That has been particularly true with reading. In Massachusetts, fewer than half of public school third-graders are considered proficient readers. And though that is still higher than the national average, the literacy rate for economically disadvantaged students in Massachusetts is now virtually the same as nationwide scores — and actually lower than in some less affluent states, including Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida.
Fortunately, Governor Maura Healey and the state Legislature have belatedly taken notice of this alarming trend. This year, Healey and legislative leaders have proposed policies to bolster basic learning in public schools, including new graduation requirements that incorporate state tests on mandated courses.
Both houses of the Legislature have also passed legislation that would mandate how reading is taught, requiring more structured, research-backed curricula involving basic skills like using phonics, comprehension, and building vocabulary. The legislation would also require districts to stop using once-popular but now widely discredited techniques that focus on strategies such as visual cues and context, and only use strategies that research has shown to be more effective.
In a statement to the Globe editorial board, Healey called the bill “another important step toward ensuring every student has high-quality literacy education.” Needless to say, we strongly urge her to sign it.
But it is also important that the final bill include a provision that is currently only in the House version. That provision, outlined in Section 8 of the bill, would require the state education commissioner to ensure that all teacher preparation programs train teachers in evidence-based reading instruction. The commissioner could withhold approval of programs that did not provide instruction in what are considered the key components of evidenced-based reading, including phonics and vocabulary building.
A 2023 study of 19 teacher preparation programs in Massachusetts underscored the need for this requirement. That study, conducted by the National Council on Teacher Quality, gave grades of D or F to 15 of those 19 programs for their literacy training, while only 3 received an A or better. Several of the state’s largest teacher preparation programs, including at Boston University, Lesley University, and UMass Boston, were among the programs receiving failing or close-to-failing grades. (A number of teacher preparation programs refused to provide data to the council. And for a new report due in June, UMass Amherst claimed that its reading curricula was proprietary information, a view that was sharply questioned by the Commonwealth’s supervisor of public records, documents show.)
Ron Noble, chief of teacher prep for the national council, said in an interview that the low-performing programs were either failing to instruct teachers in the key principles of evidence-based literacy instruction, or were still including instruction in discredited strategies. The result has been that even as more districts adopt high-quality curricula, many teachers continue to lack understanding of how to teach it.
“That’s why we’re excited by this bill because it addresses both sides of that equation,” Noble said of the House bill. “This is the missing piece of the policy landscape.”
Experts who research literacy agree. Ola Ozernov-Palchik, a cognitive neuroscientist at Boston University who studies how people learn to read, calls the falling literacy rates in Massachusetts “a crisis.”
“The reason we got into this mess is that many teachers said ‘we simply were not taught how to teach how to read,'” she told the editorial board.
The state teachers union and advocates of what is widely called “balanced literacy,” an approach that includes the cuing techniques that are still taught in some teacher preparation programs and public schools, have criticized the proposed literacy bills on two grounds. First, they assert that the evidence-based system is overly prescriptive and stifles both creative teaching and organic learning. Second, they contend that it will be costly to train teachers to use new curricula.
We agree that the state should help districts fund training programs in learning new curricula. Noble points out that such grant programs exist but that many local districts fail to apply for the funds. As for being overly prescriptive, it is understandable that teachers are weary of having to learn particular curricula only to be told to use different ones. But the need for better reading instruction is urgent, and research powerfully points to the conclusion that the cuing and context systems are failing.
In a recent op-ed for Commonwealth Beacon, Luisa Sparrow, a special education teacher in South Boston and the 2025 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year, said too many teachers are forced into a “DIY” approach to reading instruction. The literacy bill before the legislature would help ensure more of them learn how to teach reading properly, she argued.
“Since I shifted to an evidence-based curriculum, the rate at which my students have learned to independently read books has increased dramatically, and my multilingual learners have acquired English language skills more quickly,” she wrote.
Learning to read should be a basic right of every child and an inescapable function of every school. The state’s longstanding first-in-the-nation ranking should not be allowed to mask its growing literacy crisis. Massachusetts is moving in the right direction on reading instruction, but it needs this legislation to continue decisively down that road.
Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.
