Shanker Blog

Proficiency or Penalty? Grade Retention Policy and Its Implications for English Learners in Utah

vpthomas — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 06:15:11 +0000

Proficiency or Penalty? Grade Retention Policy and Its Implications for English Learners in Utah

vpthomas June 30, 2026

One common goal of public education is to ensure all students reach academic mastery. In fact, most U.S. states have agreed upon a set of aligned standards of mastery through the Common Core. To that end, it may make sense to lawmakers that students repeat third grade and get another ‘at bat’ if they weren’t able to reach reading proficiency. This theory of change— accountability in action— has prompted many states to reinforce their literacy legislation with retention provisions. Eighteen states, including the District of Columbia, require grade retention for nonproficient third graders with varying good cause exemptions. Oklahoma and Utah both added retention requirements in their 2026 literacy legislation. Our study seeks to determine whether the theory of change used by lawmakers aligns with existing research on grade retention.

In the aftermath of burgeoning grade retention policies, scholars and stakeholders are questioning whether retention will improve outcomes, or if it will become another reform that unintentionally punishes marginalized families. By interviewing stakeholders in one of Utah’s most diverse school districts, Granite, we aimed to answer the following question: what are the long-term implications of retention provisions in Utah's literacy legislation for third graders? Through qualitative interviews and a literature review on the impacts of grade retention, we found that rather than targeting evidence-based interventions, the policy risks displacing responsibility onto families least equipped to absorb it.

Utah's Literacy Ambitions

Utah is a rapidly growing state with a largely homogenous population. It has grown 21.8% in the last decade, becoming slightly more diverse in racial makeup. Currently, 72% of its 3.5 million residents are white and 17% are Hispanic. In comparison with national averages, Utah holds its own with strong literacy scores. The 2022 NAEP reading report card shows that only eight states scored a higher percentage than the national average of 32% at or above proficiency, Utah being one of them at 37%. These scores, in part, have resulted from a history of commitment to literacy from various Utah actors.

Utah’s current Governor, Spencer Cox, has made his dedication to education clear since coming into office in 2021. The 2022 Read to Succeed Initiative, or SB 127, was passed with a goal to bring state third grade reading proficiency from 46.5% to 70% by 2027. To pair with the legislative mandate, in August 2025, the Utah State Board of Education set the third-grade proficiency benchmark score to a 750 Lexile. This Lexile score is aligned to the 75th percentile of U.S. third grade students.

Put simply, Utah expects their third graders to score in the 75th quartile of the nation’s third graders to be on grade level. This guidance along with the legislature’s continued mandates on percentage of students meeting proficiency shows high expectations for literacy in Utah. However, some stakeholders are concerned about the feasibility of these marks, stating that using state third grade reading scores as predictors for college readiness and high school dropout rates miscommunicate literacy to Utahns who hear that only 50% of students are proficient — a figure inflated by the state's unusually high benchmark threshold.

Despite these efforts, Utah policy leaders did not see the growth necessary to reach their proficiency goal. Reports on reading proficiency like in figure one show that third grade rates only increased from 48% to 50.3% from 2022 to 2025 respectively. In response, in January 2026, Governor Cox announced in his State of the State address that his first legislative priority will be early literacy, claiming that “nearly half of Utah’s third graders are not reading at grade level” and calling “literacy ‘moral infrastructure’ essential to freedom, opportunity, and self-governance.” Additionally, Cox endorsed retention despite its unpopularity, claiming that “It’s hard… people don’t love that. But in Mississippi, if you’re not reading on third grade level at the end of third grade, you stay in third grade.” With the governor’s full support, SB 241 was passed in the 2026 legislative session, and is set to take effect on July 1, 2026.

SB 241 moved the goalpost from 70% proficiency by 2027 to 80% by 2030. With this shift, the legislature added additional provisions to support science of reading instruction, teacher preparation, literacy support staff, and language “requiring retention in grade 3 except in cases of certain good cause exemptions.” Utah lawmakers involved the state board of education in several requirements throughout the bill, including creating a panel for science of reading research, and approving a reading benchmark assessment to be used statewide. This benchmark will be administered three times during the school year to students in k-3. The scores are mandated to be communicated to parents.

The proposed theory of change is that retention will allow Utah students to be adequately supported in their literacy progress. However, not all stakeholders agree that retention will fix Utah’s literacy rates. University of Utah researcher Brandley posits that longer term investments like teacher support and intensive reading intervention would be more effective.

Granite School District

The student population demographics of Granite School District offer a deeper understanding of what SB 241 might mean at local levels. Relative to the state’s demographic structure (72% white and 17% Hispanic), Granite School District’s (GSD) student body is composed of 44% white students and 41% Hispanic students. In comparing state literacy proficiency scores, Utah’s 37% literacy proficiency rate lessens to 32% of students meeting proficiency in GSD. GSD made commitments to improve these scores through concerted funding, capacity building, and support system efforts. The district says their “two overarching strategic goals [for] Granite School District are to increase graduation rates and to increase literacy and numeracy proficiency.”

What the Research Says on Grade Retention

Research indicates mixed results for whether retention begets academic improvement. While there might be short-term gains, some studies show that those gains tend to fall off over the course of that student's educational career (Shepard & Smith, 1990), and a meta-analysis of 63 studies found that only 14% showed significant positive gains for retained students compared with promoted students (Holmes, 1989). A longitudinal study in Chicago found that retained students scored significantly lower in reading and math than their promoted peers — specifically eight months lower in reading and six months lower in math — and the effects of early grade retention (grades 1–3) were similar to those of later retention (grades 4–7), further suggesting that retention alone does not address the root of the problem (Reynolds, 1992; McCoy & Reynolds, 1999).

Beyond academics, grade retention is associated with an increased likelihood of dropping out of high school, increased aggression during adolescence, and elevated long-term anxiety in boys, with retained students showing anxious, inattentive, and disruptive behaviors even when retention occurred in primary school (Jimerson et al., 2002; Pagani et al., 2001).

The issue of retention efficacy is compounded by equity concerns, as the majority of retained students are from marginalized backgrounds; a study analyzing Michigan's third-grade reading retention laws found that an economically disadvantaged EL has only a 30% chance of passing the M-STEP, with even lower odds for Arabic and Spanish speakers (Winke & Zhang, 2019).

Teachers Weigh In

The research on retention’s limitations is not lost on the educators implementing it. Granite School District teachers echoed these findings consistently across interviews, raising concerns that fell into three clear patterns. For anonymity, these teachers are referred to as teacher A, B, C, and D.

1. Retention is a band-aid solution that doesn't address root causes

All four teachers expressed skepticism that retention addresses the underlying reasons students fall behind, pointing instead to socioeconomic factors, parental involvement, and early intervention as the real levers. In teacher A’s interview, he talked a lot about how out-of-class factors affect his students’ reading performance. He stated that his students' reading level “has a lot to do with things outside of their control, often where it's about class and race and parents ability, which ties in with class, but ties like it's their parents ability to read with them when they're younger… I feel like those are really the causes.” So when it came to discussing retention for third graders who aren’t proficient, A posited that "It feels like a band-aid solution. It doesn't feel like it's addressing root issues of what's happening, like why aren't students getting to that level by the time they need to."

In agreement with A’s opinions on retention being a surface-level solution, teacher B stated that "Just saying, yeah, we'll just retain them — that isn't a fix." Teacher C said: "I don't think there's one bit of research that says retention is effective...there are so many other ways you can address the problem without retaining kids." All teachers expressed that retention targets students’ actions in school, instead of targeting the problems outside of school that cause low literacy scores.

