Today’s Literacy Headlines

Last week was a big one for the editorial staff of this newsletter. Our very own Mac Barnett was officially appointed to a two year term as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress. The roster of past ambassadors is a list of truly great writers for children, and I dare say Mac fits very nicely on it. I spoke to Mac via text, on what I assume is still a secure line, about his thoughts on the appointment and what the position entails. 

The nation needs more education research, not an end to it. Here are five ideas for a more strategic, agile, relevant and impact-driven federal agency: better implementation, adherence to evidence-based practices, tackling the hard questions, better data collection and usage, and focusing on the most urgent educational challenges — such as “eliminate the early literacy gap by 2035.”

The students of MagTV at Magnolia Elementary School know all about podcasts: Last year, they made their own. It told the story of their classmate who had a sudden and life-changing accident, and it was chosen as one of the fourth grade winners of NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge. Now, a year later, MagTV students are gathered to brainstorm ideas for their next podcast. Much of MagTV’s work is centered around community. When they aren’t podcasting, the students practice their reporting and production skills by working on their news show. They put together a 30-minute episode each month, watch it with their class and upload it to their YouTube channel.

Much has been written about the “Mississippi miracle.” Many other states have learned from Mississippi’s 2013 Literacy Based Promotion Act and mimicked Mississippi’s policies and teacher trainings. However, there is one move that Mississippi leaders made that I have not seen any other state implement. Given Mississippi’s outsized gains, I think it is a move worth lifting. Mississippi leaders wanted to improve teacher coaching. Rather than sending money to schools or districts so they could hire coaches, the state hired eighty-five full-time teacher coaches and sent them to schools. They managed the coaches at the state level.

When Mississippi lawmakers in 2013 approved legislation to improve students’ basic reading skills, it fell to State Superintendent Carey Wright to make it happen. She ensured that all K-3 teachers were trained in the “Science of Reading” and hired literacy coaches at schools that had the highest percentage of low-achievers. To guide the effort, Wright turned to the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, based at Florida State University, one of 10 federally funded labs nationwide. Little-known even among many educators, the labs, created by Congress in 1965, work with states and school districts to implement research-based practices.​

Debi Ryan has worked in a public school setting for about two decades, following a stint in the medical track of speech language pathology. Over the years, she says, public awareness of her role has improved. When she started out, few people knew what her work entailed. Today, though, many know not only what a speech language pathologist does, but often, they know a loved one who has been helped by one too. Ryan is part of a team of 26 speech language pathologists at Huntley Community School District 158 in Algonquin, Illinois, which serves around 8,000 students. “We’re everywhere now,” she says of those in the profession. “You can’t separate what we do from a student’s academic success.”

[We] cannot let reading become another bygone practice. In their more than eight hours of screen time a day, on average, students navigate a galaxy of mediated experiences; schools need to be a bastion of the analog experience of the physical book. The study of English involves more than reading. It includes written expression and the cultivation of an authentic voice. But the comprehension of literature, on which the study of English is based, is rooted in the pleasure of reading.

How do we build foundational literacy skills in preschool? We turn to the research. Cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene’s research supports integrating authentic language and literacy skills in children’s everyday experiences before kindergarten. Children learn many important skills in preschool that will build literacy skills, but none as critical as the following three: print awareness, phonological awareness, and phonics. In this article, I’ll share activities implemented in my classroom when I was a teacher, as well as activities that my teachers have implemented over the years.

The third graders in Steubenville, Ohio, are among the best young readers in the nation. For nearly 20 years, 93% or more of them have scored proficient on state reading tests. In fact, the elementary schools in this economically depressed area are producing better readers than some of the wealthiest places in the country.

A virtual wrecking ball took aim last Monday at the relatively small, wonky corner of the Department of Education: evaluation studies and data collection. Researchers described the canceled projects as rigorous evaluations of how the federal government spends education dollars, efforts to improve the reading and math skills of U.S. students and guides for teachers on evidence-based methods of instruction. Many of the projects were near completion and had mostly been paid out, which means that the implied savings are likely much less than $881 million touted by DOGE. DOGE also terminated masses of census-like data collections that are used to track student trends and help schools make informed decisions. U.S. participation in international assessments was also canceled. Without those data points and results, it may be impossible to tell how well students are doing.

Free, high-quality pre-K community programs are huge for families, who otherwise would be spending tens of thousands of dollars a year on day care. They can be wonderful for kids, who are better prepared for kindergarten and more likely to go to college one day. And they’re a surprising bright spot in an otherwise bleak child care landscape. In 2022–2023, enrollment in publicly funded preschool hit an all-time high, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research.

From metaphors for elementary school kids to mindset shifts and graphic organizers for teens, here are teacher-tested tips for normalizing learning accommodations across grade levels. The ability to frame accommodations in a positive way—both for the children who need them and for classmates who are curious or even judgmental about learning supports—is a critical part of creating a classroom where kids respect each other and advocate for their own needs.

Khan’s chief learning officer says AI isn’t education’s ‘golden ticket,’ but can be ‘an important tool in the toolbox’ in improving student outcomes. Khan Academy founder Sal Khan and chief learning officer Kristen DiCerbo negotiated a partnership with Open AI, and just five months later, their AI-powered Khanmigo tutoring bot debuted. Last summer, Khan Academy launched an AI writing coach. Nearly two years in, DiCerbo remains bullish on the possibilities of AI tutoring, cheerfully engaging critics about the limitations of the technology, even as by all measures it evolves and improves. 

We’re all influenced by how we see the world. Sometimes that view is clear and sometimes it’s a bit fuzzy. Adjusting our “lens” can help us better understand one another, and ourselves. How appropriate to find three recent picture books that look at eyeglasses from different perspectives. A forgetful bear, a lovesick boy and, yes, George Washington share their views from the bridge.

It’s not often that a journalist prompts sweeping change in America’s schools. But Emily Hanford, the creator of the “Sold a Story” podcast, has probably done more than any educator, official, or researcher to drive the contemporary reading revolution in America’s classrooms. A senior correspondent for American Public Media, Hanford has been an education reporter since 2008. In 2017, she got interested in how kids learn to read. Five years later, in 2022, the product was “Sold a Story,” a series of podcasts that won an Edward R. Murrow award, was the year’s second most-shared show on Apple podcasts, and was named one of 2023’s 10 Best Podcasts by Time. I recently had the chance to chat with Hanford about “Sold a Story,” reading instruction, and education journalism. 

Consistent hands-on interactions with nature have proven benefits for both learning outcomes and emotional well-being. By creating regular opportunities for students to access and immerse themselves in the natural world—both inside and outside of the classroom—teachers encourage them to start connecting elementary classroom content to nature in tangible and relevant ways.

U.S. students were still nearly half a grade level behind in both math and reading in the spring of 2024, compared with achievement levels before the pandemic. That’s according to the latest release of the Education Recovery Scorecard, a data-rich deep dive into student learning. The Scorecard is a joint venture between Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research and The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. Here are six quick takeaways from the new, third-annual Scorecard.

DOGE, if it actually sought the “government efficiency” in its name, could help modernize IES, perhaps even put out to pasture some sacred cows, such as the regional labs. But slashing and burning, as happened the other day, won’t improve matters. It’s just going to weaken the foremost truth squad in American education, the chief sponsor and funder of rigorous analysis, reliable data, and clear-eyed evaluations in a realm that needs more of those things, not less.

While experts say that closing the agency would require an act of Congress, advocates are warning that any efforts to weaken the Education Department could have an outsized impact on the nation’s 7.5 million special education students. While federal laws including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act guarantee students with disabilities certain rights in schools, the Education Department plays a major role in ensuring that these laws are implemented.

Flat test scores prompt educators from four St. Louis schools to visit Washington, D.C. to learn from Garrison Elementary. The school had implemented the science of reading before it gained popularity across the nation and has seen improved literacy scores as a result. The trip was part of a two-year program called the Emerson Early Literacy Challenge that launched last fall to help educators from the four St. Louis-area schools brainstorm ways to improve reading in the early grades.

