Today’s Literacy Headlines

Family engagement is the key to creating a joyful school community and hitting academic goals. Research has long shown that when parents and caregivers are involved and engaged with their children’s education — whether that’s by attending parent-teacher conferences or participating in school events — student achievement, motivation and social-emotional well-being increase. Parent involvement with reading activities has a positive impact on reading achievement, language comprehension, expressive language skills and level of attention in the classroom, according to the National Literacy Trust.

Strong parent partnerships are essential to effective special education, as collaboration between families and educators provides students with disabilities with academic, social and emotional, and behavioral support. While laws like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act mandate involvement, genuine collaboration requires ongoing, intentional effort. Building trust can be challenging when families have felt unheard or excluded. Because of this, it’s crucial that educators adopt proactive, empathetic, and inclusive practices. The following six strategies offer evidence-based ways to strengthen trust and foster meaningful family partnerships.

Two new graphic novels for kids feature alien beings that aren’t what they seem. One is a monster disguised as a helper. The other is a monster that turns out not to be monstrous after all.

The Trump administration will now release the federal funding for after-school and summer programs that districts and states expected to begin accessing July 1 but had been frozen by the Office of Management and Budget, OMB confirmed. The $1.3 billion for 21st Century Community Learning Centers was under review by OMB to ensure the funding aligned with Trump administration priorities. The weekslong delay had already caused cancellations and other disruptions to summer and school-year student services, according to educators, families, education organizations and lawmakers. Still under OMB review is about $5.6 billion in other K-12 funds, including programs for English learners, professional development, student academic supports, migrant services and adult education. OMB did not provide a time frame for the review or release of those funds.

In D.C., and N.Y., age cutoffs for kindergarten fall far into the school year. As Maureen Yusuf-Morales, who has worked at public, charter and independent schools, suggests, “Parents with children born after September should be allowed choice with guidance based on developmental milestones, as opposed to birthdays being the only hard-and-fast rule.” Here are some ways to level the playing field for the youngest students: grades with multiple classes can be broken up into three- or four-month bands, so students are learning with a narrower-aged peer group; and repeating a year should be a more acceptable option. Any steps taken to help New York City’s youngest learners would provide the largest experimental sample size in the country, making those results potentially beneficial for students across America. 

Beginning next school year, all of the city’s public schools — from elementary to high school — must pick from a list of at least nine city-approved intervention programs designed to help struggling readers, according to documents obtained by Chalkbeat. The city hopes “all NYC students become thriving readers and writers by 2035,” the document states. Intervention programs can involve a range of approaches. In elementary schools, for example, teachers may pull students into small groups to go over phonics concepts from earlier grade levels to reinforce the relationships between sounds and letters. In high school, some campuses use online platforms to help build vocabulary and comprehension skills.

For this final piece in The Century Foundation’s focus group series with teachers of English learners (ELs), we discuss the evolving practices around literacy. We asked teachers to reflect on how their practices have changed in recent years, both in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and in the country’s ongoing shift away from Readers Workshop and “whole language” literacy instruction. No matter what sort of literacy program their state, district, or school prescribes, one thing was clear: from California to Massachusetts, from novices to veterans, our teachers reported that English learners were not a high priority in the general education English Language Arts classroom. 

Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which President Trump signed into law on July 4, imposes a host of new obligations on the scaled-down department. Here’s what to know about the changes students, K-12 schools and colleges can expect now that the legislation is officially law: K-12 school vouchers are going national (sort of); Medicaid changes and K-12 schools; cuts to food assistance would also impact school meals; and an increase to the Child Tax Credit

In the Fox C-6 district outside of St. Louis, elementary reading teachers are in the process of shifting their practice, moving from a balanced-literacy approach to a “structured” approach, one that aligns with the evidence base behind how children learn to read. The district implemented new curriculum materials as part of the change. It had planned to offer some follow-up training sessions and coaching this fall to help teachers integrate the resources into their classrooms, funded by federal money designated for professional development, said Tracy Haggerty, the district’s assistant superintendent for teaching and learning. But the U.S. Department of Education’s decision to withhold that money, alongside billions of other grant funding districts rely on, means Fox C-6 will have to find another way to pay for the PD—sending Haggerty’s district scrambling to adjust its plans. “We are depending on that money in order to properly train our elementary teachers in literacy,” Haggerty said. It’s a problem that seems to be happening nationwide.

