Today’s Literacy Headlines

In a primary school classroom, a nine-year old reads aloud to the person next to them. When they stumble over a word, their partner encourages them to try again. Together they discuss what might happen next. But the child isn’t reading to an adult — a teaching assistant or volunteer. Instead, they are reading to a peer in their class. Later they’ll switch jobs, and help their partner out as they read. What’s more, both children have been taught skills to help them support each other on their journey learning to read. This reading approach is called Peer Assisted Learning Strategies (Pals) developed at Vanderbilt University in the US. It builds on children’s relationships with each other to make learning to read a team endeavor. The program now has international reach.

Movement does not have to be separate from instruction. It can become a powerful instructional tool that supports both engagement and skill development. Instead of limiting movement to brain breaks or transitions, teachers can embed it directly into literacy tasks, allowing students to process content while they move. This approach gives students more opportunities to respond, think, and actively engage with new skills, and it can be done in a variety of simple, structured ways that align directly to literacy instruction.

The author Jane Yolen published an astonishing number of books in her lifetime — more than 450. She died at 87 last week at her home in Hatfield, Mass. Her residence there anchored a career in which Yolen wrote picture books, like the hugely popular How Do Dinosaurs … ? series. But she also wrote across age groups and genres, including young adult fiction, fantasy, poetry and more. Yolen’s daughter, Heidi Stemple, says her mom had a favorite saying: “Touch magic. Pass it on.” That’s what Yolen did over more than six decades as a writer.

Sarah Treharne, founder of Richmond-based Ready Set Grow Speech Therapy and mother of two, follows a simple summer rule. “Each day I try to do one thing for their mind and one thing for their body,” she says. Kristen Roberts, who’s taught gifted and elementary school education for more than 25 years, agrees that summer learning can be short and sweet. Some of the best teaching opportunities often happen naturally, at home or on the go — find ways to incorporate learning into everyday activities. Just a few intentional activities can provide structure and help prevent that back-to-school slide.

Here is my worry, and it is not a partisan one. Housing special education inside HHS invites a subtle reframing. It nudges us toward seeing a child as a diagnosis to manage rather than a learner whose potential the system exists to develop. Special education was won as an educational right. We can’t allow it to be redefined as a medical service. The difference sounds academic until you sit in an IEP meeting and watch which language wins. A medical model asks what is wrong with this student; an educational model asks what this student is ready to become. Here are 3 ways educators can step up as federal oversight moves to HHS: (1) protect the student-teacher relationship first; (2) keep the language education-focused; and (3) document as if the federal oversight still exists.

The U.S. Department of Education announced it was outsourcing certain federal special education activities to the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, eliciting a mixed bag of reactions. Critics say the changes will put more of a focus on the treatment or cure of students with disabilities, rather than an educational approach that integrates individual services with inclusion into general education instruction. Supporters say the collaboration will improve outcomes.

Standardized assessments show that over 39,000 students in Summer Boost gained, on average, nearly a month more learning in math and two and a half extra weeks in English language arts, according to a new study. Consistent attendance, lacking in some past summer school initiatives, contributed to student gains, researchers said. While the growth is significant, the fact that the study found improvement across so many sites makes the findings stand out even more, said Geoffrey Borman, a researcher at Arizona State University who led the study. “A key thing to keep in mind is the scale at which these impacts are being made,” he said. “We’re talking, in this case, about tens of thousands of students per year.”

Nurturing belonging in mathematics means valuing children’s ideas, and simple routines—like inviting students to share their thinking, comparing multiple strategies, and listening before correcting—can strengthen mathematical belonging. As children explain how they solved a problem and hear others’ approaches, mathematics becomes a shared human endeavor. Belonging in mathematics often begins with stories

Researcher Christopher Kearney, whose work on school absenteeism is among the most cited in the field, has documented consistently that students who feel genuinely connected to their school attend more regularly. Dual language classrooms create a particular kind of engagement that is difficult to replicate through other means. Students are doing something genuinely demanding — learning academic content across two languages — and they know it. For students whose home language is the partner language, that experience carries an added dimension: their language and cultural identity are not incidental to school, they are central to it. 