As social media communities splinter, children’s authors and publishers wonder where their next digital gathering place will be. This social media shakeup has some considering the purpose of being online. “It gives us an opportunity to step back and reflect on our values—on what we want from social media in the first place, on who we want to be there and how we might lift up others via our platforms,” Messner says. “The chance to reset is an opportunity to follow people who share those values and want to build positive supportive communities together.”

In the past few years, my journeys have taken me around the world. My audiences are mostly young people in middle school and high school. No matter the country or continent, they yearn to fit in, to not feel so “different.” In “What Fell From the Sky,” by Adrianna Cuevas, and “Oasis,” by Guojing, the best examples of humanity aren’t necessarily human, and the emotional yearning of the characters, longing for missing parents, is what makes the stories sing.

Too often, cognitive overload prevents the true capabilities of competent students from shining through. They know and understand the content being taught, but they have difficulty demonstrating their mastery of the material. I teach all of my students, including those with ADD or ADHD, how to recognize and handle cognitive overload as a necessary life skill. Here’s how I teach it to students in grades K–6.

Created by Congress in 1979, the department employs more than 4,000 people and has an annual budget of $79 billion. Many of its responsibilities were given to it by lawmakers. Here’s a look at what the Education Department does and doesn’t do — and how much of it is protected by acts of Congress:

The quality of instructional materials, tutoring programs or new technology tools can’t make much of a difference if students aren’t in school. t’s impossible to prove that students performed better because they were in school every day, but it’s the logical conclusion. A detailed comparison of state test scores and student absenteeism by Rhode Island education officials suggests as much. 

Starting lessons with a read-aloud can boost engagement and inspire students to make personal connections to math concepts. While some books directly align with current standards, many others tie into broader themes, seamlessly enhancing our learning. For example, A Three Hat Day, by Laura Geringer, illustrated by Arnold Lobel, provides a great introduction to multiplication by three, while Rollercoaster, by Marla Frazee, supports our exploration of estimating and rounding numbers.

Barnett is the Library of Congress’ newest National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. The position was established in 2008 to promote books and reading to kids across the country. Barnett’s plan is to focus on picture books. “The picture book is my favorite art form,” he said. “It’s such an incredible, vibrant, exciting, forward-looking, experimental art form. And I think it’s really undervalued, too.”

Just in time for Black History Month we consider this 2002 release and see how it has aged. Old nonfiction picture books age so poorly sometimes but this title had some incredible backmatter, even by 2025 standards. We discuss how this book has “sepia with depth” and somehow manages not to be boring looking and how we’d love to be remembered as “fierce but famous.”

A growing chorus of education advocates has been arguing that phonics isn’t enough. They say that being able to decode the letters and read words is critically important, but students also need to make sense of the words. Some educators are calling for schools to adopt a curriculum that emphasizes content along with phonics. More schools around the country, from Baltimore to Michigan to Colorado, are adopting these content-filled lessons to teach geography, astronomy and even art history. Content skeptics … point out that there’s never been a study to show that increasing knowledge of the world boosts reading scores.

As a progressive educator in New York City for 30 years, I thought I had all the answers. The best teaching had to do with inquiry, with “higher-level thinking,” with “student-centered” project-based learning. I still believe in all of that, but I now understand that these are just part of the picture. What students — especially struggling students — also need is teacher-directed explicit instruction. By explicit instruction, I am speaking of the “I-do, we-do, you-do” strategy, where the teacher models a concept or skill, engages students in targeted practice, checks and corrects understanding, and then gives students more independent practice, with more checking for understanding and corrective feedback.

An interdisciplinary approach can help elementary students deepen their appreciation for music while developing their literacy skills. Here are four specific reading and music integrations with clear benefits for reading and music learning: beatboxing and phonemic awareness; lyric dictations and fluency;  choral singing and comprehension; and hip-hop rhyming and reading with expression.

Scaffolding provides tailored support through three approaches. Cognitive scaffolding is the general process by which a teacher provides targeted guidance and resources to help learners gain new skills that are initially beyond their independent abilities. Metacognitive scaffolding supports learners in planning, monitoring, and evaluating their own learning strategies. Procedural scaffolding guides students through the steps required to complete tasks. These approaches translate into specific, actionable strategies.

