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Kristyn Kahahaloe still remembers the little boy in her New Jersey preschool class when she was a first-time teacher starting students on their journey to become readers.
The boy, who was in kindergarten, “couldn’t understand the way I teach,” he said. “This bright blooming flower kept shriveling and withering, and I didn’t know what to do.”
Despite his many years of teaching experience, Kahahaloe, now a kindergarten teacher at John Hancock Elementary School in Philadelphia, concluded that “the ignorance of that’s why he didn’t learn to read.”
For decades, the debate over how best to teach students to read has divided educators, scholars, and policymakers. Was the answer sounds or “all speech”? What about “balanced knowledge” versus “structured knowledge”? New words such as “phonics awareness” and “basic skills” entered the vocabulary, but they did not resolve the debate.
Like their colleagues across the country, Philadelphia teachers were dogged by controversy. Many received little training in their teacher preparation programs in explicit literacy. And once they’re in the classroom, they’re often left with a lot of possessions and resort to “doing what they think is best,” as Kahahaloe put it.
That is about to change. For the next school year, the Philadelphia school district is implementing a new reading curriculum as part of a $70 million investment in updated teaching materials in English Language Arts, math and science. The first grade language arts curriculum from EL Education replaces the teacher-driven, literacy-based curriculum, which is an accepted consensus on what works best for literacy education. to write. Based on what recent test scores say about reading skills in the district’s schools — and classrooms across the country — such interventions can make a big difference in school and beyond.
“There’s no question now that literacy is the way to teach students to read,” said Nancy Scharff, a literacy expert and professor at the University of St. Joseph is an advisor to Read by 4th, a Philadelphia-based campaign. that all children read well when they enter the fourth grade.
But adopting a curriculum that conforms to best practices does not guarantee that it will be successful in the classroom. There is concern about whether teachers are adequately prepared to use it, and the district cautions that it will take time for teachers and students to see results.
‘More development for teachers and for children’
The “science of reading” is built around a five-pronged approach – word recognition, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension – based on research into how the human brain works.
Concerns about how reading is taught and low reading scores have led many states to pass new laws dictating what their schools should use and what curriculum, science, and technology they should use. of reading often on the basis of such rules.
The Pennsylvania legislature is considering adding provisions to its 2024-25 budget that would require districts to adopt a science-based reading approach, with mandated teacher training and complex student testing to identify learning differences. But those provisions — estimated to add about $70 million to next year’s budget — were cut from the final bill.
A few years ago in Philadelphia, the district was following a curriculum established by the teachers themselves. But they often lacked enough supplies to go with them. Many teachers were stressed trying to find the right books to use.
“I think this will allow teachers and kids to make a lot of progress,” said Meredith Mehra, the district’s assistant superintendent of education and training. “A lot of resources have been included that will take the pressure off teachers to set them up.” Teachers “can think more about the kids in front of me than what text I’m going to use.”
Only 34% of students in grades 3-8 achieved proficiency in reading on Pennsylvania’s tests last year, although scores improved in some areas in 2023.
Research shows that being a good reader by fourth grade makes a big difference in future life outcomes. Yet state test data shows that 71% of the city’s fourth graders are not reading at grade level, the Reading Score is 4th. And half of the city’s adults are illiterate, according to federal data estimates.
Jennie Bogoni, executive director of Read by 4th, said she sees the new curriculum as a step forward because it will make education stand out across the district and is based on reading skills.
He also cited a federal report earlier this year that showed Philadelphia was ahead of other metropolitan areas in making up for literacy and numeracy losses caused by the epidemic.
“The district has made incredible progress since the outbreak, and this curriculum should accelerate that change,” he said.
Scharff said EL Education’s new curriculum equips all teachers with the tools “to make sure kids learn to read, emphasizing what we call foundational skills.” They include not only the teaching of decoding words, sounds and word recognition, but also the development of background knowledge.
“If a student can distinguish a word well but does not know what it means, it does not matter. Current knowledge should be part of the program. This curriculum does that well,” he said.
He noted that many children in Philadelphia come to preschools with no reading skills – although many groups are working on access to reading materials – and therefore lack strong literacy: “The good thing is to be teach reading so that they can expand their knowledge. the basis of knowledge….the ‘science of reading’ is not just sounds.”
The third grade teacher KP Edwards said that he is reviewing the curriculum alone this summer and hopes that it will make his job a little easier. Students come to him with many different skills; he said that in another class he had a girl who was reading in the seventh grade and another who did not know the letters well.
He said: “I have firm hope.
Literacy curriculum strategies are not a panacea
Scharff noted that while a new curriculum that covers all the right institutions is helpful, it is not a magic bullet. He said: “It will take time for teachers to get comfortable with it, learn it, and have the skills to use the new equipment.” “We have to be very careful about seeking instant gratification.”
Laura Boyce of Teach Plus, which works to recruit teachers in Philadelphia, is more skeptical.
Boyce said: “Things have become fragmented in the science of reading. If educators focus only on sounds but don’t develop skills to build content knowledge and vocabulary, “that’s a problem,” he said. That’s right. and in an approach that assumes students will acquire words from pictures and other materials and undermines clear phonics instruction, he said.
Boyce also worries about whether teachers are adequately prepared to implement the new curriculum: “From what I’ve seen so far, there’s no evidence of a very strong teacher development plan.”
The district held a weeklong workshop earlier this summer that was attended by about 400 teachers, and plans more professional development in the weeks before school starts after they start teaching. They also plan to train teachers on an ongoing basis throughout the school year.
Mehra estimated that “it will take a whole year” for teachers to get comfortable with the curriculum and see results. “It is not fair for teachers to expect more than that,” he said.
Edwards, who teaches third grade at Muñoz-Marín Elementary School in Kensington, where all the students in her school were from economically disadvantaged families and about 90% were Latino, many with and poor English skills, school census data from last year showed.
“I’m lucky, I had a school coach who helped me make strategies for teaching reading and writing,” he said. Those strategies were based on many of the principles included in the new curriculum, including teaching phonics.
“I have hope,” he added. “With that model we have had some benefits. I hope that next year we will have real workbooks and other tools.”
Kahahaloe’s difficult experience with a boy who did not respond to any of his efforts motivated him to get proper training in teaching reading.
He enrolled at Fairleigh Dickinson University in northern New Jersey to study the Orton-Gillingham method of reading instruction, which was designed for students with reading difficulties but can work for all children.
He thinks the new curriculum will help. But for him, the people in the classroom will be the key to whether it works.
“The curriculum does not teach the children, the teachers teach the children,” he said.
Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where he covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.
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