Schools must teach using phonics, NC lawmakers say. One company must train teachers.
North Carolina lawmakers are requiring the state’s public schools to go back to the basics and use phonics to teach young children how to read.
The state House voted 113-5 on Thursday to pass legislation requiring the state’s PreK-5 teachers to receive training on the “science of reading,” a method of literacy instruction that stresses phonics. The legislation, which was unanimously passed by the Senate on Wednesday, also creates new bonuses to encourage teachers to work in a summer reading program attended by struggling young readers.
“This is one issue that I believe there is broad consensus across party lines, philosophic lines and increasingly in education as to the appropriate and effective way to teach our kids how to read,” Republican Senate leader Phil Berger, a primary sponsor of the legislation, said Wednesday.
Lawmakers quickly acted on the bill, which was filed on Monday. The Excellent Public Schools Act of 2021 now goes to Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper’s desk. Cooper had vetoed a similar bill in 2019, but this year’s legislation has even more support and includes new features such as the science of reading training.
Questions were raised by some lawmakers, though, about how the new training contract will be awarded.
Senate Bill 387 makes changes to the state’s Read To Achieve program, which was created in 2012 to try to get more students proficient in reading by third grade. But state scores are lower for third-grade students than they were in the 2013-14 school year.
In the 2018-19 school year, the last year for which figures are available, only 56.8% of third-grade students passed the state’s end-of-grade reading exam.
“The time is now to do something and while this may not be perfect, we have to start somewhere,” said Sen. Sarah Crawford, a Wake County Democrat. “We know that when children can read at the end of third grade, they are more likely to go to college and graduate and we know this work starts in preschool.”
NC takes sides in the ‘reading wars’
The legislation has North Carolina taking sides in the long-running “reading wars” on how to best teach reading to young children.
Some schools heavily stress the use of phonics by helping teach students to read by associating sounds with letters. Another approach has young students guess words they don’t know based on the context, such as by looking at pictures or the first letter in the word.
Some schools try to blend the two approaches.
Berger cited how the science of reading has been used to improve reading scores in Mississippi.
“While I believe this is the right thing to do, it’s not just my opinion,” Berger told the House Education Committee on Wednesday. “It is the opinion of many other folks in the field, and again our State Board (of Education) and our Superintendent of Public Instruction are aligned on this being the right approach.”
Despite the bill’s broad support, some lawmakers were worried that it might be too proscriptive in telling teachers how to teach reading.
“We are locking in to a single way of doing reading instruction here when we need flexibility and the practitioners in the field are always going to be better at figuring out what is the best, most flexible way to teach every single kid than we are going to be,” Rep. Graig Meyer, a Chapel Hill Democrat, said Thursday.
Sen. Jeff Jackson, a Mecklenburg County Democrat, warned that lawmakers are “way out of our depth” picking one reading strategy over another.
They’re not ordering teachers to use a particular curriculum, according to Sen. Mike Lee, a New Hanover County Republican. He said they’re providing “an incredible amount of professional development to teachers to have the skills that are based in this complex body of research.”
Company in line for contract
The legislation requires the State Board of Education to develop literacy instruction standards based on the science of reading. School districts will review how they teach reading and make changes to match the new standards.
The effect of the bill would be for the state Department of Public Instruction to hire a specific company, Voyager Sopris Learning, to train teachers across North Carolina.
Voyager Sopris Learning was already selected by lawmakers to receive $12 million in federal COVID-19 relief to provide literacy training to teachers.
Berger said very few companies like Voyager would be able to ramp up statewide to handle all the training sessions.
“Beyond their proven ability to provide the kind of training that needs to take place for our educators, it is an approach and a company that would have the ability to scale to the amount necessary to provide consistent training across the state,” Berger said.
Meyer said Voyager is a good company. But he questioned how the legislation will steer the new contract toward Voyager.
“Anytime you name a sole-source provider and you give up on the opportunity to put out a contract for bid, you potentially cost the state government — therefore taxpayers — more money,” Meyer said.
Bonuses for teachers
Other parts of the bill include:
▪ Creation of a minimum $1,200 signing bonus to encourage teachers who have proven to be effective, based on test scores, to work at summer reading camps.
▪ Creation of a minimum $150 per student performance bonus for third-grade teachers for each student they work with at the reading camps who goes on to pass the reading exam.
▪ K-3 teachers will develop individual reading plans for students who are not reading at grade level.
▪ DPI will develop a Digital Children’s Reading Initiative so parents can find resources online to help their children read.
“You should be proud today when you vote for this bill because today as a General Assembly we have put the resources into education to help these children become proficient readers at the end of the third grade,” said Rep. Billy Richardson, a Cumberland County Democrat.
The bill was approved the same day that lawmakers also backed creating a one-year summer program designed to address COVID-19 learning loss at all grade levels. The existing summer reading camps are only for elementary school students.
This story was originally published April 1, 2021 at 3:27 PM.