Dolores Perez started tutoring students around the time the COVID-19 vaccine made it safe to meet in-person. What started as a part-time gig for a couple of students in 2021 now keeps her busy six days a week. When it comes to the youngest students she tutors, those in kindergarten through fourth grade, Perez says they all need help with reading. It’s not their fault, she says, or their parents’ or even the schools’ fault. It’s just what happened during the early days of the pandemic, when kids were stuck at home and beaming into school through a computer.

A new study carried out at the MIT Language Acquisition Lab offers a novel insight into the early acquisition of vocabulary—sentences contain subtle hints in their grammar that tell young children about the meaning of new words. The finding, based on experiments with two-year-olds, suggests that even very young kids are capable of absorbing grammatical cues from language and leveraging that information to acquire new words.

Celebrating Black people and communities also means celebrating the ways they have written themselves and their history into existence through the creation of music, visual arts, film, oral traditions, and community-building.

From the myth of multitasking to ‘attention contagion,’ high school teacher Blake Havard hopes to arm educators with the tools of cognitive science. Step into Blake Harvard’s classroom and you’ll find that Less is Decidedly More. Sixteen tables, two seats to a table, all in rows, face front “because that’s where the instruction is coming from,” he said. About the only technology in the room: small handheld whiteboards, dry-erase pens and small stacks of index cards. The walls are almost entirely bare. And phones are out of the question, stowed in backpacks before class. Harvard has put these principles into his first book, published last week, titled, appropriately, Do I Have Your Attention? Understanding Memory Constraints and Maximizing Learning. 

In response to the nation’s persistently poor reading report cards, a growing number of states in recent years have introduced sweeping legislation to mandate that schools implement evidence-based reading instruction in their classrooms. But overall, students’ reading test scores have yet to show significant improvement, and the number of “reluctant readers” grows. Now, some educators are bearing down on a strategy they hope will create better, and lifelong, readers: pleasure reading. Here’s a look at how four teachers across grade levels are piquing boys’ interest in reading for fun.

Gianni Rodari used puns, topsy-turvyism and zany names to invent stories for children and help children invent their own. It goes largely unacknowledged but is nonetheless true that a complete accounting of any country’s literary geniuses will include several writers for children. Near the top of the list for Italy would be Gianni Rodari. Rodari was a schoolteacher, a journalist and, most important, the author of stories and poems for kids. 

“It’s a profound honor to serve as ambassador. When I got the news, I was speechless, which is unusual for me,” Barnett said in a statement. “Now I feel energized to proclaim the many glories of children’s literature, with a particular focus on a unique and marvelous way of telling stories: the children’s picture book.” He has written more than 60 books for children, including picture books (and Caldecott Honor titles for Jon Klassen’s illustrations) Extra Yarn and Sam & Dave Dig a Hole, as well as the graphic novel series “The First Cat in Space.” Barnett’s platform will be “Behold, The Picture Book! Let’s Celebrate Stories We Can Feel, Hear, and See.”

Some research points to benefits when digital tools like embedded dictionaries, shareable comments, or animated illustrations are available to readers. When used well, experienced educators say, technology can dramatically improve early reading instruction inside classrooms, revealing areas that students struggle with, providing a tangible record of growth over time, or motivating students to continue taking steps forward. Over time, a smart mix of print-based and tech-powered options enable students to flex their literacy muscles, reflect on their progress with intention, and develop into more thoughtful, proficient, curious readers.

Among supporters, Schwinn is primarily known for pushing the academic needle forward following the devastating effects of pandemic lockdowns in Tennessee. As commissioner under Republican Gov. Bill Lee, she used COVID relief funds to launch a statewide tutoring program and has been credited with revamping instruction to incorporate the science of reading. “This gives me hope that the Trump Administration wants to play a constructive role in addressing learning loss and improving our schools,” said Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

For decades, we’ve bemoaned how remarkably little our students know about history. There are many reasons for this, but a critical one is that we rarely take advantage of their first years in school to provide structured and consistent social studies instruction. This is compounded by our failure to provide elementary teachers much, if any, history training during their preparation classes. The result is that teachers are often uncomfortable teaching it. A comprehensive, content-rich history curriculum offers a superior approach, one that distinguishes between truths and myths, primary sources and secondary ones. Exposed consistently to coherent, compelling stories, students would build a cohesive understanding of our history that prepares them much more effectively to carry on the civic work of perfecting our imperfect Union.

