[Please note that this blog has been updated since its original post date of January 20, 2024 to include the panel monthly meeting schedule and livestream information, as well as panel chair/vice chair appointments.]
On January 18, 2024, the State Board of Education unanimously approved a nine-person independent expert panel to develop evaluation criteria and subsequently, create an approved list of universal screening instruments for reading difficulties, including risk of dyslexia.
All school districts in California must select a universal screening instrument(s) off the state list by June 30, 2025 and implement mandatory annual kindergarten through grade two screening effective for the 2025-2026 school year.
The experts selected for this Reading Difficulties Risk Screener Selection Panel (RDRSSP) will meet monthly in open-to-the-public meetings and will serve a 2-year term.
The RDRSSP panel of experts is as follows:
A few key dates and actions to note:
To livestream a RDRSSP monthly meeting, please click here on the date of the meeting. For additional panel and meeting details, please explore the RDRSSP webpage.
For information on the RDRSSP governing policy, please click here.
In other related and important news, on January 10, 2024, the Governor’s Budget proposed $25 million of funding to support training for educators to administer K-2 universal screening for reading difficulties, including risk of dyslexia. For more details, click on the links below:
Stay tuned for more updates on universal screening legislation implementation in California… and as always, please encourage family, friends, and colleagues to sign up for DDCA emails to stay informed on all dyslexia-related efforts in California.
Well, that remains to be seen. Even before the latest round of news from Columbia Teachers College, Decoding Dyslexia CA was seeing some movement away from Calkins’ popular curriculum, the Units of Study in Reading, as some districts began aligning with the Science of Reading amid a statewide literacy crisis that has California lagging the nation in fourth-grade reading proficiency.
Units of Study in Reading refers to the wildly popular instructional materials authored by Lucy Calkins and Teachers College Reading Writing Project (TCRWP). For decades Lucy Calkins and TCRWP hosted professional development on the Ivy League campus of Columbia Teachers College that aligned with the commercial curriculum products. While the affiliation between TCRWP and the university is ending, the Units of Study curriculum will continue to be published by Heinemann. This blog focuses on districts’ movement away from using the Heinemann-published Units of Study in Reading curriculum.
Palo Alto Unified School District
One example is the Palo Alto Unified School District. PAUSD has undertaken several district changes as part of its Every Students Reads Initiative. One of these was to abandon Calkins’ Units of Study in Reading and adopt a new core ELA/ELD curriculum in addition to implementing universal screening, teacher training, and coaching, among other things.
Palo Alto’s investment in structured literacy is showing results with significant gains in the CAASPP results for their Low-income Latino 3rd Graders, as shown below.
Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD), another Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study district, has had to implement a districtwide literacy improvement plan that includes screening all K-5 students for reading difficulties and implementing evidence-based literacy interventions as the result of a federal class action lawsuit settlement in 2021.
The district must also evaluate the effectiveness of its Tier 1 curriculum. In March of 2023, BUSD began its own curriculum audit. According to theBerkeley Unified School District Literacy Action Plan 2022-2023 – Fourth Quarter Report (dated August 23, 2023), the “results of the review indicate gaps in key areas of literacy instruction in the TCRWP – Units of Study curriculum.” The details of the BUSD review can be found in Appendix B, pages 20-22, and the deficiencies are wide-ranging. What remains to be seen is if BUSD will abandon Units of Study instead of continuing to try and prop it up with “band-aid phonics patches”…but more about that later.
San Francisco Unified School District
San Francisco Unified is not as far along but has already made significant commitments to changing its reading instruction. Based on findings of anexternal curriculum and instruction audit, the district will replace Lucy Calkins’ curriculum. The audit of SFUSD’s literacy program found that over 90% of observed instruction in SFUSD classrooms did not incorporatesufficient opportunities for students to practice foundational reading skills. This comes as no surprise as the consensus from reviews and ratings is clear: Units of Study in Reading fails to provide the systematic and explicit instruction in foundational skills necessary for the majority of children to learn to read. Reviewers have also noted weaknesses in areas of vocabulary and knowledge building and other things, but poor guidance on foundational skills is the most glaring.
In West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD), despite reading scores being “stagnant for over a decade” and a less-than-ambitious district reading goal to “improve by 5% each year,” WCCUSD will shockingly stick with Calkins’ Units of Study inReading according to EdSource article “West Contra Costa superintendent seeks to raise reading scores.”
In our lastblog, DDCA referenced a 2020 report done by nationally-renowned experts entitled “Comparing Reading Research to Program Design: An Examination of Teachers College Units of Study” which found, in addition to overall flaws in Calkins program, specifically noted that English Learners “will not have access to best practices in literacy instruction, particularly in the beginning and early stages of literacy development. Claims made in the Units about practices that are “especially powerful” or “incredibly supportive” for English language learners are not consistent with existing research.”
According to the EdSource article, WCCUSD is planning on adding a “band-aid” patch to shore up its failing Units of Study curricula.
How Widespread is the Calkins TCRWP curriculum?
It is very difficult to find out how pervasive the use of Calkins’ curriculum is in our California school districts. Are Calkins’ Units of Study on the state-adopted list of approved English Language Arts curriculum? No. Are school districts able to adopt curricula not on the state-adopted list? Yes.
Two interesting reports were issued by the California Reading Coalition. One (theCalifornia Reading Report Card 2022ranked districts by the percent of economically disadvantaged Hispanic/Latino (Latino) students who “meet or exceed” grade level for the CAASPP 3rd grade ELA test in 2022. In California, economically disadvantaged Latino students make up 43% of California K-12 enrollment. The other report, theCalifornia Reading Curriculum Report, found that districts using Units of Study were disproportionately among the lowest-performing in the state overall.
If you are interested in learning more about California’s long history of failed whole language and “balanced literacy” programs, such as Calkins’ Units of Study in Reading, take the time to listen to or read:
Iowa Reading Research Center podcasts “A Novel Idea: The History of the Science of Reading Movement.” Episode #6 covers in detail California’s failed love affair with failed whole language and balanced literacy practices and Episode #7 discusses Calkins’ influence.
