When it’s time for a kindergarten reading lesson, Sunnydale Elementary School teacher Teresa Cole pulls up a story on her digital whiteboard and right away, a few kids start to chuckle. That’s a good sign. It means these 5-year-olds can read.
In the story, titled “The Ant and the Fan,” an ant resting on a tin can gets blown away by a desk fan. Cole and the kids read aloud: “Is the ant fat?” the story begins. “Yes, the ant is fat.” More kids start to laugh.
Then, the class gets stuck on a new word: “tin.” Cole points to the letter “t” and asks the kids to sound it out. Once they have it down, Cole defines the new word for them. “Like a metal,” she says.
Cole, who has taught kindergarten in Lancaster for a decade, is using curriculum rooted in an approach to literacy called the “science of reading.”
The strategy relies heavily on systematic phonics instruction, and is aligned with decades of cognitive, neuroscience, and psychological research about how kids learn to read. It teaches children to connect sounds with letters and string them into words, then builds in complexity toward vocabulary and comprehension.
It may sound familiar if you learned to read decades ago, but in most California classrooms, including Cole’s, this is not how children typically learn.
Until recently, many school districts, including Lancaster, primarily used a different approach to reading called “balanced literacy.”
That strategy, popularized in the 1990s, is based on the idea that kids learn to read through exposure to books and through parsing context clues. Its critics say it promotes guesswork, and that it doesn’t include enough phonics.
While it works for some kids, research shows it doesn’t work for most of them – something Cole witnessed firsthand. She saw many of her young readers struggle to connect letters with sounds, and blend those sounds into words: “No matter what we did, it felt like we just couldn't get that connection for them,” she says.
Now the science of reading is taking California and much of the country by storm. A new bill in the state legislature aims to mandate the science of reading in all early grade public school classrooms. If passed and signed into law, it would be fully implemented by 2028.
Whether or not it passes, Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho says all the district’s schools will be teaching the science of reading by the start of the 2024-2025 academic year.
“Few districts have gone as far, so quickly, as Los Angeles Unified has over the past couple of years in implementing and instituting the science of reading as the right – and rightful – approach to reading instruction,” he says, adding that a “vast majority, if not all teachers” have already been trained in the approach.
California hasn’t historically required school districts to use any particular reading strategy. As a result, critics say, some kids have gotten effective reading instruction, and some kids haven’t. Combine that with all the other challenges facing the state’s students, including high rates of poverty and the large number of English language learners, and the results have been dreadful.
In Lancaster, just above 25% of third through eighth graders have read at a proficient level over the last decade, says Krista Thomsen, Lancaster School District’s director of curriculum and instruction.
Across California last year, just 43% of third graders met reading standards on the state’s assessment, called California Smarter Balanced. Outcomes are worse for students who are Black, Latino, and poor.
In response, the state has shifted toward the science of reading over the last several years – and not exactly by choice.
In 2017, attorneys from the pro-bono law firm Public Counsel and the San Francisco law firm Morrison & Foerster sued California, claiming the state was violating students’ right to basic education.
As a result of a settlement agreement in 2020, the state agreed to spend $53 million to bring the science of reading to its 75 lowest performing schools. The schools received curriculum and intensive teacher training, plus extensive support from experts.
Fries Avenue Elementary School in Wilmington was one of the schools that qualified for the state reading intervention. Children there are now learning to read with a curriculum grounded in phonics. Photo by Robin Estrin.
“We also observe[d] a positive change in the performance of students on math exams,” Novicoff adds.
Sunnydale Elementary wasn’t one of the schools that got the state intervention, but after another Lancaster school did, district officials were so enthusiastic about the science of reading, they adopted it for all their elementary schools.
Cole was apprehensive at first. For her and other teachers, it meant hours of extra training, and a brand new way of teaching.
“It was still so new – no one knew how it was going to look,” she says. “We only knew the research, the data, but to see it actually happen in a classroom? I'm not convinced until I see it myself.”
Cole buckled in and gave it a try. The results astounded her.
“It was like magic – that's the best way I can describe it,” she says. “You could hear the kids reading.”
Cole estimates she sent 90% of her kindergarteners to first grade reading at grade level last year.
Now in her second year with the curriculum, Cole seems at ease. After finishing the story, she roams through tables of kindergartners, stopping to help a group of boys sound out the word “fin.”
“What do you hear, Kcuitario?” she asked one of the boys.
Kcuitario struggles, at first, to sound at the word. When he gets it, Cole congratulates him and walks away. For Kcuitario, it was the beginning of a celebration.
“Goals! Do another, do another!” he says. And then, quietly under his breath, “I’m so smart.”