2. The social and emotional cost of retention is a serious concern

Retention has been linked with disruptive and anxious behaviors in students all the way into secondary levels (Jimmerson & Ferguson, 2007; Pagani et al., 2001). Our qualitative findings aligned with this literature, as all four teachers raised concerns about the isolating and demoralizing effects of retention on students, particularly on peer relationships and self-esteem. Teacher B, a literacy coach for a Granite elementary school, shared her concerns about specific students she’s worked with that would be demoralized by being held back. She said that “if the only thing you're looking at is a reading score and you're not looking at anything else, how are you really doing what's in the best interest of that child?” She asked deeper questions of how retention will detriment students' social and emotional growth as well: "You've gotta be careful about who you retain, because sometimes, socially, it would be a very bad thing to retain a student...what is it going to do to their self-esteem? What is it going to do to them emotionally?" From a middle school perspective, teacher A and D both proposed that students already hold negative associations to learning when they’re behind, which affects their attitude and expectations for themselves.

3. Early intervention and increased funding are the preferred solutions

Rather than holding students back, all four teachers pointed to earlier intervention, smaller class sizes, better-resourced classrooms, and preschool access as more effective approaches. Teacher C, a career elementary teacher, gave clear program recommendations that she felt would more appropriately support students. "Well-trained paraprofessionals, greater intensive support in K-2, maybe preschool programs, parent awareness — I just think there are so many other ways you can address the problem." Other responses from interviewees includes that "school should start in preschool...if children are not able to be exposed to those words and to literacy so young, then children need to be put in school earlier” and “things like class size and adequate support staff would obviously assist them." Teachers agree with some researchers’ opinion that the best way to ensure long-term success is through individualized student support (Shepard & Smith, 2001; Westbury, 1994). These suggestions, aligned with current research, target interventions that begin earlier than third grade, and extend past retention to build a more sustainable future of educating students before falling behind. These teachers’ voices are not represented in Utah’s legislation.

A Divided District Office

While interviewing Superintendent Horsley, he expressed themes of strong support for SB 241 with rigor, high expectations, and parent involvement. He is “optimistic and excited about implementation” and feels that the legislation is more of a shift in method rather than goals. When asked about how the implementation will affect Granite students, he explained that during the legislative session, he pulled the predicted number of retained third graders in his district. “We tracked about 500 kids. So on average, it's about 10 to 12 kids mostly in impoverished elementary schools. We had one elementary school that had a high—it’s probably one of our larger Multi Language Learning campuses with a high refugee population. They have 26 kids.” This statement shows that Horsley is aware of the intersectional effect of retention on EL students but still believes that retention is the right method to ensure all students are proficient, stating that “getting 500 kids out of the 50,000 up to great reading levels is achievable, so my plan is to just not fail.”

In response to asking how he feels Granite families will react to the legislation, Horsley answered that Granite has done a “good job” with family engagement strategies, and they will need to “help them [parents] understand this new legislation and the impact that if we're not successful, and when I say we're it's not just us, it's together with the family. We're here to support you that grade retention will be required… and I'm optimistic that parents are going to step up and help and support make sure their kids are ready to go.” Many of Superintendent Horsley’s statements reflected high expectations for parents and teachers to take responsibility for their students' literacy.

In Granite Board Member Julie Jackson’s interview, there were more parallels to the teacher’s perspectives than that of Superintendent Horsley’s statements. When asked about the implications of retention in Granite, Julie responded that their plan is to intervene before third grade retention is necessary. She focused on the provisions of SB 241 that encourage administrators to retain students in K-2 grades: “We will not want to retain third graders. We know data shows that retaining third graders significantly lowers their likelihood of graduation. We will intervene long before third grade. We will look to retain kids earlier—in kinder or first grade if we can see the writing on the wall.”

Additionally, when asked how teachers and policymakers can best support literacy rates, Julie simply responded “Lower class size.” She also mentions the gaps in teacher preparation and quality curriculum. It is noteworthy how policymakers’ views on action differ from one another, with the superintendent posing third grade retention as necessary and advantageous, while the Granite board prioritized prior-to-third retention and lowering class size as the best interventions for their students.

The Cost for English Learners

EL students are rarely the focus of legislation—and literacy intervention is no exception. The policy language in SB 241 leaves discrete opportunities for persistent gap-widening instead of closing. Retention exemptions for “an EL [student] with fewer than three years of instruction in the EL program” aim to account for minoritized student groups, and yet data show that the majority of Utahn ELs begin their EL program in kindergarten upon registration, making them ineligible for this exception as they would be three years into the program by third grade. To date, this exemption for retention is the only mention of ELs in Utah literacy legislation.

Based on the literature review and qualitative interview research, SB 241 errs on the dangerous side of strategies promoting equity. Well-intended as it may be, SB 241’s efficacy is a short-term bandage solution. Both the interviews and research studies emphasize the potential repercussions the policy could have, particularly for Granite School District’s students and parents. In addition, the assumption that parents will ‘take things more seriously’ about their student’s literacy is flawed. It blames parents and students instead of utilizing evidence-based interventions that researchers recommend.

Grade retention may feel like accountability in action, but for English Learners in districts like Granite, it functions as a structural penalty: one imposed on the families with the fewest resources to respond to it. Utah's SB 241 arrives with ambition, but without the early intervention funding, equitable exemptions, and reduced class sizes that research consistently identifies as levers of lasting literacy.

Blog Topics

literacy

Issues Areas

K-12 Education

by Tiffany Broadbent

Evidence-based interventions are needed.

Time: The Missing Ingredient in Literacy Reform

vpthomas — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 20:19:35 +0000

Time: The Missing Ingredient in Literacy Reform

vpthomas June 25, 2026

Guest authors Jack Schneider and Ashley Carey are two of the co-authors of On the Clock: The Centrality of Time in Teacher Work, a new research brief published by the Albert Shanker Institute.

Across the country, states are rushing to adopt “science of reading” legislation. The motivations are sincere, and the research base is substantive. New curricula promise better outcomes; professional development workshops aim to equip teachers with evidence-based practices; data systems can help educators track student progress. From a distance, it seems comprehensive enough to close the nation’s yawning literacy gaps.

But policymakers have largely overlooked a critical ingredient that will almost certainly determine whether these reforms prove successful. And if you’re a teacher, you probably already know what it is.

Consider Ms. Smith, a second-grade teacher with a decade of classroom experience. She’s committed to her students and she understands why the new literacy approach matters. She wants to implement it well.

But she’s drowning.

The new curriculum requires her to learn new instructional methods. The assessment system requires one-on-one reading screeners for each of her 24 students—a process that eats up two full instructional days. New data management systems demand hours of tracking and reporting. And all of this has been added to everything Ms. Smith is already doing.

As a result, her willing participation has curdled into stress and exhaustion. She’s joining colleagues in griping about the new program and, more troublingly, beginning to question whether teaching is still a sustainable career.

This is not a story about a struggling teacher. This is a story about what happens when policymakers ignore the centrality of time.

Our research centers on a simple observation: policy doesn’t directly change what happens in classrooms. Instead, policy shapes the professional contexts in which teachers work—the schedules, resources, expectations, and conditions they navigate daily. These contexts interact with individual teacher characteristics to determine how teachers allocate their time. And how teachers allocate their time determines both their effectiveness in the classroom and their overall well-being.

This framework reveals why so many reforms disappoint. When policymakers add substantial new responsibilities without restructuring how time is used, teachers face an untenable bind. To make it all work, they debate whether to work unpaid hours in the evening, or if they should cut corners. Some debate whether to leave the profession altogether.