Teacher preparation had long been dominated by progressive education theory and pedagogy, and many of the report’s core claims—that memorization matters, prior knowledge shapes learning, practice improves retention, and “skills” like critical thinking depend on what you know—were far from universally accepted. A newly released second edition arrives under very different circumstances. What’s striking is not how much the report has changed, but how little. It’s nearly doubled in length, but its organizing questions—How do students learn and retain new information? What motivates them to learn? What are some common misconceptions?—remain largely intact. 

Many K-12 systems have spent the past decade moving toward more evidence-based models: curriculum-aligned coaching, continuous feedback cycles, practice-based professional learning, and, increasingly over the past few years, technology-enabled supports that make coaching more scalable and consistent. Research suggests these same practices work for pre-K as well. Across multiple studies of Pre-K curricula, researchers have consistently found that programs are most likely to improve student outcomes when teachers receive training and coaching on implementation and instructional practice. 

Reading seems like a straightforward process. The eyes scan the words, and the brain turns them into meaning. But it’s not always that simple. Readers regularly skip words, sometimes without realizing it. New research from USF shows how the brain still processes those skipped words using peripheral vision, even as the eyes move past them. “Our findings suggest that readers aren’t simply guessing words; they rely on detailed visual and linguistic processing,” Milligan said. “This supports the importance of learning letter-sound relationships and spelling rather than relying solely on contextual guessing strategies.”

A new study published in the journal PLOS ONE provides evidence that reading comic books on physical paper helps the brain absorb and connect story details more easily than reading on a digital tablet. The findings suggest that physical books provide stable spatial and tactile cues that lower the brain’s workload when a reader tries to recall complex plot points later. This research offers fresh insights into how digital reading formats might subtly alter human reading comprehension and memory.

Senators Jim Banks (R-IN), Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), and Tim Scott (R-SC) recently introduced the bipartisan Reading Excellence and Achievement for Development (READ) Act to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.     The READ Act is a bipartisan bill intended to align federal literacy efforts with the Science of Reading by shifting federal funds to support only evidence-based reading instruction, similar to already-enacted state legislation.

Broad screen time caps—as proposed in some legislation—do not take into account the need to prepare students for certain standardized testing or assistive technology for students with disabilities. Does a student developing a multimedia book report on a Chromebook “count” the same as a student watching MrBeast on YouTube? These distinctions matter, which is why librarians must be engaged in the policy dialogue. It’s also why we need to pay attention to who is in the room while these bills are written. The concerns around ed tech are real and credible, and we need legislative solutions that are evidence-based and supportive of skill development and learning. Librarians, now is the time to enter the conversation on screen time and advocate for reforms that balance equity and access with the growing body of research about how ed tech does (and does not) support educational outcomes.

The Trump administration said Tuesday it will move much of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). OSERS manages programs that support students with disabilities, offering guidance and oversight to ensure states follow the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a law that guarantees disabled students access to an equitable public education. The administration announced it would also move much of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). OCR’s staff of civil rights lawyers are tasked with protecting students in K-12 schools and universities from discrimination based on disability, gender, race and national origin. 

The Trump administration’s decision to move special education out of ED to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will turn back the clock on decades of progress and weaken protections for millions of students with disabilities. Administering the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) demands deep, education-specific expertise, robust oversight, and consistent guidance to states and school districts. HHS is not structured to provide that support and is already struggling to serve people with disabilities in its own domains of health and human services due to the Trump administration’s severe staff reductions and program cuts.

