Latest news with #SoldaStory
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Missouri Lawmakers Ban Controversial Reading Instruction Model as Primary Method
This article was originally published in Missouri Independent. Missouri lawmakers have banned educators from leaning on a model of reading instruction called the 'three-cueing' method as part of a bipartisan education package signed by Gov. Mike Kehoe on Wednesday. The law mandates that three cueing, which teaches students to read using context clues, can be used to supplement lessons, but phonics should be the majority of instruction. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter State Rep. Ed Lewis, a Moberly Republican and sponsor of the legislation, told The Independent that the law builds on prior legislative efforts and work from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. 'We've come to the realization that phonics is crucial,' Lewis said. 'The three cueing system, when used as the primary source, evidence shows a decrease in the amount of learning that occurs, and for that reason, we want to use it less.' Three cueing is widely criticized for encouraging kids to make guesses when reading and doesn't show how to sound out words, which is important for understanding complicated texts. Missouri isn't the only state to ban three cueing. By the end of 2024, at least 11 states had explicitly banned the method. The problem with three cueing, which once was lauded as an alternative to phonics, came to public attention when American Public Media reporter Emily Hanford investigated reading instruction and later launched the podcast series 'Sold a Story.' The series armed those backing the 'science of reading' in a longstanding war between phonics instruction and context-clue-based models and state laws followed — including a literacy bill passed in Missouri in 2022. The 2022 legislation required state education officials to create a teacher preparatory course on literacy. DESE, in turn, launched its 'Read, Lead, Exceed' initiative, including instruction for educators. As of this spring, 429 school districts and over 8,600 educators have had training in Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, or LETRS. 'It is pretty intense training,' Missouri Education Commissioner Karla Eslinger told The Independent. 'It creates an opportunity for the teachers to use that science of reading, that evidence-based best practices on how you teach reading.' The training and other science-backed materials provided by the department are not mandatory but participation has been encouraging, Eslinger said. She expects elementary literacy rates to rise as a result of the training and other efforts since 2022, like literacy coaches the department hired. With a charge to ban three cueing as the primary form of reading instruction, Eslinger said the department will continue to push best practices. 'We are not going to police this,' she said. 'We are going to show good practice and give support to good practice, so it just bolsters what we're doing.' As part of a checklist school districts provide annually to the department, they will be required to confirm that they are not using three cueing as a primary instructional model. 'The work that our literacy teams are doing in the state is all being very well received. (Educators) are wanting more and more,' Eslinger said. 'It is not because it is mandated, it is because it works.' Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
School Reform Program, Known for Science of Reading Approach, Looks to Grow
Success For All, a teaching approach using the science of reading, could expand to 150 more schools in the next three years with the help of $13.5 million in grants from an anonymous donor. Success For All, developed in the late 1980s by two Johns Hopkins University professors, relies heavily on phonics and group learning, with students reading whole story books instead of textbooks. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter It has shown outsized gains in some cities and was recently featured in episodes of the 'Sold a Story' podcast about surprisingly high reading scores in the small, Appalachian city of Steubenville, Ohio. Used in about 500 schools nationwide, Success for All's foundation is offering $100,000 'scholarships' to help cover training, learning materials and teaching coaches to 50 district, charter or private schools that are adopting it in each of the next three years. Most of the $15 million needed for the scholarships comes from a single donation from a family foundation that wishes to be anonymous. Success For All officials said the donor gave the program $200,000 a few years ago. After being taken on a tour of schools in Virginia using the approach, the family offered $13.5 million — the largest donation ever for the donor — to help launch it in schools with large numbers of low income students. Julie Wible, CEO of the Success For All Foundation, said the donor wanted to improve literacy for low-income students — and Success For All offered more than just a curriculum, but also a change in teaching styles and social-emotional help for students. 'This concept of supporting an entire school gave them clarity about how to guarantee improvement in schools,' Wible said. 'A high quality reading model is critical but it will not be enough to significantly change an entire school.' Most of the grants for this fall have already been awarded, but Success For All is still accepting applications for a few that remain. Success For All estimates that schools will spend about $150,000 in the first year of adding the program, then lesser amounts the next few years. Wible said the program wanted to help schools, but still wanted them to have 'skin in the game' so they would be committed to the shift. