Today’s Literacy Headlines

Reading Reset is an investigative series shedding light on the potential origin of the state’s poor reading proficiency, its impact on children, the criminal justice system, and possible solutions.

Cursive handwriting is making a comeback of sorts for K-8 students in the United States. Several states in recent years passed legislation mandating instruction in cursive handwriting, including California, Iowa and Oklahoma. Pennsylvania and New Jersey are considering similar legislation, as are other states. I’m an associate professor of special education and the director of the Iowa Reading Research Center. At the center, we’re conducting a systematic review of prior research to improve cursive handwriting instruction. We also want to know how learning cursive affects the development of reading and writing skills.

Tyreek Wiggins struggled to read anything longer than three-letter words at the start of this school year. But with the help of his Joyful Readers tutor Kirra Silver, Tyreek — a third grader at Philadelphia’s Mastery Prep Elementary Charter School — quickly began gaining confidence. Joyful Readers is one of the 28 AmeriCorps programs across Pennsylvania that has been gutted by DOGE. While tutors will finish out this school year, its future is now uncertain. Cuts to AmeriCorps have also affected student tutoring programs elsewhere.

More states are embracing microcredentials as a form of professional development for teachers that’s self-paced, ideally hands-on, and customizable to the skills they want to build or the subject areas they want to teach. It’s a change that’s happening gradually, and it’s one that experts say can help make professional development more relevant for educators and a tool that districts can use to retain top talent.

Lessons focused on science, technology, engineering, arts, and math give young learners an engaging way to explore new concepts. I discovered that successful STEAM activities require flexible planning, thoughtful facilitation, and differentiation for a mixed-age classroom with varying skill sets. 

New research shows fewer than half of parents find it fun to read aloud to their children. But reading aloud is one of the sacred, analog rituals of parenting. “CBS Evening News” co-anchor John Dickerson has more.

After months of intense debate, a citywide education panel voted Wednesday night to close a Brooklyn school with dwindling enrollment and open a new one for struggling readers in its place. And the panel greenlit opening a new school, the Central Brooklyn Literacy Academy, in the same building. It will be the second city-operated public school designed to serve students with dyslexia and other reading challenges.

Through an arduous summer of hiking, 13-year-old Finn Connelly finds common ground with his late firefighter father in Kate Messner’s new verse novel. “The Trouble With Heroes” is a timely, enduring story that reminds us that even the toughest fathers carry emotions worth sharing. What a gift it would be if more boys, and more young people in general, had access to our vulnerability.

Less than half of parents find it fun to read aloud to their children, new research shows. Only 40% of parents with children aged 0 to 13 agreed that “reading books to my child is fun for me”, according to a survey conducted by book data company Nielsen and publisher HarperCollins. The survey shows a steep decline in the number of parents reading aloud to young children, with 41% of 0- to four-year-olds now being read to frequently, down from 64% in 2012. Gen Z parents are more likely than millennial or Gen X parents to say that children’s reading is “more a subject to learn than a fun thing to do”. HarperCollins said that parents in this age group grew up with technology themselves, so may think “fun comes more from digital entertainment than from books”.

In Assistant Teaching Professor Jill Jones’ classroom, a group of college students decode multisyllabic words. With the guidance of a classmate, they identify word elements, such as the prefix, suffix and root, in order to determine the word’s meaning. The room is filled with pre-service teachers in the NC State College of Education’s elementary education program. The exercise is helping them determine words in a passage that fourth grade students might find challenging, and, with the help of Jones, giving them an opportunity to practice how they would work with young students to decode those words. After practicing this routine in the classroom, they go on to implement these practices in lessons they design for elementary students in their field experience classroom.

The final days of the school year offer an opportunity to ensure that students conclude the year feeling accomplished, connected to you and each other, and ready for future challenges. Teachers can help students end the year on a high note with activities that remind them how much they’ve learned in class.

I didn’t expect a podcast to unravel parts of my professional identity — but then I listened to Sold a Story, an exposé of missteps in reading instruction and the inherent consequences. Schools and educators need to rethink the way they teach reading and emphasize decoding, professional development and support for parents.

In schools beginning a new reading journey, school leaders need to understand that selecting a curriculum is only one aspect of good reading instruction. We are asking teachers to make this titanic shift and to learn new methodologies and skills on the go. As an education community, to truly be successful with the transition to the science of reading, we need to make sure there is still room for it to partner with the art of teaching. The art of teaching requires the teacher to see the child at the center of the curriculum.

