August 23, 2023 9:00 am

Imagine Learning, the Largest National Provider of Digital Curriculum Solutions, Launches Artificial Intelligence Focused Venture Fund

Imagine Learning Ventures Will Invest in Disruptive and Promising A.I.-Powered Educational Solutions

Imagine Learning, the largest national provider of digital curriculum solutions serving over 15 million students and one million educators, has launched Imagine Learning Ventures, a venture fund to make investments in promising A.I.-powered educational solutions. Leveraging Imagine Learning’s industry expertise, domain knowledge, and strong balance sheet, coupled with its track record of successful acquisitions and investments in emerging technologies, this new fund will complement the company’s A.I. development initiatives with investments in startups that are at the forefront of innovative solutions for K–12 educators and learners.

“We have built a world-class business predicated on the fundamental belief in and commitment to the transformative impact of digitally enabled learning,” said Jonathan Grayer, Chairman and CEO of Imagine Learning. “Imagine Learning has always been at the cutting edge of leveraging technology, including A.I., to empower educators and improve student outcomes. We are investing aggressively, tapping into the enormous potential of generative A.I. while always keeping learner well-being and the teacher’s success top of mind to help shape tomorrow’s classrooms.”

“Imagine Learning Ventures is differentiated in several ways: by the strength of our balance sheet, which allows us to deploy millions of dollars across the A.I. landscape; by our patient capital approach that encourages thoughtful product development and engagement with teachers and administrators to solve their problems and improve learning outcomes; and by bringing access to a diversified network of businesses and customers across the K–12 ecosystem. We look forward to partnering with entrepreneurs around the world that can benefit from our established presence in K–12 education and long-term perspective,” Mr. Grayer stated.

Imagine Learning continuously invests to improve and augment its suite of leading curriculum products with tools that leverage A.I. to support students and educators. The company is focused on using A.I. to make itself more innovative, efficient, and productive — all designed to create better products and outcomes for customers.

Mr. Grayer concluded: “We are laser-focused on creating educational technology that does the heavy lifting so that teachers can do their most important work — interacting with students to ensure their academic success. The responsible use of A.I. means that we must always serve the teaching and learning goals, empower educators, follow sound pedagogy, and ensure that our solutions are safe for students and free from bias. We are excited about Imagine Learning Ventures and the opportunities ahead.”

About Imagine Learning

Every classroom, every student is bursting with potential. That’s why we pursue relentless innovation at the intersection of technology, people, and curricula. Imagine Learning creates PreK–12 digital-first solutions, fueled by insights from educators, that evolve with the ever-changing demands of tomorrow. We work alongside educators to support over 15 million students in half of the districts nationwide. Our core portfolio includes Twig Science^®, Imagine Learning Illustrative Mathematics^®, and Imagine Learning EL Education^®. Our robust supplemental and intervention suite equips learners with insightful and personalized instruction for literacy in English and Spanish, math, coding, and more. Imagine Edgenuity^™ is our flagship courseware solution, complemented by Imagine School Services’ Certified Teachers. Imagine Learning. Empower potential.

August 16, 2023 9:00 am

Imagine Learning Foundation Awards $400,000 in Imagine Signature Grants to Five Organizations Dedicated to Learner Well-Being Outside the Classroom

Represents a 100% Increase in Signature Grants in Year Two of Program Foundation Remains Committed to Awarding $5 Million

Scottsdale, Arizona, August 16, 2023 – Imagine Learning Foundation (ILF), the philanthropic initiative funded by Imagine Learning, a leading provider of digital curriculum solutions in the United States, today announced that it has awarded approximately $400,000 in 2023 Imagine Signature Grants to five organizations actively working to improve the well-being of learners beyond the classroom. ILF and these five nonprofits are dedicated to meeting the critical needs of young people and their families throughout the country.

With an initial contribution of $5 million, Imagine Learning created and funded ILF with one principal goal: to foster the well-being of learners and the people who support them at home and in their communities. The 2023 Imagine Signature Grants represent a 100% increase over the 2022 Signature Grants and underscores ILF’s commitment to investing in initiatives that address holistic student well-being, with an emphasis on mental health and personal development.

