As states have crafted plans for addressing the academic disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, one area has emerged as a policy priority: early reading instruction.
At least 18 states and the District of Columbia have said that they plan to use COVID-19 relief funding through the American Rescue Plan or previous aid packages to support teacher training or instruction in evidence-based approaches to early literacy. And over the past year, four states have passed new laws or enacted regulations that mandate teachers be taught, and use, techniques that are grounded in the large body of research on how children learn to read.
While some of these new developments are designed to support students with pandemic-interrupted education, they鈥檙e also part of years-long legislative momentum on expanding research-based reading instruction that started pre-COVID, said Kymyona Burk, the policy director for early literacy at ExcelinEd, an advocacy group founded by Jeb Bush, Florida鈥檚 former governor. Burk was previously the Mississippi Department of Education鈥檚 state literacy director, leading the implementation of Mississippi鈥檚 Literacy-Based Promotion Act.
In early 2020, Education Week reported that at least 11 states had enacted laws aimed at expanding evidence-based early instruction in grades K-3 over the past three years.
There鈥檚 a large, established body of research in psychology, human development, and cognitive science focused on how people learn to read. This literature spans many processes, from vocabulary acquisition to comprehension to the role of background knowledge. One of the key findings in this research, though, relates to foundational reading skills, which allow children to decipher print.
Decades of studies have shown that explicitly and systematically teaching students which sounds represent which letters鈥攖eaching them phonics鈥攊s the most effective way to get them reading words. But as reporting from Education Week and other outlets has demonstrated, many teacher preparation programs don鈥檛 teach their students how to deliver this kind of instruction.
North Carolina鈥檚 new law, passed in April, requires teacher training in the 鈥渟cience of reading,鈥� while in Pennsylvania, teacher preparation programs are now mandated to teach 鈥渟tructured literacy鈥濃�攄efined as a 鈥渟trong core鈥� of foundational skills integrated alongside instruction in listening, speaking, reading, writing, and spelling.
Also this year, Arkansas banned three-cueing, a practice of word identification that encourages students to rely on pictures and context to decipher words, not just letters. Connecticut passed a law requiring schools to use 鈥渆vidence-based鈥� reading materials, to be selected from an approved list drawn up by a department of education committee.
While many reading researchers agree that many teachers could benefit from more training in evidence-based methods, some also voiced concerns about the unintended consequences of using legislation as a lever for change.
鈥淟egal remedies are a clumsy, heavy-handed tool. If you write a law saying you can鈥檛 use three-cueing approaches, that鈥檚 easy to evade and difficult to enforce,鈥� said Mark Seidenberg, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies reading.
On the other hand, he said: 鈥淣othing else was working. And the laws are having some impact.鈥�
Legislation makes promises but has limits
Mandating that teachers use 鈥渆vidence-based鈥� methods isn鈥檛 a new phenomenon, said P. David Pearson, a reading researcher and emeritus faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Education.
Reading First, the George W. Bush-era grant program authorized under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, required schools to use 鈥渟cientifically based reading research鈥� to receive grant funding.
But critics of the program argued that its implementation put too much focus on one area of the science鈥攆oundational skills instruction鈥攍eaving teachers without enough time to work with young students on other key components of literacy instruction, like building vocabulary and background knowledge and developing comprehension skills.
With these new policies, states and districts should take care not to repeat this pattern, said Claude Goldenberg, a professor emeritus at Stanford University who studies early literacy development in English-language learners. 鈥淲e need to learn from things that don鈥檛 work out, even if experiments say they should,鈥� he said.
But Burk, of ExcelinEd, said it鈥檚 crucial to help teachers develop a common understanding of how children learn the foundations of reading鈥攁n understanding that often isn鈥檛 taught in their preparation programs or in professional development.
鈥淲ith legislation, we can ensure that these things are happening everywhere,鈥� she said. Some new laws, like North Carolina鈥檚, write in this support for teachers through professional development, and detail how the state will hold teacher preparation programs accountable for conveying this information.
Fostering teacher buy-in will be crucial, said Pearson. 鈥淧rograms that engage the teachers and help them develop ownership of it, [that] make them responsible for implementation and monitoring one another, create a system that becomes self-monitoring. Reform efforts that don鈥檛 take into account the social and cultural facets of learning are, I think, never going to be effective.鈥�
Laws like the one in Arkansas, which bans three-cueing, also put pressure on curriculum publishers to align to evidence-based practice, said Seidenberg: 鈥淚f they want to continue selling their products in those markets, they are going to have to change enough to satisfy the stipulations in those laws.鈥�
Aligning materials will be the next task for these states, Burk said. 鈥淲e are teaching teachers how to teach reading, and then they鈥檙e going back into their classrooms and looking at their materials and saying, 鈥楾his doesn鈥檛 line up.鈥欌��
