How can school, district leaders help students learn to read?

Poverty alone cannot account for the fact that 32% of 4th-graders and 24% of 8th-graders nationally can’t read at a basic level, and less than 40% are at least proficient in reading — and those data points are drawing questions around whether reading instruction methods are a large part of the problem, NPR reports.Many teachers have little training in reading instruction or have been incorrectly taught that reading is a natural process, with little background on the science or research behind literacy learning. As school and district leaders assume the responsibility for providing that instruction to teachers, reading scores can improve.After a school district in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, hired an educational consultant to provide science-based reading instruction training to its early elementary school teachers, reading scores improved, and 84% of kindergartners met or exceeded the benchmark score in 2018.Providing students with a proper foundation in reading was the main goal of public education and remains one of the most important goals today. When students learn to read well in early elementary schools, reading scores not only improve, but students will likely perform better in other subjects because they have a clearer understanding of texts and can work more independently. That improvement will carry over into later grades as well as better preparing students for the future.