ALBANY, N.Y. — While it’s been nearly four years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects are still being felt on children and their learning.
Since 2019, the reading proficiency level statewide has dropped by 4 percent to just 30% of fourth-grade students reading at grade level, according to the latest Nation’s Report Card.
Because of this noticeable dip, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a new plan Wednesday, which she calls her “Back to Basics” plan to improve reading proficiency statewide.
In recent years, students have been taught to read by memorizing certain words and letters rather than by learning the sounds letters make themselves. Hochul’s plan emphasizes phonics, which many students’ parents were taught, by encouraging the science of reading approach.
“Throw out the book and what they’ve been doing before,” Hochul said Wednesday. “It just didn't work. Too many young people aren't succeeding.”
The governor’s office outlined a $10 million investment to train 20,000 teachers in science of reading instruction as well as broadening state university credentialing for the approach.
Her announcement follows 26 other states passing laws since 2019 to require or encourage literacy instruction that emphasizes phonics. New York City mandated the approach in elementary schools in May 2022.
Michael Cornell, the superintendent of Hamburg Central School District and president of the Erie-Niagara School Superintendents Association, said he supports the governor’s plan. He said his district launched a program with a similar approach at the start of the school year and has already seen significant improvements in test scores as a result.
“If you build those things up when they're in first grade, second grade, third grade, they learn to read by third grade, and then they read to learn after third grade,” Cornell said. “That's the transition.”
The plan comes just six days before Hochul will give her State of the State address and was one of a number of issues she plans to address. If approved as a part of her 2024 budget, New Yorkers could begin seeing the science of reading approach mandated by 2025.