Young students are showing notable improvements in their early reading skills since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, new research shows.  About 68% of K-2 students are on track to learn to read, according to end-of-school-year assessment data from DIBELS, the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills. That’s a jump from mid-school-year data that showed only 56% of K-2 students were ready to learn to read. Disappointing reading results throughout K-12 post-COVID spurred states and districts to invest in professional development in science of reading for teachers and reading supports for students.

Walk into any Rhode Island classroom, and you will meet a growing number of students who speak a language other than English at home. The state sees this as an opportunity, not a deficit. Over the past five years, Rhode Island has deepened its commitment to ensuring all students, including multilingual learners, have access to rigorous, high-quality instructional materials and that teachers have the necessary training to implement them. While overall gaps still exist in the state, students who recently exited multilingual-learner status are now outperforming peers who are native English speakers on statewide exams.

Tennessee students continued to show post-pandemic progress on statewide testing this year, though a majority of third graders fell short of hitting a critical reading benchmark. More third graders scored proficient this year, with 41.7% compared to 40.9% on last year’s reading test, according to testing data released this week by the Tennessee Department of Education. That leaves 58.3% of third graders statewide who fell short of the benchmark, a critical trigger for Tennessee’s third grade reading law that calls for students to repeat the grade if they cannot show improvement or complete certain reading interventions.

The tech industry’s campaign to embed artificial intelligence chatbots in classrooms is accelerating. The American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest U.S. teachers’ union, said on Tuesday that it would start an A.I. training hub for educators with $23 million in funding from three leading chatbot makers: Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic. The union said it planned to open the National Academy for A.I. Instruction in New York City, starting with hands-on workshops for teachers this fall on how to use A.I. tools for tasks like generating lesson plans.

“At the end of the day, our users are librarians, the experts in information literacy, and also the experts in collection development,” says Shelley Diaz, SLJ reviews director. With them in mind, SLJ editors assemble titles that we know will resonate with our readers and the kids they serve, she adds. So, booklists in hand, what do readers actually do with them? Librarians were quick to respond to my query. Learning the specific, practical application of these resources can enlighten our work. But also noteworthy is a commonality running throughout, and that’s trust in the curation and a mutual sense of good faith between curator and reader.

Based on the collective lessons from the districts, we argue that enacting the transformational change needed to effectively support ELs requires: (1) strong district and school leadership, (2) consistent professional learning to prepare educators to implement rigorous and research-based instructional strategies across the curriculum, and (3) genuine home-school collaboration that enriches students’ educational experiences. The brief includes questions at the end of each section to help educators consider how to transform their approach to educating linguistically diverse students.

Story time can be effective in guiding students—even middle schoolers—to recognize the possibilities of producing their own writing. Utilizing texts that students connect with and view as accessible models can bring joy and confidence back into writing instruction. The following picture books aim to help you do just that.

Papilio is an enthusiastic and adventurous caterpillar. Then she’s a blob of goo, hanging out in her chrysalis. Her main goal in life? Metamorphose into a butterfly and learn to fly! Papilio is a children’s story told in three parts, about three stages of a butterfly’s life, written and illustrated by three friends: Ben Clanton, Corey R. Tabor, and Andy Chou Musser.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — signed into law 50 years ago this November — guarantees a free, appropriate public education (FAPE) to students with disabilities. The law requires schools to provide individualized learning supports to students, as well as related services like physical or speech therapy. IDEA also helps states operate early intervention programs for infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families. Many consider IDEA not just an education law, but also a civil rights law that provides due process protections for students and families. Here’s what is critical for school districts and their educators to be aware of in their responsibilities for serving students with disabilities.

