Today’s Literacy Headlines

When Mississippi overhauled its literacy education in 2013, one of the most controversial pieces was a policy to retain third graders if they couldn’t pass the reading portion of the state’s English language arts assessment. Years later, as education officials across the country have taken notice of Mississippi’s literacy gains, more states have adopted their own retention policies. More than two dozen states now have laws requiring or allowing schools to retain third grade students who are not reading at grade level. But the research on retention is mixed. 

Ohio lawmakers have enacted two landmark policy reforms: the third grade reading guarantee (2012) and science of reading initiatives (2023). The third grade reading guarantee requires elementary schools to identify struggling readers in grades K–3 and create an improvement plan outlining the additional supports they will provide. The guarantee initially required schools to retain third graders (with narrow exceptions) who fell short of a state reading target and provide them with more intensive interventions. The science-of-reading initiative requires schools to align their curriculum and instruction with the five pillars of evidence-based reading practices (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension). It also requires colleges of education to align their teacher preparation with the science of reading, and included more than $170 million to support implementation in K–12 schools and higher education.

Each fall, students and teachers come together behind collage-decorated doors to participate in the great experiment known as school. What causes some classrooms to fizz along companionably and others to spontaneously combust? Why, chemistry of course! These four new titles explore how that mysterious magic can act as a catalyst for community, cooperation, imagination and independence. Works by Amy Schwartz, Sophie Blackall, Oliver Jeffers and Chris Priestley show little ones what they might miss if they stay home.

100 years ago, Edward Bear — also known as Winnie-the-Pooh — also known as Pooh — went bump, bump, bump down the stairs for the first time. Though he made an earlier appearance in the 1924 book of poems When We Were Very Young — “Our Teddy Bear is short and fat, Which is not to be wondered at” — 1926’s Winnie-the-Pooh was author A.A. Milne and illustrator Ernest H. Shepard’s first collection of stories about the honey-loving bear. Now, a kids’ book celebrates that anniversary and the relationship between Milne and Shepard. It’s called How a Bear Became a Book: The Collaboration That Created Winnie-the-Pooh.

This question has plagued early education researchers for years, yielding widely mixed results. Some studies show decidedly positive outcomes, others find that initial benefits fade by 3rd grade, and still others show worse academic outcomes for children who attended pre-K over peers who didn’t. Findings from the latest study to examine this question, conducted by Florida International University and George Mason University researchers and published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly, boosted the case for public pre-K attendance. It found that poor children in a large urban community in the Southeastern United States who attended public school pre-K performed better academically in 3rd grade than their peers who attended either center-based care or family childcare as 4-year-olds.

In an effort to boost screening rates, a growing number of communities are taking a new approach: bringing the tool outside of doctor’s offices to libraries, zoos, farmer’s markets and other gatherings where parents with young kids congregate, like Gregory’s son’s playgroup. In New York and 29 other states, much of this work is supported by Help Me Grow, a national network of local organizations that promotes healthy child development, including by making screenings more accessible. Help Me Grow operates in six different parts of New York state, from Long Island to the Finger Lakes communities and cities like Buffalo and Syracuse. 

Parents from California to Illinois to Pennsylvania are pushing back against technology they say creates distractions, negatively impacts learning, and conflicts with screen-time limits set at home. Many had heeded the advice of Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling book “The Anxious Generation” to limit digital exposure, only to find themselves undermined by the place that is supposed to be most attuned to child development: the classroom. At school board meetings across the U.S., parents have reported kids playing video games in class and students watching prerecorded lessons instead of learning from a teacher. Part of the solution, parents say, is to let students dig in the dirt during science class or leaf through a library book during English.

Teachers can design learning experiences with an approach that supports all students where they are and helps them develop transferable skills. I designed learning experiences grounded in UDL’s three core principles of providing multiple means of engagement, representation, and expression. It changed my students’ mindset about learning, as they understood that whether it’s through a written test, a game, or a piece of art, there is more than one way to learn, experiment, and demonstrate learning.