Researchers and educators emphasize that some seasonal loss is normal for all learners, but that for most students, this knowledge can be easily regained through basic, everyday interactions between children and parents, provided educators leave room for content review at the beginning of the school year.​ For younger kids, Dr. M.H. Raza, an associate professor in the College of Education at Missouri State University, suggests parents keep learning activities simple during summer. “Parents can make it natural; they don’t need to make learning a burden on their children,” said Raza.​ He adds that 20 minutes a day of pressure-free learning activity is usually all that it takes to help children grow intellectually during the summer.​

Prince George’s County Public Schools worked with partners that provided new furniture, lighting, books and tech devices. In total, about 26,000 students and 12,000 educators will use the newly designed spaces. “I think the biggest benefit, of course, is students having the opportunity to be in a new space with vibrant colors that’s more welcoming,” says Coquette Petrella, supervisor for the Office of Library Media Services in the district. More important, she says, are the enhanced opportunities for student collaboration and gatherings for teachers and families.

As widespread budget cuts have strained the early care and education sector, some states and localities have been exploring how best to invest in early childhood programs. San Antonio bucked that trend by identifying that a sales tax could offer a dedicated, protected revenue source to provide more stability and consistency for childcare programs. More than 23,000 children who have gone through the high-quality Pre-K 4 SA since the program began in 2013.

The growing understanding of phonics and word recognition among teachers is promising, as is the finding that 81 percent of respondents recognize the importance of breaking words into parts to support struggling readers. We were also especially glad to see the report include information on understanding the needs of students with dyslexia and English learners. At the same time, several findings are deeply concerning. We are troubled by the continued finding that only 2 percent of teachers report learning evidence-aligned reading practices during their pre-service training, as opposed to the training they receive after years of teaching. This means the overwhelming majority of teachers have been entering classrooms without the knowledge they need. It is also troubling that 56 percent of teachers still associate dyslexia primarily with letter reversal. Finally, we are also concerned by the “science of reading gap” in high-poverty schools and at intermediate and secondary grade levels.

Jane Yolen, a children’s author who wrote some 450 books in practically every conceivable genre, including history, how-to, science fiction and poetry, and whose immensely popular children’s books, rich in folklore and fantasy, earned her the nickname “America’s Hans Christian Andersen,” died on Thursday at her home in Hatfield, a town in western Massachusetts. She was 87. Her best known books include “Owl Moon,” a poetic picture book illustrated by John Schoenherr that won the Caldecott Medal in 1988; “The Devil’s Arithmetic” (1988), about a Jewish girl who travels back in time to the Holocaust; and the “Pit Dragon Chronicles” series, fantasy novels which appeared between 1982 and 2009.

After years of bad news on student test scores, there’s finally a sliver of hope. The latest results from NAEP, the Nation’s Report Card, found gains in both reading and math for 9-year-olds. Not only that, but they provide the first signs in more than a decade of increases among the nation’s lowest-performing students. This is an important reversal. The key trend over the last 10 to 15 years has been a steady decline in student performance across a range of tests, across ages and grade levels, and across a variety of subjects. Moreover, the steepest declines have been among the lowest-performing kids.

What kind of text is best for beginning readers? It’s a question at the center of the “science of reading” movement, and a complex one because of the variety of skills texts should help students build. Students need opportunities to practice the letter-sound patterns they learn in phonics lessons, experts say. They need to practice reading fluently, without many stops and starts. And they need texts that can teach them new vocabulary words and ideas, books that can deepen their knowledge about the world and foster questions and conversation. But figuring out what text to use for which purpose, and how to know what’s appropriately demanding for students, can be a challenge for teachers. Three new studies published in April and May offer insights. The research examines how the words used in texts make them easier or harder for students to read—and what interventions can support children when they’re reading more complex passages.

“Tell Me a Story” is both a history of children’s book publishing in the United States and a celebration of the Library of Congress’s rich collections of juvenile literature. I researched and wrote this book over the course of three years, and it was recently published by the Library of Congress as part of its Collection Close-Up Series. When I was conducting research for the book, specialists from throughout the Library guided me to many fascinating, unusual, and unexpected objects. Here are a few that delighted me and that readers might enjoy exploring further on their own.

