Students at R. Brown McAllister Elementary School use exercises in phonemic awareness—the ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds in English—during literary instruction on March 19, 2025, in ...

To look inside Julie Celestial’s kindergarten classroom in Long Beach is to peer into the future of reading in California. During a recent lesson, 25 kindergartners gazed at the whiteboard, trying to ...

At a minimum, schools should teach children to read. But for years California’s elementary schools have been failing many of them. The results are so obvious even those who struggle to read can see ...

California took a big step toward overhauling its reading curriculum last week when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill pushing for phonics-based instruction in elementary and middle school classrooms.

Kids' reading scores across the country and in New York remain chronically and stubbornly low. A recent national report shows high school seniors are reading at lower levels than at any time since at ...

4:16 p.m. June 2, 2025: An earlier version of this report incorrectly said teaching phonics was new to Long Beach Unified. Some phonics has been taught in the district for years, but a new focus on ...