Three consecutive chopped-up school years have had the expected effect on student learning. New research shows that growing numbers of kids are falling behind in reading, with Black and Hispanic as well as low-income and disabled children suffering the most. American public schools were no great shakes at literacy instruction before COVID. Now we’re in a full-blown educational emergency.
Among dozens of studies saying essentially the same thing: A new report by Amplify, a private curriculum and assessment company, says that the percentage of kindergarten students at highest risk for not learning to read rose from 29% in the middle of the 2019-20 school year to 37% two years later. According to a Virginia study, early reading skills hit a 20-year low last fall. Last summer, consulting firm McKinsey &Company estimated that U.S. students had lost the equivalent of almost a half a school year in reading instruction. And in every case, kids who started out disadvantaged experienced the steepest slide.
We don’t know exactly how bad things are here in New York City because very few students took state assessment tests during the pandemic. But if we wait for a definitive diagnosis before intervening aggressively, it’ll be too late.
Fortunately, the crisis coincides with the early days of a new mayoral administration committed to improving on Bill de Blasio’s woefully unrealized promise to get all kids on track to be proficient in reading by the end of second grade. Chancellor David Banks, correctly decrying the en vogue “balanced literacy” approach that failed far too many kids over far too many years — nearly two-thirds of Black and Hispanic New York City public school kids are proficient in reading — is wisely pushing phonics-based instruction in the early years.
Banks should crunch the data and identify the schools, whether district-run or charter, that have had the most success in getting kids of all backgrounds reading, and reading well as early as possible. Share their techniques. Replicate them. As somebody once said, leave no child behind.