This honor is reserved for those who have made outstanding contributions to multiple facets of literacy development, including research, theory, and practice. Recipients have decades of impactful research to their name, making the honor akin to a lifetime achievement award. For more than four decades, Joshi has built a prolific career that exemplifies a rigorous integration of literacy theory, cross-linguistic research, and impactful educational practice. He has published over 125 journal articles and 21 books relating to literacy development. Joshi also co-developed the Componential Model of Reading alongside P. G. Aaron, a framework that dissected literacy into decoding, language comprehension, and reading fluency, helping to identify specific interventions for students with dyslexia and learning difficulties. 

When teachers bring this fun formative assessment game into a lesson, they get a snapshot of what students have understood, and what they haven’t. Another benefit of this practice? “ I think a lot of kids struggle with being quiet,” says second grade teacher Kathy-Ann St. Hill-St. Lawrence. “A lot of them don’t have designated quiet time, and so then they have problems focusing. That’s a skill in this digital age that some kids have lost. 

Jessica Pack, a 6th grade language arts teacher at James Workman Middle School in Riverside County, Calif., has been using AI tools to bolster reading comprehension lessons and build metacognitive skills as well as digital citizenship skills. Research shows that asking students to monitor and correct their own understanding of text as they read can boost their comprehension — though using AI for this purpose hasn’t been studied extensively.

Working memory typically holds two to seven pieces of information at a time. In the education context, working memory is what allows students to recall directions a teacher gave, create a plan for what they need to do, or encode (map) a new strategy for a problem. Explicitly teaching brain-based memory strategies can help students build their executive function skills.

“Rebels, Robbers and Radicals” brings the document alive through court cases of real people involved in real struggles. Nearly daily, the front page of The New York Times is filled with the clash between an expansive executive branch and the responses of an embattled judiciary. Yet for many young people the most compelling current events are the swells and trends of the digital world. In “Rebels, Robbers and Radicals: The Story of the Bill of Rights,” Teri Kanefield sets out to reveal to those screenagers the architecture of laws and beliefs that undergirds this nation. Can she engage her readers and prove that a 234-year-old document matters to them? Yes.

Morning Edition host Melorie Begay checked in with WKAR’s Director of Education Robin Pizzo to see what tips she has to encourage summer reading. Her number one tip: Read, read, read, read all summer long. Get your kids out and about to libraries, to different educational events and find books that will fascinate them, and let them choose those books. We find in research that children who choose the stories that they read become lovers of stories.

“Early in my teaching career, I noticed that elementary school–aged multilingual learners heavily relied on me to make sense of grade-level content. Research on how multilingual learners process language and content helped me see that simply passing along unfamiliar English language development (ELD) actually added to students’ cognitive demands. I asked myself what the purpose of each support was and when I wanted students to use it. Then I started explicitly teaching metacognitive skills like I would anything else. An increase in student independence, engagement, and academic growth followed.” Here, the educator describes three common supports—visuals, sentence frames, and pair-share—and explained how teachers can provide elementary school multilingual learners with the metacognitive skills they need to effectively integrate those supports.

The money, which was allocated by Congress, helps pay for after-school programs, support for students learning English and other services. The administration offered little explanation, saying only that the funds were under review. It gave no timeline for when, or if, the money would be released, saying instead that it was “committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the president’s priorities.” “It’s catastrophic,” said Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance, a group that works to expand after-school services for students. She estimated that the federal dollars for after-school and summer-school programs — about $1.3 billion annually — support 1.4 million students, mostly lower income, representing about 20 percent of all students in after-school programs nationally.