Overall, the report suggests Colorado has prioritized quantity over quality as it moved from a small tuition-free preschool program for children with certain risk factors to one that’s open to all 4-year-olds. The state’s universal preschool enrollment numbers are impressive, with 70% of eligible children enrolled last year. But Colorado’s showing deteriorated in the quality standards department. In the latest report, it meets only two of 10 benchmarks, down from four in the previous preschool program. The benchmarks, which describe state policies that promote high-quality classrooms, touch on factors such as teacher training, curriculum, and class size.

Tom Angleberger is the author of the popular Origami Yoda series and the Flytrap Files series, as well as several other books for kids. The fear of failure is so huge for poetry. Before we start, we’re thinking about Emily Dickinson and Rita Dove and Robert Frost and Nikki Giovanni and we will never be that good! Anything we write will be cringeworthy by comparison! But why are we comparing? And why are we cringing? And, most importantly, why aren’t we writing the ding dang poem? If this is where you’re stuck, try my new Dino Poetry method.

Re “We’re Just Not as Good at Thinking Anymore,” by David Brooks (column, April 11): As a former teacher, professor and principal, I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Brooks’s warning about the dangers of incuriosity and the astoundingly low reading levels of many Americans. He said what thousands of American teachers have been warning for years. Without advanced reading skills and a dedication to educational development, higher-level thinking cannot exist. Information is everything to a society. Having that knowledge cannot be achieved without understanding that reading is essential. 

Screen time permeates the lives of toddlers and preschoolers. As many parents will know, research points to several negative effects of screen time. As scholars who specialize in speech pathology and early childhood development, we are particularly interested in the recent finding that too much screen time is associated with less parent-child talk, such as fewer conversational turns between parents and children. As a result, the American Academy of Pediatrics and World Health Organization suggest limiting screen time for children. Beyond quantity, they also emphasize the quality of a child’s engagement with digital media. Used in moderation, certain kinds of media can have educational and social benefits for children – and even contribute to language development. These tips may help parents structure and manage screen time more effectively.

The $190 billion earmarked for school districts to recover from the pandemic was supposed to trickle out by the end of this school year. Instead, districts reliant on the funding had their access abruptly cut off on March 28, when the U.S. Department of Education informed state education chiefs that continuing to fund pandemic recovery in schools no longer met the department’s priorities. For some districts, this means that essential student services like intensive tutoring, social-emotional supports, and plans for summer school programs have come to a screeching halt. The sudden decision has left districts struggling to honor their payments to third-party vendors they had contracted to tutor students or provide curricula, among other commitments.

The schools in Steubenville, Ohio, are doing something unusual—in fact, it’s almost unheard of. In a country where nearly 40 percent of fourth graders struggle to read at even a basic level, Steubenville has succeeded in teaching virtually all of its students to read well. Reporter Emily Hanford shares the latest from the hit APM Reports podcast Sold a Story. We’ll learn how Steubenville became a model of reading success—and how a new law in Ohio put it all at risk. 

On March 20, 2025, the president of the United States signed an executive order to shutter the U.S. Department of Education. As part of this effort, the Office of Education Technology (OET) responsible for developing national education technology plans and resources was eliminated along with its resources. OET provided federal guidance on emerging technologies via resources such as the 2024 National Educational Technology Plan, toolkits for educators on using artificial intelligence, and data gathered from OET convenings and listening sessions. These resources provide states and districts with evidence-based edtech guidance, particularly as they navigate emerging technology and concerns such as student data privacy in artificial intelligence. Although guidance and resources from the former OET office will need to be updated in time, we have made the resources available below.

These portable science labs allow young children to investigate the world around them, all year long. Wonder Wagons can be rolled to different locations, including an outdoor classroom, forest or wooded area, pond, garden, park, nature trail, or playground, or even on the sidewalk while strolling around the block. Students gather at their destination and grab their desired tools from the Wonder Wagon. They can make the most of their outdoor learning experience when they are given ample time to really explore the space and take a closer look.