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which added Success For All at 18 of its schools in the 2023-24 school year, was awarded scholarships in this first round to add it to four more this fall. Robert Tagorda, chief academic officer for the archdiocese, said the archdiocese chose Success For All because they believe it will help low-income students, including many who are learning English as their second language. The program is already showing gains, so the archdiocese will apply for additional scholarships to add more schools for the 2026-27 school year. Success for All received significant federal funding in the 1990s amid President Bill Clinton's push to support students at Title I schools but was essentially shut out of President George W. Bush's Reading First initiative, prompting a complaint to the U.S. Department of Education's inspector general. The program rebounded during the Obama administration when it received an i3 grant designed to scale up evidence-based initiatives. More recently, the program has received attention through coverage of reading gains in Steubenville, Ohio, which started using Success For All in 2000. Once known for a well-publicized rape case involving its high school football team, the Steubenville school district drew better notice in 2016 when Stanford University researchers showed the district with much higher reading scores than expected at schools where nearly every student is considered economically disadvantaged. The district has also been an outlier for its lower-than-expected absenteeism rates for its socioeconomic issues. At the same time, strong test results in elementary school have faded by high school. The 'Sold a Story' podcast, widely credited with shifting national debate about reading instruction toward the science of reading, had three episodes about Steubenville this spring. Episodes covered the district's use of Success For All the last 25 years and challenges it faced in winning approval from Ohio and other states as a science of reading approach because there was no textbook that could be reviewed. Wible said the program now has approval from most states. Lynnett Gorman, Principal of Steubenville's Pugliese West Elementary, a 2021 National Blue Ribbon School, credits Success For All for the district's strong results. 'It really has helped our students be successful,' she said. 'I hope schools who are interested apply for the grant scholarships. What a great opportunity.'
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Opinion: Ten Things I'm Doing After Listening to Sold a Story
I didn't expect a podcast to unravel parts of my professional identity — but then I listened to Sold a Story, an exposé of missteps in reading instruction and the inherent consequences. What began as casual curiosity quickly became a mirror, forcing me to confront my assumptions, instructional choices, and even my complicity in how I've taught reading. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter As I listened, I didn't just hear a story. I heard a call to action. I found myself scribbling ideas, memories, and questions in the margins of my notebook. But more than that, I began drafting a list: not just of things I had to reckon with, but of steps I need to take now. Here is a collection of those 10 actions — steps I'm committed to taking as an educator, learner, and advocate for students — told through lived experience. Listening is only the beginning. Change comes next. Patterned texts, also known as predictable or leveled readers, are books with repeated sentence structures that encourage students to guess words based on pictures or context, rather than decode them phonetically by sounding out words. These books offer false hope — to students, teachers, and families. Teachers must replace them with authentic, diverse texts that support decoding, build knowledge, and grow a love for reading rooted in real comprehension. Decodable texts are carefully written to align with a phonics scope and sequence, allowing students to practice specific sound-letter patterns they've been explicitly taught. Teachers are making this happen: book by book, classroom by classroom. But it takes intention. It takes providing clear, aligned resources that match our core phonics program so that instruction remains explicit (clearly taught) and systematic (progressing in a planned, logical sequence). Decodable texts should not be an afterthought; they should be a foundation. Just because students have progressed to the next grade doesn't mean their learning gaps have disappeared. Literacy is key to unlocking so much potential: academic, emotional, and economic. How can educators support middle and high schoolers, families, and adult learners who were left behind? By using high-quality, age-appropriate materials in foundational literacy intervention for older learners. Parents are partners in literacy. Let's equip them with the tools they need to understand how reading works, what to look for in their child's progress, and how to support learning at home. Resources matter. Accessibility matters. Language matters. This includes translating materials, simplifying jargon, and offering clear guidance aligned to evidence-based reading practices. Educators' responsibility doesn't stop at students. We must continue to educate specialists, coaches, and leaders — anyone who touches instruction. Literacy is not just the job of the English Language Arts teacher. It's a shared responsibility. The 'science of reading' refers to a vast, interdisciplinary body of research from education, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology that explains how children learn to read and why some struggle. Schools must invest in high-quality, evidence-aligned professional development specific to reading science. Not just one session: ongoing, job-embedded training that happens during the regular workday and that empowers teachers to refine their practice and advocate for what works. Organizations like The Reading League, a national nonprofit dedicated to advancing the science of reading, remind me that literacy is a movement, not just a mandate. Engaging with nonprofits, local coalitions, and national conversations helps build momentum for change that extends far beyond the