“At Imagine Learning, we understand that effective learning thrives in a safe and supportive environment – where learners are supported physically, mentally and emotionally,” said Jonathan Grayer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Imagine Learning. “Our vision for the Imagine Learning Foundation is to invest in and elevate organizations dedicated to delivering solutions to today’s issues for students and families beyond the classroom walls. It has been incredibly rewarding to witness the positive impact of our efforts to date. We will continue to play our part to support the enrichment and well-being of every learner on their journey to a brighter, successful future.”

The 2023 Imagine Signature Grant award winners are:

WPSU (Penn State University Philanthropic Fund), founded in 1965, is a Pennsylvania-based public media station dedicated to sparking discovery, enriching learning and strengthening communities through vibrant public media. To expand on WPSU’s forerunner multimedia project, Speaking Grief, ILF awarded WPSU a $100,000 grant to support the creation of Learning Grief, a free website, supplemented with community workshops and at-home learning materials, that will teach understanding and skills to support grieving children. Bereavement is the most common, and often overlooked, trauma suffered by children, and closely tied to poor academic performance. Learning Grief will provide age-appropriate lessons to help children navigate emotions dealing with grief and teach families and communities how to recognize grief and support children to deal with this trauma.

Our Minds Matter (OMM), founded in 2012, is a Virginia-based national nonprofit dedicated to fostering a world where no teen dies by suicide, and where all teens can seek help to become their healthiest and best selves. OMM implements student-led clubs where teens participate in activities designed to promote help-seeking behavior, positive coping skills, and other proactive suicide prevention efforts. OMM currently serves approximately 3,000 students in over 150 schools nationwide. ILF awarded OMM a $100,000 grant to support expansion into 20 new schools across the country.

Genesys Works, founded in Houston, Texas in 2002, is a national nonprofit dedicated to providing young adults in underserved communities with access to skills training, meaningful paid work opportunities, and impactful mentorship to help support each learner’s career path and individual upward mobility. ILF awarded Genesys Works with an $83,000 grant to implement new evaluation tools designed to measure changes in students’ adaptive mindset and career readiness for their 2024 and 2025 graduating classes.

Big Sky Youth Empowerment Program (BYEP), founded in 2001, is a Montana-based nonprofit dedicated to providing teenagers in Montana with group mentorship, experiential adventures, and life skills curriculum designed to foster success and help them become contributing members of society. ILF awarded BYEP a $58,000 grant to develop an age-appropriate suicide prevention and awareness curriculum as well as fund professional development for the BYEP team to assist teens who are experiencing a heightened state of crisis.

Erika’s Lighthouse, founded in 2004, is an Illinois-based national nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness and providing school professionals with free resources to educate youth, their families, and the community about adolescent depression while breaking down the stigma surrounding mental health. Erika’s Lighthouse was an inaugural Imagine Signature Grant recipient in 2022, and ILF is renewing their commitment in 2023 with an additional $50,000 grant to further expand upon the family engagement program that ILF previously supported. The new funding will allow Erika’s Lighthouse to increase their marketing efforts and staff capacity to fully engage more school communities and ensure all of Erika’s Lighthouse’s resources, including the family engagement program, are available to students across the country.

ILF received 450% more grant applications for the 2023 Imagine Signature Grant funding cycle. This significant increase in year two of the program underscores both the pressing needs of many organizations throughout the country for mission-critical resources and ILF’s willingness to invest in these programs. After a thorough review of compelling proposals by many worthy applicants, these five organizations were selected and awarded the resources requested to meet their project’s funding needs.

“All of us at the Imagine Learning Foundation were thrilled with the extraordinary surge in applications from qualified nonprofits devoted to supporting the well-being of learners outside of the classroom,” said Chris Graham, Chairman and President of the Imagine Learning Foundation. “The remarkable response reaffirms our commitment to impacting the lives of thousands of learners through targeted funding to amplify the tremendous efforts of organizations such as WPSU, Our Minds Matter, Genesys Works, BYEP, and Erika’s Lighthouse. We are proud to partner with these deserving organizations and we look forward to supporting them in their commendable endeavors.”