“Reading and math scores were declining even before the pandemic—especially for the lowest-performing students,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said. “Our challenge isn’t just to get back to normal; it’s to reverse decades of deterioration.” Why have scores on this national gauge of student achievement faltered over the last decade, and how can schools reverse that pattern? Those are complex, thorny questions. Education Week spoke with experts to dig into the factors that could be shaping the results.

As a transitional kindergarten teacher in Oakland, California, my job is to get the youngest learners ready for school as part of California’s universal public preschool program. I teach my students how to get up when they fall, how to open a carton of milk without incident, and how to master the skills they will need to eventually become readers. Nursery rhymes to teach phonological awareness so students can recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of words. Play-Doh to teach phonics so they understand the relationship between letters and sounds. Dramatic play to teach comprehension since acting out stories can help kids better understand them. To me, this early literacy work is integral to addressing the current literacy crisis. 

Almost five years have passed since COVID-19 first disrupted America’s schools, and new data, known as the Nation’s Report Card, offers cause for hope — and concern. The good news: In math, many students have made up at least some of the academic ground they lost during the pandemic. The bad news: In both reading and math, most fourth- and eighth-graders in 2024 still performed below pre-pandemic 2019 levels. What’s more, while these achievement declines were exacerbated by the pandemic, they appear to have begun even before COVID-19, raising important questions about why students are still struggling and what educators and policymakers can do about it.

Most American students are still performing below their pre-pandemic counterparts in reading and math, while the yawning gap between high-achieving and low-performing students got even wider, data from “the nation’s report card” shows. Results released Wednesday from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, paint a sobering picture of academic haves and have-nots. Scores are increasing for many students who already do well, while struggling students stagnated or fell even further behind their peers. That’s making a trend that began about a decade ago even more pronounced.

The kids are not bouncing back. The results of a major national test released Wednesday showed that in 2024, reading and math skills of fourth and eighth grade students were still significantly below those of students in 2019, the last administration of the test before the pandemic. In reading, students slid below the devastatingly low achievement levels of 2022, which many educators had hoped would be a nadir. The test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), is often called the nation’s report card. Administered by the federal government, it tracks student performance in fourth and eighth grades and serves as a national yardstick of achievement. Scores for the nation’s lowest-performing students were worse in both reading and math than those of students two years ago. The only bright spot was progress by higher-achieving children in math. 

Erin Entrada Kelly wanted to write a love letter to one of her all-time favorite books—2010 Newbery Medal winner When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. The result, Kelly’s middle grade novel The First State of Being, just won the 2025 Newbery Medal. The First State of Being separated itself from a strong group of Newbery contenders. “Erin Entrada Kelly juggled so many things and did them all beautifully,” said Maeve Knoth, Newbery committee chair. “This is science fiction, adventure, kid-taking-his-mom’s-car-without-permission, and even historical fiction if you are too young to have lived through Y2K! There are three important central characters who are distinct and well-drawn. The setting is so vivid—both time periods and place—and Kelly’s themes about each of us being a part of making history and awareness of every moment as we live it are important and timely. The book is also a great romp.”

On January 27, the American Library Association (ALA) announced the top books, digital media, video, and audiobooks for children and young adults—including the Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, Newbery, and Printz awards—at ALA’s 2025 LibLearnX conference in Phoenix. The First State of Being, written by Erin Entrada Kelly, is the 2025 Newbery Medal winner. Chooch Helped, illustrated by Rebecca Lee Kunz, is the 2025 Caldecott Medal winner. A complete list of the 2025 award winners follows.

If you’re a narrative lover, you certainly aren’t alone. Most literacy-oriented educators think just like you. But it’s important to recognize that many young readers think differently. Expository-loving info-kids aren’t interested in making an emotional connection with a main character, and they don’t read to escape or become immersed in the world of the book. Instead, they read to learn. They want to soak up ideas and information about the real world. That want to understand how it works and their place in it.

