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Introduction
Washington, North Carolina
Raul Olivares Jr. had heard the phrase 鈥渟cience of reading鈥� before.Like other education buzzwords, it had filtered down through the ether, mentioned casually in colleagues鈥� conversations or included in communiques from the district. But it was only last fall that he realized its significance鈥攚hen Olivares, a kindergarten teacher at Eastern Elementary in Washington, N.C., heard that his state had passed a bill that would require elementary schools to teach the 鈥渟cience of reading.鈥�
This past school year, he has spent hours going through state-mandated training designed to teach the foundations of reading science, processing it with colleagues, and trying out new ideas in his classroom.
鈥淚 do like it, and I鈥檓 learning a lot,鈥� he said. But the process has been 鈥渧ery, very intense.鈥�
He鈥檚 experienced a major shift in how he thinks about his teaching practice. 鈥淚 almost feel like I need to say 鈥業鈥檓 sorry鈥� to some of the kids I taught before,鈥� he said.
North Carolina is one of more than two dozen states that have embarked on an attempt to radically transform reading instruction over the past few years. The goal is to bring instruction in line with the decades of research on how young children learn to read.
Reaching that goal will be messy and hard.
鈥淵our philosophy on reading is as deep as religion,鈥� said Sherri Miller, the principal at Lacy Elementary School in Wake County, N.C. 鈥淚鈥檝e had many matches with people where you just go round and round and round. It鈥檚 kind of like the politics in our country.鈥�
For many teachers in North Carolina and the other states pursuing 鈥渟cience of reading,鈥� the demands to change will require a seismic shift in how they teach and a complete rethinking of their best practices and beliefs.
As North Carolina鈥檚 experience underscores, this kind of change is happening slowly, unevenly, school by school or even teacher by teacher. It relies on a careful alchemy of encouragement, incentives, and teacher buy-in鈥攁 challenging balance when most school systems and many individual teachers traditionally make their own decisions about what to teach and how to teach it.
Olivares is committed to learning from the training. He wants to do what鈥檚 best for his students. But he鈥檚 still not sure what his reading instruction should now look like.
鈥淚 felt like a lot of it was giving me background knowledge, background knowledge. But I wasn鈥檛 getting鈥攈ow do you apply it?鈥�
Why would a state want to overhaul reading instruction?
To understand why North Carolina is pursuing such sweeping changes, it鈥檚 important to know what reading instruction looks like in most classrooms across the country.
Most early reading teachers in the United States鈥擭orth Carolina included鈥�say that they practice balanced literacy.
The approach usually relies heavily on teacher choice and professional judgment: Teachers are taught to have many 鈥渢ools in their toolbox鈥� and use the methods that they think are most appropriate for the students in front of them.
One common practice in balanced literacy is guided reading, in which teachers coach students in a variety of comprehension strategies as they read a book matched to their level. Teachers encourage students who struggle over individual words to use pictures and context, in addition to looking at the letters, to guess at what the word could be.
This was how Olivares was trained, he said. 鈥淎t the university level, it was more of look at the pictures, use those picture clues.鈥�
But decades of psychology and neuroscience research have demonstrated that many of these strategies aren鈥檛 the most effective for creating skilled readers. Studies have shown that explicit, systematic instruction in how letters represent sounds鈥攑honics鈥攊s the most effective way to teach kids how to read words. Teaching students to rely on other clues, like pictures, takes their focus away from the letters. And restricting students to books deemed 鈥渁t their level鈥� can actually widen achievement gaps.
The science of reading takes a more structured approach. Teachers start with the foundations of language, including phonics. The youngest students don鈥檛 spend a lot of time attempting to read books that they can鈥檛 decode; instead, teachers work on developing kids鈥� language abilities and knowledge of the world through read-alouds and conversations.
As students begin to read more fluently, these word recognition skills and language abilities . 69传媒 read increasingly complex texts at or above their grade level鈥攏ot just in English class, but across disciplines.
There are fundamental differences in how these two approaches work. But often, these differences are flattened into a conversation about phonics鈥攚hether to teach it or not, and how much time to spend.
It鈥檚 true that some balanced literacy teachers don鈥檛 teach a lot of phonics. But others do. And as the science of reading movement has picked up steam, more schools have implemented explicit, systematic phonics programs, while still using guided reading throughout the rest of the school day.
