Experts: Literacy training must evolve to help kids in early grades

After years of teaching high school students with learning disabilities, Carol Benz realized their problems with reading could have been addressed at a much younger age.

“Many of them couldn't read beyond the basic level,” said Benz, a Park Ridge resident who retired from Maine Township High School District 207 and now is a reading tutor. “I had some students (who) had readers, paraprofessionals that were reading all of their material to them in high school, and yet they graduated. At the high school level, the focus is not so much on remediation but on accommodations. We did have a reading class for these students, but it was too little, too late.”

Educators like Benz from across the state are urging the Illinois State Board of Education to hold educator preparation programs accountable for providing high-quality literacy training to future teachers so they are better prepared to teach students how to read in the early grades.

A total of 614 educators signed a petition organized by the Illinois Early Literacy Coalition after a national report found most of the reviewed Illinois educator prep programs neglect critical elements of reading instruction and include instruction in discredited practices.

“The data doesn't lie,” said Benz, a petition signatory and vice president of The Reading League Illinois. “There are so many students that are not being prepared.”

More than one-third of fourth-graders - 1.3 million children in the U.S. - cannot read at a basic level, according to the nonprofit National Council on Teacher Quality.

In Illinois, only 33% of fourth-graders read proficiently based on the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress administered in the spring. That percentage drops steeply for historically underserved students. NAEP data show fourth-grade reading proficiency among Hispanic students at 21%, Black students at 13%, English language learners at 13%, students with disabilities at 9% and students eligible for the National School Lunch Program at 17%.

The National Council on Teacher Quality evaluated nearly 700 teacher prep programs nationwide, including 15 in Illinois, on how well they prepare aspiring elementary teachers to teach reading. Programs were evaluated for their approaches to the five core components of scientifically based reading instruction - phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension - and when they teach content contrary to research-based practices.

Only one of Illinois' 15 teacher prep programs at colleges and universities evaluated earned an A for preparation in reading - adequately teaching all five core components. Illinois ranks among the worst in the nation for its programs adequately addressing the components of reading, the council's report says.

The petition calls on the state education board to “ensure educator preparation programs offer high-quality, comprehensive literacy content aligned to ISBE's standards, and cease teaching instructional methods that have been scientifically debunked.”

Among commonly used methods some educators say are ineffective is the balanced literacy approach - a framework comprising five components including read aloud, guided reading, shared reading, independent reading and word study.

The state board is creating a statewide literacy plan, which must be in place by January 2024 according to a new state law.

“We want (reading) taught using the evidence-based practices,” said Jenine Hanson of Naperville, parent and leader of the Dyslexia Action Group of Naperville. “Illinois is very behind in this. In the daily lesson plans of early childhood, (teachers) have got to start including phonemic awareness, phonics, so that students can start decoding words, and then they practice fluency.”

The state's new literacy plan will have robust requirements for students, but also should include enhanced requirements for teachers in college prep programs, Hanson said.

“You've got to prepare them to know how to effectively teach reading when they get out there,” she said. “We need to empower the teachers.”

Hanson also advocates for universal screening for children with dyslexia - a learning disorder in how the brain processes language information - in kindergarten through second grade.

“The state doesn't require that and they are slipping through,” she said. “We now know dyslexia is the number one learning disability on the planet. If you intervene before second grade, they would never have a learning disability.”