This dynamic—a labor-intensive educational reform with little concern for the existing time structures in which teachers carry out their work—is not new. We’ve watched this cycle play out for decades. Achievement gaps prompt ambitious policy. Stirring rhetoric and significant investments raise expectations. Early results suggest something is working. And then, slowly, the project of implementation crashes into the reality of teachers’ working conditions. The instructional core resists change. Results plateau. We move on to the next reform.

Our aim is not to weigh in on the “science of reading.” Instead, our argument is that policy implementation—whatever its evidentiary base—requires more than new curricula and professional development. It requires honoring the time constraints that define teaching. And it demands that we answer hard questions that typically go unasked. When teachers assess students individually, who covers their classes? When they learn new instructional methods, when do they have the opportunity to practice, reflect, and debrief with peers? When they face new lesson planning burdens, what existing responsibilities disappear? When they navigate new data systems, where does the time come from?

Until we answer these questions—and restructure accordingly—we’ll watch another generation of teachers struggle to implement reforms that were designed without them in mind. If policymakers are interested in a different outcome, they should ask teachers what their most valuable resource is.

Blog Topics

Issues Areas

by Jack Schneider and Ashley Carey

The time constraints of teachers must be honored.

Juneteenth, Truth-Telling, and the Power of Union-Supported Educators

vpthomas — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 13:32:37 +0000

Juneteenth, Truth-Telling, and the Power of Union-Supported Educators

vpthomas June 17, 2026

Our guest author is Karla Hernández-Mats, a respected voice for public education who brings a deep understanding of the education system, from inside the classroom to executive leadership who is currently Chair of Educated. We Stand and an AFT Vice President.

As we commemorate Juneteenth—-a day that marks both delayed freedom and enduring resilience—-we are reminded that history is not just something we inherit, but something we actively teach, shape, and defend.

In today’s educational landscape, that responsibility carries new weight.

Across the country, educators are navigating a growing number of policies and political pressures designed to narrow curriculum, discourage honest conversations, and promote a version of teaching that is sanitized, disconnected, and, ultimately, self-centered. These efforts do more than limit content. They attempt to redefine the purpose of public education itself, shifting it away from critical thinking, identity development, and collective understanding.

But classrooms do not thrive under silence. Students do not grow from half-truths.

The research, presented in Unionized Teachers of Color’s Interpretations of the Silencing of Diversity Discourse in Florida: An Intersectional Qualitative Study, underscores a critical truth: educators of color consistently emphasize the importance of teaching authentically by drawing on lived experiences, cultural knowledge, and historical accuracy to foster deeper student engagement and identity development. This is not supplemental work. It is essential.

Authentic teaching is what allows students to see themselves in the curriculum. It builds critical thinking by inviting students to question, analyze, and connect past to present. It nurtures identity by affirming that their histories and voices matter. And it strengthens classrooms as spaces of trust, relevance, and intellectual rigor.

Yet, authenticity in teaching does not exist in a vacuum.

The findings from our study point to a powerful factor that enables educators of color to sustain this work: union support.

When educators are part of strong unions, they report feeling more empowered to teach truthfully and resist external pressures that seek to limit their professional judgment. Unions provide not only protection, but also a collective voice that affirms the value of honest, inclusive education. They create spaces where educators can collaborate, share strategies, and stand together when their expertise is challenged.

In this sense, unions are not just labor organizations, they are guardians of educational integrity.

This connection is especially meaningful as we reflect on Juneteenth. The legacy of Juneteenth is rooted in delayed justice, in the withholding of truth, and in the long struggle to claim both freedom and recognition. To teach this history authentically is to honor that legacy. To dilute it is to repeat the very injustices it represents.

Educators understand that their role extends beyond delivering content. They are shaping how students understand freedom, democracy, and their place within both. That work requires courage, clarity, and support.

And that is where union solidarity becomes indispensable.

At a time when policies may encourage educators to retreat—to avoid discomfort, to sidestep complexity, to center neutrality over truth—-our unions remind us of a different path. They reinforce that teaching is not an individual act of compliance, but a collective commitment to students and communities.

But solidarity must be lived, not just named.

Now is the time for educators—especially educators of color—and their allies to intentionally build networks within their schools and districts. This means creating spaces to share curriculum, support one another in moments of challenge, mentor newer educators, and collectively advocate for the freedom to teach truthfully. It means leaning into union structures not just for protection, but for connection and power-building.

When educators come together, they reduce isolation and amplify impact. When unions actively cultivate these networks, they transform individual courage into collective strength.

Juneteenth calls us to remember that progress has never been passive. It has always depended on people willing to speak truth, even when it is inconvenient or contested.

For educators, that truth lives in the classroom.

And for union members, it is strengthened and sustained through solidarity in action.

To better understand how these dynamics are playing out in real classrooms, please read the full study: Unionized Teachers of Color’s Interpretations of the Silencing of Diversity Discourse in Florida: An Intersectional Qualitative Study.

Issues Areas

K-12 Education

by Karla Hernández-Mats

Progress depends on people willing to speak truth, even when inconvenient or contested.

The Accountability Gap: D.C. Schools and Students with Disabilities

vpthomas — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 15:39:56 +0000

The Accountability Gap: D.C. Schools and Students with Disabilities

vpthomas June 4, 2026

When I first moved to D.C., it took me some time to get used to the school system. Multiple city agencies share oversight of public schools, and enrollment is split nearly evenly between traditional public and charter schools— making finding a teaching job strenuous (lots of separate fingerprint appointments!). It wasn’t until I was in the classroom that I grasped how exhausting this fragmented system is for families. Witnessing the difficulty of transitioning from a public to a charter school was one of many consequences of this fragmentation. One of my parents moved to an online charter school because she was told her family would get more targeted support, only to realize that she had to quit her job to monitor her child’s lessons adequately due to her child’s ADHD.

In December 2024, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) confirmed these challenges by releasing a report from their investigation on DCPS for discrimination of students with disabilities (SWD). In this report, the Commission highlighted two findings of discrimination: DCPS relies on due process complaints to deal with injustice, and they fail to provide transportation services for SWD that require it.

These observations contribute to a larger pattern of fragmented governance for marginalized students. The District of Columbia's education governance system is structurally fragmented in ways that obscure accountability and prevent meaningful community participation. Because D.C. functions simultaneously as a city and a state, its education agencies operate across overlapping and competing jurisdictions with no single body held democratically accountable for outcomes. This fragmentation did not flourish on its own; policy actors have prioritized market-based ideologies that treat parents like consumers in a free market. As a result of this neoliberal model, families in need are left with improper access to school resources and civic engagement. Both community and researcher voices agree that D.C.’s governance system requires structural reform to enforce democratic accountability and promote equitable access to high quality public and charter schools to all students.

D.C’s Unique Governance Structure

In the District, public education is delivered through two sectors: DC Public Schools (DCPS), which operates as a single traditional public school LEA, and the public charter sector, which spans 133 schools overseen by the DC Public Charter School Board (DC PCSB). Charter schools have shown consistent enrollment growth in all of D.C., but particularly in wards 5 and 8 with a 50% enrollment increase between 2011 and 2015. The highest number of charter schools are located in Wards 5, 7, and 8, which also hold the highest population of marginalized families. 92% and 90% of D.C. residents are black in Ward 7 and Ward 8 respectively, which nearly doubles the city’s 43% average. Similarly, 26.6% and 35.7% of residents in Wards 7 and 8 are in poverty, which is considerably higher than the city’s average of 17.3%.

