Oversight Committee got emotional. “There are a lot of good people who really care,” he said.

Telgemeier, 42, has built a fan base among young readers with her graphic novels and memoirs, including “Sisters,” a coming-of-age story about a fraught sibling relationship and an excruciating family road trip, and “Smile,” which chronicles her long and painful dental reconstruction following an accident that smashed her front teeth. “Guts,” which Scholastic released in September, with a print run of one million copies, is her most personal book yet. It tells the story of how, as a child, she developed an intense fear of getting sick and vomiting. It’s a phobia that she still grapples with. “Illustrating this experience isn’t easy,” she said. “I really have to put myself back into the feeling and my own fear.”

True to stereotype, dyslexics can reverse letters, like “b” and “d.” However, dyslexia is more complex than simply reading “backwards.” Dyslexia, a phonological processing disorder, is not a vision problem. Dyslexia is neurobiological in origin, based physically in the brain. Dyslexia is not caused by poverty or a lack of intelligence. Reading accurately with appropriate fluency, learning non-phonetically spelled words, like “was,” and even memorizing facts and retrieving specific words remain challenging for dyslexic students, despite having adequate intelligence and effective classroom instruction. Dyslexics often seem smart and capable, which often makes the disability “unexpected.” Parents are often the first to spot a reading problem. Dyslexia isn’t something that a child will outgrow, and no amount of “just reading more at home” will correct the problem. Rather, dyslexic students benefit from early identification in 1st and 2nd grades in order to receive evidence-based, explicitly taught, systematic phonics instruction delivered using specialized Orton-Gillingham methodologies.

Almost half of children with an individualized education program (IEP) have learning disabilities, and approximately 5 percent of school-aged children have a reading disorder. If your child is experiencing difficulty learning to read, early intervention that is tailored to their specific weaknesses can be extremely helpful. Talking to your child’s teacher is a great first step for addressing reading challenges, and asking about the types of errors your child is making, as well as the assessments that have been given to show your child’s performance compared to others their age, are excellent questions. Next, inquire about the programs and resources offered at your child’s school to help strengthen their weaknesses.

Elizabeth Leslie López is a second-year dual language teacher at RM Marrs Magnet Middle School in Omaha, Nebraska—the same school she attended when she arrived in the city from Michoacán, Mexico as a sixth grader in 2006. When López arrived at Marrs, she didn’t understand English. She was helped by a bilingual liaison, who served as a bridge between her family and the school, and who encouraged her and other students to be “la mejor versión de ellos mismos” (the best version of themselves), said López. She went on to graduate from the dual language program in Omaha South High Magnet School, where she became a bilingual liaison herself in the summer of 2017. Bilingual liaisons provide interpretation and translation, and they assist in initial English learner (EL) intake processes to ensure that families receive support in their home language. López’s path from student to bilingual liaison and dual language teacher spotlights the success of the first dual language immersion (DLI) program in the state of Nebraska. While many school districts across the country have implemented dual language programs, Omaha Public Schools (OPS) stands out for having a program that serves ELs from kindergarten through high school.

Educators refer to teens like Alex as “twice exceptional.” “I have a large degree of skill in almost every subject of learning,” says Alex, who is 16. “But I also have autistic spectrum disorder.” For Alex, this dual identity has meant both opportunity and frustration. He has skipped two grades so far, and began taking college math courses last year, when he was still 15. But when he was younger, Alex’s underdeveloped social skills caused him a lot of grief. “I was constantly getting into fights and normally losing them,” he says. At the end of each school year, Alex didn’t know what to do. “I was always that one kid who was unhappy whenever summer vacation came around,” he says. That changed when Alex’s parents learned about the the Belin-Blank Center at the University of Iowa’s College of Education. Belin-Blank’s mission is to identify and nurture young people who excel at math and science and the arts. And they have made a point of reaching out to, and accommodating, twice-exceptional kids.

