{"id":9963,"date":"2023-08-07T10:45:22","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T17:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandiegonewsdesk.com\/?p=9963"},"modified":"2023-08-07T10:45:22","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T17:45:22","slug":"californias-literacy-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandiegonewsdesk.com\/?p=9963","title":{"rendered":"CALIFORNIA\u2019S LITERACY CRISIS"},"content":{"rendered":"
Original Article Link: California\u2019s Literacy Crisis | California Policy Center<\/a><\/h5>\n

BY SHERIDAN SWANSON<\/h3>\n
\n

For decades, teachers, parents, academics, scientists, and curriculum developers have been engaged in a pitched battle over the best methods to implement effective, comprehensive and practical reading instruction. This controversy, dubbed the \u201creading wars,\u201d has had lifelong consequences for a generation of students who have been hostages and unwitting casualties of the war. Experts believe that\u00a0\u00a0balanced literacy, whole-word reading,\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0cueing\u00a0<\/i>approaches are systemically unreliable and have led to a nationwide literacy crisis. In California, where education leaders continue using faulty methods, there are a staggering number of public school students who cannot read at grade level and may never be functionally literate for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

THE CRISIS<\/h2>\n

Shockingly, less than half (47.1 percent) of all public school students in California met state grade-level English Language Arts (ELA) standards during the 2021-22 school year. Even as early as third grade, only 42.2 percent of students met ELA standards for their grade level. This is particularly concerning since\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0has long shown that students who lack reading proficiency by the end of third grade are likely to face long-term challenges, including behavioral issues, poor literacy in high school, and lower chances of obtaining college degrees.<\/p>\n

The reading scores of Black and Hispanic students are even worse. Across grade levels last year, only 30.3 percent of Black students and 36.4 percent of Hispanic students in California met grade-level ELA standards.<\/p>\n

Additionally, California\u2019s fourth grade reading scores are tied with those of four other states (New York, Texas, Virginia, and Tennessee) for 32nd place in the nation, despite an education budget amounting to over $21,000 per student each year.<\/p>\n

But this literacy catastrophe is nothing new in the Golden State. In 2017, struggling students\u00a0sued<\/a>\u00a0the State of California for\u00a0failing to teach its public school kids how to read<\/a>. The students\u00a0argued<\/a>\u00a0that California had violated their constitutional right to a free education. The state\u00a0settled<\/a>\u00a0in 2020, and agreed to implement a $50 million block grant to address literacy in 75 of California\u2019s poorest-performing schools. The\u00a0grant<\/a>\u00a0will run out this December.<\/p>\n

But the literacy crisis isn\u2019t limited to California; it threatens the future success of countless students throughout the United States.<\/p>\n

In 2017, education reporter Emily Hanford began investigating why reading scores were so poor in the United States. In 2022, Hanford released a groundbreaking, must-listen-to podcast:\u00a0Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong<\/i><\/a>, exposing the history of the literacy crisis. While many listeners were shocked at what they learned, others said they\u2019d been trying to sound alarm bells for years about flawed reading instruction.<\/p>\n

A case in point: California parent Kenni Alden told Hanford that her son was a struggling reader at 12 years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe omits words. He adds words. He\u2019ll substitute a word\u2026and just cruise right on,\u201d Alden explained.<\/p>\n

Alden\u2019s son had learned bad reading habits in his public school \u2014 habits very difficult to break. Instead of looking at the letters to read the words, he is stuck in a guessing game because he doesn\u2019t have the skills to decode what the actual words are. Alden considered sending her son to a different school in their hometown of Berkeley, but she soon discovered that\u00a0all<\/i>\u00a0the schools in their area taught the same reading methods.<\/p>\n

Why can\u2019t kids read what the words say? Why are they having to guess? It\u2019s the disastrous result of reading approaches called\u00a0whole word,<\/i>\u00a0whole language<\/i>, and\u00a0cueing<\/i>. In the 1980s, California implemented reading instruction methods based on these flawed theories advanced by Horace Mann, Kenneth Goodman, and Marie Clay.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\n