That can undermine the whole approach, researchers say. If students learn phonics in the morning but are then asked to guess at words while reading in the afternoon, they won鈥檛 be honing their phonics skills for authentic reading. If teachers then restrict these students to lower-level texts, they won鈥檛 be building the knowledge and disciplinary literacy that will propel their learning forward.
Olivares鈥� school had started this kind of transition long before the new legislation. Eastern Elementary has been using a systematic phonics program for the past several years. But it鈥檚 just started figuring out how to move away from guided reading and other balanced literacy practices this past year.
You can never say enough that 鈥� decoding is only half the story.
The phonics program was overwhelming to learn at first, Olivares said. But over the past couple of years, he鈥檚 started to see his students applying the skills they鈥檝e learned outside of his literacy block鈥攖o read math word problems, for instance.
On one Monday this past May, Olivares sat in a chair in front of his classroom smartboard, writing out letter combinations for his students to sound out. They were reviewing several digraphs鈥攃ombinations of two letters that represent one sound. When they got to 鈥減h,鈥� Olivares reminded the kindergarteners on the rug that this particular duo of letters is tricky鈥攊t might not make the sound his students thought it would. This digraph? 鈥淗e loves to be a spy,鈥� Olivares said.
The letters 鈥減h鈥� make the /f/ sound, 鈥渂ut they look like they want us to say 鈥榩uh-huh,鈥欌�� said Olivares, steepling his hands together and leaning forward conspiratorially. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not going to fall for it.鈥�
Olivares coaches the group as they diagram words at a quick pace, the kindergartners identifying digraphs and vowels and then raising fingers in the air to 鈥渟lide鈥� read the words from left to right. He sounds practiced, confident. But that wasn鈥檛 always the case, he says.
鈥淚t was very hard to accept that it was our new normal, because that鈥檚 not what I was taught going to school or at the university level,鈥� Olivares said. 鈥淚t took me a good two years before I finally saw the benefits of it.鈥� He is an evangelist for the program now. This past year, he had three students start school with no English who are now all reading at or above grade level. Seeing these students鈥� progress was 鈥渕y true buy-in,鈥� he said.
But he鈥檚 still not sure how the rest of the 鈥渟cience of reading鈥� should apply to his practice.
鈥淔or years, it鈥檚 been guided reading, guided reading, guided reading: the Jan Richardson model,鈥� Olivares said, referencing a popular balanced literacy approach. But now, the training has introduced him to a new way of understanding how kids learn to read. He feels like he needs a new model to match鈥攈e鈥檚 just not sure where to find one.
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Rocky rollout fuels frustration
With the aim of providing teachers with this new model, touches on almost every part of how teachers approach reading instruction: Training, curricula, and interventions for struggling students must all match new state guidelines.
The majority of the law鈥檚 requirements fall on K-12 school districts. And districts were tasked with starting the overhaul just a few months after the legislation passed鈥攁 timeline that school leaders said presented a steep challenge amid pandemic schooling.
State officials and legislators said the work was too urgent to delay. But that urgency didn鈥檛 account for the time it takes to persuade people to re-examine deeply held beliefs.
It has forced districts to throw together plans that some teachers find frustrating and overwhelming. And the changes to practice, to philosophy, that the department is asking schools and teachers to make are large, and not all teachers understand why they鈥檙e necessary.
Take, for example, the law鈥檚 most sweeping measure, which requires every K-5 teacher to undergo the same intensive, 2-year training program in both word reading and comprehension instruction. The training鈥擫anguage Essentials for Teachers of 69传媒 and Spelling or LETRS鈥攊s costing the department $54 million to implement and takes about 160 hours to complete.
Once the law passed in April 2021, it started a countdown clock: The first schools were scheduled to start the course that fall.
LETRS is often described as equivalent to a graduate-level class. Over the course of two years, it gives teachers a foundation in both word reading and comprehension instruction. Completing it takes a lot of teacher time, requiring district leaders to get creative to fit the training into their schedules.
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County schools sent the message out to its principals: Set aside your other professional learning plans. LETRS is your focus now. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, facing a substitute shortage, dispersed students to other classes so that teachers could attend sessions during the day.