When New York Public Library (NYPL) launched Nanny-Meetups, informal programs offering childcare providers early literacy information and ideas for playful enrichment, it forged a connection with a group that uses libraries every day. “I see more caregivers using the songs and fingerplays I’ve taught them, and increased storytime participation,” says Grace Zell, children’s librarian at NYPL’s 53rd Street Library. “I hope that this sort of behavior extends outside the library.” More libraries are offering initiatives to help a range of providers build early literacy teaching skills. That’s a boon for many of the 12.6 million children under six in childcare, where they spend an average of 33 hours weekly. By 2021, there will be an estimated 856,238 U.S. day care operators, though that number is only part of the story. Children can be found in myriad childcare settings, which makes library outreach complex—and rewarding.

Teachers with bachelor’s degrees. Diversity. Hands-on learning. Bilingual classrooms. These are some of the qualities parents dream about when looking for preschool programs. They’re also a few of the ingredients that can be found in the nation’s best Head Start centers, according to a recently released report. For years, researchers and academics have debated the success of federally-funded Head Start programs, with the only real consensus being that quality varies dramatically across centers. Here are some of those factors that she says contribute to the “secret sauce” of a successful program.

Are we teaching reading the wrong way? That is the daunting and uncomfortable question educators across the county are wrestling with in the light of renewed attention to the science of what supports young readers. There is a lot of evidence that something is amiss. Despite decades of intervention, reading national reading rates are flat. Closer to home, reading scores fell in Greenwich and Stamford last year. This lack of reading progress — particularly for the most vulnerable — has led to the rise of a national movement of frustrated parents of dyslexic students. In the past three years, these parents have stormed state capitals across the country demanding change to how students in need of reading interventions are treated. At the heart of this dilemma is public education’s 20-year love affair with “balanced literacy.” Balanced Literacy sounds great, but there is growing evidence that it does not work for a lot of kids. This charge has been brought most forcefully by Emily Hanford in three school-foundation shattering podcast documentaries over the past year.

It’s estimated that as many as 1 in 5 people around the world have dyslexia, a learning disorder that affects how one’s brain processes information about sounds and words. In the St. Louis region, some parents are pushing for more school resources and attention to dyslexia, and a Webster University seminar on the subject last week drew a sold-out crowd. St. Louis on the Air, host Sarah Fenske talked with Webster’s Paula Witkowski, a professor of literacy and speech-language pathologist in the School of Education, as well as local parents Sarah Bartley and Michelle Yepez, who each have a child with dyslexia. They discussed the importance of early intervention and how people with dyslexia can thrive. The conversation also included contributions from listeners who called in to the show to share their experiences.

A new study has found that children who had strong early reading skills in their native Spanish language when they entered kindergarten experienced greater growth in their ability to read English from kindergarten through fourth grade. Importantly, when the researchers factored in how well the students spoke English, it turned out that native language reading skills mattered more—even at kindergarten entry—to the students’ growth across time. Plainly stated: children who had stronger Spanish reading skills upon entering kindergarten did better across time, even than their Spanish-speaking peers who were more fluent in speaking English but less proficient in reading Spanish.

Over the next few months, Milwaukee residents washing clothes at laundromats will start to see something different: mini libraries. A new city office focused on early childhood education is installing reading nooks in places where children tend to have downtime. The goal is to meet families where they are to encourage early literacy. The first laundromat to participate in the initiative is Riverworks Coin Laundry, on Holton Street in Riverwest. On a recent Sunday afternoon at Riverworks, Clarice McGowan was washing clothes. Her 8-year-old daughter Gigi and Gigi’s 11-year-old cousin Nikiya tagged along. McGowan made sure Gigi brought a backpack of Barbie dolls so the girls would have something to play with. But here, there was another option for them. The two girls were hanging out in a children’s space next to a laundry-folding table. It has a small couch, a magnetic letter board, and most importantly, a shelf stocked with books. McGowan says she was happy to see the new space.

I like Squirrel Nutkin. Do not get me wrong. Sure I do. I do not want to hate on your Nutkin parade. Everyone is allowed to love the children’s books they love. If Nutkin’s your thing, then wave that little wacky red squirreled tail of yours proudly. I honestly do not care. But when you come around to my house, [criticizing] the state of children’s books today, that’s when the blood begins to boil. And I’m not just talking about this commenter alone. I’m talking about any adult who starts publicly mourning the current state of children’s literature in 2019. So what, precisely, is it that you wish was still around? In the end, folks, here is what you need to do when you don’t see the kind of children’s book you want to. You find an expert. Someone who knows the new books coming out very well. Say, a children’s librarian. And you tell them what it is you want. And they will help you. They will find you those books. Lots of them.