In addition to the Imagine Signature Grants, ILF has reserved funds to award a number of Grassroots Grants to employee-recommended regional organizations that focus on learner well-being and digital education equity in out-of-classroom learning spaces in Imagine Learning employees’ local communities. The Grassroot Grants will be announced later this year.

To learn more about the Imagine Learning Foundation and the Imagine Signature Grant winners, visit imaginelearningfoundation.org.

About Imagine Learning Foundation

Imagine Learning Foundation is a non-profit organization focused on fostering the well-being of learners and the people who support them at home and in their communities. Established in 2021, the Imagine Learning Foundation funds a variety of grants to mission-aligned national non-profit organizations that support initiatives to foster well-being of youth, families, and educators with an emphasis on accelerating student achievement. Imagine Learning Foundation is the philanthropic initiative of Imagine Learning, the largest provider of digital curriculum solutions in the U.S. Additional information is available at imaginelearningfoundation.org.

August 8, 2023 6:10 am

Twig Science Module Earns Prestigious WestEd NGSS Design Badge

Twig Science Middle School’s Volcano Hunters module was awarded the WestEd NGSS Design Badge

Scottsdale, Arizona – August 8, 2023 — Imagine Learning, the largest provider of digital curriculum solutions in the U.S., serving over 15 million students in more than half the school districts nationwide, has been awarded its first prestigious NGSS Design Badge from WestEd for the Volcano Hunters module of its Twig Science Middle School program.

WestEd, a nonpartisan research, development, and service agency, works with education and other communities to promote excellence, achieve equity, and improve learning for children, youth, and adults. The NGSS Design Badge is awarded to top-rated science lessons and units designed for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Only 4% of units reviewed by WestEd have been awarded the esteemed NGSS Design Badge.  The NGSS Design Badge provides an easy way for educators to be assured that units, like the Twig Science Middle School Volcano Hunters unit, are designed for the NGSS and that publishers and developers, are creating materials that are high quality and designed for NGSS.

Volcano Hunters is part of Twig Science Middle School, a phenomena-based program designed for the NGSS. In the module, students use visual media, datasets, maps, and hands-on exploration to figure out why some mountainous areas have volcanoes and others do not. They apply the three dimensions of the NGSS as they analyze real-life data from active volcanoes, assess threat levels, and devise a plan to protect people from the dangers of eruptions. A preview of the Volcano Hunters module can be found here.

“We are honored to be acknowledged by WestEd for our work on the Volcano Hunters module,” shared Natasha Stillwell, President of Imagine Learning Studios UK and a Twig Science program author. “The teams that work on our Twig Science program are incredibly talented and innovative, and focused on creating only the highest quality of science education curricula for our students and educators.”

Educational materials with the highest rating on the EQuIP Rubric for Science earn the NGSS Design Badge. Having a science unit achieve this distinction for design “reflects the degree to which the innovations represented by the standards are a foundational aspect of both the organization and content of the instructional materials.” Educators can use this distinction to help in their science curricula selection along with considering other third-party organizations that review materials for alignment and usability of the standards.

About Imagine Learning

Twig Science provides comprehensive coverage of science standards through engaging hands-on and digital investigations where Pre-K–8 students take on the roles of real-world scientists and engineers. Twig Science challenges all students to become creative problem solvers, making sense of real-world phenomena. Learn more about Imagine Learning at imaginelearning.com and learn more about Twig Science here. 

July 19, 2023 12:00 pm

Kentucky School District Trains on New Math and Reading Educational Programs

Published by: Spectrum News 1

Jefferson County Public Schools is implementing a school-wide literacy and math curriculum starting in the fall. It’s called Imagine Learning. Middle and elementary school teachers spent Tuesday learning about Illustrative Mathematics.

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July 19, 2023 12:00 pm

The Philadelphia School District is Spending $70 Million on New Curricula. Here’s a Primer on the Coming Changes.

