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Reading rates in LAUSD schools with the onset of the coronavirus, and Los Angeles students have yet to fully recover.
Just 43.1% of LA Unified students met state proficiency targets in reading in the 2023-24 school year, compared with 44.1% in the 2018-19 school year, the last before the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Families in Schools is one local organization that’s trying to boost literacy rates in LA whose ideas seem to be catching on.
In an extensive report on the district’s literacy crisis published in February, the group called for LAUSD to adopt more approaches aligned with the science of reading, which the district is doing.
And now, Families in Schools is working on more programs to boost literacy in LAUSD schools under an effort called ReadLA.
In an interview with LA School Report, Olga Corona de la Cruz, the Senior Campaign Director of the ReadLA program at Families in Schools, discusses the work underway and what the district should do next.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Could you tell me a bit about yourself and your background?
I am a first-generation and former English language learner. When I think about the key factors that influence my ability to learn to read, I think about my parents, who did not have a formal education. However, they knew the value of attaining an education.
And, while I know that it’s not on our families to ensure we’re learning to read, it is definitely a partnership between our school systems, our educators and our families, that helps young people and students to thrive and succeed.
You grew up in Watsonville, CA as the daughter of Mexican immigrants. How does your personal experience in the public school system inform the work you’re doing today?
Watsonville is a small agricultural town. It’s mostly Mexican immigrants. My parents became my biggest advocates, and that’s what Families in Schools does. We uplift our families, we inform our families, and then we give them more tools and resources to become the biggest advocates of their children.
What did it feel like to learn English at school, for you personally?
And as soon as I was dropped off [for class], I realized I had no idea what was going on. Everyone was speaking English. I remember going into my classroom and feeling confused and feeling scared. I remember trying to interact with other students, and because I didn’t know English, I was made fun of, I was bullied.
What’s one thing that LAUSD is getting right, in terms of its efforts to raise literacy rates for poor kids of color?
Something that they’re doing really well is they created a guide for families that shows the LAUSD strategic plan. And one of the pillars is academic excellence. When they talk about academic excellence, specifically, they’re talking about the quality of instruction, having enriching experiences for students and ways to build equity within all the students that they’re working with. With that, they also have a goal to increase ELA assessment scores by 30 points.
Having clear goals is so important, and so just them being able to share that with our families, I think it’s one right step in moving forward.
What’s your take on how programming for minority kids in LAUSD is changing right now, and where should it be going?
The fact is that we need to do more. We need to be more intentional about listening to families, collaborating with community leaders, designing programs that directly support the needs of our students.
Why is the science of reading important as part of that effort?
Science of reading is not a method nor a curriculum nor an approach. It is a body of evidence based on decades of research that explains how the brain learns to read and the foundational skills that students need to become proficient readers.
It’s about how the brain works and how children learn to read. So this requires explicit, systematic instruction, what are called the foundational skills, which are phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency and oral language.
What’s the best evidence we have for the success of this approach?
Often the state that is referenced the most for implementing statewide policy and seeing change is Mississippi, where they went from being ranked 49th in ELA in 2013 to 21st in 2022. That’s a huge change. It took time, but the positive impact of implementing evidence based instruction is there.
Is there anything that was done there that you think would be effective in LA as well?
This begins with ongoing professional development. LAUSD already started implementing science of reading and evidence based instruction practices. But ongoing professional development for teachers, coaching, support for all principals, to ensure that literacy instruction is aligned with science of reading, more intervention and support for students who have more challenges and closely monitoring data, and stronger family engagement practices and communication [would also be good].
Different groups could help solve this issue. There’s school districts, the state lawmakers, local lawmakers, parents and families and then other community partners. Which group would you say has the most responsibility in this crisis?
We all have a role to play. This education system is so intertwined. And everyone that is impacted has an opportunity to play a role, whether it is parents advocating for their children, the district continuing to support evidence based instruction, and then at the state level, enacting policy change that will support all of this work. This is really a problem with a responsibility that falls on all of us.
This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
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