Oral reading fluency—the ability to read a text with a natural flow, correctly and expressively—is closely connected to reading comprehension. As a student’s fluency skills become more automatic, they can spend less time decoding a text. The goal is for students to be fluent readers so they can focus on the meaning of a given text. The suggestions here are ones I have had success with this year while working with my students in a Tier 2 reading intervention, but many of the strategies can be adapted to support all students in Tier 1 to improve their fluency.

Slightly more than half of teacher preparation programs use scientifically grounded methods to teach aspiring educators how to teach children to read, according to a new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). Three years ago, when NCTQ last surveyed teacher preparation programs, only a quarter of them were fully aligned with the science of reading. So the number of programs giving new teachers a strong foundation in best practices to teach reading has doubled. However, many teacher prep programs continue to teach outdated methods even as states and school districts invest millions of dollars in retraining teachers already in the classroom.

Literacy is a continuum, not a finish line that kids cross at the end of third grade. The two-thirds of students who can’t read proficiently still need to practice key literacy skills. But that’s not what they’re getting. A solution is to provide educators and students with a core curriculum that includes supports for students who struggle with reading. Alternative texts let classes practice grade-level skills together, regardless of individual students’ differences in literacy ability.
 

Little Golden Books, with iconic golden spines and colorful illustrations, have been bringing children’s stories to life for more than 80 years. The LSU Museum of Art displayed original artwork from the children’s book series and featured 60 original illustrations from books published since 1942. “It’s not necessarily a show for children. I believe it’s a show about nostalgia,” Michelle Schulte, chief curator at the LSU Museum of Art, said. Early titles from the 1940s included “Toodle,” “The Little Red Hen” and the all-time bestseller “The Poky Little Puppy.” In the 1940s, the majority of authors were women. As times changed, Little Golden Books partnered with pop culture franchises. The series also published biographies of famous Americans.

New federal test scores show younger students are making gains in reading and math — after years of declines. “I think this is an optimistic release,” Matthew Soldner, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, told NPR. Results from the long-term trend (LTT) report, released Wednesday, provide a national look at progress in reading and math for 9- and 13-year-old students. The younger students tested showed gains in both reading and math, “which is fantastic,” said Soldner. What’s notable is that students across the board improved their scores, including lower-performing kids. The report paints a less optimistic picture about 13-year-olds. Compared to the last assessment, students showed no significant improvement in reading or math. At the same time, the report found that reading is a pastime for a shrinking number of kids.

Last week, Alexis Sorenson introduced her 8th graders to algebraic expressions with a lesson on Greek language roots rather than formulas. Sorenson drew careful boxes around the prefixes in “polynomial,” “binomial,” and “trinomial.” “I explained that ‘poly’ meant ‘many,’ so this could be an expression with many, with any number of terms,” Sorenson said. And she watched her students reason through the meanings of the other expressions based on vocabulary roots. Sorenson attributes her students’ language and content growth to the school’s intensive training for teachers across the curriculum in supporting basic reading skills.

Today, conversations about literacy often focus on what children need to learn. That conversation matters. The research matters. But so does something else. Joy matters. Identity matters. Relationships matter. The art of teaching matters. For years, I have argued that literacy education should not force us to choose between science and humanity. That belief ultimately became the foundation for my work on Integrative Literacy Theory. At its core is a simple idea: The Science of Reading. The Art of Teaching. The Promise of Possibility. Children deserve evidence-based instruction. They also deserve teachers who understand that literacy is about more than decoding. Literacy is about agency, opportunity, and belonging. It is about helping children imagine futures they may not yet have the words to describe.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten believes our schools are not ready for the “seismic shifts” that artificial intelligence is bringing. Weingarten has proposed reshaping how U.S. public schools navigate AI in particular and technology more broadly, saying our kids are experiencing a crisis of attention and well-being — and that teachers are getting precious little guidance on how to help young people navigate these challenges. Her proposal: Trim tech use, especially for younger kids, and teach all students how to think critically, communicate, collaborate and persist.

