Sacramento County READS promotes teaching literacy through foundational, time-tested practices
by Jill Spear
As an educator and a parent, Channa Pitt knows firsthand about the importance of literacy, and the challenges some students face in learning to read.
“I’ll never forget the day my son learned to read.” says Pitt, assistant superintendent of educational services for the Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE). She says her son was behind in reading comprehension by the second grade, leading to multiple tests and assessments.
“It turned out he had dyslexia. We had to learn what type, what level, and what would help him in terms of the classroom and at home,” she says.
That experience makes Sacramento County READS, a community-wide effort launched by SCOE in 2023, all the more important to Pitt. The Sacramento County READS initiative brings together educators, community partners and families to address this educational challenge. Family involvement, continuous learning for educators, and community literacy programs help to build a culture of reading and strengthen literacy efforts.
“Ensuring a shared commitment that all our children are reading at grade level will be better for our economy and the future of our country. It takes all of us. It’s critical to have a coherent system so that everything works together.”
Channa Pitt, Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services, Sacramento County Office of Education
“Ensuring a shared commitment that all our children are reading at grade level will be better for our economy and the future of our country. It takes all of us,” Pitt says. “It’s critical to have a coherent system so that everything works together.”
A crucial foundation for academic success, reading at grade level means that a student can read and understand text that meets state standards for their current grade level. “In our county, only 43.9% of students are reading at grade level,” says Tami Wilson, SCOE’s director of English Language Arts. Wilson says that statistic is in line with national assessments of childhood reading.
According to recent test results in Sacramento County, large gaps in reading performance exist between different student groups. Currently, only 22% of foster youth, 25% of African American students, 11% of English learners and 16% of students with disabilities are able to read at grade level.
“It is a systems level approach,” Wilson says. “You can’t just change one thing and expect that we’re going to have socially significant outcomes. We have to look at the whole system because teaching reading is complex.”
Pitt concurs: “It’s time to change the system, to change the outcomes. Every child matters, and every child’s reading matters.”
Behind the science
Sacramento County READS is based on the science of reading, a huge body of knowledge that comes from research in many fields, including neuroscience, school psychology, linguistics and special education.
The science of reading provides two essential frameworks for reading instruction and development. The first, called The Simple View of Reading, states that reading comprehension is the product of two components, word recognition and language comprehension. If either is weak, reading comprehension is diminished.
The second framework is Scarborough’s Reading Rope, which expands on The Simple View of Reading. It depicts reading as a rope with multiple strands that contribute to the ultimate goal: skilled reading. The two main strands of the rope are word recognition and language comprehension.
In the classroom, these theoretical frameworks come to life as students learn the five building blocks of reading. These include: phonemic awareness, which is the ability to identify and play with individual sounds in words; and phonics, which is understanding how letters and groups of letters link to form relationships and spelling patterns. The other three building blocks are fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
“When we think about teaching reading, it’s important to understand that speaking is a natural human activity. Reading is not,” says Wilson. “Our brains and neural pathways are not wired for reading.” She adds that “The sooner we address reading difficulties, the better. The younger a student is, the easier it is to build neural pathways.”
To ensure that schools are screening for reading difficulties, California just adopted a screener bill. “Kindergarten, first and second grades will be screened annually each year,” says Wilson. “The idea is that we’re going to intervene early when the brain is more open to new ideas and learning.”
To learn more about the Sacramento County READS Initiative, visit scoe.net/divisions/ed_services/sacramentocountyreads/.