During the summer, some children continue to read for enjoyment, play board games with their families, take vacations, play outside, and attend summer camps with enrichment activities — these are all completely normal and commendable ways to spend summer vacation, and parents shouldn’t feel guilty for prioritizing these activities. First and foremost, ensure your kids are reading a few minutes each day and look for opportunities to participate in a summer reading program at your local library. Also have your kids complete a math workshop once a week — and to make sure their time scrolling YouTube or Instagram is strictly limited. In this article, find other things you can do to prevent the summer slide.

In preschool, unstructured time isn’t a break from learning, it’s where learning often takes root. When children are given space to explore their interests, at their own pace, and follow their curiosity, they engage in deep, authentic learning that can’t be replicated through adult-led instruction alone. And it’s not only about academic readiness, it’s about nurturing the foundational skills that help children thrive for life. During this time, learners may engage in solving problems (“How do I build this tower taller?”); practicing communication skills (“Can I play with you?”); and even exploring cause and effect, their imaginations, and emotions. Here are four key ways unstructured time supports children’s development, and how teachers can make the most of and even elevate this powerful part of the school day.

In 2022, Linda Darling-Hammond, State Board of Education president, said only a handful of districts — thankfully, including San Diego Unified — gave adequate emphasis to phonics, long recognized as the gold standard of reading instruction. At long last, Gov. Gavin Newsom loudly backed the “science of reading,” teacher unions stopped defending the status quo, and, on June 5, the Assembly unanimously passed a bill requiring schools to phase in phonics-based instruction in early education. If approved by the state Senate, as seems inevitable, all districts must use phonics beginning in 2026.

When generative AI entered classrooms, it promised a revolution. For many teachers, it delivered an avalanche of tools instead. While edtech vendors race to integrate AI into every aspect of teaching and learning, educators are drawing clearer boundaries: AI should save them time, not replace their judgment. They want support for differentiation, not decision-making. Most of all, they want tools that align with the values and realities of teaching. The most consistent theme among educators is a desire for AI to tackle time-consuming, repetitive tasks that don’t require human judgment or relationship-building. Administrative work and basic instructional support are at the top of their wish lists.

It’s a summer day and it’s too hot to play outside. Your child is glued to a screen, content to spend their day with air-conditioning and digital media. Sound familiar? It’s the time of year when many parents are waging a war against technology – while it’s fun to have an inside lazy day now and then, these can add up quickly without school. And with fall on the horizon, the summer slide is a looming threat to school-aged children. How to get your kids to read this summer? Here are five tips to try with your household this summer, plus reading suggestions for books that’ll keep kids engaged. 

By developing — and revisiting — an instructional roadmap that connects standards, activities, and skill development, these teachers at Barbara Morgan STEM Academy in Meridian, Idaho, put students on a path toward mastery. A key part of managing these complex PBL units is a learning map, a tool that helps teachers break down an essential question and identify the academic skills that students will need to master the content at hand. The district carves out weekly planning time for all teachers, to discuss their current PBL unit and check it against the learning map. They analyze progress, identify gaps, and plan activities—always keeping their essential question at the center.

Parents are increasingly worried about their children’s screen time. A new study from the nonprofit Education Development Center finds podcasts could help with learning — which could cut down on other media consumption. The report, which polled 110 low-income families across the U.S., found podcasts seemed to spark creative play and conversations among children. Podcasts can also serve as a supplement for children who may not be reading at their own grade level by introducing new vocabulary and concepts.

A reliable and valid assessment of student achievement  — the National Assessment of Educational Progress — has been a valuable compass for helping policymakers, researchers and school leaders alike navigate the path forward and, critically, drive improvements for students with disabilities. The need for a reliable compass is greater now more than ever before. As policy and research leaders at the National Center for Learning Disabilities, an organization with nearly 50 years of experience advocating for the rights of individuals with learning disabilities, we fear the country may be entering an era in which we will be navigating this path without a reliable compass.

