Today’s Literacy Headlines

U.S. students have seen unprecedented declines in math and reading performance since the pandemic on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Peggy Carr, the commissioner for the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the assessment known as the Nation’s Report Card, said the NAEP system itself is changing to better understand how the pandemic has affected students and how they can regain their academic momentum.

In four new picture books, lions, tigers and house cats stand in for young children as they rein in wild emotions or finally let out a roar.

The so-called Mississippi miracle in education really isn’t one. The state’s surge in student achievement results not from divine intervention but from careful policy applied by committed human beings. One of these policies has received extra attention: the decision to hold back third-graders who don’t meet state reading standards. But by focusing too much on this rule alone, reformers risk missing what makes the broader program successful.

It took an infusion of federal funding and a national call to action to expand states’ role in summer learning. Here are 4 ways to sustain the momentum.

The term “heat recess” has entered teachers’ vocabularies recently, overtaking the long-held “rainy day recess” as a sign of a tough day ahead. Both call for the same thing: indoor activities, more supervision and antsy kids. Recess, and outdoor activities like physical education, provide young kids with a much needed break during the school day. Research says it’s important for students to let off some energy in order to come back to the classroom more focused and ready to concentrate.

Lucy Calkins ran a beloved — and criticized — center at Teachers College for four decades. It is being dissolved. Critics said Dr. Calkins downplayed phonics and overlooked a large body of scientific research on how children become skilled readers.

Nestled between a nondescript section of route 40 and the Patapsco River in Catonsville, Md., lies a 33-acre plot of land owned by Baltimore City Public Schools. Called the Great Kids Farm, the land serves as an outdoor classroom for students in the urban district. Students visit the farm during the school year for outdoor learning programs. But come summer, rising 3rd through 5th graders have the opportunity to spend up to two weeks at the farm, learning from high school-age counselors as part of the district-run summer camp.

At least two groups are working on bots that would make peer-reviewed research, buried in expensive academic journals, accessible for everyday use.

Coming off a hot Labor Day weekend, many students around the country had their return to classrooms cut short. Schools along the East Coast and in parts of the Midwest changed their schedules – in some cases sending students home early – due to heat advisories and lack of air conditioning.

The first few weeks in a classroom can help set the tone for the rest of the school year. Building a sense of safety and belonging for young students early on is critical, said Berol Dewdney, a pre-K teacher and Maryland’s 2023 teacher of the year. Dewdney also says that consistency helps children know what to expect each day, which also allows them to feel confident and safe in a familiar environment.

If you’re looking to celebrate Deaf Awareness Month in your library, here are a few ideas beyond typical displays. First, gather a list of all the books available to your students on the topic. D/deaf experiences vary greatly, so it’s important to offer kids multiple titles about D/deaf characters and characters with hearing loss, showcasing these differences as much as possible.

The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, the instructional consultancy housed at Columbia University and founded by the popular and controversial literacy icon Lucy Calkins, will soon be shutting its doors, Teachers College announced Sept. 1. The college is dissolving TCRWP and Calkins will step down as director. Teachers College is creating a new division offering reading and writing professional development, the Advancing Literacy unit, which several former TCRWP staff will lead.

Many states are passing laws requiring schools to dramatically revamp their approach to teaching reading. But change doesn’t happen overnight—especially without adequate resources, training, and time.

A recent meta-analysis confirms that it’s best to teach reading comprehension strategies in combination with building background knowledge. It also adds the surprising finding that it doesn’t seem to make much difference how much strategy instruction students get.

This list includes titles in English and Spanish. From board books to middle grade graphic novels, the narratives and illustrations reflect the joys, existence, and resistances of our communities and children—important elements to help kids on their individual and collective reading journeys.

Young children can develop their literacy skills as they experience the excitement of receiving their own mail.

Earlier this year, award-winning and best-selling Cuban-American author Meg Medina was named the Library of Congress’ National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature — she is the first Latina to occupy this position in the country’s history. On the job, Meg is responsible for raising national awareness of the importance of young people’s literature as it helps to promote lifelong literacy and education

A sweeping new curriculum mandate (opens in a new window) is rolling out to hundreds of New York City elementary schools this fall, requiring thousands of teachers to deploy new reading programs. If you’re an educator or school leader who is switching reading curriculums this year under the new mandate, Chalkbeat wants to hear from you (opens in a new window). We’re interested in learning about whether you feel prepared to make the transition, what training you’ve received so far, and how you feel about the new curriculum materials your school is using.