The District’s governance system is complex, with many agencies overlapping to support public schools. Figure 1 represents the governance structure through a top to bottom flow chart, provided by the Office of the Student Advocate. The top authority held accountable for education is the Mayor of the District, currently Muriel Bowser. The blue lines represent collaboration but no direct line of authority to the D.C. Council and State Board of Education. The Council, and its Committee on Education, hold legislative authority over public education matters. The State Board of Education provides support and oversight but has no authority over the Mayor or Council. These governing bodies are both elected and thus held publicly accountable for education issues. The Office of the Student Advocate and the Ombudsman both support public and charter school students.

Moving down in public facing authority, the governance system splits to represent DCPS and the charter sector. These bodies are connected with red lines to the Mayor, whom they are accountable to. On the left side, DCPS is supported by the Chancellor, OSSE, and the Deputy Mayor of Education who executes the Mayor’s agenda. OSSE is responsible for “raising the quality of education for all D.C. residents”, spanning to manage both public and charter schools. On the right side, DC PCSB and its Executive Director authorize charter schools and oversee their individual operations. All positions in the bottom half of the flow chart are appointed.

While DCPS and the charter sector both report to the Mayor, they operate through separate chains of authority with no direct line between them. OSSE and the Office of the Student Advocate serve as the only entities with formal reach across both sectors, making them critical public facing liaisons. The curriculum, teachers, and resource decisions are impacted significantly based on the sector a student is in.

Like other districts committed to a restructuring of low performing public schools, D.C. has functioned under mayoral control since 2007. The red lines in Figure 1 portray how the Mayor is in direct authority of all decisions regarding school compliance, performance, and policies. Mayoral control is often acclaimed for maintaining strong political accountability through elections. This accountability system is known as political accountability by scholars Loeb and Byun, as elected officials make decisions based on their constituents and are held accountable through re-election. However, many D.C. community members disagree, stating that mayoral control creates convoluted agencies that are inaccessible for parents who don’t know where to start when they have a problem.

The fact that D.C. functions as a city and a state further exacerbates the mayoral control aspect of governance. In all 50 states, the governor and mayor roles are held by separate elected officials: a mayor that answers to city services, and a governor that answers to statewide policy. But in D.C., the Mayor holds both roles. So, community members who want to challenge a state level education decision have no separate state political area to appeal to.

How Fragmentation Affects Students with Disabilities

Disruption within D.C.’s governance system also leads to ineffective accommodations for the public sector. In late 2024, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights investigated DCPS for thousands of complaints that spoke to the district’s inability to adequately provide services for students with disabilities (SWD). The OCR Commission released their report with major findings of patterns of discrimination within the district, and a call to action for DCPS to take on recommendations or face further federal mandates.

The Commission highlighted that in D.C., there were 127 per 10,000 due process complaints filed against the national average of 33 per 10,000. This imbalance points to inequitable implications, as extensive time, money, and knowledge are prerequisites to filing a due process complaint. OCR also reported that OSSE fails to provide adequate transportation for SWD, with a multitude of complaints from parents that the district failed to notify them when the bus would be hours late or not show up at all. This left many parents to take on the responsibility of transporting their students themselves.

Put simply, the OCR investigation revealed that D.C.’s school systems place a huge responsibility on parents to ensure their students receive federally mandated services. The Commission agreed that market-based schools are designed to allow parents to choose their students best educational fit, while simultaneously placing the responsibility on parents to oversee school operations without institutional support.

Similar to this pattern, research on district school board politics reveals that fragmentation of governmental bodies can obfuscate public accessibility. D.C. is an example of what happens when decisions about schools are made by appointed officials who answer to the Mayor instead of families. In her book Navigating School Board Politics, Sampson argues for the integral role elected boards play in successful public education systems: "One of the biggest fallacies… is the idea that private and even public charter schools, which are governed by appointed boards, provide a better education than traditional public schools." D.C.'s appointed, fragmented chain of command leaves families with no clear democratic path to challenge decisions that directly affect their children.

Local advocates also scrutinized the lack of community voice and participation in public and charter sector decisions. During an interview with an active D.C. parent advocate, they stated that "one of the largest disconnects was parent education on knowing just how the system works... that parents were not fully versed in what due process looks like, what their rights were, what their children were entitled to." This parent perceived the system not only as inaccessible, but intentionally inhibiting community control. This confusion is echoed more broadly as well; parents navigating D.C.'s public education system have reported: "We don't know who these people are, what their roles are, and who we should reach out to when we have an issue." The many governance bodies that exist under, in between, and in collaboration with others creates confusion for parents on who to contact. Indeed, scholars Enoch-Stevens et al.agree in their article that treating parents as consumers inhibits parents' role in governance and accountability. In many ways, D.C. 's top down, convoluted governance system places an unfair burden on parents as the sole accountability arm with complicated legal matters such as advocating for their students with disabilities.

What Needs to Happen Next

It is evident that D.C.'s public school system needs structural reform: not just surface level fixes, but meaningful changes to governance, accountability, and community participation. Two reforms would shift D.C.'s approach from one that places the burden on families to one that provides institutional support. First, creating a unified SWD division within OSSE would consolidate oversight of special education services across public and charter schools, reducing families' reliance on due process and giving parents a clearer, more accessible channel for resolving accommodation concerns. Second, advocating for a community participation advisory board would formalize parent and teacher voices in charter authorization and expansion, addressing the democratic deficit that D.C.'s appointed governance structure has created. The burden to protect students with disabilities and hold schools accountable has fallen too heavily on parents. It is time for that burden to shift back to our institutions, and for those institutions to be genuinely accessible to the communities they serve.

Blog Topics

Accountability

Special Education

Issues Areas

K-12 Education

by Tiffany Broadbent

DC's public school system needs changes to governance, accountability, and community participation.

Do One-Size-Fits-All Literacy Programs Serve English Learners?

vpthomas — Thu, 21 May 2026 14:08:31 +0000

Do One-Size-Fits-All Literacy Programs Serve English Learners?

vpthomas May 21, 2026

My teaching experience in a bilingual school versus a dual immersion school couldn’t be more different, although they shared one commonality: the balance between engaging and overburdening English learners (ELs) was hard to strike.

In the bilingual school, language barriers impeded my classroom daily. Although our lessons were taught bilingually, my co-teacher and I struggled to understand each other and often dealt with miscommunications. The administration mandated that state tested subjects be taught in English exclusively, implying that bilingual aims were on the backburner to test scores. Our EL students were constantly on call to translate for the non-Spanish speakers who didn’t understand the content, which distracted them from focusing on their coursework and put improper pressure on them to synthesize and interpret lessons.

But in the dual immersion (DLI) school, I struggled to get my EL students involved at all. I didn't even know which of my students were enrolled in the DLI program, but I wrongly assumed that because I taught almost all the ELs in my school that many of them would be enrolled to take advantage of its academic benefits. In the DLI program, students were eligible to receive a certification in bilingualism which could be leveraged for college and career advancement. I was shocked to find that despite the DLI program offering their native language, only a few of my 250 students were enrolled. The program marketed bilingualism as a career investment: but one aimed at English-dominant students acquiring a second language, not at students who were already bilingual and had the most to gain from formal recognition of that skill.

These experiences reflect a broader pattern in how state policy has approached English learners: investing in programs that promise inclusion while rarely centering the students those programs are meant to serve. The data reveals this gap, as 50% of ELs who are in the U.S. school system since kindergarten fail to reach proficiency within 6 years.

Dual Immersion Benefits Non-Native Learners

Many states have experienced rapid population growth of non-English speakers in the last few decades, and in response, have implemented practical school reforms to support students from non-English-speaking households. Utah’s dual immersion programming represents a widespread reform that was designed to support ELs but has instead largely served the white population.

