Last year, state legislators enacted reforms that require Ohio schools to follow the science of reading, an approach to literacy instruction that emphasizes phonics along with knowledge-building curricula to support comprehension. Starting this fall, all public schools must adopt high-quality curricula aligned to the science of reading, as well as discontinue three-cueing methods, a hallmark of debunked balanced literacy programs.
These approaches are vastly different. Balanced literacy encourages children to guess at words based on context clues, such as a picture or the first letter of a word. Phonics, on the other hand, takes a systematic approach by teaching students letter-sound relationships, allowing them to read words, regardless of their surrounding context. (For a refresher on the major divergences, see page 18 of literacy expert Louisa Moats’ 2007 Fordham Institute report.)
Transitioning Ohio teachers to the science of reading will be no small feat. To support the shift, the state has required most teachers to participate in professional development (PD), and will provide stipends to do so. The PD requirement is arguably the most critical element of the overall reform package, but it’s also likely to be the most challenging to implement.
For starters, thousands of teachers will need significant retraining. Although we don’t know exactly how widespread balanced literacy and three-cueing have been in Ohio—a statewide survey of reading curricula is expected to be released soon—a 2020 national survey from Education Week found that 68 percent of K–2 teachers said that balanced literacy was their “philosophy of teaching early reading.” Just 22 percent said phonics. Meanwhile, a study last year by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) revealed that dozens of Ohio teacher preparation programs emphasize non-scientifically based reading practices.
Making implementation even more challenging is that teacher PD has long been saddled with a well-earned reputation for being mediocre and ineffective. Teachers union boss Randi Weingarten once remarked, “Low-quality professional development, frankly, feels like detention.” In Education Next, scholars Matthew Kraft and David Blazar pointed out that PD has historically been “dominated by daylong seminars” that have “little or no effect on teacher quality.”
How can Ohio avoid these pitfalls and instead leverage PD to drive instructional change? The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce recently took an important (and legislatively required) first step by announcing a partnership with Keys to Literacy to create a science of reading course for teachers. Keys to Literacy is a PD provider on a recommended list by NCTQ and has supported literacy efforts in Colorado, a state that has aggressively implemented scientifically based reading instruction. In sum, the department’s selection of a reputable PD vendor is a good start.
But it’ll likely take efforts beyond coursework to support a successful transition to the science of reading. That’s because simply building teachers’ content knowledge is not enough. It’ll also require a reboot to teachers’ day-to-day instruction, something that will require lots of practice and feedback. In fact, the main point of a pair of 2022 papers by Heather Hill and John Papay of Brown University is that effective PD must focus on “subject-specific instructional practices.” This includes “getting teachers to deploy new instructional methods in their classroom, often by providing detailed modeling, analysis, and even rehearsals of those new methods.” They also recommend a few ways to ensure that teachers can receive this type of hands-on support. One avenue is formal teacher coaching, which usually involves one-on-one guidance from an expert trainer. In their reform package, legislators wisely set aside funding for literacy coaches, but they will only be deployed in a limited number of schools. Thus, for most teachers, peer collaboration—another recommended form of teacher PD—might be the best way to receive additional development and support.
Hill and Papay make clear that this refers to “collaborating for improvement,” not just intermittent sharing stories or social supports. In other words, teachers should be directly learning from each other by providing peers with “context-specific” feedback on classroom lessons, regularly sharing instructional strategies, and following up to see how new ideas and changes played out in the classroom. Unfortunately, this type of robust collaboration is rare. For instance, a 2016 RAND Corporation survey revealed that just one in five teachers say they receive peer feedback on a regular basis (more than twice per month).
To make such professional learning possible, district and school leaders should strongly encourage peer collaboration. They can carve out time for teachers to work together and support efforts by teachers to assist each other as they implement new practices. State leaders should also actively encourage this form of PD. The Department of Education and Workforce should make sure that educators are informed of its helpful peer-coaching guide and short (five to eight hour) PD course about how to implement it. The department could go further and highlight schools that have leveraged collaborative models, or provide resources to support video-based analysis of classroom lessons that teachers can use.
Moving to the science of reading is going to be a heavy lift for many Ohio schools. Making sure that teachers receive effective PD—one that strengthens both content knowledge and instructional practice—will be critical for the success of Ohio’s literacy efforts and, most importantly, the success of students.
