Commonwealth Beacon: Push for the ‘right to read’ landing at State House
Rep. Cataldo speaks at State House briefing on H. 698. Photo courtesy of Ed Feather.
Commonwealth Beacon: AGAINST THE BACKDROP of the pandemic learning slump – which brought a further slide in already anemic reading proficiency rates for Massachusetts 3rd graders – advocates are redoubling their efforts behind legislation that would require all school districts in the state to use “evidence-based” literacy instruction in teaching early elementary grade students.
As part of a new push for the reading legislation, which was first introduced last session, a coalition of Massachusetts groups is bringing in one of the national leaders of the campaign to get districts and states to adopt a literacy curriculum based on the so-called “science of reading.” Kareem Weaver, a former Oakland, California, educator and NAACP leader who now heads a national nonprofit focused on literacy, will speak at a State House briefing on Wednesday organized by the Mass. Reads Coalition, a group of more than a dozen organizations backing the literacy bill.
“Literacy is our greatest civil right. If you can’t read, you can’t access anything in our society,” Weaver said in a 2023 documentary, “Right to Read,” that he co-produced on the literacy crisis and the fight to get schools to use more effective reading curricula.
When it comes to Massachusetts 3rd graders, an astonishing number can’t read.
Just 42 percent of 3rd grade students were proficient in English on the 2024 MCAS. The numbers are far worse for student groups on the bottom end of the state’s yawning achievement gap. Only 24 percent of low-income 3rd graders are proficient in reading, and only 27 percent of Black students and 22 percent of Latinos are reading at grade level.
In Boston, the numbers are even worse, with just 20 percent of Black students and 19 percent of Latino students proficient in reading. Put differently, that means 80 percent of these students in the state’s largest school district – where they account for three-quarters of the student population – are not reading at grade level, an ominous indicator for their long-term success in K-12 schooling and beyond.
“We have a system now that is clearly failing students,” said state Rep. Danillo Sena, a co-sponsor of the legislation mandating that school districts employ evidence-based literacy instruction.
The bill would have Massachusetts join 42 other states that have adopted some form of required literacy instruction.
At the heart of the legislative push is a battle that raged in education circles over the best way to teach children to read.
Under one approach, known as whole language or balanced literacy, students might be encouraged to guess at unfamiliar words from the context of a sentence or pictures. That method, however, has increasingly been discredited in favor of an approach known as phonics, which involves much more explicit instruction to young children on letter sounds and how to combine them to form words.
A wealth of research evidence shows that this approach, combined with rich content knowledge, is a more effective way to teach children to read. The state education department strongly encourages districts to use this approach, and it has set expectations for teacher licensing programs to use this in their training as well.
But after years in which many schools employed the whole language approach, changing district practices, teacher training, and curriculum materials isn’t proving to be easy or without controversy. The Globe reported in 2023 that nearly half of Massachusetts districts were not using evidence-based reading curriculum.
Gov. Maura Healey has made early literacy a priority, making available $20 million in federal grant money to districts to purchase literacy curriculum materials aligned with evidence-based practices. Healey is looking to bolster the literacy initiative with $25 million more that she’s proposed in her 2026 budget along with $25 million to support high-dose tutoring aimed at helping early elementary grade readers.
The legislation, filed in the House by Sena, together with fellow Acton Democrat Simon Cataldo, and in the Senate by Sal DiDomenico of Everett, would go beyond the state grant programs that districts can tap by mandating that all schools use an evidence-based curriculum that adheres to the principles of the “science of reading.”
That has generated opposition, including from the state’s largest teachers’ union, which objects to the state directing an approach to instruction. “Massachusetts has in place a process that allows our expert educators and other stakeholders to design reading programs that best meet the needs of their students,” said Massachusetts Teachers Association president Max Page and MTA vice president Deb McCarthy in a statement. “Legislating narrow curriculum from the state is a deeply flawed approach to addressing the literacy needs of students and could hamper educators’ ability to best serve students.”
The Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents has applauded Healey’s literacy initiative, but opposed the bill mandating evidence-based reading instruction last session, arguing that it did not give districts enough flexibility.
Mary Tamer, executive director of MassPotential, a nonprofit focused on K-12 education, and a leader of the Mass. Reads Coalition, said the bill offers districts lots of leeway to use a curriculum that suits their students and their needs – as long as it uses the approach backed by research evidence.
“There’s nothing in the bill that says you have to use this one [curriculum], or have to use one of these five,” she said. “We’re just saying it has to be high quality and research-based under the state guidelines. There’s so much latitude here.”
Concerns have also been raised that the bill would represent an unfunded mandate on districts to buy new curriculum materials and carry out costly teacher training. Tamer pointed to state grant money available for professional development and said the state education department has a full evidence-based early elementary literacy curriculum available at no cost to districts.
DiDomenico said the governor’s effort to spotlight the importance of the issue is giving the effort added momentum. “We feel confident we are going to see some movement with it this session,” he said. “What we’re doing right now is inadequate.”
But whether lawmakers will have an appetite for shaking up the status quo is unclear. The chaos and uncertainty generated by the Trump administration, including threats to funding streams that find their way to schools, are adding to the resistance to pursuing changes like the call for a statewide overhaul of the approach to reading instruction.
Cataldo said the whole language and balanced literacy approaches have been “thoroughly debunked” by overwhelming evidence. “I appreciate the benefits of local control,” he said. “But that only goes so far when it comes to ensuring something so fundamental as learning how to read, which tracks so closely with success in our society,” he said. “I think it would be irresponsible of our state education system and our local districts not to give serious consideration to creating the framework and the safeguards that the bill proposes.”
