By Robbie Sequeira, Used with Permission from Ohio Capital Journal
As states rush to address falling literacy scores, a new kind of education debate in state legislatures is taking hold: not whether reading instruction needs fixing, but how to fix it.
More than a dozen states have enacted laws banning public school educators from teaching youngsters to read using an approach that’s been popular for decades. The method, known as “three-cueing,” encourages kids to figure out unfamiliar words using context clues such as meaning, sentence structure, and visual hints.
In the past two years, several states have instead embraced instruction rooted in what’s known as the “science of reading.” That approach leans heavily on phonics — relying on letter and rhyming sounds to read words such as cat, hat, and rat.
The policy discussions on early literacy are unfolding against a backdrop of alarming national reading proficiency levels. The 2024 Nation’s Report Card revealed that 40% of fourth graders and 33% of eighth graders scored below the basic reading level — the highest percentages in decades.
No state improved in fourth- or eighth-grade reading in 2024. Eight states — Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Nebraska, Nevada, Utah, and Vermont — scored worse than they did a year or two prior in eighth-grade reading.
Five states — Arizona, Florida, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Vermont — saw dips in their fourth-grade reading scores.
In response to these troubling trends, a growing number of states are moving beyond localized efforts and tackling literacy through statewide legislation.
New Jersey last year mandated universal K-3 literacy screenings. Indiana lawmakers this month passed a bill that would allow some students to retake required reading tests before being held back in third grade; that bill is en route to the governor’s desk.
Oregon and Washington are weighing statewide literacy coaching and training models, while lawmakers in Montana introduced a bill to allow literacy interventions to cover broader reading and academic skills, not just early reading basics.
Mississippi, a state seen as a model for turnaround in literacy rates over the past decade, seeks to expand and require evidence-based reading interventions, mandatory literacy screenings and targeted teacher training, and to explicitly ban the use of three-cueing methods in reading instruction in grades 4-8.
Together, these efforts signal a national shift: States are treating literacy not as a local initiative, but as the foundation of public education policy.
“Literacy is the lever,” said Tafshier Cosby, the senior director of the Center for Organizing and Partnerships at the National Parents Union, an advocacy group. “If states focus on that, we see bipartisan wins. But the challenge is making that a statewide priority, not just a district-by-district hope.”
Before he was even sworn in, first-term Georgia Democratic state Sen. RaShaun Kemp, a former teacher and principal, had already drafted a bill to end the use of the three-cueing system in Georgia classrooms.
This month, the final version passed the state legislature without a single “no” vote. GOP Gov. Brian Kemp signed it into law Monday.
Sen. Kemp said his passion for literacy reform stretches back decades, shaped by experiences tutoring children at a local church as a college student in the early 2000s. It was there, he said, that he began noticing patterns in how students struggled with foundational reading.
“In my experience, I saw kids struggle to identify the word they were reading. I saw how some kids were guessing what the word was instead of decoding,” Kemp recalled. “And it’s not technology or screens that’s the problem. It’s what teachers are being instructed on how to teach reading. It’s the system that needs fixing, not the teachers.”
The new law requires the Professional Standards Commission — a state agency that oversees teacher prep and certification — to adopt rules mandating evidence-based reading instruction aligned with the science of reading, a set of practices rooted in decades of cognitive research on how children best learn to read.
“Current strategies used to teach literacy include methods that teach students to guess rather than read, preventing them from reaching their full potential,” Sen. Kemp said in a public statement following the bill’s legislative passage. “I know we can be better, and I’m proud to see our legislative body take much-needed steps to help make Georgia the number one state for literacy.”
In West Virginia, lawmakers have introduced similar bills that would require the state’s teachers to be certified in the science of reading.
Cosby, of the National Parents Union, said local policy changes can be driven by parents even before legislatures act.
“All politics are local,” Cosby said. “Parents don’t need to wait for statewide mandates — they can ask school boards for universal screeners and structured literacy now.”
Still, some parents worry their states are simply funding more studies on early literacy rather than taking direct action to address it.
A Portland, Oregon, parent of three — one of whom has dyslexia — sent written testimony this year urging lawmakers to skip further studies and immediately implement structured literacy statewide.
“We do not need another study to tell us what we already know — structured literacy is the most effective way to teach all children to read, particularly those with dyslexia and other reading challenges,” wrote Katherine Hoffman.
Unlike in Georgia, the “science of reading” has met resistance in other states.
In California, legislation that would require phonics-based reading instruction statewide has faced opposition from English learner advocates who argue that a one-size-fits-all approach may not effectively serve multilingual students.
In opposition to the bill, the California Teachers Association argued that by codifying a rigid definition of the “science of reading,” lawmakers ignore the evolving nature of reading research and undermine teachers’ ability to meet the diverse needs of their students.
“Placing a definition for ‘science of reading’ in statute is problematic,” wrote Seth Bramble, a legislative advocate for the California Teachers Association in a March letter addressed to the state’s Assembly Education Committee. “This bill would carve into stone scientific knowledge that by its very nature is constantly being tested, validated, refuted, revised, and improved.”
Similarly, in Wisconsin, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in March vetoed a bill that would have reversed changes to the state’s scoring system to align the state’s benchmarks with the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal assessment tool that has recently been hit with funding cuts and layoffs under the Trump administration. Evers said in his veto that Republican lawmakers were stepping on the state superintendent’s independence.
