By Vin Gopal
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a critical need to ensure that every student is learning at their grade level and is able to access all the resources to help them succeed.
For the past year, the state Senate Education Committee has worked to close the gap and it is gratifying to report that the governor has signed our bill creating a Literacy Task Force to study and improve student literacy.
The new law mandates universal literacy screenings for K-3 students and requires professional development - at no cost to school districts - for early education teaching staff, school librarians, and others serving multilingual learners or students with disabilities.
Securing our children’s success later in life begins in the classroom. These foundational literacy skills can determine a student’s academic success, college readiness, future career and economic prospects. By establishing a framework for reading assessments and interventions we will give teachers and school districts a reliable resource to draw from to help all students reach their fullest potential.
Our legislation addresses the alarming fact that 57.6 percent of all third graders statewide are not meeting reading proficiency levels. That gap is even worse for students of color, with 73.6 percent of Black and 72.5 percent of Latino third graders not reading at grade level. Reading is the cornerstone of learning and academic achievement, and if we do not intervene now we risk creating another generation of children who will fail to achieve their academic and economic potential.
The legislation creates a Literacy Task Force in the state Department of Education to make recommendations to the department about implementing evidence-based literacy strategies, providing reliable instruments for a universal literacy screening, and acquiring high-quality literacy instructional materials.
The Literacy Task Force will consist of members appointed by the commissioner of education representing the northern, central and southern regions of the state with one parent of a student enrolled in a school district with expertise on how to meaningfully include parents in discussions.
The diversity of expertise in the Task Force represents the range of disciplines that contribute to how young students learn to read. The group will include two literacy experts with experience using evidence-based literacy strategies, at least one member who has expertise working with students with disabilities, and a member with expertise working with multilingual learners. Other members will have expertise working with students with dyslexia, a certified school library media specialist; a member of the charter schools community, and at least one member who is a certified speech-language specialist.
The new law calls on the state education commission to take the Task Force’s finding and develop and publish guidance for use by school districts beginning with the 2025-2026 school year.
Being able to read at grade level is critical to how successful students will be in learning other subjects. Early success in school significantly boosts the likelihood of students graduating from high school, pursuing higher education, and improving their future earning potential. The available data shows the stark difference in economic success between students who complete high school and those who don’t graduate. In 2022, workers aged 25 and over with a high school diploma had a median of just over 25 percent higher than those who didn’t finish high school, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Ensuring young children have access to the resources needed to become strong confident readers will help set them on the path to educational and career success.
That’s good for everybody because, when every child in our state has greater opportunity to succeed, we all benefit.
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