Credit: Randall Benton / EdSourceStudent Armando Garcia 9 prepares to read during a reading class at Ethel I. Baker Elementary School in Sacramento in June 2022.
Credit: Randall Benton / EdSourceStudent Armando Garcia 9 prepares to read during a reading class at Ethel I. Baker Elementary School in Sacramento in June 2022.
California is part of a national debate over how to teach reading fueled by exhaustive brain research into the science of reading that suggests that most children must be explicitly taught how to connect sounds with letters.
The philosophical tug-of-war pits teaching phonics, how to sound it out, and teaching meaning, how to think it through. The stakes are very high: research shows that students who aren’t reading at grade level by the third grade will struggle to catch up throughout their education career.
Only 48.5% of third-graders tested at grade level or above in English language arts during the 2018-19 school year, before the pandemic stalled all learning. In 2022 only 42.17 of third-graders tested at grade level.
In the past year, EdSource has taken a deep dive into the complex debate about how to solve California’s literacy crisis.
March 8, 2022
Nystrom Elementary ditched a popular, yet criticized curriculum and put a greater focus on phonics to improve students' reading skills.
August 17, 2022
Scientists, teachers, and parents battle over the best way to teach reading amid a literacy crisis.
August 26, 2022
A national push to change the teaching of reading shows contrast between other states and California's hands-off approach.
October 6, 2022
Watch how one school embraces the science of reading and phonics to teach children to read.
October 6, 2022
Here are the stories of four schools and how they are teaching the youngest students how to read. The schools are among the 70 lowest-performing in the state. They are sharing in $50 million in extra funding that settled a lawsuit accusing the state of failing to teach literacy.
November 2, 2022
The scores may be grim, some say, but they're far from shocking. Some experts warn that cratering test scores warn of a system that was broken long before the pandemic.
November 14, 2022
Teachers become gatekeepers to books, a longstanding practice in many schools where the assigned reading level is treated as a sacred cow.
December 19, 2022
Delays put more students at risk of falling seriously behind, advocates say.
December 20, 2022
What should parents do if they notice their child is falling behind in reading?
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