According to House Bill 538, passed in early 2023, universities in Ga. will be required to train educators on structured literacy, a method that refers to a phonemic approach to language comprehension and reading. The bill will go into effect in the 2025-2026 school year.
In the past, educators had been trained using different methods, such as whole word reading which associated whole words with images or easily visualizable concepts. The phonemic approach instead opts to dissect words into chunks of letters, and associates their sounds with groups of letters. Comprehension is then achieved after word structures and sounds are understood.
The shift in focus, according to Kennesaw State University education professor Kristen Killian, “really started with COVID, because parents could see online what kind of reading instruction was happening.”
“It was parent advocacy groups that really were the grassroots of standing up, speaking up, making lawsuits and really causing the shift to happen,” said Killian.
The former of the methods, whole word reading, has many problems with its approach. As described by special education teacher Alyson Dixon at Pitner Elementary in Cobb County, “when they get older, and there are no pictures in the books, what are you going to do? You can’t rely on the pictures, you can’t rely on context. You need to be able to attack every word and sound it out and know competently, that that sound says that, in this situation.”
According to the survey conducted in 2022 by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Ga. scores fall on the national average with a score of 216. But it is still apparent that a large portion of students, at 39 percent, fall below the standard for competent reading at grade four.
The science of reading, according to the definition released by The Reading League, is “a vast, interdisciplinary body of scientifically-based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing.”
According to the Reading League, the body of research has been compiled over the past 50 years, across the world, in different languages in order to provide evidence for which reading instructions strategies work the best.
With legislation now requiring structured literacy, educators will no longer have to use curriculums that do not cover structured literacy, since it will no longer fit standards. This past problem of educators not knowing whether or not curriculum was research-based was detailed by Madison Hill, a second-grade teacher also at Pitner Elementary.
“There was a study done in 2000, where they poured over thousands of studies that talked about this. And it was actually determined that this whole structured literacy and science of reading strategy was the best way to go,” said Hill. “Then there’s all these textbook companies… they say, ‘Oh, well, our curriculum is science-of-reading-based.’ And so all these states, they don’t necessarily know what they’re looking at. These people haven’t been trained to know what the science of reading is.”
With legislation changing to require structured literacy in both standards and curriculum, textbook companies will no longer be able to sell material that does not cover structured literacy. In conjunction with educators soon being required to train in structured literacy, it seems that the problems surrounding literacy rates will be solved to some extent, since textbook companies will no longer be allowed to cut corners on reading instruction and educators will be properly trained on the most effective of the instructional methods available.
“It’s kind of a slow revolution, but it’s exciting,” said Hill.
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