Today’s Literacy Headlines

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve spent years using theater games to foster young people’s abilities to think on their feet, building their communication, collaboration, and social and emotional learning (SEL) skills. I have developed a way to help students build their ideas by playing theater games, and I call it “writing on your feet.” This is a kind of hybrid of improv and sketch that incorporates content in meaningful ways, allowing students to tap into their intuition, brainstorm collaboratively, and generate quantities of ideas that would not be possible if they were working alone, staring at a blank page or a blinking cursor.

Educators are doing many things right: They are consistently delivering explicit phonics instruction that includes a clear purpose using high-quality foundational skills curricula. But something critical was often absent from those same lessons: the opportunity to connect sounds and words to meaning. In a previous report, we explored how meaning is often missing in the tasks that upper elementary students are assigned — for instance, finding literal and nonliteral language in a reading passage but not what the author was trying to convey. 

Some special educators say part of what makes them feel overworked is legally required paperwork layered on top of regular teaching duties. Special ed teacher Mary Acebu is one of a growing number of teachers around the nation using AI to help speed up that paperwork — including for writing individualized education programs (IEPs). It’s helped her instead use precious time for student interaction. “I have time to talk to the kiddos and really build those relationships,” she says, “instead of sitting here in front of my computer.”

Summer library activities help you prevent learning loss while encouraging children and families to maintain strong reading habits during school breaks. our library can be an accessible community learning hub where readers explore books and collaborative experiences that keep literacy engagement active throughout the summer months. The most effective ones encourage active participation while making reading feel collaborative and accessible. These activities combine education, social interaction, and hands-on learning experiences that keep readers connected throughout the break.

Now in its fourth year, the Education Scorecard (a collaboration between the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, and faculty at Dartmouth College) provides a mixed picture of American education: a post-pandemic math rebound and early signals that comprehensive literacy reforms are beginning to pay off. In its assessment of literacy scores, the report found that Science of Reading reforms are making a difference––but not everywhere. The recovery in reading appears to be related to state early-literacy reforms. All of the states which improved in reading between 2022 and 2025 were implementing comprehensive science of reading reforms (DC, IN, KY, MD, MN, MS, LA, and TN).

At Hunt Elementary School in Springdale, Arkansas, the third grade teaching team has some of the highest educator growth scores in the state, a measure of how well their students meet or exceed academic growth benchmarks in all subjects. The four teachers’ classrooms are located in a circle in a third-grade wing of Hunt Elementary. Students don’t stay in one classroom for the entire year, or even for the entire day. Instead, the four educators share students depending on their skill level.

Many parents have heard the warning: Don’t use baby talk with babies and toddlers. Instead, caregivers are often encouraged to speak properly and use adultlike language, out of concern that simplified speech could confuse children or delay language development. But some research suggests the opposite is true. The sing-song voice many adults instinctively use with infants, sometimes called “baby talk” but more accurately known as “parentese” or infant-directed speech, actually helps children learn language. Far from confusing babies, exaggerating phrases like “Loooook at the doggie!” capture their attention, help them detect patterns in speech and strengthen social bonding.

Researchers warn that the U.S. is experiencing a reading recession — a slide predating the pandemic’s disruptions in schooling. Scholars at Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth analyzed state test scores from third to eighth grade for over 5,000 school districts in 38 states, allowing comparisons across school districts and states in a national Education Scorecard. What they found was sobering: Only five states plus the District of Columbia had meaningful growth in reading test scores from 2022 to 2025. Nationally, students remain nearly half a grade level behind pre-pandemic reading scores and only slightly better in math. While schools have focused on catching kids up since the Covid-19 pandemic upended education, reading test scores have been falling since 2013 for eighth graders and 2015 for fourth graders, according to the National Assessment for Educational Progress.

The real power of a doorway greeting is not in the choreography. It is in the connection. After years of working with students and schools as a social worker, district administrator and consultant, I’ve learned that the ages and settings may change, but the need is remarkably consistent: Students want to know that someone is glad they are there. Research suggests that this small routine can make a measurable difference. In one study, classrooms where teachers greeted students at the door saw a 20 percentage point increase in academic engagement and a 9 percentage point decrease in disruptive behavior. The researchers estimated that this kind of increase in engagement could add roughly an extra hour of engagement across a five-hour instructional day.

Reading children’s literature in adulthood isn’t just a nostalgia impulse or an exercise to undertake in the context of sharing stories with kids. Incorporating these books into a literary diet—whether or not a person has children—can help anyone to see and hear with fresh eyes and ears, to find or rediscover wonder in the large (mountain ranges, the moon) and the small (a hummingbird, a smile, a square). 

Screens are everywhere these days. So, it seems, is the debate surrounding their role in children’s development. Much of the conversation about how much and what type of screen time is appropriate for young kids is focused on the use of digital technology at home, under the purview of a child’s parents and primary caregivers. But the reality is that a majority of children age 5 and under spend at least part of their week in an early care and education setting, where screen time may be less visible, but is often present in some form. And when communication between parents and early educators falls short, young children may end up spending more time with screens than experts recommend — and their parents intend. 