鈥淚t caused a lot of resentment, because we were already stressed, already overworked,鈥� Emily Bullard, a kindergarten teacher in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, said of having extra students added to her room. Bullard said she was a LETRS 鈥渁dvocate鈥� from the beginning, but juggling the training schedule was a struggle.
(The department of public instruction offered districts the option to push back the start date for the training, and about a dozen did.)
The rollout has not been in any way, shape, or form appropriate.
Most teachers also had to spend time outside of contract hours to do the training鈥攖ime that they aren鈥檛 all getting compensated for. The state didn鈥檛 provide a stipend, so districts chose whether to offer one. Teachers in some schools are receiving $1,000, others are receiving $250, others nothing, all for doing the same amount of work鈥攁 system that didn鈥檛 feel fair to many teachers.
LETRS became just another thing to get through鈥攁n exercise in compliance鈥攆or some.
One teacher said that her colleagues had asked her if she wanted to work together to find answers online, so that they wouldn鈥檛 have to do the assignments. A consultant with a nonprofit recounted seeing teachers in one school cleaning out their classrooms while the online training played in the background.
Jennifer Delano-Gemzik, a former literacy coach in North Carolina who has led some LETRS trainings in the state, said she鈥檚 experienced virtual rooms of 40 people, all with cameras off, who don鈥檛 interact during the training or join breakout rooms.
鈥淚 could keep repeating a question until the cows come home and nobody鈥檚 going to respond to me,鈥� she said.
Even some of the fiercest advocates for change in North Carolina have critiqued the rollout. It 鈥渉as not been in any way, shape, or form appropriate,鈥� said Amanda Harrison, a dyslexia activist with Literacy Moms NC, an influential group that helped shape the law. The lack of a statewide stipend and the logistical challenges for districts put undue burdens on educators on the ground, she said.
In other cases, this rocky start has given way to better systems.
In Charlotte-Mecklenberg, Bullard鈥檚 district, the school board eventually added extra paid work time to the calendar for the 2021-22 school year. Since then, there鈥檚 been somewhat of a 鈥渢one shift,鈥� she said. More of her colleagues are invested in the training.
Even so, the department needs to focus more on the purpose and vision behind the initiative, said Beth Anderson, the executive director of the Hill Learning Center, an independent school and research center for students with reading difficulties.
It needs to be clear to teachers why the current practices aren鈥檛 working, and why the state is trying to change how reading is taught. 鈥淵ou always have to start with the why,鈥� Anderson said.
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When research clashes with teacher training
For some teachers, the 鈥渨hy鈥� of LETRS training wasn鈥檛 clear at the outset. And for others, prior training continues to influence how they view the program鈥攅ven when it鈥檚 taught them useful new approaches.
Some districts have tried to use data to make the case for the science of reading, using stagnant student achievement scores to argue that current methods aren鈥檛 working. Leaders stress that they鈥檙e not trying to blame or shame teachers, but to help them use methods that weren鈥檛 emphasized in their preparation. 鈥淲hen you know better, you do better,鈥� goes a common refrain in the science of reading movement.
But the idea that experimental studies have more insight into best practice than teachers鈥� experiences and observations in the classroom feels like an attack on many teachers鈥� philosophy.
鈥淏alanced literacy teaches that you the teacher are the expert, you know what you鈥檙e doing,鈥� said Delano-Gemzik, the LETRS trainer.
Teacher knowledge and professional judgment still play a big role in helping students advance in a science of reading framework. But it rejects the idea that teachers can use any tool in their toolbox. It hands them a new toolbox.
It almost felt like the law was coming in to say, 鈥榃hat everybody was doing for the last 15 years was wrong. Now, you have to do this.'
Some district leaders decided they couldn鈥檛 ask their teachers to make this shift without understanding it themselves, too. These school systems paid for additional staff to go through LETRS, beyond what the state funded.
That鈥檚 the case in Beaufort County, where Raul Olivares Jr., the kindergarten teacher who鈥檚 trying to figure out how to apply new methods, teaches.
District leaders used COVID relief funds to train special education teachers, interventionists, and some district-level staff. Otherwise, said Jennifer Smith, the district鈥檚 K-5 curriculum director, 鈥渢hey鈥檙e trying to lead that work really, truly blindly.鈥�
Before the training began in January, Beaufort held a kickoff event with school leaders. Smith put the data in front of them: two-thirds of their K-8 students were below grade level in reading.