Nearly everyone backs the latest research on teaching kids to read. Why did it take eight years to update the UNC System’s literacy curriculum? The UNC System’s efforts began years before the recent surge of interest in the science of reading. Then-president Margaret Spellings—previously George W. Bush’s secretary of education—commissioned a review of the system’s educator preparation programs in 2017. It found highly varied approaches to literacy instruction and many using the debunked method of “using context and pictures to decode words.”

Educators who serve multilingual learners can adopt many different strategies to support their literacy development, including the use of reading comprehension templates and the practice of incorporating a student’s home language into the classroom. Pamella Moura is a special education doctoral student at Michigan State University who authored a 2024 paper on reading comprehension best practices for multilingual learners. To incorporate multilingual learners’ own languages into the curriculum — for example, in spelling lessons — Moura suggests translating the words on a search engine, or even asking the students themselves to do this, and then dictating the words in both forms to the class. This can be done across many different subjects, particularly those that are “vocabulary-heavy.”

Upper elementary teachers can guide their students to look forward to revising their writing with this positive, reflective approach. I blend this approach with more traditional methods such as step-by-step procedures, checklists, and rubrics. Each year, I open with an informal writing assessment to analyze students’ needs and interweave some or all of the following strategies to build a more complete understanding of the process.

The ALA Youth Media Awards were announced at LibLearnX in Phoenix, AZ, on Monday. Here are the winners on children’s literature’s biggest day. John Newbery Medal: The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly. Randolph Caldecott Medal: Chooch Helped illustrated by Rebecca Lee Kunz. 

A prominent scholar critiqued the evidence for including children with disabilities in general education classrooms. Advocates, parents and teachers argued for inclusion, against inclusion and for some hybrid of the two. The director of education at the Learning Disabilities Association of America weighed in, as did the commissioner of special education research at the U.S. Department of Education. More than 160 people commented on one Reddit discussion about the story. Here’s a sampling of views I received or saw on social media. 

Deep, transferable learning depends on domain-specific knowledge, and thinking itself is inextricably linked to the content of thought. A robust foundation of knowledge is not merely the raw material for thought, it is the scaffolding that makes higher-order thinking possible. None of this is news, but neither is it dominant—yet—in education thought or practice. A new open access book Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival dives deeply into these ideas and makes a case for knowledge-rich curriculum that embraces the role of disciplinary knowledge in education.

We are far more likely to use our hands to type or swipe than pick up a pen. But we lose something when handwriting disappears. We lose measurable cognitive skills, and we also lose the pleasure of using our hands and a writing implement in a process that for thousands of years has allowed humans to make our thoughts visible to one another. We lose the sensory experience of ink and paper and the visual pleasure of the handwritten word. We lose the ability to read the words of the dead.

When schools create a welcoming environment and celebrate linguistic diversity, they help foster global awareness, tolerance, and understanding. One way for schools to reaffirm the identities of their students—and impart a universal lesson that multilingualism is an asset to be preserved and leveraged—is to recognize International Mother Language Day, on February 21. A middle school teacher shares her favorite ways to celebrate linguistic diversity, both on International Mother Language Day and year-round.

Students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) such as autism and Down syndrome are often left behind when it comes to literacy instruction – casualties of the misperception that at best, they could only read by learning to recognize common words by sight. But researchers are finding that students with IDD, like their peers without disabilities, can benefit from a more complex approach, including phonics, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. 

A new study has found evidence of big gains in students’ reading ability from using one specific phonics program—and suggests that consistent implementation is key to getting the strongest results. The foundational-skills curriculum, UFLI Foundations, was created by researchers at the University of Florida Literacy Institute. When kindergarten and 1st grade teachers in one Florida district used the program for a year, their students grew at a much faster rate than similar students in other classrooms in the district that continued business-as-usual reading instruction. Teachers who followed the program more closely saw better results than those who didn’t teach lessons in the recommended sequence, or with all of the listed steps.