Jan. 13—Editor’s note: The Times will be presenting continuing coverage of priorities outlined by Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul in her 2024 State of the State. As New York contends with housing insecurity, public safety, health care, the emerging market for artificial intelligence and much more, stay updated on the policies impacting the north country. Read more in the coming weeks in print and online at nny360.com.

As literacy rates in New York public schools continue to lag, Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul has proposed returning to a style of reading education that she said is tried and tested.

In her agenda-setting State of the State address Tuesday, Hochul said she would seek passage of a new law to change the state Education Department’s instructional best practices for reading education to a phonics-based reading approach, called the “Science of Reading”.

“This approach includes teaching phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, vocabulary and comprehension,” reads the 2024 State of the State “book,” a document that lays out the details of the priorities the governor presented Tuesday. “By September of 2025, all school districts will need to certify with SED that their curriculum, instructional strategies and teacher professional development alight with all elements of the instructional best practices.”

There are a number of approaches to literacy, many of which have been in development for the last few decades. Educators speak of something called the “reading wars,” a dispute on how best to educate students, that has raged since the public education systems of the U.S. first arose.

The two prominent schools of thought include the “whole language” model, which focuses on teaching children entire words at a time, and their meanings, and the phonics-based approach, which teaches students the basic letters and how they fit into words.

The balanced literacy approach came into form in the early 2000s, after the National Reading Panel declared phonics one of five key pillars of literacy, alongside phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.

Educators agreed on the balanced approach as a way to bridge the two methods and get the value of both, but generally researchers found phonics-based instruction proved to be more effective than whole-language instruction generally. Proponents of emphasizing phonics-based education have called their approach “The Science of Reading,” because of that scientific backing.

But now the New York state executive branch, citing very low proficiency rates for students in early elementary English Language Arts and low literacy among school kids, has said things need to change.

According to guidance issued by the state Education Department this week, the literacy instruction standards will not mandate a specific curriculum, but will require any teaching plan include phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.

Among educators in the north country, there’s a mixed reaction to the news. Brooke L. Reid, the assistant superintendent for curriculum, instruction, technology and assessment at the Ogdensburg City School District, said in an interview that she saw both positives and possible pitfalls with the plan.

The governor had just announced the broad contours of her plan at a press event in an elementary school library in the capital region city of Watervliet, where she had railed on the poor performance of the “balanced reading” approach and specifically called attention to one proponent of the teaching style, Lucy Calkins of Teachers College, who has been an influential contributor to a prominent balanced literacy curriculum, the Teachers College Units of Study.

Reid said that Ogdensburg uses the Units of Study curriculum, and has seen positive results in certain parts of their reading education approach with it.

“That work has impacted our district in a very positive way in terms of writing,” Reid said.

She also said that the Units of Study curriculum does include phonics education, a shift that was made almost five years ago in response to ongoing cognitive and early childhood development research that indicates its value in the classroom.

“We’re always looking at the brain science and pulling that into our methods across education,” Reid said. “Education is always impacted by research, and that’s fantastic.”

But she said there is a need for more phonics-based education in schools, and said she was happy to see officials were recognizing that. But at the same time, she said she doesn’t want to lose access to the aspects of balanced literacy and whole language learning that worked for some students in Ogdensburg.

“Students do need phonics, we’ve always believed in that. Our classrooms here are aware of the Science of Reading , as many of them have attended professional development regarding this topic, and we have many teachers and reading specialists who are practitioners,” Reid said. “Certain children absolutely need it more explicitly than others. But there isn’t really a one-size-fits-all when it comes to teaching kids to read.”

Paula J. Amato, the owner of Creative Minds of NNY tutoring service, said when reached by email that she focuses heavily on reading education in her own practice and expressed similar concerns to Reid’s. Amato said using test scores is an imperfect measure of student success as well. The debate on literacy in New York has long centered on test scores for the state-mandated exams given to students starting in third grade.

“There are so many variables to consider when looking at scores — class size, poverty level, curriculum, test preparation, teacher experience, computer based testing or paper and pencil, and the list goes on,” she said. “I wish I could say that one size fits all and teaching reading was that easy, unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.”