At Sharswood, the share of students who were proficient or advanced in reading jumped 11 percentage points — to 43 percent — in the 2024-25 school year over the previous year, the first year using the District’s new science of reading curriculum. That result far outshone what happened District-wide, where proficiency rates dipped slightly from 34 percent to 33 percent compared to 2023-24. The school believes a combination of factors have likely contributed to Sharswood’s successful curriculum implementation: the curriculum itself, but also how a strong principal implemented it, while maintaining high teacher morale and zero staff vacancies. Sharswood teachers are given flexibility, have time to spend on learning the curriculum instead of covering for absent teachers, and, critically, receive support when they request it, including from a specialized onsite literacy coach.

Americans are increasingly listening to audiobooks instead of reading books. There is evidence that reading and listening activate the same areas of the brain. Other studies find that reading develops cognitive skills in ways that listening to an audiobook cannot. A 2022 meta-analysis of 46 studies found that when participants were not able to control the pace of listening, they scored lower on general comprehension and were less able to make inferences about the text compared to those who were reading. Pacing, re-reading, and the visual clues of written words are important components of reading a book, Sternberg explains. When listening to a book, you may have no idea what a new word looks like and how it’s spelled—and it’s more difficult to go back to a passage that you found important.

Leaders of this midsized, mid-Atlantic district were perplexed. The district had recently invested heavily in early-childhood education. It expanded universal free preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, scheduled daily two-hour literacy blocks in the early grades—divided among phonics, comprehension, and needs-based small-group instruction—and provided common, coordinated planning time for teachers. Despite these efforts, the district continued to see wide disparities in literacy assessment among K-2 students—not just between schools but from classroom to classroom. To understand why students’ scores hadn’t improved uniformly, the district partnered with the nonprofit SERP Institute (Strategic Education Research Partnership). Close observations of classroom literacy blocks revealed two key findings. First, how teachers allocate instructional time during literacy blocks matters—in unexpected ways. Secondly, students performed better on standardized assessments when teachers routinely taught new vocabulary and encouraged more than one-word responses during comprehension lessons.

Something is happening in America’s elementary classrooms. After decades of reading wars, policy stalemates, and children quietly falling behind, teachers across the country are embracing the science of reading. At least 40 states have enacted science of reading laws. Professional development programs like LETRS have reached a third of the nation’s K–3 teachers. And as the Fordham survey makes clear, teachers who have gone through these types of training know more and teach better. Yet, even as progress spreads, it isn’t reaching everyone equally. And the students most likely to be left behind are those who can least afford it. Four important challenges remain.

Should kids be held back in third grade if they can’t read? As of this year, 18 states say yes and impose some form of retention policy linked to a child’s reading scores, according to the advocacy group ExcelInEd. But the question of retention has been hotly debated as a tool to drive reading scores, with Ohio weakening its version in 2023 and Michigan dropping its requirement in 2024. But there’s one argument that, in my opinion, tips the scales in favor of third grade reading laws. In threatening to hold students back if they haven’t been taught to read properly, states are warning the adults to make sure each child is on track in literacy.

The incessant buzz of student chatter in a classroom can challenge even the most patient of early education teachers. The impulse to hush children can be strong and, at times, appropriate. But it’s also critical for teachers to create space during the school day for early learners to practice talking, experts say. “When we talk about language, in particular, what’s really important is usage. Hearing language is one thing, but actually using it, and having fun with it, and playing with it, is another,” MaryKate DeSantis, a reading specialist and educational consultant, told EdWeek.

Mac Barnett is an author of children’s books, otherwise known as books, including but not limited to “The First Cat In Space” graphic novel series, “Sam And Dave Dig A Hole,” “The Great Zapfino,” “Extra Yarn.” He’s also the current U.S. national ambassador for young people’s literature, and he gets asked all the time when he plans on writing a book for adults. Barnett is the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and has a new, short book about writing for kids: “Make Believe.” He talks with NPR’s Elissa Nadworny about it. 

Instruction often focuses on teaching students how to decipher and analyze an author’s purpose in the texts they read. While this work is prioritized in the classroom, students should also think about and name their own purpose for reading. It is important to teach about the reader’s purpose just as explicitly and commonly as we do the author’s purpose. While considering the author’s purpose requires readers to exercise their analytical skills, knowing their own purpose for reading invites them to engage in metacognition and reflection, and ultimately build their own personal connection to reading.

Join the Progressive Policy Institute and The 74 for a special Friday conversation about the education turnaround in Mississippi. The national media has extensively covered the state’s literacy breakthroughs, and other local leaders are now beginning to try to replicate some of the same strategies. But what policymakers may not realize is that the story is larger and more complex than the adoption of any single policy, and states should understand this complexity if they want to spark the same success.

These tips help elementary teachers purposefully select digital tools that provide students a chance to express themselves. This teacher developed the 5 Cs — (1) Clickable: removing barriers to participation, (2) Choice: multimodal options, (3) Curation: focus on synthesis, (4) Collaboration: shared digital spaces, and (5) Connection: the authentic audience.