THE HISTORY OF WHOLE WORD, WHOLE LANGUAGE, AND CUEING<\/h2>\n

Horace Mann was an American politician in the 1830s and \u201840s, called the \u201cfather of American education\u201d due to his advocacy for free education in the United States. Education expert Dale Chu\u00a0writes<\/a>\u00a0that Mann described letters as \u201cskeleton-shaped, bloodless, ghostly apparitions.\u201d He perceived phonics as boring, and advocated for a reading approach called\u00a0whole word:<\/i>\u00a0children should learn to read by looking at whole words as units, instead of decoding those words by reading the letters. He thought this would make reading more interesting for students, but this means a student has to memorize a word in order to read it in the future.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a major problem with whole word reading. In English, words are made of\u00a0phonemes<\/i><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 units of sound that convey meaning \u2014\u00a0 and are represented with letters. This is why it\u2019s important to teach children phonics: so they understand the relationship between sounds and letters. Learning to decode words by \u201csounding out\u201d the letters does not come naturally, like learning to speak comes naturally for most children. We know this from the \u201cscience of reading<\/a>,\u201d the\u00a0decades-old<\/a>\u00a0cognitive science of how we learn to read. But phonics instruction was the accepted strategy for reading instruction long before then; the 1690 New England Primer, for instance, was\u00a0phonics based<\/a>. It wasn\u2019t until \u201creformers\u201d like Horance Mann that phonics was replaced with unproven methods.<\/p>\n

Mann\u2019s misguided opinion, which dismissed letters and phonics, was the precursor to the\u00a0whole language theory,\u00a0<\/i>which assumed children are natural readers who easily acquire reading skills. Whole language theory emphasizes that children should focus on the meaning of a whole sentence or story, rather than the meaning of individual words. With the whole language approach, like the whole word approach, phonics takes a back seat.<\/p>\n

American education professor Kenneth Goodman and New Zealand teacher Marie Clay were influential figures who advanced whole language reading, and rejected the importance of relying on letters. In 1967, Goodman wrote a\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0titled, \u201cReading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game.\u201d Remember the guessing strategies Kenni Aldren\u2019s son was (unsuccessfully) relying on? Those guessing strategies are an outworking of whole language reading.<\/p>\n

In the paper, Goodman criticizes the \u201cpreoccupation\u201d with \u201cprecise letter identification.\u201d He wrote that when he observed a child misread the word \u2018your\u2019 as \u2018the,\u201d it didn\u2019t affect the meaning of the passage, so \u201cthere is no reason to reject and correct it.\u201d In other words, he dismissed the importance of accuracy.<\/p>\n

Goodman\u00a0believed<\/a>\u00a0that when learning to read, a student should use \u201ccues.\u201d Cues are clues that a reader can use to surmise what a word might be. While the letters in the word might be one cue, the context and structure of the sentence are other cues, along with illustrations.<\/p>\n

Also in the 1960s, teacher Marie Clay promoted a reading method that used cues, arguing that phonics is not a primary skill required for reading. By the 1980s, Clay\u2019s program, called\u00a0Reading Recovery<\/i>, was being implemented throughout America. In line with whole language theory, Clay\u2019s reading program directed students to use cues to get the meaning of a story \u2014 rather than phonics to read the actual words.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\n

THE IMPACT IN CALIFORNIA<\/h2>\n

Hanford explains in\u00a0Sold a Story<\/i>\u00a0that under state Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig, \u201creading scores tanked\u201d in California during the 1980s after the state \u201chad gone all-in\u201d on the whole language approach. In 1996, Honig was questioned by California lawmakers, and\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0that whole language is \u201cnot a good strategy to teach kids. It\u2019s a second-rate strategy that will mean that they\u2019re slow readers for the rest of their life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Honig was right. By the mid-1990s, there was a wealth of evidence that whole word and whole language methods, which rely on cueing, don\u2019t align with how the human brain learns to read. So, in the\u00a01990s and 2000s<\/a>, California funded teacher training and pro-phonics textbooks aligned with the research that shows kids need explicit phonics instruction. The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing also developed the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment (RICA), a test to measure an educator\u2019s ability to teach evidence-based reading practices.<\/p>\n

Phonics instruction prevailed in California by the early 2000s, but its success was short-lived. Some educators, who felt that phonics instruction was too rigid and boring, pushed back against phonics and advocated for a return to whole language. This led to the push for\u00a0balanced literacy<\/i>, which began in California and blends (or is supposed to blend) phonics with cueing and whole language.<\/p>\n