Published by: Philadelphia Inquirer

“It is really built to be more conceptual and more engaging for students around mathematics discussions,” Lauren Overton [Principal of Penn Alexander in West Philadelphia] said. “This program is robust, and it gives the teachers routines and practices that are going to benefit the students for years to come.”

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July 18, 2023 12:00 pm

JCPS Rolling Out New Curriculum to Enhance Students’ Learning in Math

Published by: WDRB

Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) is instituting a systemwide reading and math curriculum for kindergarten through eighth grade students for the 2023-24 school year. Educators are receiving training on Imagine Learning’s Illustrative Mathematics, which is curriculum designed to give all students equity and access to grade-level mathematics.

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June 28, 2023 2:09 pm

The Science of Learning a Second Language

Learning a new language is not easy. Trading outdated instruction for science of reading-backed techniques can help give English language learners the skills they need for biliteracy.

“English is HARD.”

This was my students’ (and my) mantra whenever we encountered something about the language that just didn’t make sense. I was teaching English language development, or ELD, for newcomers in grades 9–12, most of whom were native Spanish speakers.

As anyone who’s taken a language class in high school or college knows, it gets more difficult to learn a language the older you get. That’s what I always assumed was the reason behind my students’ struggle to acquire English. That, and the fact that I agreed that English is “HARD.”

I agreed that

English is “HARD.”

Without a background in linguistics (and as a first-year teacher), I couldn’t quite explain why it was hard, though. I just knew there were exceptions to every rule I taught.

But 10 years later, the science of reading is helping me understand — both why it was so challenging for my students and what kind of instruction would have helped them. The science of reading is “the converging evidence of what matters and what works in literacy instruction, organized around models that describe how and why.” Research tells us that systematic instruction in phonological awareness, phonics, and vocabulary, combined with fluency and comprehension is what builds foundational literacy skills and sets students up for a lifetime of reading success.

Here are 3 ways the science of reading can help improve instruction for ELs:

What I did:
Encouraged (okay, begged) my students to only speak English in the classroom
My district’s ELD curriculum recommended only allowing students to speak English in the classroom. Though I knew it would be a tough sell, I found some merit to it. If there were students with different native languages, English became the unifying language in the class — keeping students from feeling excluded. And the more you immerse yourself in a language, the faster you learn it.

Why that didn’t work:
At any given point, 90 to 100% of my students were from Spanish-speaking backgrounds, and that was how they communicated with each other — regardless of how convincing I thought I was. As teenagers feeling singled out in remedial ELD classes at a high school in a new country, it made sense that they defaulted to the language they felt comfortable speaking.

But the main reason this didn’t work wasn’t because of their noncompliance. It was because what made learning English especially hard for my students was a lack of literacy skills in any language. Inconsistent schooling led to their Spanish reading and writing skills being far below grade level.

1

What the science tells us: language skills transfer from one language to another

In my professional development for the ELD curriculum, the trainers assured teachers that a student’s proficiency in their first language had no bearing on their ability to learn English. Though that felt wrong to me, I didn’t have the confidence to question it as a new teacher. We now know this isn’t accurate.

Because research shows that students use the same sound/letter correspondence skills within and across languages, we can assume that their ability to map letters with sounds transfers from literacy instruction in one language to another. So, while the intention to focus on acquiring English via complete immersion was logical, it was unrealistic for my students who needed a basic foundation of language skills in their first language. Without that, learning another language would require more than just avoiding Spanish (actually, quite the opposite).

What I did:
Focused on grammar over vocabulary. My grammar-based direct instruction curriculum emphasized understanding the structure and syntax of English over the meanings of individual words. I was teaching my students to identify the parts of speech of words they didn’t know based on their placement in a sentence they also didn’t understand. It was frustrating for all of us.

Why that didn’t work:
When you’re first learning a new language, you naturally gravitate to the words and phrases that are important to you. If you’re traveling, “please” and “thank you” are useful. If you are learning a new style of cooking, you’ll want to learn the names of foods. And if you’re a baby, your first word will be the most important object in your world (usually ‘dada’ or ‘mama,’ or in my son’s case, ‘panda’). Once you learn those words, you can then build the understanding needed to notice how they are placed in a sentence.

