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SCHOOLS SEPT. 13, 2023
Did New York City Forget How to Teach Children to Read? This fall, Eric Adams is pivoting to phonics.
By Caitlin Moscatello
Link: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/09/new-york-city-schools-how-to-teach-children-to-read.html
At a meeting with parents in May, Elizabeth Phillips, a longtime principal at P.S. 321, a highly sought-after elementary school in Park Slope, didn’t mince words about the new reading curricula being implemented across the city this fall by Mayor Eric Adams’s administration.
Not only did she refer to the trio of options selected by Schools Chancellor David Banks and the mayor’s Cabinet as “three bad choices,” she also shared her plans to resist.
“We are definitely pushing back against it,” she said, “and many principals in the district are. And our superintendent understands that we are not going to do it with fidelity, that we are going to keep doing what has worked for us.”
...It could be three to five years before Adams’s big gamble can pay off. That’s how long educators say it takes to really get comfortable with a curriculum and know whether it’s working.
Some educators in the first phase of the rollout are envious of the districts in phase two, which have more time to select a curriculum and the benefit of observing how things go this year.
Others say there’s no time to waste. “A year’s wait for a kindergartner to second-grader is a lifetime in terms of being able to learn to read,” says Danielle, the teacher.
"It’s not pivotal in the scheme of a curriculum, but it’s pivotal in the life of a child.”
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