Reading doesn’t just happen. It’s a skill that has to be learned, which means it has to be taught. And since reading is foundational to success in just about every other aspect of life, teaching it well is among the most important tasks performed by public schools.

Unfortunately, however, Pennsylvania is falling behind in childhood literacy training. A combination of trendy, but now discredited, approaches to teaching reading and a lack of specific focus at the state level has allowed youth literacy levels to stagnate, while other states — most notably Mississippi — have leapfrogged the commonwealth.

The Mississippi model is sometimes called the Mississippi miracle, but it didn’t come as a lightning bolt out of the sky. Rather, it was the product of years of research and policymaking, followed by a decade-plus of executing that strategy in schools across the state. That included mandating phonics-based curricula; funding and then managing training for educators in proven teaching methods; and improving monitoring, accountability and intervention through assessments that ensure as many children as possible are reading fluently by the end of third grade.

Bills that would bring much of the Mississippi model to Pennsylvania have been proposed in Harrisburg. Passing them would be among the most important moves state leaders could make to improve education in the commonwealth.

TRENDY TEACHING

The skill of reading is essentially the skill of decoding. The symbols that we call “letters” signify certain sounds (though in English, which sounds can be complicated), and collections of letters — which form a distinct collection of sounds — form words. These words, in turn, stand for an infinite variety of meanings.

Reading is the translation of symbols into meaning. To do it effectively, most people begin by decoding the letters, and then move onto decoding the words. This, in essence, is the traditional discipline called “phonics,” which focuses on teaching the sounds made by particular letters and sets of letters.

In the 1990s, however, a challenge emerged to phonics: so-called “whole language” literacy, which argued that reading comes naturally, like speaking, and that students can generally become fluent simply by being presented with text and guided through it on a word-by-word basis. This approach become trendy, despite never being backed by actual research, and diluted the emphasis on phonics in elementary schools, but more importantly in the institutions that train teachers.

The effects — compounded in recent years by COVID learning loss — have been baleful. In Pennsylvania, for instance, in 2022 only about a third of students were assessed to be proficient at reading in fourth grade by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The figures were much worse for poor, Black and Latino students.

This is particularly discouraging because the research speaks with one voice that the age of 8 — that is, about third grade — is the key moment for fluent literacy. Children who struggle to learn to read but catch up by age 8 show no ill effects going forward. Children who are behind at age 8 struggle to ever catch up to their peers.

START EARLY, DUSE EVIDENCE

But what can be done about it? Luckily, the poorest state in America — Mississippi — has allowed itself to be a natural laboratory for a reading policy experiment. And the results are incredible.

Since passing phonics-based literacy training and curriculum policies in 2013, Mississippi has gone from 49th in the country in fourth-grade NAEP reading scores to 21st. When adjusted for demographics, the Magnolia State is now in the top five for early literacy in America.

The Mississippi model policy prescription includes early interventions for young children who are struggling; a statewide phonics-based curriculum that’s proven effective by research, not hunches; and funding for initial and ongoing training for elementary teachers in this “science of reading.” All of these can and should be implemented in Pennsylvania.

Arguably the most noticeable aspect of Mississippi’s reading reforms has been the rule that children are not permitted to graduate to fourth grade without demonstrating proficient reading. The effects of this regulation are debated, specifically whether the stress induced by it, and the setbacks imposed on those who don’t make the grade, are worth the benefits. It is likely unnecessary for Pennsylvania to implement this rule to achieve significant positive results.

FOLLOWING MISSISSIPPI

But the commonwealth can and should pass proposed legislation that would apply much of the rest of the Mississippi model to Pennsylvania. Last session, these bills went by the numbers HB998 and SB801. The House version was introduced on a bipartisan basis by Reps. Justin Fleming, D-Dauphin, and Jason Ortitay, R-Allegheny.

The proposal included a big financial ask: $100 million to fund training for educators, statewide evidence-based curriculum materials and a system of early literacy monitoring and intervention for young students struggling to reach the third-grade benchmark. The price tag may seem steep, but not when compared to the costs of the status quo for the long-term education, maturation and overall confidence of Pennsylvania’s young people.

Mandating a curriculum at the state level would be a departure for the commonwealth, which has a long tradition of local control of education. In this case, however, it’s warranted: Ensuring every Pennsylvania student has access to proven literacy-learning materials, and trained educators, isn’t about delivering any one side’s perspective or enforcing ideological conformity in any way. It’s about giving every child the proven best opportunity to learn to read on time, and therefore to succeed in every other way.

Mississippi has shown the way. Now it’s up to Pennsylvania’s leaders to follow.

— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via TNS