Smith tried to emphasize that it was systems鈥攐f teacher preparation and training鈥攖hat were to blame for those results, not teachers individually. 鈥淭his is what we鈥檙e going to do to move forward together,鈥� Smith said, recounting the presentation.
The messaging has hit home for Olivares. Others are more skeptical.
Lauren Johnson, a 17-year veteran educator, teaches in Beaufort County鈥檚 Chocowinity Primary School.
鈥淲hen the law was written 2021, I had mixed feelings, because I was originally, as a classroom teacher, balanced-literacy trained,鈥� Johnson said. 鈥淚 started seeing a lot of people wanting to change the language of what you deem the best way to teach literacy to kids. 鈥� It almost felt like the law was coming in to say, 鈥榃hat everybody was doing for the last 15 years was wrong. Now, you have to do this.鈥欌��
Johnson鈥檚 time is split between delivering 69传媒 Recovery, a one-on-one intervention for 1st grade struggling readers, and leading guided reading groups with students in other grade levels.
Much of her practice is grounded in the balanced literacy frameworks that districts in North Carolina鈥攊ncluding hers鈥攈ave pledged to move away from. But she sees the wholesale rejection of balanced literacy tenets as misguided. 鈥淭here are so many ways to help children access literature and to help kids become lifelong readers,鈥� she said.
Johnson is not anti-LETRS. 鈥淔or a lot of our beginning teachers, this has been great,鈥� she said, noting that some of her less-seasoned colleagues are learning about the structure of language for the first time. 鈥淚f you don鈥檛 understand that as a teacher, you can鈥檛 teach the code to a kid,鈥� Johnson said.
The content, so far, has been review for her, Johnson said. But she鈥檚 learned some new things, too鈥攍ike how to coach students on their mouth placement to distinguish the different sounds that different letters make.
鈥淭hat has been a big shift for me,鈥� Johnson said. 鈥淲e got so focused on the end of where [students] needed to be, and the fast-paced curriculum, that some of those critical foundational skills like the phonemic awareness piece have been overlooked.鈥�
But Johnson worries that her experience as a 69传媒 Recovery teacher is being discounted鈥攖hat in rejecting balanced literacy wholesale, the state might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
鈥�69传媒 Recovery teachers are highly trained, and that training should not be disregarded just because it doesn鈥檛 fit with what someone else believes,鈥� Johnson said.
The curriculum that her district has adopted leads students through a highly structured progression of foundational skills, which they then apply in decodable texts written to given them practice on the letter-sound patterns they鈥檝e learned. Eventually, they progress to more complex texts that are less controlled.
Johnson supports phonics instruction, but such a structured progression goes against her beliefs about what reading should feel like for young kids as they鈥檙e starting out. 鈥淚 want them to be able to open up any book and look at the pictures, and think about the story, and try to read,鈥� she said.
She believes there鈥檚 no 鈥減erfect way鈥� to teach reading. There have to be a multitude of approaches.
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Transferring knowledge to practice
Lauren Johnson鈥檚 mixed reception is probably a fairly typical response to an attempt to change practice at such a scale on such a compressed timeline: It takes time to see the incentive for trying something new, and to figure out what that would look like in a classroom context.
What that means, said Sarah Woulfin, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Texas at Austin, is that teachers need a comprehensive system of support.
It means curriculum that鈥檚 aligned to the training teachers are receiving. It means time to draw those connections in professional learning. It means an ecosystem of educators鈥攑rincipals, coaches, interventionists鈥攁ll working toward the same goals.
And it means knowing, with clear examples, what should replace discarded practices. Mississippi, which has come to be seen as a model for other states seeking to improve reading instruction, hit on a strategy for demonstrating this that North Carolina is slowly adopting.
My ideal situation would be that our curriculum coach, or even district literacy coaches, would come into our school, sit all of us down, and say: 鈥楾his is what a small group lesson is going to look like using the science of reading.'
When it began on its science-of-reading journey, Mississippi funded coaches for each of the state鈥檚 lowest-performing schools to help teachers apply what they were learning in LETRS training, as well as professional development and online learning for schools without coaches. It also asked coaches to provide monthly reports on their work, keeping school principals and the state officials informed.