Balanced literacy wasn\u2019t the solution its proponents claimed it would be. Sabrina Causey, a first grade teacher in Oakland Unified who used a balanced literacy curriculum,\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0EdSource in 2022 that the lessons \u201cdidn\u2019t make sense.\u201d She said her students \u201cdidn\u2019t know letters or sounds. These kids had no basic skills. So [she] had one kid who could read that year\u201d with a balanced literacy curriculum. Only one.<\/p>\n

The impact of balanced literacy in California schools was devastating on an incalculable scale. Austin Beutner, former superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, says, \u201cA generation of kids got sold down the river,\u201d having \u201cno grounding in the fundamentals of phonics.\u201d He continued, \u201cLess than half the kids can read\u2026 How can we find that acceptable?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\n

BALANCED LITERACY TAKES HOLD IN CALIFORNIA<\/h2>\n

During the 2000s and 2010s, problematic balanced literacy curricula were being adopted throughout the nation, including in California. These include\u00a0Units of Study<\/i>\u00a0by Lucy Calkins, and\u00a0Leveled Literacy Intervention<\/i>\u00a0by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell.<\/p>\n

Education professor Lucy Calkins developed her\u00a0Units of Study<\/i>\u00a0curriculum with a balanced literacy approach. It\u2019s estimated that tens of millions of American students were taught to read with her program. Hanford\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that schools in Palo Alto, California contracted with Lucy Calkins\u2019 company for more than a million dollars from 2013 to 2021.<\/p>\n

Critics said the phonics component of Calkins\u2019 curriculum wasn\u2019t adequate. As the evidence mounted, Lucy Calkins\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0last year that cueing strategies taught in her curriculum were misguided. \u201cAll of us are imperfect,\u201d she said, adding that \u201cwhat I\u2019ve learned from the science of reading work has been transformational.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite Calkins\u2019 recent shift to a more phonics-centered program, she\u2019s lost the trust of many educators. The\u00a0New York Times<\/i>\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that school districts nationwide are dropping her curriculum. Palo Alto school board trustee Todd Collins\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0Sold a Story<\/i>\u00a0that his district is replacing Calkins\u2019 curriculum because \u201cthere\u2019s a trust issue there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Leveled Literacy Intervention<\/i>\u00a0curriculum also uses cueing strategies. Sara Parker, a sales rep in northern California for Heinemann (the publisher of\u00a0Units of Study<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Leveled Literacy Intervention<\/i>) said that school districts were clamoring for\u00a0Leveled Literacy Intervention.<\/i>\u00a0She \u201cnever\u201d had to work hard to convince districts to buy the curricula; they were coming to her, eager to get these reading programs.<\/p>\n

But literacy coach Margaret Goldberg, hired by Oakland Unified School District as a teacher in 2015,\u00a0describes<\/a>\u00a0her experience using\u00a0Leveled Literacy Intervention\u00a0<\/i>as disheartening. She observed a first grade student say a sentence completely different from the words on the page. He was relying on the pictures since he could not decode the words. But he \u201cbreezed right through it, unaware that he hadn\u2019t read the sentence on the page.\u201d Goldberg realized that \u201clots\u201d of students were in the same boat with that curriculum. She then switched to a phonics-based curriculum called\u00a0Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words<\/i>. The result? Goldberg\u2019s students learned how to sound out the words and became proficient readers.<\/p>\n

Goldberg still feels guilty about using the\u00a0Leveled Literacy Intervention<\/i>\u00a0curriculum in Oakland Unified. \u201cI did lasting damage to these kids,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was so hard to ever get them to stop looking at a picture to guess what a word would be.\u201d\u00a0Leveled Literacy Intervention<\/i>\u00a0authors Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell maintain that cueing is a reliable strategy, though they now also offer a phonics and spelling curriculum.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\n

EMPOWERING CALIFORNIA PARENTS<\/h2>\n

While some phonics advocates say local school districts should make decisions about reading instruction and curriculum, others say the Dept. of Education ought to work to reverse the damage the state caused by implementing whole language and balanced literacy decades ago and actively promote phonics.<\/p>\n