As a professor who specializes in children’s library services at the Information School at the University of Washington, Michelle Martin is still turning children into readers, and her mission has expanded to educating teachers and librarians about how to make students of all backgrounds eager to explore books. Martin’s day job is teaching graduate students, most of them future librarians, about children’s and young-adult literature. (Her professorship is named for the librarian turned beloved children’s-book author Beverly Cleary.) Martin’s philosophy is that all children can become lovers of books, but that it’s an educator’s job to help them find the stories in which they can see or imagine themselves. In 2017, a study by the ALA indicated that in the U.S., some 87 percent of librarians were white. The pool of American teachers, meanwhile, is about 80 percent white, and children’s literature as a genre is also overwhelmingly written by, and about, white people. Yet only half of American children are white—and Martin has taken note over the years of the ways in which the whiteness of school libraries and classroom book collections can alienate students of color, resulting in missed opportunities to foster a love of reading. So Martin co-founded Camp Read-a-Rama, a summer program that started in South Carolina and then moved with her when she relocated to Washington. She’s also a trusted resource for librarians, teaching them how to incorporate books by and about people of color into their libraries and story times.

The Fonz from “Happy Days,” a defenseman with the 2010 Stanley Cup-winning Chicago Blackhawks and a construction contractor living in Bolingbrook all have one major thing in common: The way their brains work. Actor Henry Winkler, hockey pro Brent Sopel and carpenter Jeremy Bailey have dyslexia, a learning disorder that experts say affects as many as one in five people to some degree. They’ve all struggled with self-esteem, self-acceptance and everyday literacy, and they’re all speaking out to encourage others to seek diagnosis and assistance during October, which is Dyslexia Awareness Month. Dyslexia isn’t what many people think. It’s not the simple flipping of letters or numbers. It’s a diversity of brain function that causes difficulty recognizing word parts, sounding out words, spelling, reading and attaining language fluency. It is the most common neurocognitive disorder, affecting between 80% and 90% of people who have learning disabilities. The disorder is treatable with tutoring and the use of strategies to break words into chunks, identify them and connect them with meaning. But it never goes away. And it often hides.

This summer’s announcement by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) responds to an increased for a better understanding of “implementation science”. Educators want to see why a program or technology works in one setting and not another. It’s not enough to know that something works in an idealized environment. They want to know if and how it can help their particular students—and what they can learn from their peers nationwide to make that happen. The agency kicked off a new research competition to better understand how technology programs that IES previously deemed effective can perform in specific but varied settings, from different geographic regions to different populations of learners, educators and schools. It will also look at how a program’s impact may differ based on intervention delivery, such as the particular rotations of students in a blended learning program or the balance of video versus face-to-face instruction.

An increasingly robust body of research supports the power of art to improve learning. Johns Hopkins University professor Mariale Hardiman published a 2019 paper in Trends in Neuroscience and Education describing the results of a randomized, controlled trial she conducted in fifth grade science classrooms. She and her team found that arts integration instruction led to long-term retention of science concepts at least as successfully as conventional science teaching. Arts integration was particularly helpful for students with the lowest reading scores.For teachers at Maya Lin Elementary, integrating art throughout the curriculum and the school day is about making learning fun, multi-disciplinary, connected and creative. It gives students a way to think about the world differently, to make connections, and to contemplate their place within it. Thinking like an artist helps them develop habits that they’ll use no matter what they go on to do, and it has helped inculcate an ethic of perseverance, challenge, and craft to everything students do.

Richard Jackson, an editor who published books by Judy Blume, Paula Fox, Virginia Hamilton and other award-winning authors that broadened the scope of children’s literature, then late in life became a children’s author himself, died on Oct. 2 in Towson, Md. He was 84. Mr. Jackson won acclaim in recent years as the author of “In Plain Sight” (2016) and other children’s books, but it was his work as an editor beginning in the 1960s that changed the landscape of literature for young people. At a time when many people still thought of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries as the height of sophistication for young readers, he published authors who wrote about bullying, race, sexuality and adolescent angst of all kinds. He often found himself defending the books he published against complaints from librarians, school boards and parents who deemed them too strong. Ms. Blume was a frequent target of such objections.

