The rating Republican on the U.S. Senate’s Well being, Training, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Invoice Cassidy has represented Louisiana within the higher chamber since 2015. Cassidy not too long ago launched a much-discussed report, “Stopping a Misplaced Technology: Dealing with a Essential Second for College students’ Literacy.” As faculties battle to deal with studying loss, and at a time when “the nation’s report card” finds that simply 33 p.c of 4th graders are proficient in studying, it’s heartening to see leaders step up. On condition that, I reached out to the senator to debate his report and what he has in thoughts. Right here’s what he needed to say.
—Rick
Rick Hess: Senator, you’ve had a long-standing curiosity in literacy and dyslexia specifically. Are you able to speak a bit about why this problem is so essential to you?
Sen. Invoice Cassidy: Literacy—the essential potential to learn—is on the coronary heart of all different studying. If college students don’t study to learn, they can not learn to study new materials in different topics. There are important societal impacts for individuals who can’t learn, together with being much less prone to graduate from highschool and extra prone to be incarcerated. Additionally, and not using a literate workforce, we as a nation can’t fill the 9 million jobs presently open or adequately workers the navy, which hurts our competitiveness with different nations.
Inside literacy, analysis exhibits dyslexia impacts hundreds of thousands of individuals throughout the nation, particularly an estimated 1 in 5 People. Dyslexia shouldn’t be about a person’s intelligence however the want for specialised instruction and instruments. As a father or mother of a kid with dyslexia, I understand how laborious it may be to get your youngster the assets they should meet their full potential. Sadly, many college students aren’t screened for dyslexia till after they’ve already fallen behind, if in any respect. And, even after a father or mother finds out that their youngster has dyslexia, they could not have the ability to discover or afford a college that gives the right, tailor-made schooling.
We have to have a Twenty first-century method to literacy and dyslexia primarily based on science, together with early screening and evidence-based instruction, so each youngster can obtain their God-given potential.
Hess: You lately issued a brand new report on literacy. What prompted it? And why now?
Sen. Cassidy: We are actually vulnerable to having a complete technology of kids—who had been of their prime studying years throughout the pandemic—fail to change into productive adults if studying proficiency doesn’t enhance. Whereas many states proceed to take significant steps to enhance literacy instruction, extra have to be finished. This report highlights this urgent problem and requests suggestions from stakeholders throughout the nation. This suggestions shall be essential to informing our efforts on the federal stage so we will higher help lecturers, dad and mom, college students, and faculties to make sure each youngster can learn proficiently.
Hess: Your report cites quite a lot of troubling statistics in terms of studying. What are a number of of the information factors that you simply discover most illuminating?
Sen. Cassidy: The 2022 Nationwide Evaluation of Instructional Progress revealed that two-thirds of 4th and eighth graders are unable to learn proficiently. The common studying rating for 4th graders is the bottom it has been in over 20 years. For eighth and twelfth graders, common scores are close to a 30-year low. These numbers ought to concern us all; they’re utterly unacceptable.
Hess: As you understand, there’s been rising curiosity in science-based studying instruction. Are you able to share a number of of the important thing analysis findings out of your report and the sorts of practices or insurance policies that you simply discover particularly promising?
Sen. Cassidy: It’s essential to be clear that after we say “science of studying,” we’re discussing an evidence-based physique of analysis. It’s not one curriculum or program and it’s not simply phonics-based instruction. This physique of analysis has recognized key parts crucial for college students to learn to learn and write and the way lecturers can finest implement these parts into studying instruction. Particularly, the science of studying has proven that college students want express, systematic, and cumulative instruction in every of the 5 key pillars of literacy—phonemic consciousness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
The states implementing the science of studying method particularly properly are supporting the implementation by deploying literacy coaches, updating teacher-preparation packages, and offering express coaching for present lecturers within the science of studying. These states are additionally supporting all educators—not simply studying lecturers—in studying evidence-based studying practices. It’s essential that enhancing scholar literacy be an all-hands-on-deck effort.
Hess: We’ve seen quite a lot of states launch bold efforts to overtake studying instruction, together with your personal state of Louisiana. Which states are doing this notably properly and what can we study from them?
Sen. Cassidy: I’m pleased with the work being finished in Louisiana to enhance scholar literacy. A key to that success has been the excellent nature of those efforts. Louisiana is one among three states which might be implementing all 18 parts of what science of studying specialists define as a complete literacy coverage. Unsurprisingly, Louisiana had the most important beneficial properties out of all 50 states in grade studying on the 2022 Nationwide Evaluation of Instructional Progress.
There may be additionally the “Mississippi Miracle,” which describes that state’s huge beneficial properties in literacy over the previous decade. Mississippi achieved these outcomes by specializing in the implementation of science-of-reading reforms. They didn’t cross a legislation and simply hope for the perfect. The Mississippi division of schooling labored relentlessly to create clear tips and assets in order that lecturers had the required help and coaching to enhance instruction. Mississippi additionally ensured dad and mom had been engaged and college students had entry to high-quality supplies.
Hess: Your report affords a normal name to motion fairly than particular prescriptions. Nonetheless, I’m curious you probably have some normal ideas about what Congress needs to be considering by way of information-gathering, oversight, or lawmaking?
Sen. Cassidy: Suggestions from lecturers and households, which might be despatched to literacy@assist.senate.gov, shall be essential on this course of. I plan to share extra on this entrance after reviewing responses to the report and workshopping concepts with stakeholders. Any coverage that’s thought of might want to help lecturers in utilizing the science of studying and fogeys in understanding and figuring out it. Whereas curriculum selections ought to stay the accountability of states and districts, there are seemingly alternatives to strengthen how federal funds are used for literacy and to help states in tackling the extra advanced items of this puzzle.
Hess: Twenty-odd years in the past, throughout the Bush administration, the Studying First program sought to advertise research-based studying instruction. Do you look again at Studying First as a cautionary story, a mannequin value reviving, or one thing else?
Sen. Cassidy: It’s a cautionary story. Studying First had worthy objectives aimed toward aligning literacy instruction with evidence-based strategies and supplies. Nevertheless, it was fraught with implementation points and conflicts of curiosity. My hope is that this report provides the schooling discipline a possibility to mirror on all earlier makes an attempt to help literacy and supply constructive suggestions to not repeat the errors of the previous.
Hess: Final query: Given present legislation, are there issues the U.S. Division of Training may do to extra successfully deal with the challenges you’ve famous? Are there specific modifications to present packages, funding streams, or guidelines you’d prefer to see the division discover?
Sen. Cassidy: That is the precise query I hope to discover with the schooling discipline as we obtain responses to the report. I’ve already heard considerations that every one shouldn’t be properly and that we will and should do higher. That is the time to place all concepts on the desk and chart a path ahead collectively to enhance literacy. If we don’t seize this second, the long-term implications shall be dire.