In 2001, a Utah family member filed an OCR complaint about their nephew’s school, submitting that the school was grouping together ELs into isolated classrooms and providing inadequate curriculum/instruction. This complaint led to an investigation, which forced the state to implement an EL endorsement requirement and ELD instruction blocks for English learners. But in 2007, former Gov. Jon Huntsman began to advocate for a better way to integrate ELs into Utah schools: through dual immersion. Huntsman served as an ambassador to Russia and China and came back to his home state committed to making new economic and global goals of success for Utah students. Although the program offers that the two way programs—which teach both English and the program language—should have at least one-third native speakers, in 2013 only 8% of 3^rd graders participating were English learners. By investing so heavily in DLI programs to ‘serve ELs’, the state managed to predominantly serve white populations instead. Utah’s case was not an anomaly: literacy policy has continued to treat ELs as the justification rather than the starting point.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Science of Reading

The politicization of science of reading legislation has created additional structural barriers for ELs. Tracing SOR back to NCLB and the Reading First Initiative, researchers note that the foundational 1998 Reading Panel report largely failed to study diverse learner populations, and assumed ELs should reach native language proficiency before starting to learn to read in English. A study on how SOR legislation affects deaf learners analyzed 24 recent SOR bills and found that state policies frame reading as a policy problem, and equally equate dyslexia, disabilities, and El interventions in one grouped mandate. This symmetrical language assumes that each of these states have the same demographics, and that reading interventions for students with disabilities and ELs will look the same.

Reading intervention provisions are not the only place researchers find problematic in SOR legislation: the gaps extend into how states prepare the teachers responsible for carrying out those interventions. While ELs benefit from the same foundational literacy pedagogy as all students, they additionally require oral language development and linguistic scaffolding that most teacher preparation programs do not include. State policies have largely failed to mandate oversight of whether teacher preparation programs incorporate EL-specific, science-based reading strategies. Teachers in bilingual programs must be trained to develop genuine bilingualism in their students, not simply translation skills.

Even when bilingual programming exists, the structural problems do not stop at teacher preparation. Research on dual language programs find that many plans are based in deficit frameworks for emerging bilingual students, particularly by using monolingual assessment practices. A policy brief reviewing Texas’ literacy legislation criticized the required assessments for ELs and found that when Spanish scores were combined with English, the students underperforming decreased from 84% to 40%. In short, when diagnostics and assessments are only completed in English, non-native English speakers may be mischaracterized. This leaves equity gaps in this type of intervention for English learners, as their bilingual growth is not reported accurately.

Bottom Line

The throughline across bilingual schools, dual immersion programs, and science of reading legislation is the same: English learners are rarely the starting point of policy design and are instead expected to adapt to systems built around other priorities. Utah's dual immersion expansion is an early example of this pattern. The economic and global competitiveness goals that drove that expansion were not EL goals, and the students who were meant to benefit were largely left out.

Science of reading legislation has followed a similar trajectory. When EL interventions are folded into the same legislative mandate as dyslexia and disability accommodations, and when the assessments used to track progress are monolingually normed, the policy infrastructure around English learners ends up measuring something other than what it intends to. What is consistent across these approaches is not a lack of investment, but a gap between the populations that policies are designed around and the populations they are meant to serve. Whether that gap closes depends on how seriously states take the distinction.

Blog Topics

literacy

Language and Reading

English Language Learners

Issues Areas

K-12 Education

by Tiffany Broadbent

English language learners are rarely the starting point of policy design.

Voter Suppression Will Not Have the Last Word

vpthomas — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:11:34 +0000

Voter Suppression Will Not Have the Last Word

vpthomas May 1, 2026

Our guest author is Reverend Dr. Cassandra Gould the national political director of the Faith in Action National Network.

Democracy aka governance by the people depends on full and equal civic participation. Free and fair elections are its foundation, ensuring that citizens choose their representatives, not the other way around. At its core, democracy rests on a simple but powerful principle: every vote carries equal weight, regardless of a person’s race, income, education, or social standing.

Yet, for Black Americans, that principle has always been contested.

From Reconstruction to Jim Crow to the present day, Black political participation has been met with coordinated resistance through law, policy, and violence. Yet, it has also been Black political action organizing, strategizing, marching, litigating, and voting that has repeatedly forced this nation closer to its democratic ideals.

That is why the Supreme Court’s April 29, 2026 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais must be understood for what it is: a decision that weakens protections against racial vote dilution and makes it easier to silence Black voters while claiming neutrality. It opens the door for politicians to choose their voters, reversing progress that was hard fought and hard won gains secured through decades of struggle and bloodshed.

This decision, coupled with the proposed SAVE Act, (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act) represents a coordinated effort to contract the electorate.

The SAVE Act, under the guise of election security, would require in-person documentary proof of citizenship such as a passport or birth certificate to register or re-register to vote. In practice, it would dismantle modern voter registration systems, severely limiting online and mail-in registration. Millions of eligible voters would be impacted particularly Black communities, other communities of color, young people, low-income voters, naturalized citizens, married women with name changes, and elderly voters without ready access to documentation.

This is not about protecting democracy. It is about restricting it.

The implications are far-reaching:

Over half of U.S. citizens do not have a passport
Millions cannot easily access their birth certificates
Mail-in and online registration would be drastically curtailed
Election officials could face criminal penalties for documentation errors

These are not isolated policies; they are signals of what is coming. While “authoritarianism” may feel like new language, Black communities know this reality well. Legislative and judicial efforts to silence our voices are not new; they are part of history.

History also teaches us this: suppression has never had the final word. Black communities have resisted, organized, and expanded democracy even in the face of overwhelming opposition. That same spirit is required now.

For unions, educators, and people of faith, this moment is both political and moral. The same systems that undermine voting rights also weaken worker power, silence communities, and limit whose voices shape our collective future.

This moment demands a renewed commitment to solidarity across race, class, faith, and geography, one powerful enough to meet the scale of the threat.

We know what’s coming: more barriers, more intimidation, more attempts to divide and discourage participation and sadly more violence: But we also know this: suppression has never had the final word.

Organized people have. This is not just about defending the democracy we thought we had. It is about building the democracy we need, one where everyone belongs.

So what must we do?

Build solidarity power across sectors so that no community stands alone
Engage in ongoing political education know the ballot, the candidates, and the issues
Push for fair maps wherever state legislative processes allow
Expand the electorate by registering and training a record number of new voters
Demand accountability from election officials to ensure elections are not interrupted or compromised
Oppose restrictive legislation like the SAVE Act through coordinated advocacy
Prepare to defend elections through organized, collective action and coordination with election protection agencies and faith leaders

Democracy has always required struggle. The question before us now is whether we will meet this moment with the same courage, clarity, and collective power that brought us this far.

Issues Areas

Strengthening Democracy

by Reverend Dr. Cassandra Gould

This moment demands courage, clarity, and collective power.

Equity and Fairness Equals Civic and Business Success

vpthomas — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 15:53:51 +0000

Equity and Fairness Equals Civic and Business Success

vpthomas April 27, 2026

Guest author Stanley S. Litow is a professor at Columbia University, author of Breaking Barriers: How P-TECH Schools Create a Pathway From High School to College to Career and The Challenge for Business and Society: From Risk to Reward, a columnist at Barron's, and an Albert Shanker Institute board member.