classrooms. I'm pursuing a doctorate in educational leadership through Appalachian State's interdisciplinary cohort. My research will honor students, teachers, and families — and will contribute to a body of knowledge that is student-centered, justice-driven, and grounded in evidence. We must ask: How were they taught to read? How were they trained to teach others to read? And how will they transfer that knowledge into practice? There's no room for outdated methods (such as cueing or three-cueing, which encourages guessing words based on context) or well-meaning misconceptions. Let's start with the strategies that work. Let's write. Let's explain. Let's connect. No one should stay quiet in the face of misinformation or misaligned instruction. Every conversation, post, and resource we share has the potential to shift hearts—and systems. We can do better. We are doing better. But the work isn't done. Sold a Story didn't just reveal the gaps in reading instruction—it lit a fire in many of us to ensure this story doesn't repeat itself. And that fire? I plan to keep it burning.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Why Steubenville, Ohio, Might Be the Best School District in America
There's no more fundamental task for a school than teaching kids to read. But what about kids living in poverty? Don't schools need more money, and more staff, to be able to get good results? Well, yes and no. Poverty is certainly correlated to reading scores, and the best evidence suggests money helps boost a range of student outcomes. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter But that doesn't mean the best school district in the country is the most well-resourced or the one with the fanciest buildings or most prestigious alumni. In fact, based on how much students learn — which, in my opinion, is how schools should be evaluated — there's perhaps no better district in the country than Steubenville, Ohio. Last fall, I worked with The 74's Art & Technology Director Eamonn Fitzmaurice to find districts where students had high reading scores despite serving large concentrations of low-income students. We highlighted Steubenville, a high-poverty district in Ohio's Rust Belt, as a true outlier. (In a follow-up piece, we showed that Steubenville was also exceptional at teaching kids math.) But I wanted to revisit the case of Steubenville after it was spotlighted recently on Emily Hanford's award-winning 'Sold a Story' podcast. Are its results just a one-time fluke? And if not — if the results are real — what can other districts learn from Steubenville's success? First, it's quickly apparent that Steubenville is not a flash in the pan. A 2012 Hechinger Report story noted that its success traces back to the early 2000s. Related It's also incredibly consistent over time. I used the Zelma tool from the Education Data Center to look at its recent results. The graph below compares Steubenville's third-grade reading proficiency rates (in blue) to the statewide average (in gray). As the graph shows, Steubenville consistently gets 95% to 99% of its third graders over the proficiency bar. In 2018, it had a bad year, and 'only' 93% of third graders scored proficient. But the district did not suffer much of a drop-off in the wake of the pandemic, hitting 97% in spring 2022. Steubenville's results are also remarkably strong across student groups. Last year, for example, 100% of its Black students, 99% of its low-income students and 92% of its students with disabilities scored proficient in third grade reading. How does Steubenville get such remarkable results? What can other districts learn from its success? It's not that the district has extra money or more staff. Steubenville spent $10,718 per student last year, which was about $1,500 less than the average Ohio district and well below many other districts in America. It also had slightly more students per teacher than other comparable districts. Related Some things Steubenville does have are not easily replicable. As Robert Pondiscio pointed out in a recent column, the district can boast incredible continuity: It has been following the same reading program, called Success for All, for the last 25 years. Teacher turnover is low, and the same superintendent has been in place for a decade. But Hanford found a few things that Steubenville did differently that other schools can learn from. Steubenville, for example, offers subsidized preschool beginning at age 3. And in those early years, teachers regularly remind students to speak in complete sentences as language practice for later, when those kids will start learning to read and write. The district also deploys staff differently than most do. Every elementary teacher, even the phys ed instructor, leads a reading class. And during that reading block — which all students have at the same time — children are grouped with peers performing at the same level, regardless of age. Related Steubenville kids are also practicing constantly, either as part of the whole class or in small groups, where kids work on their fluency skills by reading aloud to each other. That stands in contrast to schools that prefer to give kids silent reading or 'Drop Everything and Read' time, which can be great for kids who already read well but wasteful or even harmful for children who aren't ready for long blocks of independent free reading. Now, it's worth noting that Steubenville's robust education results have not guaranteed kids a path to economic security. Despite its near-perfect early reading scores, strong middle and high school achievement and a 96% graduation rate, the district's post-high school results are only slightly above statewide averages in terms of college-going and completion rates and the percentage of graduates who find 'gainful employment.' But those early adulthood outcomes are at least partly tied to the economic climate in a given community, and it's hard to find fault with anything that the school district itself directly controls. Most districts would envy Steubenville's impressive results.