What would happen to Head Start programs if they began to follow state childcare licensing standards instead of the decades-old federal performance quality standards that the Trump administration proposed partially rolling back this month? A majority of toddlers would see worse adult-to-child ratios, and only two states would meet Head Start lead teacher qualification requirements, according to a 50-state policy analysis of state childcare licensing standards published by the Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University this month.

Educators are worried that many students can no longer write essays without A.I. And it’s costing more than just grammar skills. Research shows that traditional, unassisted composition is valuable, not despite its difficulty, but because of it. Writing builds our working memory, executive planning skills and metacognition — the ability to think about our thinking, weigh alternate viewpoints and revise for clarity and style. It takes decades to develop writing skills, from toddlerhood into adulthood. “Writing is a technology for thinking,” cognitive psychologist Ronald T. Kellogg said.

The conference may be brief, but it can set the tone for a family’s relationship and partnership with the teacher. Parents, teachers and school administrators have these tips to make the conference productive and help build a stronger connection between home and school. Schools typically offer several early opportunities for parents and teachers to connect, from meet-the-teacher events and back-to-school nights to open houses. By the time conferences are on the calendar, parents and teachers should already be communicating.

School librarians across the country spent the summer thinking about the 2026–27 school year, what they can do differently, what new programs they can run, and how they can overcome the latest challenges created by administration, legislation, systemic failures, and an increasingly politicized educational environment. Across the breadth of issues, age levels, and locations, there is a throughline. They are focused on getting kids into the library, creating lifelong readers and critical thinkers, building community, and solidifying their standing in districts across the country.

Twenty-five years ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that parents of young children complete developmental screeners at regular visits to the pediatrician — often a crucial first step in diagnosing a child’s disability or delay. But a generation later, implementation remains spotty, with just over 36 percent of parents of young children nationally reporting having filled out a screener in the previous 12 months, according to the latest National Survey of Children’s Health by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In an effort to boost screening rates, a growing number of communities are taking a new approach: bringing the tool outside of doctor’s offices to libraries, zoos, farmer’s markets and other gatherings where parents with young kids congregate.

Some advocates fear that the science of reading is a poor fit for English learners, but there are ways to make its practices work. A new report from Joanna Yip, a policy lead at the Education Trust-New York, an education advocacy organization focused on civil rights in that state, outlines a constructive path forward to “center the needs of multilingual learners as part of a comprehensive approach to literacy instruction for all students.”

What does a child need to prepare themselves for kindergarten? I’m not talking about a new water bottle and a backpack, though certainly those come in handy. I mean what it takes to try to make new friends, be brave, resilient, inventive and hopeful – no small tasks for anyone. Here are a few important ideas that can fortify children who are entering this unknown land – as told through five engaging books that may help new students prepare for their journey ahead.

This gradual release of responsibility routine helps students hear what fluent, expressive reading sounds like, practice with support, and then read with expression on their own. “I Do, We Do, You Do” provides the support that students need to strengthen their fluency—and devote more cognitive resources to understanding what they read.

Sleep is life and dreams are magic. We’ve always known it. But magic is rarely safe and often scary. The young know this best of all. My littlest went through a time when she would say, “I don’t want to go to sleep because … I don’t want to have dreams!” Here are four new picture books about sleep and dreaming that are well worth including at bedtime, and could happily be read as a set.

As the 2025–26 school year came to a close, a graduating senior came to Winooski (VT) School District librarian Matt Gile to share a memory. Having arrived in the Vermont refugee resettlement community not knowing any English, the Somali student didn’t know what to make of the tall, white man gathering students for story time in the library. But as Gile broke into silly voices and shared one of his favorite read-alouds—The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka—the student recalls understanding the intention, if not the language.