My students showed me this as they repeatedly asked me what words meant, while I unsuccessfully tried to reroute them back to the grammar concept we were learning. Finally, I gave in and started “What does it mean” Wednesdays. They collected English words and phrases they encountered in their daily lives — at work, on the bus, at the doctor’s office — and we spent 30 minutes crowdsourcing the definitions. This was easily the most engaged my students were all week — because it mattered to them.

2

What the science tells us: vocabulary supports comprehension and fluency, especially when incorporating syntax instruction

In other words, if grammar and syntax are the structure of language, vocabulary is the building blocks. This is not to say we should throw out grammar instruction entirely (though students might celebrate). Evidence shows that increasing vocabulary boosts students’ reading comprehension and fluency, requiring less decoding and allowing them to read for meaning. But when you combine that vocabulary practice with explicit syntax instruction, emerging bilinguals show increased comprehension — able to unlock meaning not just from the words themselves but also from how they are organized in the sentence.

What I did:
Practiced English letter sounds individually. During our daily language warm-up, we practiced “saying” a few different letters at a time. Without much more direction than that in the teacher’s guide, this was challenging. When faced with the letter “a,” it seemed like I discovered another pronunciation with each practice attempt. There are the long and short sounds like “make” and “cat,” of course, but then also “want” and “many.”

Why that didn’t work:
Decoding demands are different in English and Spanish. Focusing on single letter sounds in English was confusing for my students whose first language was Spanish. That’s because Spanish is a phonetically regular language, with 27 letters mapping to 22-24 phonemes, while English, with 26 letters and 44 possible phonemes, is not. Native Spanish speakers expect the letters to make the same sounds wherever they are placed in a word, and that’s just not the case.

3

What the science tells us: English requires more intense explicit phonemic awareness

Learning to read in Spanish requires an emphasis on syllable awareness. In fact, once students learn the basic sound-symbol correspondences, they can easily decode and read most Spanish words with a high degree of accuracy. But in English, phonemic awareness is crucial — especially when coming from a language where sounds and letters make more “sense.” Activities like rhyming, segmentation, and blending help students to understand all the different sounds English letters can make, by themselves and when combined with others.

While it’s hard to look back at all the things I should have done differently as a teacher, it’s promising to know that first-year language arts teachers now will start teaching with all of my science of reading hindsight as their basis of instruction. But I would still love to travel back in time and give my students exactly what they needed: English language instruction grounded in the science of reading combined with high-quality Spanish language arts (SLA) to reinforce literacy in their first language. Maybe then our class mantra could have been more like “English is hard, but we have the skills and support to learn it.” (Even if the last part was just in my head because high schoolers would never say that.)

About the Author – Ally Jones

Ally Jones is a California credentialed educator who specialized in teaching English language learners at the secondary level. Outside of education, she is passionate about fitness, literature, and taking care of the planet for her son’s generation.

The Science of Reading Applied

Imagine Learning’s solutions make it easier for teachers to apply the research.

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June 20, 2023 1:00 pm

Dysart Earns District of Distinction from Program

Published by: Surprise Independent

Dysart Unified School District has been selected as a 2022-23 District of Distinction for its use of Imagine Learning Illustrative Mathematics. … This award is a testament to the hard work and dedication of many administrators, teachers, staff, students, and parents.

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June 20, 2023 10:00 am

New Study Reveals Significant Gains in Student Math Performance with Imagine Math

Idaho students using Imagine Math show academic growth and higher scores on state assessment, according to Imagine Learning analysis

SCOTTSDALE, AZ – June 20, 2023 – Imagine Learning, the largest provider of digital curriculum solutions serving 15 million students in more than half the school districts in the U.S., today announced the results of a new study revealing statistically significant associations between math achievement and use of Imagine Math.

Imagine Math is a digital program that combines a rich curriculum with fun, adaptive experiences to engage students and help them become confident math learners. To understand the impact of Imagine Math on students’ achievements, the study analyzed more than 4,000 Idaho State Assessment Test (ISAT) math assessment scores from students in grades 4 through 8 in schools across four districts in Idaho during the 2021–22 school year.