As the school year ends, it’s easy for kids to want to forget about school and learning but the loss of knowledge that comes from not being in school is real. Known as the summer slide, this academic loss can be prevented. There are plenty of ways to keep summer learning fun so kids stay engaged and don’t lose important knowledge. There are many ways to keep summer learning fun and here are 24 different ideas to keep kids motivated to learn when they’re not in school.

Louisiana is the only state where students’ reading scores have improved since 2019. Officials credit the state’s new policies, and now, the final piece is taking effect. Starting this year, schools must hold back third graders who fail to pass the state’s reading test unless they qualify for an exemption, including if a child is diagnosed with dyslexia or new to the country and still learning English. Students who attend charter schools are also exempt. Nearly a quarter of Louisiana’s third graders did not pass the test on their first try in April. Students could retake the test in May and have one final chance this summer.

At age 3, children learn language best through play and the back-and-forth with caregivers who talk, read and sing to them, says Susan Neuman, a professor of childhood and literacy education at New York University. Parents might read nursery rhymes, a powerful tool that teaches children rhymes they remember throughout their lives. “That’s really essential. Oral language is the foundation of early literacy, and that’s what we need to do at 3 or 4.” Research suggests these oral skills may actually prove more valuable than learning to read early: Children who learn their letters early may be more “school ready” in kindergarten, but that benefit fades quickly as other children catch up. A strong vocabulary in the early years, however, predicts school readiness in the fourth grade, Neuman said.

Every summer, many families across the country receive suggested — or required — reading lists from schools. And every summer, it’s likely some version of the same battle begins: Kids push back against reading expectations and parents try to motivate them. Or parents may be unaware whether their older kid is reading at all. “For most children, [summer reading] becomes summer homework and for parents it becomes something to fuss about over the summer,” says Senior Lecturer Pamela Mason. “With summer reading, the explicit problem we’re trying to solve is summer melt, keeping learners reading over the summer so that they at least maintain their level of reading skill. But we all know motivation is so key.” A good place to begin is letting kids choose what they read. Motivation increases when kids have autonomy over what they read. 

Newark Public Schools will use a new artificial intelligence tool this fall to help identify students who may be struggling to read, as part of the state’s new literacy plan aimed at boosting early reading skills. The Newark school board last week approved the use of Amira, an AI-powered literacy tool, as a universal screener, an assessment given to students to identify who may be at risk for reading difficulties. Under the state’s new Literacy Framework, New Jersey school districts are required to screen students in grades K-3 starting this fall. Amira is designed to assess student reading deficiencies and improve reading skills through personalized intervention plans based on individual needs.

Recent research from NWEA, an assessment and research company, found several common roadblocks to family-school partnerships. The organization highlighted the need for improved collaborations — especially as schools continue to recover from COVID-19-related setbacks — and offered strategies to strengthen family-school connections. Educators should have frequent, ongoing communication with families and share complete pictures of student academic progress.

Visit the aquatic hereafter in a fantasy, then track down threats on Martha’s Vineyard in a taut contemporary suspense novel. “Graciela in the Abyss,” Medina’s first work in the magical realist fantasy genre, is the more ambitious of the two novels in terms of scope and the world it renders. Anna and Elena Balbusso’s mesmeric illustrations accompany Medina’s graceful and gently eerie narrative about a sea ghost who must find purpose beyond the material contours of mortality. “Blood in the Water” takes place in a similarly nautical environment, although its milieu and its characters’ motivations differ.

California first touted its plan for “universal pre-K” in 2021, pushing for a full rollout by the 2025-2026 school year. As the start of that academic year nears in August, the state has largely kept its promise that all 4-year-olds can attend a high-quality early learning program for free. But with the rollout comes what many call growing pains, including unclear guidelines, fluctuating curricula and a potential drop in the number of teachers available.
Among the hurdles is helping families — and educators themselves — understand one of the flagship offerings of the program: transitional kindergarten.