After missing four days of classes last fall at Gompers Elementary-Middle School, Jay’Sean Hull was called into the cafeteria with 100 other students with similar attendance records. Jay’Sean’s mentor: Harris herself. Over the next few weeks, she would greet the sixth-grader at a side entrance designated for middle schoolers, visit him in his classrooms on days that he arrived late, and regularly check in with his family. 

Effective apologies require empathy, perspective-taking, honesty and courage – all qualities that schools and parents try to cultivate in children.  Explicit lessons on giving good apologies are rare for kids, and they live in  a world full of adults who aren’t great at the task, either.

The surge in book challenges nationwide is having a chilling effect on school librarians, who are more likely to avoid buying books or to remove titles from collections because of their content than they were last year, according to SLJ’s 2023 Controversial Books Survey.

Seventy miles inland from the Bering Sea, on roadless lands beside the Kuskokwim River, three Yup’ik villages are perfect examples of the educational challenges faced in Alaska. This year, the district was allowed to operate on an academic calendar that’s aligned with seasonal subsistence harvests. School leaders spent much of 2022 working to get it approved by the state.

Record-high chronic absentee rates in California show little sign of returning to pre-pandemic levels anytime soon, and data shows that’s especially true for kindergarten students.

How many people are pursuing careers as teachers? A new analysis looks at nearly 15 years of teacher-preparation program enrollment data to find out. The data reveals a significant national decline in enrollment that now seems to be leveling out. Still, the number of education students in the United States declined by about a quarter of a million between 2008 and 2020.

For book lovers, the library is the best place in town. For young children who have never entered that space, the shelves seem endless, the stacks are tall, and they have no idea where to begin. These eight books comprise a love letter to libraries to help newcomers get their bearings. They’re only a start.

Students, educators and families are preparing for a historic year in Oregon schools. The state has invested an unprecedented $10.2 billion in K-12 funding and started a new early literacy initiative backed by parent groups and Gov. Tina Kotek. And thanks to a bill passed by state lawmakers this spring, Oregon school districts can no longer limit educational time for students with disabilities without their parent or guardian’s consent.

Just before 7 a.m. Monday, the first day of school in Denver Public Schools, 7-year-old Sara sat on her family’s couch, velcroing brand-new sneakers so glittery that when she ran her hand over the outside, sparkles clung to her fingertips. Sara was excited despite a big change. Her old school, Fairview Elementary, was one of three schools closed by DPS this past spring because of low enrollment (opens in a new window) — a persistent problem caused by lower birth rates and high housing prices that have pushed families out of the city.

Reading about animals who have the same fears and other feelings about going back to school can help young readers face their own.

Future Forward began in Milwaukee in 2005 as SPARK—a small-scale, local effort to combine family engagement with intensive tutoring to help low-income elementary-age students improve their literacy skills. It has since expanded significantly, rebranded, and moved under the aegis of national nonprofit Education Analytics, Inc. The SPARK pilot has been studied extensively, and a new report, from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, gives us the most comprehensive analysis yet.

The city of Indianapolis will launch a literacy tutoring program at nine schools and a Boys & Girls Club location for this school year, after a pilot program with a small group of students showed some promise. The program, launched in partnership with the RISE Indy education advocacy nonprofit, will offer tutoring during the day at school sites from paid parents and community members who have completed RISE Indy’s Freedom Readers tutor training program. 

Ohio recently passed a historic state budget that includes, among other components, ambitious literacy reforms that require schools to follow the science of reading—an instructional approach that emphasizes phonics for building foundational literacy skills and knowledge-rich curricula to support vocabulary and comprehension. If state leaders aren’t attentive and hard-nosed about implementation, Ohio’s promising literacy efforts could turn into mush. How can they ensure rigorous implementation? Let’s take a look at seven ways.

Hear how family partnership can foster engagement and oral language production among multilingual students. Sahira Larios, a public school kindergarten teacher in a bilingual Spanish-English classroom in Oak Grove School District in San Jose, California, shares her story. Several years ago, she participated in an intensive two-year professional development program focused on how to teach multilingual learners.

States across the country are passing laws designed to change the way students are taught to read in a way that is more aligned with the science of reading. But there has been much less attention paid to another critical component of reading: background knowledge. A significant body of research suggests students are better able to comprehend what they read when they start with some understanding of the topic they’re reading about. Yet new state reading laws have almost entirely omitted attention to this issue, according to a recent review.

These text features are not often included in nonfiction writing instruction, but they’re important elements of expository writing. Here are some ideas to share with students in order to help them expand their text feature repertoire as readers and writers.

