San Diego Unified Is Slowly Embracing Science of Reading

On a balmy afternoon, teachers at Johnson Elementary gathered in one of the school’s classrooms. Led by Betsy Hall, a professional learning coordinator for the California Reading and Literature Project, they worked through a series of rules about the English language, reviewing each one with a partner. They hummed with excitement. 

Casey Hickenbottom, a second-grade teacher at Johnson, took studious notes.  

“I don’t remember learning to read myself, but I do remember teaching kids to read. We did it very poorly before. This is much better,” Hickenbottom said. “We’re heading in the right direction.”  

The workshop was all part of the school’s partnership with an organization focused on infusing research-backed practices into how educators teach kids to read. Teachers at Johnson are putting into practice what many have known for years, but few districts have acknowledged: that we’ve been teaching kids to read all wrong. 

And while other organizations and some schools at San Diego Unified have been using science and research-backed methods to teach kids to read, the district has largely used strategies that rely on widely discredited theories.  

Now, district officials are taking steps to align its scattered curriculum with science and research-backed approaches. But the district still hasn’t entirely kicked its bad reading habits. 

The Science of Reading  

San Diego Unified reading levels are actually better than the state’s average. About 54 percent of the district’s students are meeting state English standards which is about seven points higher than the state’s average.  

Still, that means tens of thousands of children are falling behind.  

Research has long shown that what could help kids catch up is a more thorough embrace of what science has taught us about how kids learn to read. That body of research, often referred to as the science of reading, calls for a delicate mixture of strategies, like robust phonics instruction, that were largely put on the backburner by now-discredited teaching methods. 

But even after the bombshell podcast “Sold a Story,” made the science of reading a nearly household term, San Diego Unified has on occasion dumped piles of money on materials panned by researchers.  

Just last year, San Diego Unified spent about $185,000 on tools that measure how well kids can read that researchers have labeled faulty and unreliable reading materials based on discredited theories. 

In March of last year, for example, the district spent $152,000 of those funds on sets of books by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell called leveled readers. Fountas and Pinnell, and their reliance on strategies that encourage kids to guess words using the pictures on a page rather than actually reading, have been widely criticized. The leveled readers they’ve written are designed to help kids do just that.  

While schools have leeway to purchase materials they want, most of those books went to the district’s supply center, which distributes materials to schools across the district. 

Wendy Ranck-Buhr, the district’s executive overseeing equity, access and opportunity, didn’t seem concerned by the purchase. Ranck-Buhr has led much of the literacy work under Superintendent Lamont Jackson. She said it’s important that all kids have a wide range of books accessible at their schools, leveled readers or not.  

For her, the bigger question is whether those books are used without considering what research has taught us. “I think we would want to have more conversations about that, if that’s the case,” Ranck-Buhr said. 

San Diego Unified Board President Shana Hazan, who has pushed for science of reading backed methods since being elected, was careful not to make sweeping statement about the purchase without having more information. But she said, “based on what I know about Fountas and Pinnell, I would say that is not the highest and best use of dollars designed to support reading proficiency.” 

‘We Have to Strike a Balance’ 

San Diego Unified’s efforts to right the literacy ship are a long time coming. In 2016, the district dropped about $140,000 on six days of reading and writing workshops hosted by balanced literacy evangelist Lucy Calkins, whose work was dissected in depth on “Sold a Story.”  

But by 2020, San Diego Unified had adopted new curriculum called Benchmark Advance to bring the district in line with research-based practices. Reviews of that curriculum are generally positive. But implementing it in a district as large as San Diego Unified was easier said than done, according to Ranck-Buhr. Doing so during the Covid pandemic further complicated things.  

Years after Benchmark’s adoption, Ranck-Buhr said there are still “a lot of different programs out there.” In a later email, however, she wrote that 93 percent of schools are utilizing the Benchmark curriculum. 

Regardless of the real uptake rate, Ranck-Buhr said some diversity may not be a bad thing. 

“We have to strike a balance between allowing schools to have some autonomy to meet the needs of their school, but then being in alignment with what the research tells us and best practices,” Ranck-Buhr said. 

District officials don’t seem to have figured out exactly what that balance looks like, but they have taken steps to get a better grasp on it. San Diego Unified spent Covid dollars on a Literacy Acceleration Plan that provided professional training, instructional material and reading-support teachers at 30 of its schools. Though it helped some kids, it didn’t seem to have the broad impact officials had hoped. San Diego Unified is phasing it out now that funding has expired. 