Sage and Scribe is a cooperative learning activity that gives every student a chance to be both an expert and a learner. In Kait Hudson’s first-grade class at Barbara Morgan STEM Academy in Boise, Idaho, she uses this simple partner exercise for a variety of academic tasks. In addition to dedicated time to practice a skill, this cooperative learning activity also provides an opportunity for peer feedback. Watch the video.

For many, the “science of reading” has become synonymous with phonics instruction. The idea that the “science” in reading instruction only supports phonics instruction has been “hard to dislodge,” said Maria Murray, the founder and CEO of the Reading League, an organization that advocates for evidence-based reading instruction, at its annual summit in Chicago this week. But at this and other recent events, the Reading League is intentionally bringing in panelists to discuss language development, reading comprehension, and the various social and cultural factors that influence students’ ability to learn to read well.

When I heard that “Strega Nona” is turning 50, I did what any self-respecting book lover would do: I heated up a bowl of pasta and paid the signora a visit. I remembered Tomie dePaola’s Caldecott Honor-winning picture book for the same reasons you might: oodles of noodles pouring out of a cauldron, threatening to overtake a Calabrian village rendered in soothing earth tones; panicked locals; the titular grandmother sorceress who saves the town. But the character who caught my eye on my anniversary reading hasn’t inspired a postage stamp, a TikTok trend or a D.I.Y. Halloween costume. His name is Big Anthony, and he’s the awkward, galumphing antihero who makes “Strega Nona” possible. Yes, he causes a boatload of trouble. I still think we should give him a second chance.

A new study by the research group RAND Corp. suggests primary teachers in states with comprehensive early literacy laws—those that include pre- and in-service teacher training and curriculum requirements for teaching foundational reading skills—are more likely to give students evidence-based strategies for tackling text than those in states with laxer laws. But in many cases, K-2 teachers continued to use some classroom materials that did not meet standards for teaching foundational reading skills in phonics, phonemic awareness, and fluency—though many of them mixed them with materials that did address those topics. In all, the findings paints a mixed picture of the implementation of “science of reading” laws—or at the very least, an incomplete shift in teachers’ practice.

Substantial parts of NAEP came crumbling down when the board that oversees the exam reluctantly voted to kill more than a dozen of the assessments that comprise the Nation’s Report Card over the next seven years. The main reading and math tests, which are required by Congress, were preserved. But to cut costs in an attempt to appease Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) scrapped a 2029 administration of the Long-Term Trend NAEP, an exam that has tracked student achievement since the 1970s. Also cut were fourth grade science in 2028, 12th grade science in 2032 and 12th grade history in 2030. Writing assessments, which had been slated for 2032, were canceled entirely. State and local results were also dropped for an assortment of exams. 

In Cherokee, the word for boy or son is “atsutsa,” often shortened to “chooch.” In the children’s book Chooch Helped, Chooch is a little boy who is just trying to be helpful! Unfortunately, it’s driving his older sister crazy. “Chooch Helped is a sibling story,” says Andrea L. Rogers, who is herself a sibling, as well as the mother of siblings, and the author of the book. “This story is about two siblings sort of figuring out their relationship.” Artist Rebecca Lee Kunz illustrated Chooch Helped. Not only was it her first-ever children’s book, it also won the 2025 Caldecott Medal.

Most states have already forged the tools to turn poor literacy performance into meaningful progress. Passing laws is only part of the solution; effectively implementing them is now the major challenge. Education leaders must implement necessary pedagogy and maintain the necessary data to track improvement over the upcoming critical years. The most effective NAEP response from state education leaders would be to launch an intentional period of implementation of what is enacted into law.

Project-based learning (PBL) can feel like an overwhelming practice for teachers. While there are many moving parts to manage when giving students agency in their learning, the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help. With AI, it is possible for teachers to create personalized prompts, even for a class of 20 to 30 students. AI can also create personalized rubrics for students based on the specifics of their projects and can be used to differentiate the work needed for students with 504 plans and individualized education programs and multilingual learners

Edtech platforms can help you create a personalized learning experience to improve students’ learning and engagement. So how can you press play and start personalized video engagement? You can get started with the support of edtech platforms such as Edpuzzle, Quizizz, Formative, Kami, Google Classroom, and Screencastify. They all provide some level of personalized accessibility options for students, features to support teachers in content creation, and insights on student performance. Even video-based platforms like BrainPOP now offer many levels of differentiation and accessibility features.