What counts as a counting book? Is there a range of characteristics or features of counting books? And finally, how might we more deeply explore and discuss concepts of number and quantity with children? Thumbing through stacks of counting books, we discovered that this popular genre has a huge variety of features. Some march in sequence from 1–10, while others skip-count by odd or even numbers or jump by tens into the hundreds. Some represent numbers in multiple ways, while others scarcely mention numbers that are nearly hidden in story events.

A group of 14 researchers from Harvard University, the American Institutes for Research and the assessment company NWEA found miniscule gains in math and no improvement in reading at all after scrutinizing how much 2022 summer school helped children in eight large school districts around the nation. A separate study in Tennessee, also looking back at the summer of 2022, found the same tiny learning gains in math but none in reading. There are two big reasons for the disheartening results: the summer school programs were very short and there was too little participation.

A festival that showcases science, technology, engineering, arts, and math can open up new worlds for elementary students. As the science coordinator at my school, I considered many ways to bring students, families, and community members together for hands-on learning from STEAM experts. One of my most successful projects is our school’s annual STEAM Fest event. My ultimate goal was for students and families to think critically and creatively to develop solutions for inquiry-based activities while having fun and exploring new subjects.

A decade ago, Mexican illustrator David Álvarez took a trip and got the idea for his children’s book, Ancient Night. Spain — the cities, the culture — reminded him a lot of home. The similarities made him want to research the history of Mexico and Central America before the Spanish conquest. So Álvarez started reading. He came across many myths, including one that stuck with him: the story of the rabbit and the moon.

Just a hundred yards off the shores of Helsinki, beyond its embassies and marina, its cafes and upscale homes, lies Harakka Island. There is no bridge to Harakka; it must be reached by boat — or by trudging over an ice sheet, when the temperatures plummet in the winter. There are no cars, no bikes and no electric scooters on the island. Even dogs aren’t allowed. But it’s a haven for a thriving community of artists. The acclaimed children’s book illustrator and author Marika Maijala is one such artist. And it turns out the island is still a place of transformation and discovery. Her studio on Harakka, part of the island’s Artists’ House, is where she wrote and illustrated “Rosie Runs,” which will be published in the U.S. by Elsewhere Editions.

How can teachers, to borrow an expression from polling expert Nate Silver, distinguish the “signal from the noise” in the so-called “reading wars”? These highlights from past Classroom Q&A posts may help educators do just that. Plus, look for another series on this topic later in the fall as more classroom educators weigh in by talking about their direct experiences.

The science of reading is often misunderstood, experts say, to mean just the teaching of phonics, how to sound out words. Amid the battle over phonics, experts warn that too little attention has been paid to other key reading skills, such as background knowledge and vocabulary, that also drive comprehension. There is also an emerging concern that some kids may not learn to read as well if they are constantly toggling back and forth from page to screen. Even if the debate over whether phonics is necessary is finally winding down, there are many other battles to be waged on the science of reading front. On the heels of a longstanding national debate known as “the reading wars,” misconceptions about the science of reading may have dire consequences. 

Since 2019, 45 states and Washington, DC, have passed at least one bill related to reforming reading instruction. The new rules apply to areas like school curriculum, professional development for teachers, screenings for dyslexic students, and requirements for testing. New York City — the largest public school system in the nation — has also ordered change for its 700 elementary schools. Momentum for these reading laws traces its roots to four main factors.

Mounting evidence suggests that leveled reading groups don’t improve struggling students’ reading skills. Studies have shown that the tools powering popular leveling systems don’t always accurately capture students’ abilities—and that dividing up high- and low-performing students can actually widen achievement gaps. These findings leave teachers and school leaders with a few big questions: Should they get rid of grouping altogether? If not, how do they group students if not by level? And how should they go about restructuring literacy blocks that have been designed around leveled group time for so long?

Can acts of kindness make a difference in the lives of others? As an instructional technology coach, I have worked with fourth-grade teachers for the past seven years to transform abstract themes of empathy and compassion into concrete learning experiences. Using resources from the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation and the ISTE Standards for Students, we collaboratively plan social and emotional learning (SEL) experiences in the classroom.

There has been much research over the past decade building on research-practice partnerships. Teachers and researchers should work collaboratively to improve student learning. Here’s how teachers can find helpful ideas in research articles and take a strategic approach to get the most out of what they’re reading.

Literacy coach Mika Frame has a memorable mantra for accomplishing big goals. “My current principal always tells me, ‘Eat an elephant one bite at a time,’” she said. A K-2 literacy coach at Rose Hamilton Elementary School in Centerville, Frame is part of the first cohort of educators that trained in reading science practices as part of the Indiana Literacy Cadre. Now she co-teaches, analyzes student data to see who needs more help, and leads her colleagues through the state’s new requirements. Frame told Chalkbeat about her work as Indiana looks to bring more literacy coaches like her to its schools.