Kindergarten is one of the most consequential years in a child’s education. It’s the first universally available, formal schooling a child experiences, and for many children, it’s where they first learn to be a student and a friend. At the same time, it is not required in every state, and it can look and feel very different depending on where families live. There is a lot we need to rethink about kindergarten, but below are the five things I most want school leaders, teachers, and families to understand about quality in kindergarten. Number 1: Play and academic rigor are partners, not opposites

Illinois has adopted a comprehensive literacy plan intended to promote evidence-based instruction and better prepare educators. But the plan serves primarily as a roadmap for districts, without imposing mandates. Illinois law requires the state board of education to make literacy training available, but it does not require all elementary reading teachers to complete it. Making training available is a start. Making sure teachers get it is a better.

Last week’s disappointing reading scores capture only a moment in a much longer process of instructional change in evidence-based approach. I do not believe those results tell us we are on the wrong path. Rather, classroom observations, school-level assessments, districtwide growth data and state results lead me to a different conclusion: meaningful instructional change has begun. Educational change takes time. The important question is not whether the work is finished. The important question is whether it is moving in the right direction.

Developing strong reading habits and skills from an early age is key to creating a lifelong love of reading in children. Sometimes, however, kids need a little extra help when they start to lose interest or fall behind in their reading skills. The good news is, there are ways that parents can help their children not only build reading skills at home, but become avid readers. Here are top tips from a 5th grade teacher, a 2nd grade teacher, and an experienced teacher and library media specialist on how to help your child advance their reading skills. 

In 2004, Jeff Kinney started posting daily online entries from a manuscript of funny illustrated stories based on his childhood that he’d been working on for six years as a “nostalgia piece” for grown-ups. It wasn’t until 2006, when an editor at Abrams saw the potential of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” as a book for young readers, that it was accepted for publication (eventually sporting a Play-Doh-red cover, BTW). More than 300 million copies later, it’s clear the series heralded — or maybe created — the illustrated middle grade novel boom that’s been going strong ever since. These recommendations should tide over fans of Jeff Kinney’s laugh-out-loud illustrated novels until the next installment (out Oct. 20).

New research from the Harvard Graduate School of Education finds that brain differences linked to reading difficulties can be detected as early as 18 months, prompting calls for earlier intervention. The research comes from the lab of Nadine Gaab, associate professor of education, and draws on a decade-long study of brain development from infancy to childhood. “Our findings suggest that some of these kids walk into their first day of kindergarten with their little backpacks and a less-optimal brain for learning to read, and that these differences in brain development start showing up in toddlerhood,” Gaab says. “We’re currently waiting until second or third grade to find kids who are struggling readers. We should find these kids and intervene way earlier because we know the younger a brain is, the more plastic it is for language input.” The study also finds that phonological processing a key predictor of decoding and word-reading skills, mediates the relationship between early brain development and later reading performance.

All phonics instruction helps students link sounds to letters, so that they can decode words. The difference between linguistic phonics and some other approaches is a technical one springing from how they get kids to make those connections. Linguistic phonics works differently. Instead of starting with letters, teachers start with sounds, demonstrating the multiple ways each sound can be represented by letters on the page. And because of the focus on translating spoken sounds into spellings, such programs tightly integrate spelling and writing with reading. Kerin Moser, New York’s Patchogue-Medford schools director of early learning, reading, and home schooling, says it’s been a game changer for students who, until now, hadn’t been seeing growth. “It was more engaging for them,” she said. “They were more on task during reading intervention time.”

Groundbreaking Latine author Benjamin Alire Sáenz died on July 28. His YA debut Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood (Cinco Puntos, 2006), was the first novel with Latine protagonists that I read when I began working in publishing. Its lyrical prose and luminous characters made me fall in love with YA. Benjamin Alire Sáenz was an author of poetry and prose for adults and teens. He was the first Hispanic winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and a recipient of the American Book Award for his books for adults. Justin Chanda, SVP and Publisher of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, shared: “There is no book I am prouder to have published than Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Knowing and working with Ben was an absolute honor. We’ve lost a luminary, but his books will continue to change lives for generations. I am so grateful for that.”