鈥淵ou won鈥檛 see any of those things in statute,鈥� said Kymyona Burk, a senior policy fellow at ExcelinEd, who led the implementation of Mississippi鈥檚 law as the state鈥檚 literacy director. 鈥淭hose things grew out of a need, working with my assistant director and our leadership team.鈥�
Now, in Beaufort, each school designated a LETRS 鈥渁mbassador鈥� who meets monthly with ambassadors from other North Carolina schools and district leaders to discuss implementation progress and challenges. School-based reading coaches meet with teachers during the middle of each unit to digest the LETRS information together and talk about how it applies in their school context.
Olivares, the kindergarten teacher at Eastern Elementary, sat in one of these meetings in late May. Denise Owens, the school鈥檚 LETRS ambassador, led the group of teachers in a discussion about why understanding the structure of students鈥� home languages and dialects is important to reading instruction.
They talked about African American Vernacular English and Spanish, and how features of students鈥� spoken language shape their pronunciation of words. Native Spanish speakers, Owens noted, often confuse the 鈥渃h鈥� and 鈥渟h鈥� sounds when speaking English.
It鈥檚 important to know these features, she said, so that when a student鈥檚 pronunciation differs from standard English, teachers can figure out whether it鈥檚 due to their language background or whether it might be indicative of a phonological processing problem.
鈥淭hey may not need that extra intervention service,鈥� Owens continued. 鈥淲e want to make sure we鈥檙e looking at that carefully, and not just the number or score.鈥�
This new information鈥攁nd help translating it to practice鈥攈as been valuable for Monica Littlefield, one of Olivares鈥� colleagues who teaches 1st grade at Eastern. So far, LETRS has been most helpful for her work with English-language learners, Littlefield said.
She learned that Spanish has fewer vowel sounds than English does and that English learners can struggle to identify two different sounds in English that are pronounced the same way in Spanish. This year, she had a boy in her class who had trouble distinguishing vowel sounds for e and i. The training helped her take a step back and understand why this student, a native Spanish speaker, might be confused. 鈥淭o him, those vowels sounded very similar,鈥� she said.
Olivares, too, has started applying pieces of what he鈥檚 learned in LETRS training. But he still feels like he can鈥檛 see the entire picture yet.
Years ago, when he started teaching guided reading, a representative from the curriculum his school used came to show teachers how to use the framework in a small group. Olivares wants something like that for LETRS, too.
鈥淢y ideal situation would be that our curriculum coach, or even district literacy coaches, would come into our school, sit all of us down, and say: 鈥楾his is what a small group lesson is going to look like using the science of reading. These are the lesson plans for a small group lesson. These are the resources we鈥檙e going to pull from. This is how we understand the data,鈥欌�� Olivares said.
Then, there鈥檚 the need for classroom materials. Over his dozen years in the classroom, he鈥檚 bought resources with his own money to support guided reading, and it鈥檚 unclear whether they can be modified or used to support the new literacy approach.
鈥淲hat happens with that now?鈥� he asked.
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A scramble to retrofit curriculum
Olivares鈥� predicament is one districts all over North Carolina are now wrestling with: how the materials used for teaching can support and deepen the new training rather than subverting it. Curriculum is critical鈥攆or the discrete word-identification part of early reading, but also for the much lengthier, yearslong work of building students鈥� knowledge and comprehension across a wide range of texts.
鈥淲e can train teachers up all day long, but if they don鈥檛 have the materials they need to then put that training into action in the classroom, we鈥檝e missed that mark,鈥� said Katharine Bonasera, a manager of educational partnerships at the Center for the Collaborative Classroom.
Districts must use core curriculum and intervention materials that are aligned to the science of reading, which they must phase in over the course of the next three years. But unlike other states, North Carolina has not put out a list of approved materials, citing local control.
This leaves districts with a few decisions: Do they buy new products, or try to work with what they have? Do they wait to roll out new curricula until they get formal approval from the state, or start making changes now? Adding to those questions there鈥檚 a new one, a product of last year鈥檚 culture wars: A science of reading framework calls for students to engage deeply with a variety of texts. But what happens when those texts become the target of political backlash to curricula that teach about equity, diversity, and inclusion?
