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When Philadelphia school officials announced preliminary new achievement data earlier this month, one trend was especially concerning: Philadelphia third graders are less likely to be proficient readers than they were a year ago.
The district — like many across the country — has spent millions to try to improve literacy instruction and reading scores. If kids can’t read by the end of third grade, research shows they’ll have an increasingly difficult time catching up.
The initial data is especially notable because during the 2024-25 school year, Philadelphia began implementing a new reading curriculum based on the science of reading at a cost of $25 million. State lawmakers have also pushed for legislation meant to ensure reading instruction follows research-backed methods.
Still, crucial third grade reading rates remain low, with fewer than 1 in 3 third graders able to read proficiently last school year, according to the district’s preliminary data from the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment test. That’s lower than scores the year before, when the district hadn’t yet adopted the new curriculum.
At a school board meeting earlier this month, Superintendent Tony Watlington said that he expected that progress would not be linear. District officials said they plan to continue to invest in training teachers on how to use the new curriculum and provide tutoring to struggling students.
But literacy instruction experts and advocates say the declining scores mean it’s urgent for Philadelphia to improve preparing teachers to teach the new curriculum and support students who fall behind.
“Just looking at the outright percentage of students who are reading proficiently, it’s extremely troubling,” said Laura Boyce, Pennsylvania executive director of the advocacy organization Teach Plus. “It just doesn’t bode well for our future workforce or our city as a whole if we aren’t able to accelerate things.”
New reading curriculum exposed weak points, officials say
At the school board meeting earlier this month, district officials said the low English language arts scores from last school year revealed crucial information.
Along with a dip of nearly three percentage points in the number of third graders scoring proficient or advanced on the state reading tests compared with the year before, the share of students in grades 3-8 with proficient scores also fell slightly. (Officials said further breakdowns of the data will be released in November.)
In addition, the preliminary data shows that the percentage of Philadelphia third graders who read proficiently is lower than it was a decade ago.
“What this curriculum has exposed for us is that many of these students did not have the foundational skills that were provided and what was expected of them on the state assessment,” said Jermaine Dawson, the district’s deputy superintendent of academic services, at the meeting.
Dawson added that to address some of the challenges, the district aims to “make sure that comprehension is more amplified” in English language arts instruction and grow its high-impact tutoring program.
District officials did not respond to Chalkbeat’s requests for information about how the district will address low reading scores. During a discussion of the curriculum at a board meeting last year, Watlington said, “When you try something new, outcomes get worse before they get better. It’s very common in education.”
When Chalkbeat spoke with Philadelphia teachers implementing the new curriculum last year, many shared concerns that they weren’t adequately trained on the new materials. Though teachers said they were glad the new curriculum followed research-backed methods, some said there was not enough support for struggling readers in the program.
Kymyona Burk, senior policy fellow at ExcelinEd, an education policy advocacy organization, said training teachers to implement new curriculum and providing support is essential to achieving results.
“There’s nothing that’s going to be this kind of magic pill,” said Burk, who previously served as the state literacy director at the Mississippi Department of Education, where she led implementation of Mississippi’s landmark literacy law. “It’s the preparation that goes into it.”
Burk and other literacy experts said Philadelphia’s new curriculum, from the curriculum company EL Education, is well regarded.
But to be effective, the curriculum overhaul must include in-depth teacher training, coaching, professional development, parent engagement, and screening of kids to understand what’s working, Burk said. She estimated it takes teachers at least a year to get acquainted with new curriculum materials, even with support.
Though Philadelphia school officials have provided training to teachers on the new curriculum, the low scores indicate more is needed, said Julia Cadwallender, managing director of the local advocacy organization Read by 4th.
As teachers get used to the curriculum, she said she’s hopeful the district’s reading scores will begin to improve, just as the district’s math scores have risen two years after it implemented a new math curriculum.
“We have to recognize the ups and downs that exist in actually creating any lasting change,” Cadwallender said.
Other districts struggle to boost student reading scores
Philadelphia is far from the only district where an expensive curriculum overhaul hasn’t immediately resulted in improved achievement.
In New York City, scores also dipped the first year after that district began overhauling its reading curriculum in 2023, and have only recently begun to show progress. In Ohio, reading scores fell recently after state lawmakers overhauled reading curriculums and required teachers to train in the science of reading.
Recent national test score data show that reading scores have remained stagnant even after several districts have implemented the science of reading.
Ashley Jochim, education researcher at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, said across the board, high-quality curriculum means little if districts don’t also invest in other kinds of support for staff and students. Helping teachers “scaffold” curriculum to ensure that students aren’t left behind is essential, she said. So is addressing other challenges, like attendance and teacher turnover.
When it comes to reading scores though, Jochim said she’s hopeful that districts will be able to achieve improvements in the coming years. Researchers have revealed key ways kids learn to read, including by learning phonics and phonemic awareness. Experts have also found that giving kids tutoring and other interventions can help struggling readers from falling behind.
Now, she said the challenge of school districts like Philadelphia’s is to ensure implementation is also following those best practices.
“This is why I’m optimistic,” said Jochim. “We have these tools. We can do it.”
Rebecca Redelmeier is a reporter at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. She writes about public schools, early childhood education, and issues that affect students, families, and educators across Philadelphia. Contact Rebecca at rredelmeier@chalkbeat.org.