For years, much of American education had tremendous confidence in a child-centered, pedagogically progressive vision of literacy. (In this context, “progressive” refers to an educational philosophy, not political affiliation or policy stance.) Students would become readers through authentic encounters with books. Choice would foster engagement. Reading comprehension was treated as a transferable skill. Teachers would facilitate rather than prescribe. Students would construct meaning rather than receive it. The work of journalists like Horowitch and Hanford, along with declining NAEP scores, has made the failure of these ideas difficult, if not impossible, to ignore. The science of reading offers insights that sit in tension with these long-dominant practices. The first phase of the science of reading movement focused, appropriately, on decoding or “phonics.” But now the conversation is shifting toward harder questions. Once students can decode, what enables them to understand what they read? The answer turns out to sound remarkably traditional—and prescriptive. Fluency. Vocabulary. Background knowledge. Familiarity with canonical texts. The very things that education spent years deemphasizing have returned to the center of the discussion. Indeed, there’s rising interest in classical education, with its emphasis on the Great Books and old-school pedagogy. 

The declines in reading proficiency were most pronounced in grades 3-5. In addition to the dramatic decline in third grade, fourth grade scores fell nearly 6 percentage points, and fifth grade scores fell by 13 points. (You can find your school’s test results at the bottom of this story.) The unusually steep drop in reading proficiency comes as the city is heading into its fourth year of a major shakeup in literacy instruction. All elementary schools are required to use approved curriculums that officials contend line up with the science of reading, a longstanding body of evidence about how children learn to read. A growing number of middle schools are in the process of adopting new reading curriculums, too.

These 14 books can help teachers celebrate student writing by weaving literacy and social and emotional learning into the school day. Following each book link and description is a list of themes that connect each title to the early childhood curriculum and CASEL’s social and emotional learning framework. These themes can assist teachers in planning how to integrate these videos throughout the school year.

President Donald Trump’s administration said Thursday it plans to overhaul Head Start, tossing out many of the regulations that are the hallmark of the early education program for the nation’s poorest children. Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the federally funded preschool program, said the proposed changes would encourage more local decision-making. Early childhood policy experts argue the deregulation could undermine Head Start’s position as the gold standard in early education.

Few states test students on how well they can write, and the country hasn’t published national writing test results for elementary-age children since 2002. Regardless, experts say they have a sense of how it’s going: “The word on the street is that kids can’t write,” said Vicki McQuitty, a professor in Towson University’s elementary education program and director of the Maryland Writing Project, an initiative aimed at improving writing instruction. Younger children struggle with basic sentences, spelling and punctuation, leading to problems later on in school when they’re expected to produce more complex works. 

As the 2025–26 school year came to a close, a graduating senior came to Winooski (VT) School District librarian Matt Gile to share a memory. Having arrived in the Vermont refugee resettlement community not knowing any English, the Somali student didn’t know what to make of the tall, white man gathering students for story time in the library. But as Gile broke into silly voices and shared one of his favorite read-alouds—The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka—the student recalls understanding the intention, if not the language. He told Gile he thought, “Okay, I get it—we’re sitting in a circle, we’re learning to be together.”

The Reach Out and Read model targets literacy rates among young kids. A new Pennsylvania affiliate is expanding services in the commonwealth. Some pediatricians may give out stickers, crayons or small toys to their young patients after a routine wellness visit. But others like Dr. Trude Haecker and her colleagues at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia have been taking a different approach: They’re “prescribing” new books to children and families. They send them home with a new book after visits, along with encouragement to read together as a family. Their goal is to support literacy rates and school readiness.

