K-12 Education

Proficiency or Penalty? Grade Retention Policy and Its Implications for English Learners in Utah

One common goal of public education is to ensure all students reach academic mastery. In fact, most U.S. states have agreed upon a set of aligned standards of mastery through the Common Core. To that end, it may make sense to lawmakers that students repeat third grade and get another ‘at bat’ if they weren’t able to reach reading proficiency. This theory of change— accountability in action— has prompted many states to reinforce their literacy legislation with retention provisions. Eighteen states, including the District of Columbia, require grade retention for nonproficient third graders with varying good cause exemptions. Oklahoma and Utah both added retention requirements in their 2026 literacy legislation. Our study seeks to determine whether the theory of change used by lawmakers aligns with existing research on grade retention.

In the aftermath of burgeoning grade retention policies, scholars and stakeholders are questioning whether retention will improve outcomes, or if it will become another reform that unintentionally punishes marginalized families. By interviewing stakeholders in one of Utah’s most diverse school districts, Granite, we aimed to answer the following question: what are the long-term implications of retention provisions in Utah's literacy legislation for third graders? Through qualitative interviews and a literature review on the impacts of grade retention, we found that rather than targeting evidence-based interventions, the policy risks displacing responsibility onto families least equipped to absorb it. 

Time: The Missing Ingredient in Literacy Reform

Guest authors Jack Schneider and Ashley Carey are two of the co-authors of On the Clock: The Centrality of Time in Teacher Work, a new research brief published by the Albert Shanker Institute.

Across the country, states are rushing to adopt “science of reading” legislation. The motivations are sincere, and the research base is substantive. New curricula promise better outcomes; professional development workshops aim to equip teachers with evidence-based practices; data systems can help educators track student progress. From a distance, it seems comprehensive enough to close the nation’s yawning literacy gaps.

But policymakers have largely overlooked a critical ingredient that will almost certainly determine whether these reforms prove successful. And if you’re a teacher, you probably already know what it is.

Consider Ms. Smith, a second-grade teacher with a decade of classroom experience. She’s committed to her students and she understands why the new literacy approach matters. She wants to implement it well.

But she’s drowning.

The new curriculum requires her to learn new instructional methods. The assessment system requires one-on-one reading screeners for each of her 24 students—a process that eats up two full instructional days. New data management systems demand hours of tracking and reporting. And all of this has been added to everything Ms. Smith is already doing. 

Juneteenth, Truth-Telling, and the Power of Union-Supported Educators

Our guest author is Karla Hernández-Mats, a respected voice for public education who brings a deep understanding of the education system, from inside the classroom to executive leadership who is currently Chair of Educated. We Stand and an AFT Vice President.

As we commemorate Juneteenth—-a day that marks both delayed freedom and enduring resilience—-we are reminded that history is not just something we inherit, but something we actively teach, shape, and defend.

In today’s educational landscape, that responsibility carries new weight.

Across the country, educators are navigating a growing number of policies and political pressures designed to narrow curriculum, discourage honest conversations, and promote a version of teaching that is sanitized, disconnected, and, ultimately, self-centered. These efforts do more than limit content. They attempt to redefine the purpose of public education itself, shifting it away from critical thinking, identity development, and collective understanding.

But classrooms do not thrive under silence. Students do not grow from half-truths.

The research, presented in Unionized Teachers of Color’s Interpretations of the Silencing of Diversity Discourse in Florida: An Intersectional Qualitative Study, underscores a critical truth: educators of color consistently emphasize the importance of teaching authentically by drawing on lived experiences, cultural knowledge, and historical accuracy to foster deeper student engagement and identity development. This is not supplemental work. It is essential.

The Accountability Gap: D.C. Schools and Students with Disabilities

When I first moved to D.C., it took me some time to get used to the school system. Multiple city agencies share oversight of public schools, and enrollment is split nearly evenly between traditional public and charter schools— making finding a teaching job strenuous (lots of separate fingerprint appointments!). It wasn’t until I was in the classroom that I grasped how exhausting this fragmented system is for families. Witnessing the difficulty of transitioning from a public to a charter school was one of many consequences of this fragmentation. One of my parents moved to an online charter school because she was told her family would get more targeted support, only to realize that she had to quit her job to monitor her child’s lessons adequately due to her child’s ADHD.

In December 2024, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) confirmed these challenges by releasing a report from their investigation on DCPS for discrimination of students with disabilities (SWD). In this report, the Commission highlighted two findings of discrimination: DCPS relies on due process complaints to deal with injustice, and they fail to provide transportation services for SWD that require it. 

