I always say that I got into early literacy by accident. I started out teaching grades 3–5, which weren’t then widely considered “foundational skills grades.” But I began doing additional work conducting poetry and arts workshops with women and girls who were incarcerated, and kept coming across the same issue: many had never been given the chance to fully develop literacy skills. 

Determined to learn more, I took a course in teaching reading and started using my one or two hours a week with the girls and women I served to help them grow their skills. Not long after, I went back to my school principal and asked to teach younger grades. I’ve been an early literacy specialist ever since.

Reading and writing underpin all other learning. All students must have the opportunity to build foundational skills in grades K–2, with more advanced instruction in 3–5. Without this, learners don’t get an equitable chance to build knowledge and reading comprehension skills, and may experience compounding effects that impact all other subject areas and their journeys beyond school. That’s why it’s critical that early literacy teachers have access to high-quality foundational skills materials to help all students become thriving readers and writers.

As EdReports’ early literacy principal, I’ve been working for over a year on revisions to our foundational skills review tools (the criteria against which we review instructional materials). As we prepare to release the first reviews using the revised tools in June 2024, I’m thrilled to share more about the updates we’ve made to help districts select materials that best serve teachers’ and students’ needs.

Why and how we revised our ELA foundational skills tools

Our original foundational skills tools were developed in 2018 with the first reviews released in 2019. Since that time, the early literacy field has seen a significant increase in awareness of the science around how children learn to read and of structured literacy: the application of the science of reading to instructional practices. In addition, the majority of states have now introduced legislation relating to early literacy, in some cases banning practices not aligned with the science of reading such as three-cueing.

In early 2023, we started the process of revising EdReports’ foundational skills tools, conducting a listening and learning tour to gather feedback from a wide range of experts and EdReports users. We then synthesized that feedback to begin updating the tools, revising them over multiple versions in consultation with our early literacy advisory group consisting of experienced classroom educators, esteemed literacy researchers, state and district leaders, and partner organizations.

EdReports’ revised foundational skills tools now provide districts with even stronger information grounded in seminal literacy research. This will help school systems make highly consequential decisions around identifying foundational skills materials that will best meet the needs of their students, setting them on the path to college and career ready literacy.

3 key updates to our foundational skills review tools

1. Flagging three-cueing and introducing non-negotiables

Our updated tools now contain a dedicated indicator (an area of focus for review) to ensure materials are absent of three-cueing. A program cannot achieve an “all-green,” or “meets expectations,” rating if this approach is present. We’ve also made three review criteria “non-negotiable” in the revised tool’s first gateway, or stage. This means that, in order to achieve “meets expectations” in the gateway overall, materials must meet expectations in all of:

• Phonemic Awareness (awareness of discrete sounds that make up words).
• Phonics (decoding and encoding).
• Fluency (the ability to read text correctly and automatically).

While we reviewed for all these elements in our pre-2024 foundational skills tools, it was possible to score “partially meets expectations” on one of them and still score “meets expectations” overall. Now, the updated tools require consistent high quality across all three “non-negotiable” criteria for a program to meet expectations.

2. Tighter alignment to seminal science of reading research

EdReports’ original foundational skills review tools prioritized alignment to college and career ready standards as well as theoretical models including the 2000 National Reading Panel report and Scarborough’s Reading Rope. In recent years, the early literacy field has become more aware that most college and career ready standards don’t capture all the foundational skills necessary for students to fully develop into proficient readers and writers, nor all the settled science on how kids learn to read.

Our updated tools align more directly to theoretical models, putting the research first and incorporating the standards as appropriate. This includes evaluating materials’ inclusion of the “how” of structured literacy practices in addition to the “what” of foundational skills, and the removal of print concepts from our foundational skills review tools to match the structure of Scarborough’s Reading Rope. (Print concepts remain part of our core ELA review tools.)

3. Increased focus on phonemic awareness

Our 2018 foundational skills tools, reflecting college and career ready standards, looked at phonological awareness (awareness of the parts of spoken words, including whole words, syllables, and discrete sounds) as a whole. However, research shows that phonemic awareness (awareness of the smallest, discrete sounds in words) is the most critical aspect of phonological awareness in early literacy. The newly-revised tools look for materials’ alignment to that research, including:

• A clear sequence in which to teach phonemic awareness skills that’s aligned to the program’s phonics scope and sequence.
• Systematic and explicit instruction in phonemic awareness.
• Daily student practice in connecting sounds to letters.

Our educator reviewers’ reception and use of the revised tools

EdReports’ foundational skills reviewers are classroom educators and literacy leaders with centuries of collective education experience, screened and selected for their extensive expertise in early literacy. Before conducting the new reviews, they also received specialized training on the research base that informed the tool revisions, and on applying the tools to identify components of quality in foundational skills materials.

Reviewers’ responses to the tool updates have been overwhelmingly positive and I’m excited to share the results of their hard work via the upcoming release of the first reports using the tools. I’m really proud of the efforts of the EdReports ELA team and our expert advisory panel to incorporate feedback from the field and better align to research. And I’m proud that districts can use the resulting tools and reports to seek out high-quality foundational skills materials that can help all young learners build the literacy skills to excel as lifelong readers and writers.

Stephanie Stephens is EdReports’ Principal of Early Literacy. She brings more than 20 years of experience in literacy education including as senior director of professional development services at AIM Institute for Learning and Research and English language arts specialist at UnboundEd. Stephanie also serves on the boards of The Reading League Florida and Hope at Hand, Inc. She began her career as an elementary ELA teacher and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education and a Master of Science in Montessori Education. She’s certified by the American Montessori Society and as a Structured Literacy Classroom Teacher (C-SLCT) by CERI.®