The scene on the lawn looks like any other summer camp around the country. But while fun and games are an important part of the experience, the 20 or so kids at “Camp LIT,” a program of the Mississippi University for Women, are here in late June for a more important reason: to become better readers.

The updated meta-analysis was published in July 2023 in the peer-reviewed journal Child Development. It was conducted by 14 researchers, the majority from Yale University, and it also found good results for SEL interventions in schools while simultaneously broadening the category of “social and emotional learning” to encompass even more non-academic skills. However, this latest research synthesis doesn’t really settle the debate over whether the evidence for SEL is strong or guide schools to which SEL interventions are most effective.  

You can never start too early. That’s the message from an unusually intensive and longlasting education study that is following low-income children from birth into elementary school. It found that students who consistently participated in a high-quality, early-childhood program from infancy until they started elementary school performed on par with children their age nationally in early literacy and math by the end of 3rd grade. The children in the study also significantly outperformed children who had experienced more informal preschool or no early education.

Three notable middle grade mysteries (two published earlier this year and one forthcoming in the fall) feature young sleuths who question the world around them and are undaunted when the answers they receive aren’t the ones they hoped for. These mysteries run the gamut, from quirky Gothic to small-town cozy to chilly Nordic noir.

Last school year, nearly a quarter of the state’s third graders did not pass an important reading test on their first try. What will get more children over the bar? To prepare students for that last chance to take the test, the Mississippi Children’s Museum, in partnership with Jackson Public Schools, held a Read to Succeed summer reading camp this June — the eighth time it has held the now-annual event.

As educators prepare for a new school year, state teachers of the year share the important lessons they’ve learned on classroom management, as well as establishing rules and expectations with students.

Joan Sedita, founder of literacy professional development service Keys to Literacy, suggests there may be literacy benefits in adopting and including handwriting in curricula. When young students are learning how to read and spell words, she said, the physical act of handwriting that information may help them better embed these skills. “In the earliest grades, learning writing letters reinforces and improves the learning of phonics concepts, and having students write letters while learning letter-sound correspondences supports both the decoding and spelling of words,” Sedita said.

Adults and kids love Bluey. This Australian animated show – hugely popular in the U.S. as well – focuses on a family of blue heeler dogs living in Brisbane. As developmental scientists who study children and how they interact with the world, we sort of adore Bluey too. The show exemplifies what years of child psychology research have made clear: that children learn through play. Bluey illustrates a variety of age-appropriate caregiving practices that parents and caregivers can use in the everyday life of a child.

We took a peek inside school libraries across America to see how librarians are reframing the space to support students’ social, emotional, and creative growth—while still prioritizing excellent reads.

Jason Reynolds, award winner, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature emeritus, was recently on The View. He talks about how he became a reader, his mother’s influence, letting kids read freely, and passing along a love of reading. The bestselling author also discusses his latest book, “Miles Morales Suspended,” and the moment he had “a place in this big pantheon of literature.”

In the first full year following pandemic-related school closures, public schools in the United States lost about 1.2 million students. The largest losses were in kindergarten and early elementary grades, according to analyses of enrollment changes. Where those students went has largely been a question mark, though some experts speculated much of the attrition was likely students switching to homeschooling and, to a lesser degree, private schooling.

Frustrated that many educators, administrators, and other stakeholders seem to ignore—or are unaware of—the data, champions of the science of reading are leading the charge for reading instruction reform that is currently sweeping the nation, and they are making some hard-won strides. The issue has taken on new urgency as the education system struggles with addressing pandemic learning loss and the racial and socioeconomic disparities that were seen even more clearly during the Covid lockdowns. Here we take a look at this movement’s rise and where it’s headed.

On a warm August evening, Brenda sits with her computer and a handful of envelopes. She eagerly opens the first envelope and begins to read. “Thank you for asking about our daughter Claire…” the letter begins. Each year Brenda sends a small survey along with her welcome-back-to-school letter to the parents, caregivers, or guardians of her incoming students. She asks them to introduce their precious children to her by describing them and answering some simple questions. What are your child’s interests? Likes and dislikes?

In this explainer, Education Week breaks down what standards are, how they have come to occupy such a central place in the U.S. education system, and how they have—and have not—changed instructional practice and student outcomes. Academic standards—sometimes called content standards—describe what students should know and be able to do in the core academic subjects at each grade level. They can cover skills, such as adding and subtracting within 100, or content, like understanding the roles of the three branches of government. Standards are not a curriculum, though. They don’t outline the day-to-day lessons and activities teachers use; rather, they provide an end goal for instruction.