That veto is another step in the evolution of a broader constitutional fight over literacy policy and how literacy funds are appropriated and released. In 2023, Wisconsin lawmakers set aside $50 million for a new statewide literacy initiative, but disagreements over legislative versus executive control have stalled its disbursement.
Indiana’s legislature faced criticism from educators over a 2024 mandate requiring 80 hours of literacy training for pre-K to sixth-grade teachers before they can renew their licenses. Teachers argued that the additional requirements were burdensome and did not account for their professional expertise.
In Illinois, literacy struggles have been building for more than a decade, according to Mailee Smith, senior director of policy at the Illinois Policy Institute. Today, only 3 in 10 Illinois third- and fourth-graders can read at grade level, based on state and national assessments.
Although Illinois lawmakers amended the school code in 2023 to create a state literacy plan, Smith noted the plan is only guidance and does not require districts to adopt evidence-based reading instruction. She urged local school boards to act on their own.
“If students can’t read by third grade, half of the fourth-grade curriculum becomes incomprehensible,” she said. “A student’s likelihood to graduate high school can be predicted by their reading skill at the end of third grade.”
Despite the challenges, Smith said even small steps can make a real difference.
“Screening, intervention, parental notice, science-based instruction, and thoughtful grade promotion — those are the five pillars, and Illinois and even local school districts can implement some of these steps right away,” she said.
“It doesn’t have to be daunting.”
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Although I have taught, I am certainly no expert on literacy education. I can, however, say that “one size fits all” approaches don’t work. As an example, the phonics method may be fine for native English speakers, but it may not work as well for someone who was speaking another language before entering school. Also, while “the science of reading “ is based on evidence, it—like any kind of science—is subject to change as new evidence comes to light . So while it might be the “best practice “ available at this moment, it shouldn’t be set in stone.
I’m not an educator, but I am married to one so I have heard a few things over the years. Teachers teach to the average student in the classroom. The first challenge is finding the average in a class. The hope is to capture as many students at one time. Then you fund out which students lie outside the average and try to capture those too. A teacher with 25 students in a class may be teaching to several different levels in a classroom. This is particularly true in lower grades before kids are shuffled into different level tracks in high school. Once someone becomes a teacher, they aren’t to remain stagnant – they generally are required to complete continuing education throughout their careers to stay up-to-date on new teaching methods based on research. (Note that private school teachers don’t do this – they can teach the sane way 30 years whether it works or not).
I don’t have an answer to this problem, but it seems that if literacy rates have dropped so much, the method needs to be evaluated and potentially changed. Plus, do we know how virtual school during covid affected this?
I like Obstaclechick am not a teacher, but my father was he taught German to kids from the USA. He also taught English as a Second Language to kids in high school who came from non-English home language kids. How you learn a language and then reading are sometimes dependant on age, my neurologist told me this. There will always be kids who have problems like dyslexia like my brother had. They need more individual help. We need a broad approach. I can easily see what Obstaclechick is saying about with a large class needing to teach to the average in the class. However, I think what we need is more tutors to teach to individual kids by understanding what that individual kid needs.
One limitation on learning to read is the books used for reading instruction. My grade school used simple story books; we were encouraged to “sound the words out” One story book included a kitten which said “mew” In New York City “new” is pronounced as “noo”. Logically — to a six year old — “mew” would be pronounced “moo”. Even in Brooklyn cows “moo”, not cats. MY mother thought it over and suggested “myew” as the cat sound. That I still remember it so many years later probably means something. My younger cousins were given those “Dick and Jane” books. One youngster complained that the pictures told the story, why bother with the words, which often were simply “Run, Dick, run.” Books like that were a read turn-off! Learning to read takes effort; it should be worth the work! Before my children learned to read we read to them. the books had to be worth our time and attention .
I’ve only taught three people how to read. First I taught myself, by being given many books and having adults willing to read them to me. I just… caught on. The words just started to make sense. I was five.
Then both my children learned the same way. The oldest was five when he started reading and was reading fluently from the National Geographic within a year.
Youngest was three. She started by reading food packages in the grocery store to me one day. I was stunned. Tested her at home by moving all the index cards around (we did environmental labeling) and she put them all back where they belonged.
I guess my kids just caught on the same way I did.
My son’s first grade teacher jumped ALL over my ass for ‘letting him learn to read the wrong way’. Apparently reading at an adult level and not understanding the phonics worksheets in class was a sacrilege. One of many reasons we took him out of school and never sent his sister to school at all.
My childhood home was a horror story of abuse and neglect in spite of which my overwhelmed Mother found time and patience to read to me. That made all the difference in my life. She always just read to me and I never felt any pressure to learn. Reading was a totally positive experience and when I started school, reading on my own was a pleasure. I can’t recall how we were taught. It was the 1940s in Ohio so it was whatever system used at the time. I recall I always decoded words letter by letter which amounts to phonics. I believe I was an early reader who grew up reading for pleasure and profession thanks to my Mother’s patiently reading my comic books to me. No way can the state provide all children with a patient Mother but if my experience is relevant, a pleasurable early exposure to reading can foster a lifelong positive attitude toward reading and learning in general. That being so, the early exposure to reading may be as important as how it is taught. One system may be more effective than another but a happy early experience with reading was crucial for me. The subject of teaching kids always reminds of lines from the poem “The Reading Mother” by Strickland Gillilan.
Richer than I you can never be
I had a a Mother who read to me
Thank you Mama