These observations contribute to a larger pattern of fragmented governance for marginalized students. The District of Columbia's education governance system is structurally fragmented in ways that obscure accountability and prevent meaningful community participation. Because D.C. functions simultaneously as a city and a state, its education agencies operate across overlapping and competing jurisdictions with no single body held democratically accountable for outcomes. This fragmentation did not flourish on its own; policy actors have prioritized market-based ideologies that treat parents like consumers in a free market. As a result of this neoliberal model, families in need are left with improper access to school resources and civic engagement. Both community and researcher voices agree that D.C.’s governance system requires structural reform to enforce democratic accountability and promote equitable access to high quality public and charter schools to all students. 

Do One-Size-Fits-All Literacy Programs Serve English Learners?

My teaching experience in a bilingual school versus a dual immersion school couldn’t be more different, although they shared one commonality: the balance between engaging and overburdening English learners (ELs) was hard to strike. 

In the bilingual school, language barriers impeded my classroom daily. Although our lessons were taught bilingually, my co-teacher and I struggled to understand each other and often dealt with miscommunications. The administration mandated that state tested subjects be taught in English exclusively, implying that bilingual aims were on the backburner to test scores. Our EL students were constantly on call to translate for the non-Spanish speakers who didn’t understand the content, which distracted them from focusing on their coursework and put improper pressure on them to synthesize and interpret lessons. 

But in the dual immersion (DLI) school, I struggled to get my EL students involved at all. I didn't even know which of my students were enrolled in the DLI program, but I wrongly assumed that because I taught almost all the ELs in my school that many of them would be enrolled to take advantage of its academic benefits. In the DLI program, students were eligible to receive a certification in bilingualism which could be leveraged for college and career advancement. I was shocked to find that despite the DLI program offering their native language, only a few of my 250 students were enrolled. The program marketed bilingualism as a career investment: but one aimed at English-dominant students acquiring a second language, not at students who were already bilingual and had the most to gain from formal recognition of that skill.

These experiences reflect a broader pattern in how state policy has approached English learners: investing in programs that promise inclusion while rarely centering the students those programs are meant to serve. The data reveals this gap, as 50% of ELs who are in the U.S. school system since kindergarten fail to reach proficiency within 6 years.

The Wright Hire: What Maryland's Decision Tells Us About Literacy Reform

When Maryland recruited Dr. Carey Wright to lead its public school system, the choice seemed striking: a strongly Democratic state turning to the architect of literacy reforms from a deeply Republican one.

When Literacy Reform Meets the Classroom

Our guest author is Cooper Sved, an Elementary Educator and Education Policy Analyst.

Opening

Earlier this week, in my sixth-grade general education classroom, my students and I engaged in a thoughtful, generative discussion about North American colonialism as part of our social studies curriculum. I teach at an elementary school just outside Washington, D.C., serving a uniquely multilingual population that spans the full socioeconomic spectrum. My class, in particular, is a microcosm of the diversity present in our area and across the country. My students benefit daily from the range of cultural, linguistic, and economic perspectives that surround them. Unsurprisingly, students were deeply engaged in our discussion, regardless of academic standing. While I relied on a handful of county-provided resources, our social studies curriculum allows for teacher discretion and innovation. Because I know my students well, I was able to modify texts and discussion questions to account for the wide variance in reading proficiency in my room. That short discussion was energizing for students and deeply rewarding for me as their teacher.

Roughly twenty minutes later, our literacy block began.

Last year, in response to the Virginia Literacy Act, my district adopted a scripted literacy curriculum. According to the lesson script, students were to take out their consumable booklets and read two poems, one from the nineteenth century and one from the early twentieth. Despite reviewing key vocabulary and providing extensive background knowledge, none of my students were able to meaningfully comprehend the texts. The lesson assumed students could decipher and analyze both poems within a fifteen-minute window. I was forced to go “off script,” spending nearly twenty minutes simply helping students make sense of the language. What had moments earlier been a classroom full of curious, engaged learners quickly shifted into one marked by boredom, frustration, and escalating disruption. In the span of a single lesson, motivated students became irritable, resistant, and, perhaps most concerningly, disengaged.

From the Simple View of Reading to an Integrated View of Foundational Skills

Our guest author is Rafely Palacios, a first-grade bilingual teacher and literacy advocate in the Bay Area, recognized by the ILA 30 Under 30 for her work improving literacy outcomes for multilingual learners. 

If you’re a teacher, you’ve likely encountered the Simple View of Reading (SVR). This model shows that reading comprehension results from two essential components: decoding (word recognition) and language comprehension (understanding spoken language). In many U.S. classrooms, these components are taught in separate instructional blocks: phonics for decoding and, later, a distinct time for comprehension or oral language. 

But could this separation have unintended effects on students’ development as readers?

In Elbow Room, a paper recently published by the Albert Shanker Institute, Dr. Maryanne Wolf challenges a siloed interpretation of the Simple View of Reading, shown by the separation of decoding and comprehension blocks in many classrooms. Instead, Dr. Wolf argues for a more integrated approach to foundational skills. Rather than treating decoding and language comprehension as parallel but separate strands, she emphasizes that children must develop word recognition, word meaning, syntax, and morphology as interrelated components within a coherent instructional sequence. Dr. Wolf argues that each skill, and their integration, must be taught explicitly, systematically, and cumulatively, ensuring no component is left to chance, while remaining dynamic enough to adapt pace and support to each learner's needs.