School cellphone bans might seem like a good way to improve learning for elementary school children, but new research published in Behavioral Sciences shows that simply owning a cellphone correlates with worse reading comprehension. Whether a child brings the phone to school made no difference in reading comprehension, the team of UCLA psychologists and researchers found. The study focused on determining whether acquiring a phone was negatively related to reading comprehension test performance among third- and sixth-grade students.

Some of the most precious moments in a busy schedule are spent reading a story with your child. But you can make this time even more valuable and increase what your reader gets out of it by asking a few strategic questions. “When you ask questions during story time, it really helps children learn to be active readers and to think critically,” says Tammy Milby, Ph.D., director of reading in the Department of Education at the University of Richmond. “When parents can get kids thinking and discussing a text, it makes storytime a richer experience.” Ask the questions following before, during, and after a story to encourage your child to think about the text in a more in-depth way. (It’s OK if they can’t read independently yet.)

if schools are getting better at teaching reading, why are so many young people still not choosing to read? It’s easy to assume that the problem must be down to motivation and so schools respond by doubling down on encouragement and incentives. They introduce routines, campaigns, reading challenges, assemblies, logs, tutor-time reading and messaging about why reading matters. Sometimes these things help, but more often than not, they don’t. I believe that’s because these solutions miss the fact that a child’s reading life is not only shaped by how well they can read, but by the conditions they are being asked to read in.

A classic strategy called dyad reading—matching up students with different skill levels to read out loud in unison—helps both partners build confidence and fluency. As students read aloud concurrently, the developing reader naturally matches the pace, expression, and pronunciation of the more fluent reader—and the stronger reader continues strengthening their own skills through consistent oral reading practice. Fluent readers don’t just recognize words—they read aloud with accuracy, expression, and confidence, which allows them to focus more cognitive resources on understanding what they read. 

How do we actually inspire students to fall in love with reading? Children who love reading don’t just become better readers – they become deeper thinkers, more confident writers, and stronger students overall. One of the most powerful ways to fuel this passion is to allow teachers the opportunity to develop meaningful one-on-one bonds with students through the pages of their favorite books while using technology to support, rather than replace, those connections. When students see their teachers’ enthusiasm and mirror their joy over the written word, that is when lifelong readers are made.

As book bans surge nationwide, Jan Lacina — professor at Texas Christian University and associate editor of the Early Childhood Education Journal — explores the benefits of diverse children’s literature in her new textbook for educators, “Children’s Literature to Read Our World.” The research-grounded guide aims to help teachers intentionally select books for their students, centering age-appropriate books that present Black, Latinx and Asian culture as wellsprings of understanding. It also highlights titles that explore complex issues such as homelessness and poverty, and those that can help educators teach about historical topics like the Holocaust or the Civil Rights Movement.

Are you looking for a free program that will allow your students to make personal connections with other kids their age around the world? The Global Read Aloud (GRA) project could be the perfect fit. Each spring, a new list of books is released on the GRA website covering a variety of interest levels from kindergarten through high school. During a six-week period in the fall (usually October–November), teachers can select one or more books to read to their class, connect with another classroom, and plan activities with their partner teacher. Here are fun, easy ways to connect with another classroom across the world, including a virtual school tour or postcard exchange. 

On a vacation two years ago, I started to read aloud the first book in the series, “Little House in the Big Woods,” to my own child — and then the next, and the next. Where once I had viewed Ma as a joyless nag, now I saw not just the Sisyphean rounds of her workload but her relentless desire to inject beauty and normalcy into the family’s chaotic, peripatetic lives. The character was no more “fun” and no less prejudiced — I still didn’t see her as especially relatable. But that was no longer all I needed. I sympathized with her during those endless moves, the poverty and hunger and precariousness — living in the wagon for months at a time. She had been there all along, softened by nostalgia and smart editing.

