'How Black activists in Northern Virginia transformed the way children learn to read' in The Washington Post (and more)
Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2023 12:07 pm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/educatio ... nia-naacp/How Black activists in Northern Virginia transformed the way children learn to read
By Sarah Carr
December 27, 2022
...In a virtual meeting that March with Fairfax’s school district leaders, Hampton says, she said the NAACP would “flood the internet with your poor reading scores for Black and Brown students if you don’t take this seriously.” The cause, as activists saw it, was partly “the absence of systematic, cumulative, phonics-based reading instruction in the early elementary classroom,” they later wrote in an open letter. “All the research suggests that this shift would have the most immediate and profound impact on closing the achievement gap.” Some teachers had always incorporated phonics — intentionally sequenced lessons in how to sound out words from letters — but the district had not made it a requirement.