When Massachusetts passed a law last year requiring school districts to screen for dyslexia, Nadine Gaab, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, was glad the state was taking a proactive approach to prevent early reading difficulties. She wanted to provide educators with a screening instrument children can administer themselves, and one that provides strategies to help children when they miss key early literacy milestones in areas such as vocabulary, oral listening comprehension and phonological awareness. The Boston Children’s Hospital Early Literacy Screening System is a 20-minute, game-based, adaptive app being piloted in 40 schools in nine states. The project also recently received a $50,000 prize as part of the Solve Challenge Finals, a competition for tech entrepreneurs held by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As state mandates have come through requiring schools to identify students with dyslexia, educators have quickly realized that the mandates didn’t necessarily come with an instruction manual on how to support students once they were identified. If a student exhibits signs of having dyslexia, the educator’s role is to encourage parents to get a doctor’s diagnosis. If a diagnosis comes through positive, it’s an educator’s job to support this student through their journey, whether the educator is ready or not. Though the definition of dyslexia is clearer than ever, there are still lingering fears to address. Individuals coping with dyslexia need help to overcome their fear of speaking about their struggles so educators can provide them with the help they need. Educators, in turn, need knowledge and resources so they can help their students with dyslexia, rather than being afraid of what a positive diagnosis might require of them. Here are a few ways that educators, students, and parents can change their mindsets about dyslexia so that, together, they can confront it fearlessly.

New brain imaging research debunks a controversial theory about dyslexia that can impact how it is sometimes treated. The cerebellum, a brain structure traditionally considered to be involved in motor function, has been implicated in the reading disability, developmental dyslexia, however, this ‘cerebellar deficit hypothesis’ has always been controversial. The new research shows that the cerebellum is not engaged during reading in typical readers and does not differ in children who have dyslexia.

Here are the articles I have written as both a librarian and the mother of a child with dyslexia in which I share my personal journey of learning how to better understand, advocate for and help my child with dyslexia. Every day I’m learning more about how to better understand and help my child and children like her. I hope you will join me on this journey because if we want to raise readers, we need to understand that not everyone learns to read in the same way and at the same time. And if I could say one important thing to you it is this: never ever shame a person on their reading journey, no matter where they are at, what they are reading, or how it may differ from yours.

Does it actually help children to learn new words if those words are taught with their spelling patterns? Some time ago, Linnea Ehri and Lee Wilce published the finding that presenting beginning readers with spellings helped them to learn how to pronounce new words. But I was interested in whether this transferred to vocabulary learning more broadly, to the learning of not only new labels, but also what they mean. When we tested this idea, we found that children did indeed learn vocabulary items more readily when they were taught with their spelling patterns. We call this strategy “orthographic facilitation”, as having access to the orthography, or printed form, of a word seems to facilitate vocabulary learning. If we want to narrow the word gap at school entry, then drawing on early letter-sound knowledge (phonics) may well be an important strategy.

The dismissal bell rings at Latimer Middle School and sixth graders spring from their classrooms. We can all imagine the scene: crowded corridors, lockers flung open and shut, a skateboarder weaving past, kids gathering on benches outside, school buses lined up and a teacher at the door to “tell everyone what not to do.” At the corner a crossing guard waits in the same place every day. But in the very first lines of LOOK BOTH WAYS: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks, Jason Reynolds’s inspired new novel for middle-grade readers — a National Book Award finalist — we’re reminded to take a closer look. “This story was going to begin … With a school bus falling from the sky. But no one saw it happen. No one heard anything.” For young readers, the structure of this “tale told in 10 blocks” is bound to be deeply satisfying, a way to zoom in on the everyday mysteries of this neighborhood.

Some of the most important pre-literacy skills begin in infancy. This timeline shows examples of the milestones children meet on their path to fluent reading.