New York Times
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
5 Podcasts Where Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction
There's an overwhelming amount of news to keep up with right now, and it can sometimes feel impossible to look away or take a break. Getting absorbed in a truly compelling story can be a great antidote to doom-scrolling, and if focusing on fiction isn't working, you can try a crazy-yet-true audio narrative. These five shows all center on stories so shocking, unbelievable and full of twists that it's hard to believe they're nonfiction. 'Noble' 'It takes 28 gallons of fuel, and a spark, to burn a human body.' So begins the attention-grabbing opening to 'Noble,' which describes the process of cremation in grueling detail to set up the story about to unfold. In February of 2002, investigators acting on an anonymous tip discovered a pile of more than 300 corpses abandoned in a wooded area of Noble, Ga., a tiny rural town in the Appalachian foothills. This horror movie scene was found on the grounds of the Tri-State Crematory; it turned out that the owner had been improperly disposing of bodies for years, while assuring grieving families that their loved ones had been cremated. In a sensitive eight-part series, Shaun Raviv, an Atlanta-based journalist who has written for Wired and The Washington Post, unravels the emotional and legal details of this disturbing saga through interviews with investigators, experts and family members. Noble also uses this singular story as a jumping-off point to explore deeper questions about what the living owe the departed, and our ambivalent relationship to death. Starter episode: 'The Gas Man' 'Sold a Story' For decades, a staggering number of top-rated primary schools across the country have failed to effectively teach children how to read. That sounds like it can't possibly be true, and yet over 13 detailed episodes, this American Public Media podcast lays out how a deeply flawed teaching method took hold despite having been widely debunked by cognitive scientists. This approach (known as the 'whole language' method) encourages children to decode words by understanding the overall meaning of a text rather than learning words by sounding them out (known as phonics), and the conflict between the two sides is so fraught that it's been called 'The Reading Wars,' and demands for reform have mounted nationwide. In 'Sold a Story,' Emily Hanford speaks with educators, linguistics experts and parents to weave together an exposé of this systemic failure and its ramifications for children. Starter episode: 'The Problem' 'Kill List' In 2020, Carl Miller, a technology writer, received a tip about a murder-for-hire service operating via the dark web, where customers could anonymously order hits and pay using bitcoin. The first six episodes of this gripping series from Wondery outline the investigation that followed, as Miller and his small London-based team try to track down who is behind the kill list and find out if it's a real crime syndicate or an elaborate scam. The show then shifts focus into more episodic storytelling, with each of the 12 additional installments spotlighting one of the people whose names ended up on the list. (There were more than 100 names.) Alongside its obvious themes of cybercrime and the internet's capacity to erode our empathy, 'Kill List' is about toxic masculinity — a large majority of these kill orders are traced back to abusive or spurned male partners. It's also a deeply humanistic podcast, anchored by Miller and his colleagues' reflecting on the human toll of responsibly reporting these kinds of stories. Starter episode: 'The Hack' 'Inconceivable Truth' The growth of affordable DNA testing over the past couple of decades has allowed people to unlock the secrets of their ancestry, but the process sometimes comes with an unexpected twist ending. Finding out that your presumed father is, in fact, not a biological relative is common enough that there's a genealogical term for it: a non-paternity event, or N.P.E. Matt Katz, an investigative reporter, grew up with an unreliable, often absent father whom he found both fascinating and frustrating, until he dropped out of the picture altogether. After spending years unsuccessfully trying to track down his father, he took a DNA test which revealed the truth. In this unguarded, compassionate series, Katz's very personal story intersects with a broader one about the widespread impact of New York's largely unregulated artificial insemination industry during the 1970s. Starter episode: 'Warren' 'The Superhero Complex' During the early 2010s, dozens of people in downtown Seattle experienced a scene right out of a movie. Just as they were on the verge of witnessing or becoming victims of a crime, a masked man swooped in to intervene. This mysterious figure wore a hooded rubber mask and a skintight black-and-gold suit, went by the moniker Phoenix Jones and seemed to be motivated by a desire to make the streets safer. But after Jones became a local celebrity, and started a local citizen patrol group called the Rain City Superhero Movement, things became a lot more complicated. David Weinberg, the host of 'The Superhero Complex' leaves no bizarre stone unturned in his chronicle of the rise and fall of Seattle's self-styled vigilante. Starter episode: 'Out of the Shadows'