Cabarrus County, a district in the Charlotte area, is starting with a few homegrown solutions.
As it transitions away from Lucy Calkins鈥� Units of Study for 69传媒, a popular guided reading curriculum, the district has created an evolving, shared guidebook for small group instruction. As leaders and coaches see strong examples of classroom activities aligned to the science of reading, they include them in the guidebook for other teachers to reference.
Liz Schriver, an intervention coach in the district, took pictures of a few of her students making different vowel sounds with their mouths and posted them on the wall in a 鈥渧owel valley鈥� for other students to reference. She gathered manipulatives for students to use during phonemic awareness practice鈥攍ike magnetic chips that kids could use to represent each sound in a word鈥攁nd started using them in intervention groups.
Those materials support LETRS training, but Schriver didn鈥檛 push these things on the teachers she coached.
鈥淚 never said, 鈥楥ome look at the things that I鈥檓 doing!鈥� Because that wouldn鈥檛 have worked,鈥� she said. Instead, she waited for other teachers to come to her with questions鈥攕omething that happened when they saw her intervention students having success in their classes.
Finding reading material is another challenge. Most of the teachers Schriver works with use leveled texts鈥攈er school has an entire book room full of them. She鈥檚 asked her colleagues to take a look in storage closets and back shelves for stray decodable books, which she鈥檚 collecting to start a resource library.
But she鈥檚 figuring out a way to repurpose the collection of leveled texts, too. 鈥淲e really don鈥檛 need to buy all new and abandon everything,鈥� she said.
She and her assistant principal have started a massive re-cataloging project in the school鈥檚 book room. Instead of grouping texts by purported readability level, they鈥檙e planning to group them by topic in 鈥渒nowledge bins.鈥� They鈥檒l put all of the books about rainforests in one bin, and all of the books about weather systems in another. The idea is to help students develop a rich and layered understanding of different social studies and science topics through their ELA block, Schriver said.
Other districts are further along. In Wake County, the biggest district in North Carolina, district leaders completed a curriculum audit in 2016 that ended in system-wide adoption of new ELA materials. So it already had a phonics program and an ELA curriculum designed around developing bodies of knowledge鈥攍earning deeply about certain topics and then writing and presenting on those topics.
If you think about, what do we want of our students to be literate, what it all means, it鈥檚 not just reading and writing and speaking and listening. It鈥檚 being able to think and understand different perspectives.
Wake put together a guide that showed educators here how the LETRS training fit into the materials schools were already using.
When the district moved away from guided reading several years ago, 鈥渨e had to replace it with something,鈥� said Sherri Miller, the principal of Lacy Elementary in Wake County, and the district鈥檚 former K-12 literacy director. 鈥淚t took giving teachers another language comprehension curriculum that got them away from the leveled readers.鈥�
Staci Pollock, a 2nd grade teacher at Lacy, said that she鈥檚 already made new connections from LETRS to the district鈥檚 curriculum. But she thinks that, as a whole, her school is farther along on its understanding of what makes for good foundational skills instruction than good comprehension instruction, in part because the curriculum for the former is more straightforward and user-friendly.
In part, this is a difference between constrained and unconstrained skills, said Gina Cervetti, an associate professor of education at the University of Michigan who studies the intersection of literacy and content-area learning.
Most foundational skills are bounded. Once students learn how different sounds represent different letters, they鈥檙e done. 69传媒 comprehension isn鈥檛 like that.
鈥淵ou can get a kind of easy win with phonics instruction, because decoding is a fairly constrained skill. Kids can learn it with relative ease and relatively quickly. Moving the needle on comprehension, moving the needle on language, those are things that become increasingly complicated,鈥� she said.
That鈥檚 why, even in the early years, reading instruction needs to be integrated, Cervetti said. Learning the code of written language is critical, but so is having rich conversations to develop students鈥� oral language, vocabulary, and critical thinking鈥攅ven before they can read text. 鈥淵ou can never say enough that 鈥� decoding is only half the story,鈥� Cervetti said.
Developing students鈥� understanding about the world is a key component of the science of reading, said Miller, the Lacy principal. And it鈥檚 one that she thinks is lost in some of the decisions that legislators are making.