Most people can say far more than they can write. The reason is simple: Speaking is an evolutionary trait, while writing is a cultural invention that has existed for roughly 5,000 years. Writing requires the coordination of moving parts: handwriting and visual-motor integration, spelling and sentence construction, and bigger-picture demands like organization, planning, focus, and stamina. The more students can automatically coordinate these moving parts, the more cognitive energy they have for writing. Verbal rehearsal — the practice of saying a sentence or idea aloud before writing it — can bridge the gap between speaking and writing. It’s especially beneficial for younger, developing writers, as well as multilingual learners and learners with executive function or language-processing challenges.

A new line from Lee & Low offers emerging readers the chance to master early literacy skills while immersing themselves in world culture—no passport needed. Later this month, the publisher, in partnership with the Asia Foundation, will release the first 10 paperbacks in the Let’s Read Decodable Books Collection. The new line features the work of 57 creators, from seven countries across Asia and the Pacific, each bringing their own cultural perspectives to the page. Twenty additional titles will roll out next year, all published under the Bebop Books imprint.

The effects of artificial intelligence on learning are still largely unclear. But a new NPR/Ipsos poll of K-12 teachers found that nearly 3-in-4 believe AI has bigger implications for education than past innovations like the internet or computers. The nationally representative poll surveyed 545 respondents and paints a complex picture of teachers’ views on AI: Many are using it to save time and improve their teaching materials, but a majority of teachers are worried AI is making it harder for students to learn to think for themselves.

As academic expectations for young children continue to intensify across the United States, education policy expert Laura Bornfreund, MPA, is calling for a renewed focus on what kindergarten should be: a place where rigorous, joyful, play-based learning fuels curiosity and builds the foundation for lifelong success. In her forthcoming book, Rediscovering Kindergarten: Embracing Play and Joy in Learning, Bornfreund argues that kindergarten should not function as the new first grade. Instead, she advocates for classrooms that prioritize play-based exploration, hands-on learning, and opportunities for children to develop language, social-emotional skills, and foundational academics through meaningful experiences.

As the gentle giant who just wanted to live his best life turns 90, Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson’s classic fable is as apt as ever. The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass., has opened a comprehensive exhibition for all ages featuring, among other memorabilia, Leaf’s manuscript, Lawson’s original pencil sketches and pen-and-ink drawings, some of the 60-plus foreign-language editions of the book, the various adaptations and the Spanish-style musical suite commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestra in 1998.

As states and districts have moved to improve literacy outcomes at scale, many are recognizing the importance of ensuring educator-preparation programs (EPPs) are supported to be in stronger alignment with broader efforts. Without that alignment, instructional improvement is difficult and costly to sustain. From our work on the ground with 300 teacher-preparation programs, we’ve seen strong examples of meaningful EPP shifts. Below, we highlight three different examples of how state and local systems are bringing preparation more intentionally into literacy change efforts.

One, schools should recognize that this trend is likely to change in the next few years. There were reduced numbers of newcomers during the first Trump administration (though not as large), but it bounced back quickly after the Biden administration took office. Two, schools could take this opportunity to support their many long-term English learners, who are often given short shrift. Instead of laying off experienced EL teachers, or assigning them other classes, they could utilize their experience by expanding efforts for the long-term learners (who are often born in the U.S.). I’ve previously shared how my former school made such an effort a reality.

What makes Eerdemans so very very interesting is that they’re one of the very few religious publishers to make the crossover into mainstream children’s book publishing. Sure they do some light religious stuff (you’ll see a touch of that today) but a lot of the children’s book imprint titles are secular. And remember back in 2009 when they won their first 2008 Caldecott Honor for A River of Words? When small publishers win huge awards, I get very happy. I’m happy today too with the array of titles I’ve seen. Take a gander. You may see something you like. [Betsy Bird, Evanston Public Library]

Canadian author and illustrator Jon Klassen has become the first Canadian creator to receive the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, one of the world’s most prestigious distinctions in children’s literature. Klassen’s award highlights how literary prizes shape the global circulation of culture. Awards influence which books are translated, taught, reviewed and remembered. Awards recognizing children’s literature help determine which visions of childhood, emotion and storytelling travel internationally and gain cultural legitimacy.