I recommend this paper to all primary-grade teachers. Dr. Wolf’s work broadens our understanding of how we act as architects for our students, revealing how every lesson and interaction reshapes a child’s mind. It answers questions we often have about why some students struggle, showing that the 'magic' happens when our instruction helps them integrate skills rather than teach them in isolation. In this post, I share key ideas from Dr. Wolf’s paper and reflect on how they are shaping my own first-grade reading instruction. 

When “Success” Leaves Students Behind: How Market-Based Schools Exclude Students with Disabilities

As a freshly licensed teacher, I entered the profession hoping to challenge common stereotypes about teaching. I was ready to defy persistent myths of the ‘jaded teacher’ who re-used their lesson plans year after year and taught from their desk chair. So, I sought an environment where teachers taught with rigor and acted as advocates for change. When I encountered a job listing for a national charter school network, it felt like the perfect place to teach: the network emphasized high expectations for both staff and students, all in the name of helping disadvantaged communities beat the system.

Once the school year started, every moment of lesson prep and execution was centered around a single goal: excellence. As the year progressed, the administration increasingly painted certain students as threats to this goal students who struggled to comply with the demanding curriculum and constant test taking. These students—many of whom were multilingual learners and had a learning disability—were many grade levels behind. The strict behavioral regime didn’t accommodate their needs, and they were often in the dean's office instead of participating in instructional time. But when I questioned what we could do to support them, I encountered pushback. They will learn to meet the expectations. We need to focus on the cuspers. Because we were compared to other charters in the district, my leadership wanted to prioritize “cuspers”—students on the verge of advancing performance categories, whose gains would most directly improve accountability metrics—over students who were severely under proficient and therefore viewed as unlikely to advance brackets.

That school year taught me a lot about the nuanced and tense views on how to help disadvantaged students succeed in a world of standardized success. However, a broader question stuck with me years after this experience: To what extent do charter and private schools exclude students with disabilities within a highly standardization education system? Existing research confirms that charter and private schools do, in fact, exclude students with disabilities—- not only by discouraging initial enrollment, but also by pushing students out after enrollment.

Due to the rapid expansion of charter schools and the widespread adoption of private school voucher programs in many states, this research is all relatively new. However, one argument that has consistently championed the charter movement is that charter schools perform slightly better than traditional public schools on standardized tests. This stance became less clear as research has muddied reported score growth when accounting for student demographic and location. More recently, political verbiage has shifted to center priorities like educational freedom and parent choice to push for market-based schools. Beyond political rhetoric, this shift raises important questions about the larger costs to public education. Here are three key patterns that demonstrate how market-based schools exclude students with disabilities. 

What Changed My Mind About How to Teach Reading

This guest essay features Claude Goldenberg, Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University, who shares how his thinking about teaching reading changed through close work with colleagues who held very different views, and how that experience points to a broader lesson about how teachers learn, how assumptions shift, and how practice can improve. It is adapted from a recent podcast episode of Literacy Across Languages. Learn more in his Substack 'We Must End the Reading Wars... Now."

When I went to college, I thought I'd go to law school or something like that. Education was not in my sights. But I found out in college there was a program you could take to get a teaching credential. My roommate told me, you know, before we go to law school, it might be good to get a teaching credential. It won't mess up your schedule. You don't have to take bulletin boards 101 or anything, and it will give you something to do for a year or two before going to law school. I said, okay, that sounds okay. As it turned out, over the remaining years I got more interested in education and less in law.

By the time I graduated from college, my parents were living in San Antonio. And I thought, well, I could go back there and teach because in addition to being interested in education, I spoke Spanish. So I thought that was sort of an additional skill I could bring to the proceedings.

I considered different places, but I always wanted to work with kids who just, you know, don't have the opportunities that I grew up with, and how many of the people in my socio-demographics grew up.

I wanted to teach history, my major in college, but I was offered a job as an eighth grade reading teacher in probably the poorest school district in Texas. Back then I thought, well, the more impossible the assignment, the more I wanted it. The students I’d teach were kids who, in eighth grade, were reading so poorly that the principal said, you can’t have your elective—you’re going to take remedial reading. And he assigned me, a first-year teacher, wet behind the ears and with very little preparation. And I struggled. I mean, it was hard.  I had a lot of “ganas,” you know, a lot of wanting to help. But I realized I just didn’t know that much. I really didn’t have very good teacher preparation. Not to disparage anyone or any program, but I just wasn’t prepared. And so I decided to go back to graduate school and try to learn something—to understand why these kids were arriving in seventh and eighth grade so far behind academically.