The curriculum her school uses covers social issues throughout鈥攃limate change, civil rights, women鈥檚 rights. The resources used to explore these topics are 鈥減owerful, great texts that get kids thinking critically and seeing a different perspective on things,鈥� Miller said.
But the same lawmakers who have championed evidence-based literacy instruction鈥攚hich includes rich curriculum鈥攁re trying to circumscribe some of the choices. Senate Leader Phil Berger, the Republican who sponsored the 2021 reading law, told Education Week in a statement that it鈥檚 鈥渦nnecessary to insert woke dogma鈥� into reading comprehension efforts.
Miller says the kind of issues Wake鈥檚 curriculum covers need to be part of that frame.
鈥淚f you think about, what do we want of our students to be literate, what it all means, it鈥檚 not just reading and writing and speaking and listening,鈥� Miller said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 being able to think and understand different perspectives.鈥�
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A year ends with more questions than answers
What it all comes down to in North Carolina after a year of intensive training is this: Many school leaders and teachers still feel like they鈥檙e in the beginning stages of a huge shift in both instructional practice and culture.
They鈥檙e left with big questions: Who will help teachers make these changes and refine their practice? How do schools create a culture where these shifts persist, even as staff come and go? Is it sustainable to keep asking for more from teachers as the effects of the pandemic continue to ricochet through schools?
The answers may not come for a while. For one thing, the new legislation won鈥檛 be fully implemented until the 2024-25 school year and it will take even longer for academic improvements to materialize. 鈥淎nything in education, it takes three to five years,鈥� said Amy Rhyne, the state department of public instruction鈥檚 director of early literacy.
For another, the pandemic adds a layer of uncertainty to interpreting results. Many school leaders and teachers observed greater than normal growth in their students this year after using the new methods. But this was also the first year spent mostly in the classroom since the beginning of COVID. It鈥檚 almost impossible to tease out those two variables.
鈥淗ow are we thinking about measurement and evaluation of these efforts when we have a new baseline?鈥� Woulfin, the implementation science researcher, asked. 鈥淲hat needs to be adapted, accounted for to account for this new reality?鈥�
The pandemic has also introduced fears about higher-than-average teacher turnover鈥攁nd the effect that might have on the implementation of new practices, especially after LETRS training ends in 2024. 鈥淲e鈥檙e putting training into people, but that training can walk out the door,鈥� said Bonasera, of the Center for the Collaborative Classroom.
Part of that sustainability challenge will fall to districts, as a consequence of teacher turnover. But part of it falls to the state鈥檚 teacher-preparation programs. Some instructors are also taking LETRS now, and they鈥檙e redesigning their own courses, said Monica Campbell, a professor of education at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, N.C. But it鈥檚 going to be a process.
Your philosophy on reading is as deep as religion. I鈥檝e had many matches with people where you just go round and round and round. It鈥檚 kind of like the politics in our country.
鈥淭he main concern is being able to complete the professional development in the amount of time that we have, and to really be able to take it in and think about it and talk about it, and process it,鈥� she said. 鈥淧rogram redesign is never simple. These things take a lot of time and energy.鈥�
Energy is what Olivares, the kindergarten teacher, is trying to muster for the summer ahead.
He feels drained from this past school year. He spent extra time on the weekends doing his assignments for LETRS training, sacrificing precious time with his wife and three kids. He felt like he put his role as 鈥渄ad鈥� on the back burner for a while, he said. And he doesn鈥檛 anticipate things slowing down anytime soon.
He鈥檚 starting grad school in the fall, and along with the other teachers at his school, he鈥檒l be completing four units of LETRS next year. Even so, he sought out another summer PD course to take, which promises to give him concrete strategies for applying the science of reading in his classroom that he doesn鈥檛 feel like he has yet.
Stress and anxiety are starting to bubble up when Olivares thinks about the next few months, but he doesn鈥檛 want to leave this opportunity on the table. He wants to move beyond the same question that he feels like he鈥檚 been asking himself since the beginning of the year.
鈥淵ou can read all about it, but how do you truly apply it?鈥� Olivares said again.
For right now, at least, he feels like he has no choice but to figure that out by himself.
A version of this article appeared in the August 17, 2022 edition of Education Week as Why Putting The 鈥楽cience Of 69传媒鈥� Into Practice Is So Challenging