In kindergarten through 5th grade classrooms at Allen Jay Elementary School, students learn subjects like reading, math, and science in English, and in Urdu. The school, in High Point, N.C., offers dual-language immersion programs in Urdu and Spanish, reflecting the two most commonly spoken world languages in the local community. The programs follow a 50/50 model: Half of the day’s lessons are taught in English, the other half in either Urdu or Spanish. A teacher may be speaking in English, but a student may initially respond in Urdu if the answer is easier to first grasp in that language, or vice versa.

“El Niño” combines magical realism, climate fiction and coming-of-age sports tales. In “El Niño,” by the two-time Pura Belpré medalist Pam Muñoz Ryan, 13-year-old Kai Sosa, a talented athlete, is trying to return to competition on an elite swim team two years after his beloved older sister, Cali, vanished at sea while surfing near their home in Southern California.

When you’re looking for research on four-day school weeks or how to teach fractions, or trying to locate an historical document, such as the landmark Coleman Report of 1966, you might begin with Google. But the reason that high-quality research results pop up from your Google search is because something called ERIC exists behind the scenes. ERIC stands for Education Resources Information Center and it is a curated online public library of 2.1 million educational documents that is funded and managed by the U.S. Education Department. This critical online library catalog is supposed to continue operating under a five-year contract that runs through 2028. [However] ERIC is scheduled to run out of money on April 23. 

Socratic seminars are common in middle and high school, but at Barbara Morgan STEM Academy in Boise, Idaho, fourth-grade teacher Ricky Clark sees their value for much younger learners. His elementary students are well-versed in using a modified version of a Socratic seminar to build up their speaking skills and get practice in giving peer critique. As with Socratic seminars in higher grade levels, the structure includes an inner circle and an outer circle.

Many students—and teachers (including me!)—love graphic novels. Today’s post begins a series exploring how they can be used in the classroom. Tim Smyth is an award-winning educator and Eisner-nominated author of Teaching with Comics and Graphic Novels: Fun and Engaging Strategies to Improve Close Reading and Critical Thinking in Every Classroom. Smyth says, “Being a reading specialist and social studies educator for over 20 years, I continue to be amazed at the power of comics and graphic novels to inspire and engage students of all ages and level.”

Nearly 60% of third graders aren’t reading at grade level. A new bill would require schools to use a phonics-based approach to teach students. The bill would build on existing legislation that requires credential programs to teach phonics instruction to teachers-in-training. The proposed legislation would require existing teachers to undergo training in the topic. Last year, an almost identical bill died in the Assembly after pushback from the teachers union and English learner advocates, who argued that curriculum isn’t effective with students who aren’t fluent in English, and therefore shouldn’t be required.

Artist Minnie Phan has been honing her craft for many years, but her journey to becoming an artist meant better understanding herself, her heritage and her family. On the MindShift Podcast, she discussed how the Vietnamese diaspora inspired her to pursue art. She also shares what motivated her to create the book “Simone” with Pulitzer-prize winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen. The book follows a young child who has to evacuate her home because of a wildfire. In the process, she learns about how her mother had to evacuate her home when she lived in Vietnam because of a flood. The book also shares how kids can process displacement and see who is helping them during tough times.

The American Library Association and a union representing more than 42,000 cultural workers nationwide have filed a lawsuit contesting the Trump administration’s deep cuts to the federal agency that supports the nation’s libraries, arguing that the cuts are already causing “irreparable harm.” The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday by the library association and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, came days after the Institute for Museum and Library Services dismissed most of its staff of 70, fired its board and began informing state library agencies that their grants had been cut. 

According to a new NPR/Ipsos poll, reading is something a majority of Americans enjoy, and want to get better at. But it’s nowhere near a top priority. The online survey, conducted in late February, heard from a representative sample of more than 2,000 American adults. According to the poll, 82% of respondents think reading is a useful way to learn about the world, 76% say reading is relaxing and a whopping 98% of respondents with children in their household want their children to “develop a love of reading.”

Spokane Public Schools welcomed students back to class last fall with new rules: Elementary and middle schoolers must keep smartphones, watches and other internet-connected devices in a backpack, pouch or out of sight. District leaders and community partners in Spokane, though, didn’t simply want to tear devices out of kids’ hands. They also wanted to engage young people “in real life,” or “Engage IRL” as the district’s campaign is called. To that end, school officials came up with a plan to get every student involved in some after-school activity, club or sport every day.