Screening tools and diagnostic assessments can aid educators in setting up a Multi-Tiered System of Support so that students reach appropriate grade-level reading benchmarks.

A U.S. Department of Education proposal to remove certain data collections for racial disparities in special education has drawn opposition from special education organizations, disability rights advocacy groups and a coalition of state attorneys general — saying the data collections on racial disparities are essential to states’ compliance with IDEA. 

Each August in rural southwestern Oklahoma, more than half of Frederick Elementary School’s incoming third graders begin their school year in a literacy intervention program because they’re behind in reading skills. But by the time the class leaves the following spring, the majority are ready for fourth-grade reading. It’s a transformation made possible by Frederick Elementary’s third-grade teaching team, whose strategies include daily 45 minute interventions that break down literacy into 15 distinct skills. 

Research shows that preschool oral language skills, including vocabulary and grammar, strongly predict later reading comprehension. Preschoolers finding and sharing messages in a text fosters critical thinking and opens a world of possibilities. As beginning readers explain what a text is mostly about, they strengthen comprehension and oral language simultaneously. These early experiences accumulate. By the time students encounter AI tools, they bring years of practice in listening, interpreting, questioning, and communicating.

Michigan has one of the worst attendance rates in the country.  Yet a new study released in May offers hope. Researchers found that some Michigan schools appear to be substantially better than others at getting students to show up, and identified one intervention — frequent home visits to families whose children are absent from class — that was used more often by schools making a difference. Schools that were more successful in boosting attendance were much more likely to conduct these visits frequently — daily or weekly. 

Mississippi’s recent gains in reading and math have attracted national attention. A state long associated with low academic rankings is now being discussed as a model for improvement. In education circles, the turnaround has been called the “Mississippi Miracle.” The label has helped shape the national conversation around Mississippi schools, even if it simplifies a much longer story. Miracles are usually understood as rare, unexplained events. Mississippi’s progress in literacy was neither sudden nor mysterious. The state’s gains followed years of changes in reading instruction, teacher training and academic accountability. Those improvements came from decisions made inside classrooms, schools and intervention programs across the state.

Life—much like learning—is filled with friction. New, emerging technologies like AI increasingly promise to smooth those rough edges. Forget having to cook when you can get hot food delivered to your door in minutes. Forget stressing about parallel parking on a crowded side street; modern cars can practically handle that task with barely any human intervention. But that same impulse toward ease in learning, warns author Jason Reynolds, is quietly robbing a generation of an opportunity to develop something far more valuable: fortitude. For many kids, AI has become deeply embedded in their learning process, and they’re leaning on it to do their reading and writing. Edutopia asked Reynolds in a recent interview: How do you make the case to students that the hard work of developing literacy skills is important?

s the final bell rings and students spill out of classrooms into the wonders of summer break, one question is on many parents’ minds. How do we keep kids reading when the school year is over? Across Washington, schools, libraries, and community programs respond to that question in many different ways. For some children, the answer is simply a stack of graphic novels. For others, it is story time at their local library, or a summer reading tracker covered in stickers. Finding what sparks young readers’ interest is key because reading competence cannot be built by obligation alone. Like many skills, reading grows through access, practice, confidence, and maybe most importantly, finding something worth turning the page for.

Increased attendance, better attention in classrooms, stronger friendships, and more engaged citizens – these are not a long wishlist of preferred traits in an elementary school student. They are what some advocates believe are a direct impact from recess. Recess, long a staple in children’s school days, has been put on the back burner or cut entirely by some districts as the push for more class time, higher academic performance, and increased test scores take center stage. Recess advocates are pushing back in their efforts to guarantee a playtime each day. They argue adding in more structured play time benefits children’s academic, social and emotional well-being.

California began screening all students in kindergarten through second grade this school year to determine whether they are at risk of developing reading difficulties, such as dyslexia. The screenings are part of a set of policies that aim to raise the number of California third graders reading at grade level by reimagining how kids are taught to read. Now, the governor has introduced legislation to require schools to wait until the 91st day of school to screen kindergartners, and until the 46th day of school to screen first and second graders. Proponents of the waiting period say it’s necessary to ensure children have had enough instruction in foundational reading skills and English before testing whether those skills have soaked in. But the proposal has some literacy and dyslexia advocates and researchers worried that California is backpedaling on a hard-won effort to catch kids early on who need extra help with reading.

Three new picture book biographies — about Marcel Marceau, Pablo Casals and John Cage — consider ways that silence can be used to great effect: as resistance, as protest and as a pathway to awareness. Picture book biographies are uniquely suited to offer us a glimpse, a taste. If we’re hungry for more, we can visit the library, follow the links in the backmatter or simply slip into silent wondering, taking it all in.

Parents want their children to spend their summers outdoors, away from screens and connected to learning and social activities, according to a report released Tuesday by the Afterschool Alliance. Instead, a little over half of the nation’s children — about 12.6 million kids — don’t have access to structured summer opportunities. Cost, transportation and availability are barriers to these programs. Schools, in partnership with other community organizations, can help fill the voids, the report said. 

Three school librarians — in New Jersey, South Carolina and California — are among 10 winners of this year’s I Love My Librarian Award, selected for their expertise and dedication. The nonprofit American Library Association bestows the award every year to staff from academic, public and school libraries around the country who were nominated by their communities. Szeluga, Cox and Gittlen spoke with The 74 about the challenges librarians face and how they have worked to attract more students to their libraries.

A child sitting at a desk, pencil in hand, tracing over worksheets and patterns. This is often what we think of when we think about prewriting skills—fine motor development and activities that include small, precise movements and pen grip. However, before children can successfully hold a pen using a tripod grip, they first must build a strong foundation of gross motor movement by strengthening larger muscles, such as core, shoulders, arms, and wrists. For my youngest learners, I try to provide a range of fun, hands-on, engaging activities that promote prewriting skills and large muscle development.

As the school year is coming to a close, a new analysis shines yet another harsh spotlight on what’s being called a learning recession for America’s students. And it’s a problem that started long before the pandemic. That’s according to the latest National Education Scorecard, which is an annual deep dive into data about kids in grades K-12. The findings of this report are sobering. Children had a steady decline in math and reading scores beginning all the way back to 2013, which happens to be when smartphones and social media really took off. [PBS NewsHour] Ispoke recently with Thomas Kane. He’s one of the authors of the scorecard and a professor at Harvard University. I started by asking him, what stood out most about this latest report?

I was asking children with logical and rule-following brains to guess when they needed help understanding why words were spelled the way they were. They needed to learn the code to recognize the patterns and words so they could decode them. I was teaching memorization of whole words to kids whose brains craved patterns, rules, and systems. I was showing them pictures and whole words when what they needed was to see the patterns of logic within the words themselves. Dyslexic brains—the ones we often label as “struggling readers”—are actually systematic thinking machines. They see connections. They visualize in three dimensions. They’re built for pattern recognition. When you teach them the patterns in English, when you give them the systematic rules that govern 98 percent of our language, something incredible happens.

The U.S. Surgeon General’s office issued a warning yesterday about the harms of extended uses of screens on children, raising concerns about its impact on academic performance, physical health and mental well-being. The advisory follows a contentious debate over screen time that has been fraught in recent years as schools that implemented 1-to-1 device ratios amid the pandemic now struggle with student attention, behavioral and mental health issues that took root around the same time. The report encapsulates what researchers and education experts have been long saying: Excessive time in front of devices like smartphones and tablets can worsen mental health and academic outcomes for students.

Ensuring that school libraries not only remain funded, but actually expand collections and resources to meet changing needs, requires librarians and staff to get loud and proud about the difference they make each day for students. And one of the most powerful ways to amplify their voices is through hard data — circulation trends, program participation, and student engagement metrics — that demonstrate the indispensable role they play in student success. After years of spending all their time on smartphone screens, today’s students are heading back to the school library for a range of reasons.