Education leaders across the US have been working overtime in response to a range of very serious changes in federal policies that seem to have a consistent goal of undermining what had been long standing commitments to both equity and diversity. Such commitments were designed to reverse a history of discrimination, not just in education, but in a host of segments of American life, including the workplace

Recently one of New York's most iconic headquartered businesses IBM, agreed to pay $17 million to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to settle a claim that their diversity, equity and inclusion programs were discriminatory and unlawful. While IBM has fully denied engaging in any practices that were discriminatory in any way, some will interpret the payment as an admission of guilt. The DOJ cited that IBM provided diversity training programs, bonuses based on achieving diversity goals, and considered diverse candidates for promotions. There was a time those practices addressing the need for more equity in the workplace were honored, rewarded, and modeled—not penalized. Over more than a century IBM has always prided itself on being a leader in addressing the need for diversity and equity in the workplace, something that was directly connected to long-term bottom-line business success. While IBM is not a perfect employer, a look at IBM’s history speaks volumes about their progress.

In the 1950's IBM sought a site for a new manufacturing plant. The Governor of Kentucky anxious for IBM to bring thousands of jobs to Lexington Kentucky offered them the best tax incentives. But in the negotiations, he also informed them that the plant would have to be racially segregated since there were zero integrated manufacturing plants below the Mason Dixon Line in the US. IBM's CEO informed the Governor that the company had a core policy enacted in 1953 that IBM "fills jobs regardless of race color or creed” and that was an essential element of opening anywhere. If the state would not support such a policy IBM would not complete the deal. Nervous about losing the jobs, the Governor relented and IBM opened what became Lexmark Computers in Kentucky with a diverse set of employees, a year before the Brown vs. the Board of Education Supreme Court decision and a decade before the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This has always been a critical AND praiseworthy action by a US company.

Several years later JFK was elected President and moved to address the fact that workplaces across the US in a range of industries discriminated against people of color. He put together what was called "Plan for Progress” asking all companies to institute equal opportunity employment practices. Something IBM did in the 1930's. JFK tasked his Vice President Lyndon Johnson with convening major US companies at the White House to ask the companies to make voluntary commitments to end discrimination and increase minority hiring. The President got commitments from 268 companies and from 1961 to 1963 hiring of Black employees increased from 30,000 to 43,000 an increase of 13%. IBM's increase was almost double that, at 24%. President Kennedy and then President Johnson praised the company and its CEO for taking the need to end discrimination in the workplace seriously and providing a model of leadership for others to follow.

The company's commitment to diversity was directly connected to IBMs bottom line success. In the late 1960's working with then Senator Robert F. Kennedy they opened a manufacturing facility in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, at the time an economically challenged minority neighborhood. The plant had 400 employees, 300 of them being men and women of color. The plant fueled IBM’s business success and reinforced support for civil rights across the US.

More recently in 2011 IBM worked with the City of New York to create the PTECH program offering students a combined high school and community college program during grades 9-14 with students getting both a high school and community college degree concurrently, with IBM providing mentors for the students and paid internships, and placing successful completes first in line for jobs The program has grown to over 600 schools across 16 states and 28 countries with 150,000 students enrolled. States like Texas have expanded the program significantly but the initial school in Crown Heights, with a student population consisting of 99% low-income students of color, was recently judged to be the best New York City high school out of over 500 high schools that admit students without screening for admissions. It provided the company with a pipeline of exemplary hires who were skilled and diverse and once more a model for others.

But IBM policy was not only about racial equality in the workplace. In 1935 the company added women into its sales school and had an initial class of 25 women who joined 52 men in the program, which was referenced in major news articles. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. IBM’s first CEO stated, “These women would have neither handicap nor an advantage over the young men, and should expect equal pay and advancement opportunities.” On the 50th Anniversary of women getting the right to vote, the CEO of the company issued a directive against sexual discrimination in the workplace and appointed a corporate officer in charge of equal opportunity for women. In 1996 before any federal actions, IBM adopted a policy providing health and other benefits to same sex partners, making IBM the largest US company to adopt such a policy in the US.

Presidents, government, civic and community leaders and other businesses across the US praised IBM's actions, and employees, shareholders and prospective employees appreciated real leadership and a commitment to equity and fairness.

As we move toward the celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the US this is a time to pause and remember that fairness and equity in the workplace is key to both economic and societal success. Diversity needs to be a core element of education and business success. The lesson of history can inform current and future action, but it will take leadership to achieve results. It has been the case in the past and in can be and should be part of our future.

Issues Areas

Strengthening Democracy

by Stanley S. Litow

Equity and fairness is key to economic and societal success.

The Wright Hire: What Maryland's Decision Tells Us About Literacy Reform

equintero — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:30:19 +0000

The Wright Hire: What Maryland's Decision Tells Us About Literacy Reform

equintero April 7, 2026

When Maryland recruited Dr. Carey Wright to lead its public school system, the choice seemed striking: a strongly Democratic state turning to the architect of literacy reforms from a deeply Republican one. You could read that as a political story. But it might be more useful and accurate to understand it as evidence of something else: that beneath the visible layer of policy, literacy reform is spreading in ways that don't follow partisan lines.

A survey of state legislation by the Albert Shanker Institute found that 45 states and the District of Columbia enacted reading reform laws between 2019 and 2022 — investments in teacher training, early screening for reading difficulties, reading coaches, alignment of practices and materials with literacy research — and characterized the effort as nonpartisan and state-driven (Neuman, Quintero & Reist, 2023). The non partisan momentum is visible at the federal level too. The Science of Reading Act of 2026 (H.R. 7890) passed out of the House Education and Workforce Committee in March 2026, co-led by a Democrat and two Republicans.

But legislation is what we see, it doesn't tell us how reform takes hold inside a school system. That process is harder to see. It happens through professional networks, staffing decisions, and relationships — the kind of work that unfolds over years before it shows up in outcomes. Last year, a Maryland Democrat and a Tennessee Republican — both former teachers — made exactly this point in a joint piece, arguing that staying the course on science of reading reform requires of cross-partisan commitment.

Researchers who study how change spreads across school systems have found that professional networks and trust relationships are often better predictors of whether change takes hold than the policies themselves (Fullan, 2001; Spillane, 2004). Alan Daly and Kara Finnigan's work on social networks in education reform shows that how ideas travel through systems — who talks to whom, who learns from whom — shapes implementation in ways that policy mandates alone cannot (Daly & Finnigan, 2010). Bryk and Schneider's research on trust in schools points in the same direction: relational infrastructure is not the soft backdrop to reform; it's a core condition for it (Bryk & Schneider, 2002). Dr. Wright herself has noted this as well. Speaking at the Reading League Conference last fall, she shared, half-jokingly, that she'd had more breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with people than ever before.

The Wright hire is indeed the right one; but also, not just a pragmatic decision by a state looking for someone with a strong track record — though it is that. It's also a signal that something real is moving at a level that's harder to see. Education leaders and practitioners are crossing political lines and passing similar bills in red and blue states because people doing the work are learning from each other across those lines — through networks, relationships, and hiring decisions.

There may be value in learning to notice these early signals — a leadership hire, a cross-state collaboration, a professional network that's pulling in the same direction. These don't guarantee outcomes but they suggest that something is taking hold, and that it may be worth paying attention to even before the results are visible. In Maryland's case, state officials are starting to claim some promising results — see Governor Moore's announcement during his 2026 State of the State address.

In short, when a Democratic state hires the architect of a Republican state's literacy reforms, that's not a political story. It's evidence that the work of reform is less partisan than we sometimes assume – and in this case, demonstrably so. Other prominent voices have begun making this case, emphasizing the importance of keeping literacy tethered to evidence and away from politics. Perhaps the blue-red frame matters less than we think — and holding on to it makes it harder to see where things are shifting and what is actually working.

Blog Topics

literacy

Issues Areas

K-12 Education

by Esther Quintero

The Wright Hire: What Maryland's Decision Tells Us About Literacy Reform

When Literacy Reform Meets the Classroom

vpthomas — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 16:25:55 +0000

When Literacy Reform Meets the Classroom

vpthomas March 17, 2026

Our guest author is Cooper Sved, an Elementary Educator and Education Policy Analyst.