“For students to achieve success in any subject as measured across any number of metrics, they must be engaged and motivated,” said Sari Factor, Chief Strategy Officer at Imagine Learning. “Imagine Math’s personalized learning platform aligns with each individual student’s needs while providing the right amount of challenge to help the student achieve grade-level proficiency.”

Several school districts in Idaho use the program in a variety of different ways to supplement mathematics teaching for students with diverse academic abilities and standing. The study analyzed the relationship between software usage (active time, progress, and completion) and performance on the ISAT Math assessment, which was taken in Spring 2021 and Spring 2022. Additionally, it analyzed how the software affected student achievement based on other factors including grade level, English learner status, special education status, ethnicity, and/or free or reduced-price lunch status.

STUDY HIGHLIGHTS

The relationship between Imagine Math lessons passed and ISAT score growth is positive for all grades and statistically significant for grades 4 through 7. Students who passed more lessons in Imagine Math experienced significantly more growth on the ISAT math assessment than students who passed fewer lessons. Imagine Learning recommends students use the program until they pass at least 30 lessons over the course of the school year.
The study also observed positive and significant relationships between Imagine Math lessons passed and ISAT math score growth for various student subgroups, including special education students, English learners, students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, and Hispanic/Latino or American Indian/Alaskan Native students.

The rigorous, standards-rich content in Imagine Math adapts to the unique needs of each learner to develop essential foundations and conceptual understanding they need to be proficient at the appropriate grade level. Unique to Imagine Math, point-of-need access to live instruction by certified, bilingual math educators is available to make deep learning beyond the bell a reality.

Additional details on the analysis and a copy of the full report are available here.

About Imagine Learning

Imagine Learning provides digital-first PreK–12 solutions for core instruction, supplemental and intervention, online courses, and virtual instruction. Our mission is to ignite learning breakthroughs with forward-thinking solutions at the intersection of people, curricula, and technology. We serve over 15 million students — partnering with over half of districts nationwide. Imagine Edgenuity^™ is our flagship courseware solution, complemented by Imagine Instructional Services’ virtual teachers. Our core portfolio includes Imagine Learning Twig Science^®, Illustrative Mathematics^®, and EL Education^®. Additionally, a robust supplemental and intervention suite provides personalized instruction for ELA, SLA, math, coding, and more. Visit https://edu.imaginelearning.com/research-partner if you would like to become an Imagine Learning research partner.

June 12, 2023 3:38 pm

The Science of Reading: It’s personal. It’s political. It matters.

From living room couches and teachers’ lounges to the front pages of major newspapers, everyone is talking about the Science of Reading. What is it? And why does it matter?

“Your child is at risk of not reading on grade level by the end of kindergarten.”

My family and I were devastated after our very first parent-teacher conference back in early 2020. Two years in a high-quality preschool in a well-to-do suburb, reading aloud every night, alphabet games and puzzles — all this and our kid still struggled to remember every letter and sound, let alone smush them together to make words.

Then came the tears. Books sent home in his backpack that he couldn’t read. Words like “fall” with an L-controlled vowel and “birthday” with two syllables and a digraph. He hadn’t been taught those patterns yet. One day he came home telling me he had a special “picture power” and began guessing words based on illustrations in his books. That’s when I started asking questions.

A decade earlier, I became a first-grade teacher at a Title I school in a different town, in a different state, during the Reading First era. I graduated from my credential program in 2008, when George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act provided funding for reading academic coaches to model best practices and in-service training based on the National Reading Panel’s meta-study findings.

I was taught about the big five: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. I learned that word walls should be replaced with sound walls and that we prompt students to look at all the letters from left to right and sound it out every time. No exceptions. I regularly administered a phonics and decoding screener that identified discrete skills the students had mastered — and which patterns, such as ‘oo’ or ‘a_e’ that they didn’t know yet. My students had weekly fluency passages to practice with, and I listened to them read it every Friday afternoon. We built oral language and vocabulary with read-alouds. We applied our weekly phonics skills to spelling words.

All this in 2008, before the “science of reading” was even a thing.