It’s been a little over a year since Tram Gonzalez opened Color Wings Preschool in her home in Portland, Oregon. Of the 15 children enrolled in her program, 10 attend for free, covered in full by Multnomah County’s Preschool for All initiative, which was passed by Portland voters in November 2020 to create universal free preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds who want it. This early into running her business, Gonzalez attributes her program’s robust enrollment and staffing to Preschool for All, which has provided her with both the startup grants to get established and reliable, adequate tuition reimbursements to operate with confidence.

Childhood memories came flooding back as I read two new middle grade books that capture the intensity of friendships forged through shared creative passions and pursuits. In the graphic novel The Cartoonists Club, by Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud, four middle school students — Makayla, Howard, Lynda and Art — support and inspire one another while tackling the challenges of making comics. J vs. K, by the cartoonist Jerry Craft and the writer Kwame Alexander, blends prose, verse, illustration and comics to tell the story of two precocious fifth graders whose fierce rivalry drives each of them to greater artistic heights. 

There are creative alternatives to the traditional book report that get students engaging in rigorous literary analysis without stifling their love of reading. These approaches—often involving multimedia, role-playing, and discussions—can be not only more fun for students, but more academically enriching too, giving kids a broad range of options to demonstrate what they learned from a book. Edutopia consulted research and surveyed our community of teachers to compile six creative substitutes for book reports that are worth trying in your classroom.

This high-poverty Rust Belt district is exceptional at teaching kids to read — and has been for more than a decade. The district has been following the same reading program, called Success for All, for the last 25 years. Teacher turnover is low, and the same superintendent has been in place for a decade. Steubenville offers subsidized preschool beginning at age 3. And in those early years, teachers regularly remind students to speak in complete sentences as language practice for later, when those kids will start learning to read and write. The district also deploys staff differently than most do. Every elementary teacher, even the phys ed instructor, leads a reading class.

In this era of extreme partisan divide, there’s very little that unites conservatives and liberals. But both sides have long backed the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is also called the Nation’s Report Card. Now even this test, touted as the “gold standard” among all assessments, is in jeopardy. Mass layoffs, funding disruptions, and threats of future steep cuts are worrying those who are aware of the inner workings of the NAEP test.

There is a link between physical activity, screen time, and academic performance in high school students, according to the CDC’s 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Those with higher grades were more likely to be active, play on a sports team, and spend less time on screens. This downloadable guide—featuring data from the 2019 and 2023 surveys—provides insights into the link between students’ physical activity levels and their academic performance.

There was once a time when America’s lowest-performing students were improving just as much as the country’s top students. Despite their low scores, these students at the bottom made slow but steady gains on national tests for much of the 2000s. It was one sign that the U.S. education system was working, perhaps not spectacularly, but at least enough to help struggling students keep pace with the gains of the most privileged and successful. Today, the country’s lowest-scoring students are in free fall. Starting around 2013, something changed.

SLJ asked librarians to share with us how the loss of Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funding has/will impact their library. From the loss of Hoopla, databases, and Wi-Fi hotspots to the closing of rural branches, these stories document the devastating effect of the Trump administration’s policy decisions on public and school libraries across the country. Here are some of the responses.

Department of Education spokesperson Madi Biedermann said, “The Department is actively reviewing where [Education Department] programs can be responsibly managed to best serve students and families. This will be done in partnership with Congress, other agencies, and national and state education leaders.” Experts tell NPR any such move would be incredibly complicated. Special education laws are “intertwined” with the Education Department, says Katy Neas, a former deputy assistant secretary in the department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.

Many English language learners (ELLs) in upper elementary classrooms face the challenge of developing English proficiency while also mastering grade-level academic content. Here’s where project-based learning can help. Project-based learning (PBL) immerses students in meaningful inquiry, allowing them to engage with real-world topics while naturally acquiring language skills. Effective implementation, however, requires a thoughtful approach that integrates both content learning and language development. Clear academic and language objectives need to ensure that students engage deeply with the content while simultaneously developing listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills.

A bill that would require Colorado schools to screen early elementary students for dyslexia advanced out of a legislative committee Monday, marking a big win for advocates after years of effort. Starting in the 2026-27 school year, the bill would require schools to screen students in kindergarten through third grade for signs of dyslexia, a common learning disability that makes it hard to identify speech sounds, decode words, and spell them. The Senate Education Committee unanimously approved the bill Monday, sending the bill to the full Senate for consideration.