Opening

Earlier this week, in my sixth-grade general education classroom, my students and I engaged in a thoughtful, generative discussion about North American colonialism as part of our social studies curriculum. I teach at an elementary school just outside Washington, D.C., serving a uniquely multilingual population that spans the full socioeconomic spectrum. My class, in particular, is a microcosm of the diversity present in our area and across the country. My students benefit daily from the range of cultural, linguistic, and economic perspectives that surround them. Unsurprisingly, students were deeply engaged in our discussion, regardless of academic standing. While I relied on a handful of county-provided resources, our social studies curriculum allows for teacher discretion and innovation. Because I know my students well, I was able to modify texts and discussion questions to account for the wide variance in reading proficiency in my room. That short discussion was energizing for students and deeply rewarding for me as their teacher.

Roughly twenty minutes later, our literacy block began.

Last year, in response to the Virginia Literacy Act, my district adopted a scripted literacy curriculum. According to the lesson script, students were to take out their consumable booklets and read two poems, one from the nineteenth century and one from the early twentieth. Despite reviewing key vocabulary and providing extensive background knowledge, none of my students were able to meaningfully comprehend the texts. The lesson assumed students could decipher and analyze both poems within a fifteen-minute window. I was forced to go “off script,” spending nearly twenty minutes simply helping students make sense of the language. What had moments earlier been a classroom full of curious, engaged learners quickly shifted into one marked by boredom, frustration, and escalating disruption. In the span of a single lesson, motivated students became irritable, resistant, and, perhaps most concerningly, disengaged.

The Science of Reading/Virginia Literacy Act

Virginia is just one of more than forty states that have passed legislation aligned with the "Science of Reading" (a brief overview can be found here). This wave of legislation has emerged in response to declining literacy rates nationwide. Virginia’s law, the Virginia Literacy Act, mandated that all public school divisions select and implement a basal literacy program from a list approved by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE). First adopted in 2022, districts were required to implement approved programs in grades K–3 by the start of the 2024–25 school year, with grades 4–8 following in 2025–26.

My district, after selecting its program, moved quickly toward implementation in grades K–6. That summer, all elementary teachers across the county received training in the new evidence-based curriculum. In what felt like an attempt to “rip the band-aid off,” the district adopted the curriculum across all elementary grade levels at once, despite the VDOE allowing for delayed implementation in upper grades. All K–6 teachers (our elementary schools end in sixth grade) were given two days of paid professional development, facilitated by out-of-state company representatives. These sessions offered a surface-level overview of the program’s structure, resources, and digital infrastructure. Ongoing implementation support was largely delegated to school-based reading specialists.

The message to classroom teachers was clear: adhere to the lesson scripts and structures as closely as possible. At my school, the expectation was that teachers would have their guides in hand throughout the two-plus-hour literacy block. In our linguistically diverse context, this approach felt overwhelming, constraining, and, most troubling, disrespectful to struggling learners.

Professional Development

The VLA also required that all K–8 classroom teachers receive professional development in the Science of Reading. Although my teacher preparation program had trained me in structured literacy only a few years earlier, and our school had already fully adopted a Science of Reading approach, my coworkers and I were still required to participate in a series of professional development opportunities that felt unresponsive, laborious, unnecessary.

To help us understand our new curriculum, we were required to complete two days of in-person training over the summer. Conducted by out-of-state representatives, the training provided a brief overview of the program but was completely devoid of district context. We were given the resources, yet left without a clear understanding of how to implement them within our district’s established pedagogical needs and expectations.

All Virginia teachers, regardless of district, were also required to complete a series of self-paced Science of Reading modules before the start of the following school year. While I understand the intention was to establish a baseline level of literacy knowledge across the state, the general consensus among teachers was that the modules were largely unnecessary and primarily enforced to “check a box.” Even my mother, a veteran elementary educator of nearly forty years, found the process unnecessary. Anecdotally, the modules seem to have had little effect on the work my fellow teachers and I were already doing.

Curriculum Adoption

The pressure of rapid adoption, and the recognition of its inevitable shortcomings, was felt across grade levels. During the first year of implementation, I taught a first-grade special education inclusion class. After several months of growing pains, my team found the program manageable, though our primary challenges stemmed from dense texts and unrealistic assumptions about student background knowledge and skill sets. When I moved to sixth grade the following year, those challenges were amplified. Many of my current students, even strong readers, find the program incoherent, the texts inaccessible, and the assessments deliberately confusing. Despite sharing many of their critiques, I have been given no leeway in either grade to modify tier-one instruction. Most of my professional judgment is reserved for deciding which in-program resources students can access during independent work. Still, these issues with adoption are intensified with VLA mandates for consistent intervention cycles. While I agree with this mandate in theory, it proves challenging in my classroom, where nearly half of my students require differentiated reading plans. At the moment, we lack the capacity to meaningfully intervene with every student who needs the support; the stress and exhaustion we already feel as a result of the VLA is being compounded by unrealistic expectations for intervention.

For many of my students, literacy instruction has reinforced a growing distaste for school, one that has intensified since the COVID-19 pandemic. While my diagnostic assessment scores indicate real academic progress, I remain unsure whether that success should be attributed to the program itself or to how I interpret and implement it in response to the particular students in my classroom this year. I also fear that this academic success has come at the cost of my students’ overall interest in academics.

Policy Reform

Despite my clear cynicism toward the current wave of reading legislation, I do not place sole blame on legislators or school leaders. I recognize the need for a clear, coherent strategy to improve literacy instruction statewide. In many ways, the Virginia Literacy Act represents a genuine attempt to address socioeconomic inequities between districts. I work in a system with significant internal capacity to support instructional decision-making; many districts do not. Mandated basal programs can help level that playing field. I also acknowledge a practical benefit: my workload related to lesson creation has decreased significantly. There are real, tangible upsides to the legislation we are seeing. My issue is not with the intent, but with the haphazard implementation.

Could lawmakers temper implementation through more deliberate legislative design? I believe my experience, and my students’, would have been markedly different if adoption timelines were more thoughtful and patient. Districts were given little time to prepare, leaving teachers overwhelmed and under-supported. Literacy legislation should prioritize not only the quality of instruction, but also the experience of those tasked with delivering and receiving it.

Future legislation (literacy-related or otherwise) should:

Prioritize slower, more methodical adoption cycles;
Provide teachers with greater opportunities to exercise professional judgment; and
Require deeper, context-specific professional development well before classroom implementation.

Do lawmakers have an incentive to slow their own legislation? Probably not. Do these critiques suddenly make my students love the texts they find disengaging? Of course not. There is still work to be done. What I do know is that the perspective shared here is not mine alone, it is echoed by colleagues in my building and by educators across the country. For students, the experiential rewards of classroom learning are foundational to their engagement with the world, and a literacy curriculum should support, not stifle, that process.

Blog Topics

literacy

Language and Reading

Issues Areas

K-12 Education

by Cooper Sved

Literacy legislation should consider the experience educators and students.

From the Simple View of Reading to an Integrated View of Foundational Skills

vpthomas — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 14:39:07 +0000

From the Simple View of Reading to an Integrated View of Foundational Skills

vpthomas February 12, 2026

Our guest author is Rafely Palacios, a first-grade bilingual teacher and literacy advocate in the Bay Area, recognized by the ILA 30 Under 30 for her work improving literacy outcomes for multilingual learners.