Back to 2020. Frustrated and confused, I decided one night to attend my district’s board meeting where there was to be a presentation on the reading curriculum. That’s the first time in my life that I heard the term: balanced literacy.

I googled on my phone as the presenter carried on. I was horrified. Three-cuing — asking kids to guess the words based on pictures and context clues — was a keystone of the curriculum they were using. My son wasn’t receiving the systematic, explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics that he needed — that most children need — to connect speech to print. Students in 3rd–5th grade were being denied access to complex, grade-level texts because teachers were told to match students with ‘just right’ texts instead. None of these practices were based in research. And they were harmful.

But that night at the board meeting I also learned that I wasn’t alone. There were other parents, just as outraged as I, sitting next to me. There were parents of students with dyslexia who were forced to bus their children to private, specialized, schools just so they could learn to read. There were parents, like me, who took it upon themselves to order “Bob Books” and teach their kids to read on their own.

This was in January of 2020 and we all know what happened just a few short months later.

“There were parents of students with dyslexia who were forced to bus their children to private, specialized, schools just so they could learn to read.“

Zoom school was the new normal, and parents across the country gained insight into how their children were being taught: guess the covered word, look at the first letter and guess, look at the picture and guess… guess until you get it right! Does it look right? Does it sound right? They took to YouTube and Twitter to share what they saw, wondering if anyone else was as concerned as they were?

It turns out over 68% of teachers were using this flawed approach. Despite the National Reading Panel’s findings two decades prior, several publishers and most credentialing programs clung to an outdated theory about how our brains best learn to read.

Parent and child practice sounding out words

Pandemic parents started Googling how to teach their kids to read. They began reading books like Overcoming Dyslexia and the National Reading Panel’s report. The term ‘science of reading’ took over the internet — a colloquial term for a wide body of neurological and empirical research showing us how brains learn to read.

Then came a podcast series that really put the literacy world on its head: Sold a Story. A journalist named Emily Hanford did a deep dive into the history of this flawed belief system about the way students learn to read, and how those beliefs took hold across America. She also discussed how much damage those beliefs, and curriculum that adheres to those beliefs, is still doing today.

Teachers listened to the podcast, texted their colleagues, and discussions were sparked in teachers’ lounges everywhere. Justifiably angry parents took to the podiums at board of education meetings. They ran for open seats. They petitioned their representatives in state legislators.

31 states plus the District of Columbia have enacted legislation related to the science of reading. Some require teachers to receive special training in the science of reading, some ban methods such as three cuing, and others require the adoption of new teaching materials aligned to the science of reading.

The science of reading is now a national movement.

My child, now in 3rd grade, is reading on grade level. It took a lot of expensive tutoring and extra support at home to get him there. But most of these stories don’t have a happy ending. Students in privileged neighborhoods get private tutoring while the majority of bright, intelligent students continue to struggle.

Research shows 95% of students can be taught to read by the end of first grade. Yet, recent NAEP scores show only 33% of 4th graders can read on grade level. And it has devastating effects on their future. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, two-thirds of students who cannot read proficiently by the end of the fourth grade will end up in incarcerated or on welfare.

Some folks are still resisting change. They find the ‘science of reading’ movement to be adversarial. To that I say, why yes — yes it is. It’s an emotionally charged issue because students deserve the right to read. There are many factors that play into a student’s ability to read and it’s a monumental challenge to address them all, but research-based materials and professional development in the science of reading for our teachers is a good place to start.

Students across the country are counting on us to do better.

About the Author – Carolyn Snell

Carolyn Snell started her career in education teaching first grade in San Bernardino, California. A passion for the way technology and stellar curricula can transform classrooms led her to various jobs in edtech, including at the Orange County Department of Education. Her knack for quippy copy landed her a dream job marketing StudySync—an industry leading ELA digital curriculum. Now, as the Senior Content Marketing Manager for Imagine Learning, Carolyn revels in the opportunity to promote innovative products and ideas that are transforming the educational space for teachers and students.

The Science of Reading Applied

Imagine Learning’s solutions make it easier for teachers to apply the research.

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