Bolstered by Miami track record, Carvalho revamps LAUSD Primary Promise reading program

Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho, right, with students at Miles Avenue Elementary School in Huntington Park.

Credit: Twitter / LAUSDSup

Alberto Carvalho came to Los Angeles Unified last year having delivered impressive academic results at the helm of Miami-Dade, another large urban district grappling with myriad challenges.

Among the hallmarks of his 14-year tenure in Florida are a centralized approach to education, a passion for data and a commitment to the science of reading. He is now bringing to bear these key tenets to the nation’s second-largest school district. Many of the changes the superintendent is pushing at LAUSD, such as restructuring the Primary Promise reading initiative, jibe with this track record in Miami.

“The reading progress in Miami was achieved by virtue of the identification of the most fragile schools, disproportionate allocation of resources, additional training and accountability measures, reduction of class size in those targeted schools and creating an echo of parental support,” he said. “We deployed the essentials of the science of reading. We invested aggressively, annually, in professional development, not just in some teachers but in all teachers, increasing the skill set of reading instruction for the entire workforce. The performance data drove the allocation of resources.”

That’s the same basic vision he now has for Los Angeles Unified. Carvalho has long said that coherence in the classroom is his goal. Consolidating training for teachers and testing for students are parts of his plan to create a more consistent approach to instruction, one closer to the system in Miami.

“That is one of the most significant differences between the reality that I left and the reality that I’m in now, is the level of coherence specific to curricular approach, basal series, progress-monitoring tools, interim assessments,” Carvalho told EdSource last year, referring to various reading metrics. “They were absolutely uniform and standardized across the entire district.”

This would be a sea change in California where there are often differing philosophies of how to teach reading within the same school district. Many science-of-reading advocates laud his willingness to shake things up. In recent years, Miami has dominated the fourth grade reading ranking of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test, often called the nation’s report card, in the large urban districts category.

“Based on his track record in Miami, Carvalho could have a significant impact on reading achievement in LAUSD,” said Todd Collins, a Palo Alto school board member and an organizer of the California Reading Coalition, a literacy advocacy group. “The average Miami fourth grader student is about two full years ahead of similar kids in LA on the fourth grade reading NAEP,” he added, referring to the national reading test. “Bringing that kind of improvement to LAUSD would be transformative.”

Carvalho is stirring up controversy as he shakes up the district’s current reading intervention program, Primary Promise, which targets K-3 students who need extra help. Carvalho has said he plans to expand the initiative, which former superintendent Austin Beutner launched in 2020, from 305 schools to 449 schools, saying that the old model is both too expensive and not as effective as hoped. As he wrote in a May 9 memo to the school board, “There is limited data supporting that the current approach has achieved the results as envisioned.”

The new program, district officials say, will serve students at all grade levels, K-12, and will not rely on expiring pandemic relief funds. It will also expand science of reading-based training to all teachers and English learner outreach.

Carvalho has brushed off suggestions that he is undercutting Primary Promise, saying that his vision for an intervention model reaches older students too.

“There’s been a rumor that we’re doing away with Primary Promise, which, by the way, is not true,” Carvalho has said. “What we’re doing now is we’re actually expanding the interventions. In Miami, we have been using interventions for many years with fantastic results. The difference is that we deployed interventionists at the elementary level, at the middle school level, and at the high school level. It was not just an investment in a couple of grade levels. That’s what we’re doing now in Los Angeles.”

Time for something big and bold

Carvalho has said the new plan will “build off the lessons learned from Primary Promise” and will push for more affordable initiatives. As he wrote in the May 9 memo to the school board, there is a need for more equity, “to address the literacy needs of students in TK-5 in schools with the highest needs, the shift will include an equitable distribution of interventionists to those schools that did not have the support due to staffing challenges.”

The new program, the Literacy and Numeracy Intervention Model, district officials say, will serve far more students than before. The 449 schools were chosen, those officials say, based on academic needs, social-emotional needs and staffing needs.

“The data changes and evolves. We need to target who has the highest need right now,” said Karla Estrada, deputy superintendent. “We need a sustainable model that extends through the higher grades. The need for literacy intervention doesn’t end at the earlier grades.”

Carvalho hasn’t yet publicly explained the reasons behind the restructuring, and many parents and teachers have been pushing back on the cuts, hoping to save the program.

“Teachers across our far-flung district are so upset that something that is actually helping students is being ruined by a superintendent who claims to be saving it with a new program but is actually dismantling the quality of and access to this critical work,” said Nicolle Fefferman, a parent and teacher, who has taught history at LAUSD for 16 years. “It is incredibly upsetting to watch the destruction of Primary Promise.”

This drama is unfolding amid wide-ranging woes besetting LAUSD including labor strife, declining enrollment, pandemic learning loss, chronic absenteeism and a teacher shortage. Carvalho has spoken about the need to embrace change in a time of crisis.

“Now is a time to usher in innovation and to recalibrate the learning approach,” Carvalho told EdSource.  “You have the money, you have the nation’s attention, as a result of these massive losses as far as educational attainment is concerned, whether you’re looking at California’s Smarter Balanced or the NAEP data. You can not ignore those. I think there’s a clarion call now to do something big and bold in a crisis.”

Carvalho is often described as a larger-than-life figure with an outgoing personality and a strong will. He’ll need that resolve as he champions the tenets of the science of reading against the backdrop of the state’s deepening post-pandemic literacy crisis.