Amato and Reid both described the debate over literacy instruction, the “reading wars” as a pendulum swinging back and forth between the two main schools of thought. Both said they believed literacy education suffered the most when the pendulum was swung too far towards one end or the other.

“The reading wars have been going on since I can remember, and it has never worked to swing one way and one way only,” Amato said.

Amato said successful reading education comes when a student’s specific educational needs are met — with whatever tools achieve those goals.

“We have to teach the child, not the program,” she said. “It would be so simple to say that phonics is the only answer, yet we have many children who are excellent decoders yet struggle with comprehension, especially the higher level questions that are on the New York state tests.”

For her own practice, Amato said successful education involves both phonics and comprehension instruction, a balanced approach. She said students need access to a variety of materials, and need to discuss it to understand meaning.

“A well designed classroom engages students in phonics, active thinking, deep conversations and real reflections about texts that meet both the needs and the interest of the students,” she said. “No program or single approach can replace an expert teacher. It’s the responsive teacher, not the teacher manual, that will have the greatest impact on the students.”

Many education experts are awaiting the finer details of what the governor is proposing, some of which were shared on Tuesday. A bill has not been introduced in the state legislature yet, and even once passed, the state Education Department will have the final say in what is adopted as policy for districts to apply. Hochul has proposed a $10 million program to retrain at least 20,000 teachers in the updated standards, as well as outreach to the teachers colleges feeding New York’s public teacher ranks to update what they teach the next generation of teachers. Hochul has also proposed expanding access to micro-credentials in literacy instruction for teachers at SUNY and CUNY schools, reflecting the most up-to-date cognitive and early development science.

At the Watertown City School District, Superintendent Larry C. Schmeigel said administrators are aware of the governor’s announcement and awaiting specific guidance. He said Watertown elementary school teachers use a variety of methods to teach reading, depending on the needs of their students.

“We value research-based approached and strive to incorporate best practices into our teaching methodologies,” he said. “As we await further guidance and clarification from the state, we remain committed to providing effective and evidence-based reading instruction that supports the academic growth of our students.”

Sarah Part, senior policy analyst for Advocates for Children Of New York, an education advocacy nonprofit that works to assist students facing structural challenges to their academic success, said the organization is also awaiting the finer points of the governor’s plan, but was excited to see literacy get political attention.

“We are extremely supportive of the shift towards the science of reading,” Part said. “We work primarily in New York City, but the issue has national and statewide implications. We have seen the consequences of not having guardrails around the curriculum practices that individuals schools are using to teach.”

Part cited the scientific research, which shows that most students learn to read by learning the direct relationships between letters and sounds, then learning to decode a word from those parts. That’s the basis of phonics-based reading education.

New York City has already made the curriculum shift Hochul is prescribing, and 33 other states in the U.S. have passed similar plans.

Part said she was also pleased to see Hochul proposing extra funding and attention for training programs and education for teachers on how to teach literacy.

“Teaching children to read requires a lot of expertise, that’s something we haven’t always recognized historically, and teacher prep programs haven’t been giving our teachers the knowledge and tools they need,” she said.

Part said she expects that the $10 million to retrain 20,000 teachers may be just “a drop in the bucket, given the scale of need,” and that ongoing investment both in training programs and continued attention to literacy is going to be key to successfully turning New York’s student literacy rates around.

“In order to see the changes you really want to see, we need a sustained, multi-year effort,” Part said. “Teachers are going to need ongoing professional learning and instructional coaching. That’s what’s proven to be effective.”

When reached for comment on Friday, a spokesperson for Hochul reiterated the governor’s comments from her initial announcement of the reading initiative on Jan. 3.

“Every child should have the best shot at life, the best shot to learn how to read, best shot to become completely literate by the time they leave school and make sure that our families deserve better as well,” she said.

“For a long time, people realized what was going on was not working, but nobody stood up and said it needs to change,” she continued. “And sometimes it takes a little bit of will and ambition and a bold idea for what our State can be.”