The Learning Curve: Literacy Bill Crumbles Under Union Pressure

How we teach kids to read has been in the spotlight for years now. Still, many schools haven’t embraced research-backed methods and continue to employ strategies that have been widely discredited. The urgency to catch up has ratcheted up lately, as schools scramble to get with the program.  

San Diego Unified, for example, has taken steps to align its schools scattered teaching strategies with approaches backed by the science of reading. But even as advocates have been encouraged by the district’s efforts, the work has been slow going.  

That’s why Board President Shana Hazan was “really excited,” when a state bill that would have mandated all teachers use methods backed by the science of reading came to the fore.  

That would have been a big change: California has taken steps to improve the way its schools have taught kids to read, but thus far those efforts have been targeted rather than broadly implemented. For example, California was hit with a lawsuit in 2020 that alleged the civil rights of the state’s most marginalized students were being violated because they weren’t being taught to read. As part of the settlement, the state invested $53 million into 75 of the highest needs schools. That program yielded good results and led to further investments in high-needs schools. 

But what’s needed to really move the needle is a comprehensive approach, Penny Schwinn, Tennessee’s former education commissioner, said at a recent EdSource roundtable on literacy in California. 

Leaders need to make sure “the curricular materials are aligned, the professional development is aligned. All of that has to row in the same direction. Otherwise, you have people who are all doing different things in different ways and kids get confused,” Schwinn said. 

AB 2222 would have been that more comprehensive approach: The bill would have made teaching things like phonics, one component of research-backed methods to teaching kids to read, mandatory. It also would have required teachers and other literacy-focused school staff to receive approved trainings 

Though it garnered wide support from literacy advocates, it was met with skepticism from advocates of English language learners. 

Hazan hoped the bill would accelerate San Diego Unified’s sluggish work by laying out clear guidelines the district would then be required to follow.  She’d been so enthusiastic that she’d considered trying to pass a districtwide motion to support it.  

Though she said she didn’t explicitly canvas her other board members, she said, “It was made clear that support was not unanimous.” 

Death of a bill: The bill ultimately died on the vine after the California Teachers Association – the state’s largest teachers union, and the one that represents San Diego Unified teachers – came out in opposition.  

The union claimed the bill would advance a “one-size-fits-all” approach that doesn’t work for all students, officials wrote in a letter to the Assembly Education Committee chairperson. The union also claimed that literacy instruction in California, “is already rooted in an understanding of the science of reading and decades of research that serve the needs of the most diverse set of students in the country.”  

During that EdSource roundtable, Dave Goldberg, the president of the California Teachers Association, said that while most people agree with the broad strokes of literacy reform, the “devil is in the details.” For Goldberg, educators, parents and students need to be at the center of any reform if it has any hope of succeeding. 

“Frankly, going and passing legislation that reinforces a top-down approach, it’s antithetical to what all of our goals are about: really having all students succeed,” Goldberg said. 

But this won’t be the end of efforts to bring a comprehensive framework for teaching kids to read to California schools. Though the bill died, its author was tasked with working with the union on fixes. Still, it’s unclear when the resurrection may come. 

Content Bouncing Around My Mind Palace 

There are lots of educational alternatives to traditional public schools out there, like homeschooling, charter schools and private religious programs. In this fascinating piece, the Union-Tribune explores how some parents have found a way to mix all three of those options to take advantage of programmatic flexibility, curriculum that jives with their family’s beliefs and even state funding. 

What We’re Writing 

The wave of campus protests opposed to Israel’s war in Gaza reached San Diego in recent weeks. Last Monday, UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla, called in law enforcement to clear a pro-Palestinian encampment on the university’s campus. They did, and arrested dozens of protestors in the process. In the wake of those arrests, serious questions about free speech have been raised, but local representatives have been relatively mum. Congressmember Sara Jacobs, however, wrote in a post on X that she was “deeply concerned,” by the decision to call in riot police. “A militarized response further escalates the situation and doesn’t help keep students safe,” Jacobs wrote. One of the student protestors’ demands has been that the UC system divest the $32 billion it’s invested in assets connected to Israel, but as EdSource reports, officials say they have no plans to do that. 

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