In Fall 2022, EdSource \u2014 a California nonprofit that publishes education news and research \u2014\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cdespite the literacy crisis, California has yet to embrace a comprehensive strategy that will get all students statewide reading by third grade.\u201d While California might not have a comprehensive literacy strategy, the state has taken some steps in recent years.<\/p>\n

In 2015, California adopted a list of pre-approved reading curricula. Districts may choose a curriculum directly from this list, or opt for an alternative that conforms to state-adopted standards. Alternative curricula must also undergo a public\u00a0review process<\/a>\u00a0where the district assembles a panel of educators, parents, and administrators to evaluate the material. The California Reading Coalition, which advocates for explicit phonics instruction,\u00a0says<\/a>\u00a0that many curricula aligned with the science of reading did not exist in 2015 when the state\u2019s list was made, and that the most-used curricula on the list demonstrate \u201cno strong relationship\u201d with student achievement. In an analysis of California\u2019s 331 largest school districts, the Coalition found that only five of those districts use curriculum they identify as aligned with the science of reading.<\/p>\n

Last year, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0he would reconvene a Task Force on Early Literacy amidst\u00a0criticism<\/a>\u00a0that the state has not done enough to develop a cohesive, statewide plan to address the literacy crisis. He also\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0the state would spend $250 million to place literacy coaches in high-needs schools and the creation of a new statewide literacy director position at the California Department of Education.<\/p>\n

In 2021, the California legislature passed a bill (SB 488<\/a>, Rubio) that\u00a0requires<\/a>\u00a0teacher preparation programs to adhere to new standards of \u201cphonological awareness, phonics and word recognition\u201d by 2024. The\u00a0plan<\/a>\u00a0mandated by the bill will replace the aforementioned Reading Instruction Competence Assessment (or RICA, required to become a credentialed teacher) with a framework that more strongly emphasizes the science of reading by 2025.<\/p>\n

Some school districts within California have been taking their own steps to address the literacy crisis. The California Reading Coalition\u00a0says<\/a>\u00a0Oakland Unified and Mount Pleasant Elementary school districts have adopted a science-of-reading-aligned curriculum called\u00a0EL Education<\/i>. Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has also\u00a0expressed<\/a>\u00a0support for the science of reading, emphasizing the importance of teacher training.<\/p>\n

The National Council on Teacher Quality\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that more than 90 percent of all students could learn to read if they had access to teachers who employed scientifically- based reading instruction. California has no time to waste.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\n

WHAT PARENTS CAN DO<\/h2>\n

If you do not know what reading curriculum is used in your child\u2019s classroom, ask your child\u2019s teacher. If you experience resistance, you have the right to file a Public Records Act request to discover what curriculum your public school utilizes. School districts are government entities and must abide by public records laws. You can learn how to file a public records request\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If your school district uses a whole language curriculum, has poor reading performance, and\/or isn\u2019t transparent about what materials are used in the classroom, you can bring your concerns before your local school board during the\u00a0public comment period<\/a>\u00a0of a regularly scheduled board meeting.<\/p>\n

Parents in California can monitor annual ELA (English Language Arts) scores in their district and their child\u2019s school using the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP<\/a>) portal.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, and perhaps most importantly, do not leave your child\u2019s reading instruction completely up to a school. While California is constitutionally obligated to provide a free education to each child, parents must hold schools accountable and advocate for their children. Observe your child\u2019s reading habits and strategies. Red flags that indicate your child is a struggling reader include adding, skipping, or replacing words, and refusing to read a book aloud unless it\u2019s been read aloud several times already. Concerned parents can also have their child screened to rule out dyslexia or impaired vision.<\/p>\n

Getting a struggling reader on the right track can be challenging, but you can be your child\u2019s best advocate by getting involved in your local school district. Most of all, do not wait on the state. Take steps at home to build your child\u2019s understanding of tried-and-true phonics reading strategies and spend time reading with your child at home.<\/p>\n

Original Article Link: California\u2019s Literacy Crisis | California Policy Center<\/a><\/h5>\n

Image Credit: Canva<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Original Article Link: California\u2019s Literacy Crisis | California Policy Center BY SHERIDAN SWANSON For decades, teachers, parents, academics, scientists, and curriculum developers have been engaged in a pitched battle over the best methods to implement effective, comprehensive and practical reading instruction. 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