I’ve been hard on the New Jersey Department of Education, especially during the last few years when, instead of focusing on COVID learning losses —currently 58% of NJ students can’t read at grade level–leadership seems more interested in promoting “progressive”  indulgences and dismissing objective measurements of student academic growth.

Yet when news broke yesterday that New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul would require all school districts to certify they are using “scientifically proven” approaches to literacy by 2025 (the State Legislature has to give a stamp of approval) I wondered if my ire was misplaced.  Clearly there are ways to bypass a distracted DOE if elected leaders really care about raising literacy rates. (Hochul wants to augment this effort with $10 million—not enough, by the way— to re-train teachers how to teach reading.)

In other words, New York is showing us that when a state education agency falls short, elected leaders can step up.

Indeed, much of the national revolution in reading instruction has come from state legislatures that have passed bills requiring schools to use structured literacy when teaching reading or through initiatives from governors like Hochul. This is where NJ is a laggard: According to the Shanker Institute, NJ is one of only five states in America that has failed to pass legislation requiring teachers to use the science of literacy when teaching reading. (Senate President Teresa Ruiz proposed a science of reading bill last November that requires schools to use “explicit and systematic instruction in phonological awareness,  decoding, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and building  content knowledge” but the proposal is stuck in committee purgatory.)

Now, let’s be fair: Two months ago the State DOE updated reading standards to include an emphasis on phonics. For example, kindergarten students are now expected to “know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding and encoding words.” That’s great.  The problem is there’s no teeth for enforcement, except for an accountability rubric called QSAC that districts fill out every three years to certify, among other things, they’re following the NJ Student Learning Standards.

That and a token will get you a ride on the subway. (Heck, it won’t even get you a ride on the subway anymore.) Like Blanche du Bois, NJ famliies must depend on the kindness of strangers or, in this case, the predilections of their local school district.

Some of these districts are doing the right thing. Montclair is training teachers in a reading instruction method called Orton-Gillingham heavily based on phonemic awareness and North Star Academy, a large charter network in Newark, has fully integrated the science of reading into instruction. Yet these successes don’t give Gov. Murphy or the State Legislature a pass, especially when nine out of ten district students in Trenton can’t read. A year and a half ago—well before Hochul made her announcement—NYC Mayor Eric Adams (who is dyslexic) announced that all NYC schools must adopt a phonics-based reading program, which Chalkbeat called “a potentially seismic shift in how tens of thousands of public school students are taught to read.”

Data point: NYC has almost as many K-12 public school students as all of New Jersey. If Adams can do it, so can Murphy, right?

So imagine this: The Senate passes Ruiz’s bill and Gov. Murphy signs it. Or Murphy announces an initiative like his compadre across the Hudson to require all NJ school districts to adopt effective reading instruction with meaningful accountability built in. Or an education-friendly legislator sponsors a bill requiring our teaching colleges—currently, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality, the worst in the nation in requiring knowledge of core competencies—to train prospective teachers to teach reading properly.

If any of these scenarios came to fruition, we’d graduate from cultural kerfuffles to getting serious about educational equity. Now that’s what I call progressive.

photo credit Flickr: Phil Murphy