What makes for a “good” curriculum? It’s a simple question with no easy answer. Depending on who’s providing the definition, a good curriculum could mean one that aligns with state standards, or one that’s easy to use, or one that has studies demonstrating its effectiveness at improving student outcomes. In many states, leaders want districts to adopt “high-quality instructional materials,” and say that teachers should get “curriculum-based” training on how to use these programs. But two new surveys focused on math teaching show that educators’ understanding of these two terms varies widely—and often doesn’t align with how researchers define them.

Standardized testing isn’t perfect, and I am sympathetic to the argument that it can hamper teacher autonomy in the classroom. But there is evidence that without standardized testing, parents have little awareness of their children’s deficits, in part because of grade inflation — over the past few decades, test scores have gone down while grades have gone up. This issue, which predated the pandemic, is known as “the honesty gap.” If we no longer have reliable federal test scores to measure states against each other and see what’s working, we won’t even have these small wins. We won’t know they’re happening in the first place.

The former IES and NCES leader speaks candidly about radical cuts to the Education Department, government ‘stasis’ and the uncertain future of NAEP. In his view, the cuts offer an opportunity “to clean out the attic” of old, dusty policies and revitalize essential research functions. Those include the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which he maintains has lost its way and grown prohibitively expensive while in some cases duplicating the work of independent researchers.

Getting children to engage with reading is a high priority in West Virginia and across the U.S., where troubling results from the assessment dubbed the “nation’s report card” this year showed students continuing to fall further behind. In a country filled with struggling readers, the volunteer-led read-aloud program is one example of an approach that starts inside a classroom but is, very intentionally, meant to expand beyond those four walls. In other words, it takes a community — and a cultural shift — to develop strong readers. Today, roughly 1,000 volunteers – retirees, lawyers, parents, Air National Guard members, and a woman who reads books in braille — visit classrooms across the state each week. They’re not there to teach students how to read. Instead, it’s about nurturing excitement.

Honestly, every month is Poetry Month when you do it right. Now back in January, I happened to notice something a bit odd. 2025? Chock full of some SHOCKINGLY strong poetry! I mean, we’re only a couple months in and already I’ve been seeing scores of books with excellent verse. It all got me to thinking that maybe I should give these books their very own post today. So if you are looking for some of the best poetry of 2025, I haven’t seen everything out there yet, but I have been significantly wowed by the following books.

President Donald Trump has pledged to shutter the Department of Education but also promised that students with disabilities will keep getting the services they need. Special education advocates, school district officials and teachers say mass federal layoffs mean that too few people are left to carry out a complicated law intended to protect some of the nation’s most vulnerable students’ right to an education. Parents might not see an immediate difference in their children’s education, but experts warn Trump’s planned move could mean big changes in the classroom. Advocates are worried that oversight and support for schools would suffer because HHS does not have education expertise, and the needs of many children with disabilities are educational, not medical.

In a surprising turnaround, Mississippi, once ranked near the bottom of U.S. education standings, has dramatically improved its student literacy rates. As of 2023, the state ranks among the top 20 for fourth grade reading, a significant leap from its 49th-place ranking in 2013. This transformation was driven by evidence-based policy reforms focused on early literacy and teacher development. The rest of the country might want to take note. That’s because Mississippi’s success offers a proven solution to the reading literacy crisis facing many states — a clear road map for closing early literacy gaps and improving reading outcomes nationwide.

Attention to civics education often spikes during election years, as educators collectively wonder if they’ve done enough to prepare young people to become informed voters. That’s important, of course, but focusing on civics education only during federal election cycles misses a broader purpose: understanding how government works 365 days a year, fueling engagement over cynicism and offering young people the skills to solve common problems together.

A growth mindset in the classroom helps build resilience, social and emotional development, and confidence. These skills are essential for both children and adults. Kindergarten is a critical time to build these skills, as 5- and 6-year-olds are beginning to develop language, memory, and imagination, but they still struggle with perspective-taking and logical reasoning. Encouraging a growth mindset during this period helps children develop greater flexibility in thinking, resilience in problem-solving, and confidence in their abilities, laying the foundation for future academic and social success.