BY Laura Boyce
Oct. 24, 2024
Chanté was an animated, outspoken middle schooler when I met her. As her principal, I got to know her well because she was frequently sent to my office for disrupting class. One day, when I asked her to complete a written behavior reflection, she told me with tears in her eyes that she couldn’t read. It turned out that her behaviors in school came from a place of shame and hopelessness: She had given up on anyone being able to help her crack the code that would allow her to access the content being taught in her eighth grade classes. When she was exposed to explicit, systematic phonics instruction, she progressed rapidly — and her disruptive behavior disappeared as those defense and avoidance mechanisms were no longer necessary.
We have far too many Chantés across Pennsylvania — students who never learned to read in the way science tells us is best. And too many teachers — including myself earlier in my career — never got the training and instructional materials to allow us to teach reading the correct way.
Research says the ability to read on grade level by the beginning of fourth grade is our best predictor of future success. Kids reading on level at that point are exponentially more likely to graduate high school, get a well-paying job, avoid incarceration, and even live longer. It’s not the only measure of success that matters, but we hear frequently from parents that “Can my kid read?” is not only a very straightforward measure of whether our schools are working, but a prerequisite for the big, multifaceted dreams they have for their students’ futures.
But there is a huge disconnect between the aspirations of communities and current student outcomes, especially in underserved communities. In an average Pennsylvania fourth grade classroom of 20 students, according to the Nation’s Report Card, only seven students can read proficiently. Only 11 percent of Black students, 20 percent of Hispanic students, and 18 percent of economically disadvantaged students read proficiently. PA’s scores are lower now than they were 20 years ago, with the largest racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps in the nation.
In Philadelphia, the picture is even more dismal: In 2022, only 15 percent of students citywide read proficiently by fourth grade, according to the Nation’s Report Card, with proficiency rates for Black, Hispanic, and economically-disadvantaged students all at 10 percent or lower. That ranks us in the bottom 20 percent of large urban districts nationally.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Other states, most notably Mississippi, have made dramatic progress in early literacy by embracing the science of reading in teacher training, curriculum, and instruction.
The science of reading is a vast body of research on how our brains learn to read — a complex process that requires literal rewiring of our brains, which have evolved to naturally acquire oral language but are not naturally wired to process written language. Major advancements in neuroscience and brain scanning have allowed scientists to better understand this process, and with systematic, explicit instruction in phonics, as well as vocabulary, syntax, and content knowledge, up to 95 percent of elementary students can learn to read proficiently.
But many teachers in PA have never been trained in the science of reading, instead learning an approach called “balanced literacy” that teaches students tricks to guess words rather than to crack the code of reading. And too many schools use curricular materials based on a balanced literacy approach.
Mississippi went from last in the nation in reading outcomes to above the national average — and at the very top after controlling for race and class — by embracing the science of reading through state policy. While the state’s gains have been called a “Mississippi miracle,” there wasn’t any magic to them: They stemmed from comprehensive policy changes. In recent years, many states, including nearly all of PA’s neighbors, have passed policies to advance the science of reading and made major investments to pay for these policies.
The PA legislature took a step in the right direction recently by unanimously passing SB 801, which requires the development of state-recommended lists of curricular materials, universal screeners, and teacher training aligned with the science of reading. The bill was sent to Governor Shapiro this week. However, the final bill fell short of the ambitions of the original bill, which would have gone beyond recommending to requiring that all PA public schools adopt K-3 reading curricula from an approved list, implement universal screening and interventions for struggling readers in K-3, and provide teacher training aligned with the science of reading. The original bill also would have provided funding to help schools pay for these new requirements.
The slimmed-down SB 801’s passage is still progress; schools will have guidance in selecting literacy materials and professional development providers for the first time. And the overwhelming bipartisan support for the legislation bodes well for attempts next session to implement the provisions that were cut from SB 801 this year.
Locally, the School District of Philadelphia isn’t waiting for a state mandate to implement the science of reading: The district recently adopted an evidence-based literacy curriculum aligned with the science of reading.
But we must keep our foot on the gas to ensure students locally and statewide are able to make the same kinds of transformative reading gains we’ve seen in Mississippi and elsewhere. In Philadelphia, implementation of the new curriculum has been rocky so far; ongoing, school-based support for teachers is critical to ensure that the rollout doesn’t go off-track. At the state level, PA must enact the kind of comprehensive reform that has been associated with the greatest progress in other states. Teach Plus and 24 other organizations have called on Governor Shapiro to invest $100 million in the 2025-26 state budget to fund the full suite of policies in the original SB 801.
With political will and policy change, PA can become the fastest-improving state in the country — and Philadelphia the fastest-improving urban district — in fourth grade reading over the next decade. By investing in comprehensive early literacy policy and teacher training, our state and local leaders can put students like Chanté in a position to chart their own futures. It shouldn’t take a miracle to get us there.
Laura Boyce is a former teacher and principal from Philadelphia who currently serves as the executive director of Teach Plus Pennsylvania, which advances student opportunity and outcomes through teacher voice and leadership. She was one of the Citizen’s Generation Change Philly fellows.
The Citizen welcomes guest commentary from community members who represent that it is their own work and their own opinion based on true facts that they know firsthand.
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