Two bills that would boost federal involvement in reading instruction passed out of a Senate committee on Thursday, signaling Congress’ continued interest in the “science of reading” movement. One, the bipartisan READ Act, would put new requirements on existing federal literacy grants to support early screening for reading difficulties and evidence-based reading instruction, and shift some funding to states with the lowest reading scores. Another, the 21st Century Dyslexia Act, would change how the reading disability dyslexia is classified under federal disability law, establishing dyslexia as its own category.

Watching a colleague implement an instructional practice with students is a highly effective way for the observers to learn it. Here are three benefits of the lab classroom approach: (1) Lab classroom requires less dedicated PD time and can be implemented within the school day. (2) It follows the coaching cycle process utilized in preservice and teacher development programs.
(3) As funds for PD become harder and harder to come by, it is a low-cost “grow your own” alternative.

Outdoor education has been shown to improve academic outcomes across subjects, including science, reading, and math, while also strengthening motivation, well-being, and school engagement. Studies also link outdoor learning to increased attendance, improved behavior, and stronger relationships among students. Equally important are the developmental benefits. Outdoor learning environments support confidence, independence, problem-solving, and leadership—skills that are difficult to cultivate through traditional classroom instruction alone. 

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced in-person classroom instruction to go virtual, students suddenly needed to have their own laptops or tablets in order to interact with teachers and complete assignments. Today, however, more and more schools are reconsidering how technology fits into teaching and learning, with many districts establishing clearer expectations about when technology should be used, for what purpose and at what ages. Instead of treating screens as the default tool for instruction, some schools are directing teachers to use laptops only when the technology adds clear instructional value.

A multi-university study led by Texas A&M University sheds new light on what matters most in developing literacy. Researchers analyzed nearly 50,000 correlations across 137 coordinated cognitive and achievement tests and found that visual processing played a minimal role in reading ability. General intelligence also played less of a role than previous research suggested. Auditory processing, vocabulary and general knowledge were the most critical factors, the researchers found. Reasoning, memory and mental processing speed played secondary roles.

Picture book biographies, STEM finds, and a deep look at American history make up this list of superlative elementary nonfiction. 

Across the U.S., nearly every state uses a child’s fifth birthday to determine when they can enter the public school system as kindergartners. The shift to full-day kindergarten was not immediate, and program design often looked more like daycare than formal schooling. Gen X and elder millennial parents have vague memories of playing kickball and scribbling with crayons from that first year of formal schooling; today’s kindergartners take standardized tests. So what happens if your child isn’t ready for today’s design?

While the “science of writing” isn’t as deeply researched as the science of how children learn to read, experts generally agree on practices that are key to teaching students how to write. For example, students should be given time each day to write and taught different genres and purposes of writing. Educators should also explicitly instruct students in individual components of writing, starting with handwriting, spelling and vocabulary. Students need to learn that a complete sentence includes a subject and a verb, not just a capital letter at the beginning and a period at the end. Later, they must be taught how to connect ideas by expanding and combining sentences. Finally, they can tackle essays, using worksheets and charts to plan their writing. 

[As] I learned more about the science of reading and how it applied to small group time, I realized that my students didn’t need more activities—they needed more opportunities to practice the same decoding skills in a focused, connected way. I decided to simplify everything. No more juggling multiple rotations and activities. I moved to a consistent 15-minute routine built on one target skill. II’ve saved a tremendous amount of planning time. Instead of creating and organizing different activities for every group, I now use the same simple structure and only adjust the skill that I’m teaching.

So universal a condition is boredom — or, as the French call it, ennui — among children that a robust subgenre of books about it already exists. The new picture books “Bored” and “Endless Afternoons” are odes to the joy of having nothing to do. Both admirably resist the common adult suggestion of dealing with boredom by doing things differently in favor of the more challenging process of seeing things differently.

Students with dyslexia and other language-based learning difficulties can benefit greatly from activities that integrate oral language. As a dyslexia therapist working with students in kindergarten through second grade, I know that many of my students have strong ideas but struggle to generate complete, grammatically correct sentences independently. Young students, particularly those with dyslexia and other language-based learning differences, lack opportunities to organize those ideas into language. This realization transformed the way I approached grammar instruction in my classroom. 