Officials also launched a Literacy Working Group that’s advising schools on curriculum and has put together a science of reading primer to help teachers get a handle on what the research says.  

The group also began a district-wide assessment of its schools’ curriculum. The hope is twofold: to get an idea of what schools are doing and to better understand if it’s working.  

If it is working, Ranck-Buhr said they hope to be able to replicate it at other schools. “If it’s not, then we need to rein those in and look at some other things that could be used,” Rack-Buhr said. 

‘That Work Is Going Slow’ 

Though there has been some progress, district officials haven’t made the kinds of strides some hoped for. Hazan is one of those people. She said her expectation was that the district would bring clear findings about what needs to change. 

“But we haven’t seen very specific, concrete changes recommended … We’ve heard that there are plans coming, but we have to be ready to really implement something new and different and we have to name it and say it and get clear for everybody,” Hazan said. “It is going very slow and they need to accelerate the pace.” 

Ranck-Buhr understands this shift may feel slow but said it’s vital to bring people along rather than try to force change. She was around when the district was focused on mandating change from the top, she said, referring to the era when Alan Bersin ran San Diego Unified, and those mandates didn’t move the needle much. They also didn’t stick around long term. 

“There’s a lot of work to do to really get clear on instructional strategies,” Ranck-Buhr said. “But keep watching us, because we are shifting and we are really trying to do this in the right way.” 

Even given her impatience, Hazan is quick to point out that some progress has been made. In addition to the curriculum assessment underway, San Diego Unified officials have implemented district-wide testing. The assessments are administered three times a year to all students, from kindergarteners to high schoolers.  

That will allow the district to finally have an apples-to-apples comparison of student performance instead of the patchwork system they had previously, Hazan said. It will also allow schools to have a better idea of where students are before they take state standardized tests, which aren’t administered until third grade. That’s vitally important because research shows that students who aren’t reading on grade level by third grade struggle to catch up – if they ever do. 

That testing information won’t only help district officials identify schools that may be outliers, but it may also help teachers tailor instruction and interventions to fit the needs of students, Hazan said. Results will also be distributed to parents, who need to be key partners in teaching kids to read. 

Hazan feels like the district will get threading right sooner or later and that it’s important to ensure the board holds it accountable in the meantime.  

‘Kids We Lost Along the Way’ 

Purchases like the Fountas & Pinnell leveled readers are a drop in the bucket in terms of the district’s budget. But back at Johnson, where teachers have long embraced research-backed methods to teaching reading, the impact is apparent. 

“We realized this year and last year that a lot of things that have been purchased for us were great books, but not necessarily going along with the science,” Tracey Jenkins-Martin, Johnson’s principal said.  

They had plenty of books, but what they needed were decodable books that encouraged kids to actually break down words and sound them out. What the school had been provided, though, were guided and leveled readers like the ones the district purchased in 2023.  

With more than a hundred schools and nearly 100,000 students, San Diego Unified is a big ship and big ships take a while to turn. Even at Johnson, there was a learning curve. It took some years before teachers got fully onboard, and the early ones were rocky.  

Jenkins-Martin said they had early adopters, naysayers and people in between, but they’d stuck with the strategies because “the data was telling us that what we’re doing is making a difference to kids.” 

“It’s really hard to change your mindset (and realize) what you have been doing for 23 years may not be what’s best. But as we learn better, we’ll do better,” Jenkins-Martin said. 

Kim Barnes, Johnson’s literacy coach, agreed. 

“It’s really sad to think about how many kids we lost along the way,” Barnes said. “It’s heartbreaking.” 

Hall, the professional learning coordinator working with teachers at Johnson, has been with the California Reading and Literature Project since 1997. Over the years, she’s worked with districts across the county, but aside from the small cadre of San Diego Unified schools she’s worked with, she said she it’s been hard to break into the district. It often felt like those schools’ focus on research backed strategies made them the “rebel alliance,” from Star Wars. 

But things feel different now, she said. The district does seem to be shifting in fundamental ways, even if the movement is slow. 

“Everything I’m hearing is very encouraging – and I’m hearing it from district personnel and from different departments. There’s a real openness and willingness to talk about these things, and to have these conversations,” Hall said. “It’s very exciting.”