“The two biggest things he brings to the job are clarity and authenticity. He is able to communicate his ‘why’ better than almost any superintendent I’ve seen,” says Kareem Weaver, a member of the Oakland NAACP Education Committee and co-founder of Fulcrum, a group that advocates for early literacy. “You may disagree with him, but you’ll understand his rationale. Most superintendents fail there.”

“Data was our superpower.”

The push toward the science of reading is gaining momentum this year as six states have passed laws to change the way reading is taught to jibe with what cognitive science tells us about how children learn, joining earlier adopters such as Mississippi and Florida.

California is also making strides in literacy reform. Gov. Gavin Newsom set aside $1 million for teacher training and mandatory dyslexia screening in his May budget revision. There are also plans to place reading coaches in some high-poverty schools and to better prepare new teachers. But, in keeping with the state’s local control ethos, decisions on curriculum are left to districts to decide. Many continue teaching balanced literacy, a method experts say does not track with how the brain learns. That dynamic may help explain why less than half of the state’s third graders read at grade level.

Florida, by stark contrast, has had a statewide science of reading mandate since 2002. The state’s comprehensive statewide reading initiative is built around the cornerstones of early dyslexia screening, individualized reading plans, teacher training and school-level reading coaches.

Proponents of the science of reading point to an exhaustive body of research that suggests that most children need systematic lessons in phonics, or how to sound out words, as well as other fundamentals, such as building knowledge and vocabulary.

“There’s a compelling body of work about the science of reading,” Carvalho has said. “I believe that if we are going to follow the science, then we should really embrace all science, including the science of reading. We cannot afford to be selective in which science we focus on.”

Carvalho credits the laudable literacy scores he racked up in Miami-Dade to this approach.

“There’s a reason why that district improved even when the rest of the nation declined,” he said. “Nobody expected that from Miami-Dade with a very similar demographic profile to many other urban districts, large, poor, extremely high percentage of students with disabilities, and students who are English language learners, with basically the same percentage of students experiencing homelessness. You know why? Because we followed the science. Data was our superpower.”

In California where almost 60% of third-graders do not read at grade level, the need for solutions is urgent. One way to fight plunging scores, experts suggest, is to dig deep into the exhaustive body of research on how the brain learns to read. That is the core of Carvalho’s plan.

“You lead with data, with research, and with the practical best-case examples that the nation has produced,” said Carvalho. “In Miami, we were able to achieve those results, not miraculously and not overnight, but by sticking to a tried-and-true research-endorsed methodology.”

Carvahlo, for his part, plays down the influence of Florida state policy, which has long espoused phonics and other foundational skills, as a crucial component of Miami’s success.

“I don’t think it has much to do with a certain theory or philosophy or political agenda,” he said.

Thus far in Los Angeles, Carvalho has made a name for himself as a bit of a showman (consider this skydiving stint on Twitter), but he talks policy like a wonk. When he rolled out his literacy reforms in Miami, he did it methodically, he says, with one eye always on the data.

“Decisions were well grounded on research on best practices, and then a faithful high-fidelity implementation of a program that relied on identification of the most fragile readers in every school,” he said. “It needs to be equitably distributed, meaning students with a greater level of fragility get more resources…That’s how we got those scores up.”

As the Primary Promise debate suggests, however, Carvalho is being criticized as heavy-handed, pushing ahead without community engagement. It should be noted that both Primary Promise and Carvalho’s new model hew to science of reading principles.

“We are worried that one person’s ego is getting in the way of thousands of students learning how to read,” said Fefferman. “This program is an incredible investment in the children of Los Angeles. Superintendent Carvalho is pulling the plug because his name is not on the program.”

Many were hoping the program would be extended because of positive preliminary results. An independent review of the initiative is pending.

“In 19 years of teaching, this is the best thing I’ve ever done for students,” said Rina Simon, a Primary Promise teacher. “I’m literally changing the course of these children’s lives.”

Many don’t understand how the new system will work and what the overhaul is intended to accomplish. They want more clarity.

“This is devastating,” says Simon. “We want an explanation of why some schools did not make the cut. We want more transparency.”

One of the biggest changes in the new program is reaching out to older students. The new model will range from kindergartners to high school seniors who have been flagged as needing help. This targeted cohort will be recalibrated, Carvalho says, on the basis of what the data reveals.

“Expanding to grades 6-8 in priority schools will provide an opportunity,” as he wrote in the memo, “to help address the literacy gap that grew during the pandemic.”

Shift toward universal curricula

Carvalho’s plan also includes a more coherent approach with more instructors trained in best practices. Part of the new reading program is a plan to help teachers meet the needs of English learners more effectively.

“We want to ensure that every student who walks through our door, whether that’s an English language learner or a student with learning differences, is able to get the help they need,” said Estrada. “We need to make sure that every student has access to a teacher with the right tools.”

That’s one reason Carvalho hopes to gradually shift LA Unified toward more universal curricula, so that best practices for reading and math can be more centralized.

“We are moving in that direction,” he has said. “This is a system that values choice. There’s a balance. In my world, you reward high-level performance with autonomy, right? However, schools demonstrating fragility in terms of performance need more directed strategies, more universal uniform curriculum and curricular resources, a greater level of support and accountability.”

However, resistance to change is natural, literacy experts say, and it requires patience, transparency and persuasion to get buy-in.

“Somebody has to keep making the case as to why. It’s an ongoing process, and the messaging must include the kids,” Weaver said. “Every teacher is open to hearing about improved outcomes for kids, despite politics and ideologies, but it takes knowledge, will and the ability to communicate consistently.”

More communication is precisely what many are calling for regarding Primary Promise. The district is planning a presentation about the new program at the June 6 board meeting.