Led by Governor DeWine, the science of reading is taking off in Ohio—and not a moment too soon. To date, the focus has been on essential skills, especially phonics, which systematically teach children letter-sound relationships to help them decode words. Such attention makes sense, given the critical role of phonics in building the foundation for reading.
But the science of reading is more than just phonics. The influential National Reading Panel report identified five pillars that together constitute what’s known as reading science: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. All five elements are necessary. As the National Council for Teacher Quality wrote in our recent report, “all the components, working together, are essential to developing strong readers.”
In the realm of comprehension, students need a wealth of background knowledge to make sense of what they’re reading. This notion, based on the influential work of E.D. Hirsch, Jr., makes intuitive sense. It’s easier to comprehend material on topics we’re familiar with, while we often struggle with texts outside of our experience. Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham writes, “Three factors are important in reading comprehension: monitoring your comprehension, relating the sentences to one another, and relating the sentences to things you already know.” The upshot is that the wider and deeper a child’s knowledge base, the better reader he or she will be.
One example: A child proficient in phonics can sound out the word “walrus.” But only a child with an understanding of sea animals will know what that is.
How can elementary schools build a strong knowledge base? Best is to adopt a literacy curriculum that intentionally builds students’ knowledge. A stellar example is Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA), a comprehensive K–8 curriculum that includes language arts, math, history, geography, science, and the arts. Created more than two decades ago by Hirsch and his colleagues, CKLA is already used in some 1,700 U.S. public schools. While there’s no hard data on its use in Ohio, recent news reports indicate growing interest in this curriculum among school leaders. Several classical charter schools in Ohio have adopted CKLA, as have the United Preparatory Academics, two high-performing elementary charters in Columbus.
A recent study published by Brown University suggests that more Ohio schools should consider moving to CKLA. In it, the analysts track the outcomes of students attending one of nine Colorado charter schools that implement Core Knowledge. Though small-scale, the researchers provide strong causal evidence about the effect of attending these schools by leveraging Kindergarten lottery admissions data. This helps to approximate a “gold standard” experiment, as children are randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. The study includes 2,360 school applicants, of whom 35 percent won the lottery (and about half of those students enrolled in the charter schools). The researchers then analyzed state test results of lottery winners and losers from grades three through six to gauge the academic effects of attending a CKLA school.
The results are impressive. Lottery winners who attend CKLA schools post reading scores that are significantly higher than their peers who did not get a winning ticket. The impacts are substantial, too, equivalent to gaining 16 percentile points on state reading exams. The positive effects show up starting in third grade, the first year of test data, and persist through sixth grade. The results in math are also positive, though not statistically significant.
Of the nine CKLA charter schools in the analysis, eight were located in mid- to higher-income communities. One was in a low-income area. In that school, the results are even more pronounced. The academic gains for students attending it are “very large” in both reading and math, significantly higher than those registered in the other eight CKLA schools. The researchers note that, for this school, the “effects were large enough to close achievement gaps for disadvantaged students by third to sixth grade in all subjects measured.”
Commenting on the study, my Fordham colleague Robert Pondiscio—a longtime evangelist for background knowledge—writes, “If we want every child to be literate and to participate fully in American life, we must ensure all have access to the broad body of knowledge that the literate take for granted.”
There is great truth to that statement. Achieving this goal starts with decisions that school leaders make today about which reading curriculum they’ll use in their classrooms. Will it be one that skimps on knowledge building—often focusing on ineffective “comprehension skills” instead—or is it one that intentionally builds children’s knowledge about the world around them?
Core Knowledge isn’t the only great option. Wit and Wisdom and EL Education are two other excellent curricula. Given their remarkable benefits for low-income students, Ohio’s urban districts, where literacy rates are lowest, should take an extra close look at such curricula. Charter schools can help fuel the movement, too. Colorado, for example, is currently home to fifty CKLA charters.
The science of reading promises to help thousands more Ohio students become strong, lifelong readers. A return to phonics is a necessary start, and kudos to Governor DeWine and early-adopting schools across the state for focusing on this foundational skill. But that’s just the start. Ohio’s literacy efforts can build to an even higher level of success by making knowledge-building the next frontier.