Kylene Beers, PhD, a beloved member of the International Literacy Association for 35 years, passed away on June 20. A tireless advocate for literacy and beloved educator and author, Kylene’s work transformed how we teach and engage with young readers. Kylene began her career as a middle school teacher, where she first recognized the disconnect many struggling readers experienced with traditional instruction. That insight became the foundation for a career devoted to closing that gap—not through rigid prescriptions, but with compassion, curiosity, and trust in every student’s potential for learning. Her groundbreaking book When Kids Can’t Read, What Teachers Can Do became a beacon for educators seeking practical strategies for teaching literacy.

The Horn Book, Inc., established in 1924, has announced the 2025 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winners. First presented in 1967, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards celebrate excellence in children’s and young adult literature. The picture book award winner is I Know How to Draw an Owl by Hilary Horder Hippely. “This year’s winners and honorees represent such a wide range of what books for young people can be and say,” said Elissa Gershowitz, Editor in Chief of The Horn Book, Inc. 

Now, as multisensory instruction has become a hallmark of the “science of reading” movement, some educators and advocates have started to question its necessity, raising new questions about programs that feature the techniques, laws that prescribe it, and training that includes it among other early-reading elements. Several meta-analyses suggest that adding in these multisensory components doesn’t provide a definitive edge in reading ability over other forms of explicit, systematic instruction in foundational skills.

The University of Florida Learning Institute (UFLI) curriculum was developed over the course of nearly 30 years, refined along the way as University of Florida developers piloted their work-in-progress with cooperating Florida districts. Teachers were invited to critique the curriculum as well as to share fun or effective tricks for how to put across each concept. Having classroom teachers field test curricula components is rare. As a result, when the program was published in 2023, it included a wealth of downloadable materials, detailed lesson plans, activities, and assessments. Compass School in North Kingstown, RI adopted it in 2023.

By the time these innovators had finished their projects, they had designed four new resources and approaches for engaging with families in their districts, working with and eliciting feedback from parents along the way. Their simple tools and techniques, which can be borrowed and adapted in schools and districts around the country, are examples of low-cost solutions that can have a big impact in building trust and creating conditions for lasting relationships between parents, caregivers, school leaders, and teachers. These relationships build social capital, strengthening communities in the long run.

Here’s how it works at my school: Every morning, for 45 minutes, all students in grades K–2 receive Tier 1 instruction using Reading Horizons. That’s 14 classrooms running simultaneously, including general education teachers and interventionists. To begin, we administer a spelling inventory aligned to the Reading Horizons scope and sequence. Based on those results, we create skill-based groups — regardless of students’ ages or grade levels. Groups range from letters and sounds coupled with phonemic awareness (more foundational), all the way to multisyllabic decoding and comprehension strategies (more advanced).

The U.S. Department of Education and the White House are moving to pull national funding from the Public Broadcasting Service. As PBS leaders fight the loss of funding, they argue that it may not only spell the end of PBS programming like “Arthur,” “Clifford the Big Red Dog” and “The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!”; it could also be detrimental to the foundation of research focused on children’s media. And when there are more options than ever for children’s entertainment, advocates say that producing research-backed, high-quality, non-commercial options for families — particularly those who live in low-resource areas — has never been so important.

 “So Many Years: A Juneteenth Story” is such a perfect example of how to pack an emotional punch with a spare text and exquisite art. The celebrated author of Ezra Jack Keats Award winner Nell Plants a Tree and a Caldecott Honor artist come together for a poetic picture book introduction to Juneteenth and its origin.

Students can have fun and learn a lot by making some 21st-century linguistic and thematic tweaks to the Bard’s plays. For the past nine years, I’ve been running after-school drama clubs for upper elementary students focused on adapting Shakespeare’s plays. Now, as a third-grade teacher in an Oregon public school, I’ve continued the after-school drama club—called the Pine Ridge Players—using the same process I started back in 2016. Yet, this year’s show is different from all the previous ones. This time, we’re modernizing Macbeth to incorporate widely held concerns about the influence that technology has on society.