The Read Act, introduced by a bipartisan coalition led by Sens. Bill Cassidy and Maggie Hassan, is a great start to addressing the nation’s literacy crisis. The legislation is a chance to finally stop pretending this problem will fix itself. If passed, it will help states use proven strategies to teach kids how to read, identify and support struggling students early, and give teachers and families the tools they need to step in before it’s too late. In practice, the Read Act would mean that more children are screened early for literacy challenges, so problems are caught before they turn into years of frustration. 

A second grade classroom is in a braiding craze. They will braid anything: shoelaces, hair, friendship bracelets, the tails on their toy ponies. But Noah doesn’t have anything to braid. So his teacher takes a whiteboard rag and tears it into three long strips. Soon, Noah is braiding on the school bus. And in the bath. He wakes up early to braid some more. The other kids in Class 203 start bringing in old skirts, tablecloths and curtains to braid. The braid stretches all the way down the hallway and back. What to do with it? “I’m just going to spoil it right here. It ends up as a classroom rug,” says Story Rug author Sophie Blackall. 

The Minnesota Kindergarten Fall Assessment, or MnKFA, relies on educators observing students as they go about their normal daily routines—rather than one-on-one evaluations in front of a computer or with pencil and paper. The MnKFA, which state officials stress isn’t an accountability measure or a traditional kindergarten readiness test, will aim to gather information not just on academic readiness skills like phonemic awareness and numeracy, but also on students’ social-emotional development and approach to learning, such as their ability to solve problems.

68 percent of respondents to SLJ’s Mobile Device Policy Survey noted at least one of four positive impacts on reading or library use: more visible engagement with books and reading materials in classrooms; increased library circulation; more independent reading during free time; and more library traffic. The SLJ poll collected 878 completed responses from U.S. school librarians and educators in late April. Cell phone bans are increasingly becoming the norm across the country.

Reading comprehension is often described as a skill, but as Professor James Kim says, students never just “read.” They always read something. What children understand depends not only on whether they can read the words on the page, but also on what they know about the topic, the vocabulary they can access, and how well they can connect ideas across sentences, texts, and experiences. Kim’s discussion with Assistant Professor Phil Capin highlighted the importance of background knowledge, vocabulary, language comprehension, motivation, and aligned systems of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

One of the biggest challenges in elementary literacy instruction is meeting students at their level. Reading abilities often vary widely within the same classroom, making it essential to create opportunities for targeted support. At Ojibwa Elementary School in Macomb, Michigan, second-grade teacher Renee Sheridan builds dedicated time into each day to meet those different needs through a routine she calls WIN Time—an acronym for “What I Need” Time. WIN Time is a total of 30 minutes per day, and it’s a blend of small group instruction and independent work where students are focused on “just right” tasks that are tailored to skills they need to develop or improve.

Michigan elementary school teachers will be required to take literacy training by the 2031-2032 school year, under a new law signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.  Districts were already required to teach in “evidence-based” ways and screen students for traits of dyslexia beginning with the 2027-28 school year, under laws passed in 2024. Districts must also affirm that teachers have received information about evidence-based literacy practices and related topics. But the law signed Tuesday takes the requirements a step further by prescribing what type of training is required of K-5 teachers. 

Secondary education is not just a “last chance.” It is a powerful chance—requiring urgency, alignment, and distributed responsibility across every classroom and every content area. One of the most important mindset shifts secondary schools can make is challenging the idea that literacy instruction belongs exclusively to ELA teachers or reading specialists. The skills adolescent students need to succeed across all subject areas—decoding and deciphering multisyllabic vocabulary, comprehending complex text, analyzing and synthesizing information—are literacy skills. A history teacher helping students decode colonization and a science teacher breaking down electromagnetism are both doing literacy work.