If you’re a teacher, you’ve likely encountered the Simple View of Reading (SVR). This model shows that reading comprehension results from two essential components: decoding (word recognition) and language comprehension (understanding spoken language). In many U.S. classrooms, these components are taught in separate instructional blocks: phonics for decoding and, later, a distinct time for comprehension or oral language.

But could this separation have unintended effects on students’ development as readers?

In Elbow Room, a paper recently published by the Albert Shanker Institute, Dr. Maryanne Wolf challenges a siloed interpretation of the Simple View of Reading, shown by the separation of decoding and comprehension blocks in many classrooms. Instead, Dr. Wolf argues for a more integrated approach to foundational skills. Rather than treating decoding and language comprehension as parallel but separate strands, she emphasizes that children must develop word recognition, word meaning, syntax, and morphology as interrelated components within a coherent instructional sequence. Dr. Wolf argues that each skill, and their integration, must be taught explicitly, systematically, and cumulatively, ensuring no component is left to chance, while remaining dynamic enough to adapt pace and support to each learner's needs.

I recommend this paper to all primary-grade teachers. Dr. Wolf’s work broadens our understanding of how we act as architects for our students, revealing how every lesson and interaction reshapes a child’s mind. It answers questions we often have about why some students struggle, showing that the 'magic' happens when our instruction helps them integrate skills rather than teach them in isolation. In this post, I share key ideas from Dr. Wolf’s paper and reflect on how they are shaping my own first-grade reading instruction.

Why the Reading Wars Miss the Point

For decades, educators, researchers, parents, and policymakers have debated how best to teach reading. Two approaches are often positioned in opposition: Structured Literacy, which addresses all components of reading and emphasizes systematic, explicit instruction, especially in foundational skills such as phonology and decoding, and Whole Language, which prioritizes reading for meaning, using rich texts and context to support comprehension, with decoding often taught implicitly.

It is essential to clarify that Structured Literacy is distinct from the Science of Reading (SOR). The Science of Reading refers to the body of interdisciplinary research on how the brain learns to read. Structured Literacy is one instructional approach informed by that research, but it is not synonymous with it.

Despite decades of debate, two facts are difficult to dispute. First, national assessments reveal a critical literacy gap: over one-third of students perform 'Below Basic,' meaning they lack the fundamental skills for grade-level work. While systemic factors like poverty, school underfunding, and the effects of the pandemic compound this issue, inconsistent instructional practices remain a primary, addressable concern. When classroom methods are not aligned with literacy research, the impact is not felt equally; as Dr. Wolf argues in Elbow Room, insufficient and inconsistent instruction most disadvantages marginalized students, who are often left without the foundational tools to bridge these divides.

Second, decades of neuroscience research have given us a clearer picture of how the brain learns to read. These studies show that reading circuits are built gradually and that explicit, systematic instruction matters, including sufficient practice with texts. They also reveal something important: the distinctions we draw between instructional camps do not exist in the reading brain.

Skilled reading does not involve switching between phonics and comprehension.

Decoding, language comprehension, background knowledge, and meaning-making operate together. As Dr. Wolf argues, this reality calls for humility. No single approach offers children everything they need. Each approach has something to contribute, and students benefit when instruction integrates the strengths of both approaches, intentionally and thoughtfully (explicit and systematic).

How the Reading Brain Is Built

A child’s reading journey begins long before formal schooling. At birth, the brain contains foundational systems for language, cognition, and vision. From infancy through early childhood, these systems are shaped through rich interaction, play, conversation, and meaningful engagement with the world. The quality of a child’s language environment, regardless of language or dialect, plays a crucial role in strengthening the neural pathways that later support decoding, word recognition, comprehension, and fluent reading.

During this period, children gradually come to understand three foundational concepts: words represent ideas and objects; words are composed of individual sounds; and these sounds can be represented by letters that form written words.

But understanding these concepts is only the beginning. The brain must organize them into a functional reading circuit that links letters, sounds, words, and meaning. Children are not born with this circuit. Reading is a cultural invention, and the brain must learn it by repurposing and connecting existing neural systems. This is why teaching reading is an act of building brain circuits.

Phonics and Beyond: Building an Integrated Reading Circuit

Phonics instruction teaches children how sounds map onto letters, the code of written language. But sounding out a word does not guarantee understanding. Readers must also know what words mean, how sentences work, and how ideas connect across text.

In my first-grade classroom, this integration occurs daily. When we decode a word like replay, we don’t stop at sounding it out. We pause to ask what re- means, how it changes the base word play, and how the word functions in the sentence we’re reading. During phonics, we talk about meaning. During reading, we return to studying word structure. I plan these moments to match what we are learning in phonics, build on our work with word structure in morphology, and connect to language comprehension. This is how our students' brains process text: not as separate skills in isolation, but as interconnected systems working together.

Dr. Wolf captures this complexity with the mnemonic POSSUM, which names the interdependent processes involved in skilled reading:

P – Phonology, Phonemic Awareness, Prosody, and Pragmatics
O – Orthographic patterns
S – Semantics (meaning)
S – Syntax (sentence structure)
U – Understanding the alphabetic principle and stories
M – Morphology (meaningful word parts)

As Connie Juel noted in 2005, “The biggest mistake most early instructional approaches make is to assume that when children decode a word, they know the word.” Phonics is essential, but it is only one component of a much larger system.

This integrated view also affects how we think about fluency. Fluency is not simply about reading faster. It reflects how efficiently multiple reading processes work, both independently and together. As children strengthen decoding, morphology, and syntax, these processes become more automatic and better coordinated, freeing cognitive space for comprehension and meaning-making.

Giving the Reading Brain Elbow Room

This brings us to Wolf’s central metaphor. Just as we need physical elbow room to move comfortably, the reading brain needs cognitive and instructional space to build and integrate its many components.

The elbow analogy helps teachers visualize how instruction should shift over time

Early in reading development, foundational skills—phonics, decoding, and orthography—need the most emphasis. These are the “top arm” of the crossed-elbows model.
Comprehension, however, is never absent. Even simple texts require meaning, syntax, and word knowledge. This reflects Dr. Wolf’s expanded view of foundational skills, in which decoding and understanding are developed explicitly and systematically from the start. Once a few letter-sounds are learned, this kickstarts decoding, word recognition, and so on.
As fluency develops, deep reading comprehension processes (the bottom arm) gradually move to the foreground, while foundational skills continue to support from below.

Imagine crossing your arms, then switching which arm is on top. The arms represent the balance between basic skills and comprehension; both are always present and support each other, but the focus (i.e., which takes the lead) shifts as children develop.

Why This Matters

Phonics instruction is necessary but not sufficient. Fluency is not just about speed; it emerges when multiple processes become automatic and integrated, allowing the brain to focus on meaning rather than effort.

All children follow a shared developmental architecture for learning to read, with the same neural systems and cognitive processes involved. However, children differ in how quickly these systems develop and in the support they need. Teachers must adapt instructional pace to students' trajectories, language backgrounds, and prior knowledge.

As Dr. Maryanne Wolf writes in Elbow Room, “Phonemes need letters. Phonics needs knowledge of semantics, syntax, and morphemes. Words need stories. The reading brain connects all of these processes, and so should our teaching.

When we give ourselves elbow room, we do more than support the reading brain's processing of foundational skills. We create the conditions for children to become fluent, thoughtful readers who can integrate sound, structure, and meaning. This kind of reading does not emerge from rigid pacing or isolated skills, but from instruction that allows foundational processes to develop in a connected way for each learner. By understanding how the brain learns to read, we move beyond ideological debates and toward teaching that truly serves all children.

Blog Topics

literacy

Issues Areas

K-12 Education

by Rafely Palacios

By understanding how the brain learns to read, we move beyond ideological debates and toward teaching that truly serves all children.