Ellen Oh is the co-founder of We Need Diverse Books, the nonprofit organization that advocates for diversity in all aspects of the book publishing industry. As part of WNDB’s 10th-anniversary celebration this year, Oh is being honored by Dav Pilkey and Sayuri Pilkey, who recently established a grant in Oh’s name for creators of Asian heritage. Having served as WNDB’s executive director for 10 years, Oh stepped back a year ago and currently serves as an honorary trustee. PW spoke with Oh about the group’s beginnings, its accomplishments, the impact of book bans, and what people can do to combat censorship.

Two youth-related divisions of the American Library Association, which originated as one association in 1941 but have been separate entities since 1957, have announced plans to reunify. The Young Adult Library Services Association, dedicated to serving teens, will be dissolved and its membership activities merged with the Association for Library Service to Children. By fusing the two divisions, ALSC can rethink member dues, unify committees, and streamline operations. Bittner believes that having a single division will mean “improved financial viability” and help staff “focus on unified goals and initiatives, and creating more efficient workflows.”

Families and caregivers are more essential than ever in supporting children’s learning. Based on my research, I offer four ways to support children’s summer learning in ways that feel playful and engaging but still foster their interest, confidence and skills in STEM. #1: Look for “problems” in or around your home to engineer a solution for.

Teachers can amplify students’ creativity by showing them how to demonstrate their learning with multimedia applications. “I love Science class!” exclaims a third-grade student. Why? Because she’s getting to show her learning by creating a podcast. This year, our third-grade students were empowered to take ownership of their learning by developing graphics, writing scripts, and even creating songs to teach their audiences all about energy.

When the California Assembly passed a bill last week adopting the so-called “science of reading,” a literacy approach that emphasizes phonics, it was a sign of progress. More than 40 states have taken similar measures, but California was one of the last holdouts. The bill advances phonics and other skills like comprehension and reading fluency, but its adoption is only voluntary. The state would only be encouraging school districts and teachers to revamp their reading instruction, not mandating it. Some school districts have already started transitioning to a more phonics-friendly curriculum, including Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles Unified. 

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has repeatedly said that the February and March cancellations and firings at her department cut not only the “fat” but also into some of the “muscle” of the federal role in education. So, even as she promises to dismantle her department, she is also bringing back some people and restarting some activities. Court filings and her own congressional testimony illuminate what this means for the agency as a whole, and for education research in particular. 

As literacy coaches and bilingual educators, we work alongside teachers across a variety of classrooms: general education, bilingual, and special education. One of the most versatile and underutilized tools we see time and again is the bilingual picturebook. These books don’t just support language learners — they elevate comprehension, vocabulary, and engagement for all students.

Research indicates that learning to spell is directly correlated with improved reading and writing skills, especially for young learners. Yet many schools across the country no longer do spelling tests and have cut explicit spelling instruction from their curriculum. Spelling bees can help fill the gaps. Experts told Education Week that spelling bees are both educational and enjoyable for kids, in part because they allow for some friendly competition. “Some people think of it as memorization, but the national spelling bee is not memorization at all. It is the origin of the word and where it comes from—it’s quite amazing, actually,” said Nikki Montana, the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee Educator of the Year and an instructional coach at Edwin Forrest Elementary School in Philadelphia.

George and Martha and Frog and Toad are among the most memorable duos in children’s literature, beloved for the way their relationships convey the true value of friendship. Their creators, James Marshall (George and Martha) and Arnold Lobel (Frog and Toad), are now the subjects of two picture book biographies, JIM! Six True Stories About One Great Artist: James Marshall by Jerrold Connors, released by Dial in May; and Outside In and the Inside Out by Emmy Kastner, about Lobel’s life, due out from Viking on September 23.