In August 2024, thanks to long-time literacy champion Senate Leader Teresa Ruiz, as well as a host of education equity advocates like JerseyCAN, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a three-part package of bills that reforms how we teach students to read. Way back in 2000 the National Reading Panel found that the conventional way teachers taught literacy—known as “balanced literacy” or “whole language”—made the incorrect assumption that students learn to read with little direct instruction: Surround them with books and they’ll just pick it up. But many children require direct instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension, an approach called the “Science of Reading.”

What are these new laws and what will these changes mean for your children and your local school district?

Here are some answers to common questions about pending changes in the way we teach children to read, an issue that acquired new urgency when students across the country—including in New Jersey — fell behind in reading skills due to Covid-19 school disruptions.

What are the new laws?

They require school districts to provide training and coaching in the Science of Reading (SOR) to all teachers who teach literacy. Districts must also assess all K-3 students in reading proficiency: Students who perform below grade-level will receive effective interventions like high-dosage tutoring. Also the state Department of Education (DOE) must train and deploy literacy coaches in schools; develop an online resource center to help school districts select evidence-based high-quality literacy instructional materials, including data analysis tools; establish a working group on student literacy to make recommendations; and establish the “Office of Learning Equity and Academic Recovery” to promote student literacy and advance learning equity.

Why now?

The longtime national flaws in reading instruction, along with multi-year Covid-19 school disruptions and attendant learning loss, have left American students far behind. Across America (using most recent data), just 33% of rising fourth-graders read proficiently. This is important because fourth grade is when “learning to read” becomes replaced with “reading to learn.” In New Jersey the percentage of students below proficiency is lower—we’re a wealthier state and socio-economics plays a role—but by the end of third-grade only 42% of NJ students read proficiently, according to 2023 test results. (The DOE still hasn’t released 2024 statewide assessment results.)

Outcomes are far worse for NJ Black and Hispanic students; statewide, only 26% and 27% respectively read at grade-level. In Newark Public Schools, for example, only 19% of third-graders read at grade level. We can do better for our children, as demonstrated by Newark’s North Star Academy, a public charter network that has long-incorporated SOR into reading instruction. At North Star 59% of third-graders read at grade level by the end of the year.

Will this new focus on SOR help struggling students?

SOR is not a specific curriculum or set of lesson plans. Instead, it’s a not-so-new understanding of how children learn to decode and comprehend words, which requires them to understand the connection between how words are written and how they sound when spoken aloud. Yet many teachers who weren’t trained in SOR while in teacher preparation programs rely on methods that, says Emily Hanford of “Sold a Story fame,  are “rooted in a flawed theory about how reading works, a theory that was debunked decades ago by cognitive scientists, yet remains deeply embedded in teaching practices and curriculum materials.” 

According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, students who can’t read fluently by fourth-grade are four times more likely to drop out of school, have lower lifetime earnings, higher unemployment, and higher incarceration rates.

Here’s Sen. Ruiz: 

“The evidence is so clear: when you don’t have a foundation in reading, your obstacles for your academic success grow larger,” she said. “And when your obstacles grow, you’re farther away from obtaining a high school diploma or any other license, and your earning potential just gets smaller and smaller.”

Since 2013 46 states plus the District of Columbia have passed laws or implemented policies requiring schools to use SOR for instruction.

New Jersey joined them in August 2024 when Gov. Murphy signed those bills. 

(One caveat: A singular emphasis on phonics is no silver bullet. Education researcher Natalie Wexler, among others, explains that without background knowledge in science and social studies, as well as effective instruction in vocabulary and comprehension, students won’t be able to reach full reading fluency.)

Have other states’ adoption of SOR laws helped kids learn to read?

Yes, in many cases, but much depends on how robust the laws are and if they are accompanied by adequate funding. The example many reading experts cite is Mississippi, where in 2013 fourth-grade reading proficiency was the second-worst nationwide and is now 21st. Some call this the “Mississippi Miracle” but there was no divine intervention, just stellar leadership from state education chief Carey Wright and a collective determination to adhere to SOR. “Mississippi has shown that it is possible to raise standards even in a state ranked dead last in the country in child poverty and hunger,” New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wrote in May 2023. (Mississippi now ranks first in the country for reading improvement while spending only $9,614 per pupil in 2022; that year NJ spent $21,385 per pupil.)

Much of Mississippi’s success was top-down, an unpopular approach in the Garden State where we worship local control, but it worked by raising standards, drilling down on early education, screening all K-3 students for reading difficulties, providing effective interventions, sending highly-trained literacy coaches into every school, requiring teachers to prove mastery of how to teach reading effectively, working with teacher colleges to ensure prospective educators are properly trained in SOR, and funding these efforts to the tune of $15 million a year. Also, more controversially, the state holds back third-graders who, even after intense intervention, haven’t reached proficiency benchmarks. (So do 18 other states, which all make exceptions for multi-language learners and students with disabilities.)

New Jersey’s new literacy laws aren’t nearly as robust: Ninety percent of our teacher preparation programs get an “F” for adherence to tenets of the science of reading and there are no plans to intervene. The state Department of Education has no plans to require districts to select a high-quality reading curriculum. Gov. Murphy is funding these initiatives with an extra $5 million, not $15 million.

Yet it’s a start! Here’s Sen. Ruiz: “It’s great that we have a plan now in place, but I’ll continue to repeat that we are at least two to three years behind on this. This should have been done years ago.”

What will be different in my child’s classroom?

Local NJ school districts will continue to maintain control of reading programs and curricula. Some will not change anything, especially if they’ve already embedded SOR into literacy instruction. In these cases, the only difference you will see, starting with school year 2025-2026, will be that your K-3 child will have short, painless reading screenings at least twice a year. School districts must notify parents of the results within 30 days and send those results to the DOE. This is important: Parents typically rely on report cards to tell them whether their child is making appropriate progress but report card grades are wildly inflated. 

If your child is not meeting expectations, they will have access to tutoring and other interventions that target reading skills. You will be kept informed about their progress. 

Has there been blowback about these reforms?

Of course! This is New Jersey, the land of home rule, plus education reform is inherently political. NJ teacher union president (and gubernatorial hopeful) Sean Spiller told NJ Spotlight, “there’s so much loss of freedom and flexibility in terms of you being able to teach as an art.” In May, three superintendents wrote, “we are deeply concerned at the apparent ‘wrecking ball’ approach championed by those aligned with specific special interest groups” that will “force schools to discard the knowledge and skills that make New Jersey among the top in the nation.”  (Note that all three superintendents work in  districts—Pascack Valley, West Windsor-Plainsboro, Springfield—where students overwhelmingly come from high-income households.)

Yet, as Sen. Ruiz says, “the criminal justice system, labor, health, access, everything always points back into the academic foundation of that human being. If we know that there is a problem where we are enabling students to move along through a system without being able to read, the outcomes in generations to come are going to be detrimental.”

Now parents, children, and teachers have the building blocks to change those outcomes. 

(Graphic courtesy of NJ Spotlight.)