May 2, 2024

Dear Families, 

This letter is all about our school’s reading curriculum.   

New York City Public Schools has begun a huge initiative called NYC Reads.  Eventually, NYC Reads will involve new phonics programs, but not for 2024-2025.  However, the chancellor has required each district to adopt one of three reading programs.  By September, every elementary school is expected to use one of those three programs.   

District Four in East Harlem has selected a program called Into Reading.  Into Reading is published by Harcourt McGraw-Hill, or HMH.    

This letter will highlight some strengths of HMH Into Reading, and some reservations about how its textbooks fit our school.  We plan to combine the best of Into Reading with reading material we think will serve our community. 

How Into Reading Supports Literacy  

HMH Into Reading meets several priorities of the NYC Reads initiative.  First, Into Reading tries to build children’s vocabulary.  Research shows that vocabulary accounts for at least half of reading comprehension; the more words readers know, the more they understand what they read.   HMH Into Reading exposes children to many new words, and makes vocabulary exercises part of daily reading lessons. 

Another predictor of reading comprehension is background knowledge.  All of us understand more when we read about a topic we already know.  HMH Into Reading builds children’s background knowledge by letting them read about the same topic for a month at a time.  The program mixes in lots of nonfiction to develop students’ knowledge of history, science, and the arts.  

Finally, Into Reading challenges readers with complex text.  Reading sophisticated language in the early grades helps students prepare for even more advanced language in the later grades.  Into Reading has students practice with one challenging text per week.  That gives the whole class several chances to read and re-read, with teacher guidance, a text some children couldn’t read by themselves. 

All three reading programs approved for New York City Public Schools offered these changes, but only HMH Into Reading has a Spanish-language version of the entire program.  En marzo, visité una clase bilingüe en nuestro distrito.  Yo vi a los alumnos leyendo y aprendiendo exactamente lo que la clase del lado estaba aprendiendo en inglés.   Aprender en el primer idioma es poderoso.   

If you understood what I just wrote about my visit to a nearby school reading in Spanish, you can appreciate how powerful the bilingual version of Into Reading could be.  And if you don’t read Spanish – if you skipped reading part of this letter – you can imagine how much learning children miss when they don’t have access to the curriculum.    

As the only city-approved reading program with a Spanish version ready for September, Into Reading is an inclusive choice for our district.  Unfortunately, in other ways, Into Reading is not inclusive.  It’s not how Into Reading teaches children, but what the program gives children to read, that raises concerns. 

Into Reading and the Ban on LGBTQ+ Reading 

This image is an advertisement to officials who purchase curricula in Florida.  The ad promises, “Into Reading Florida was designed to ensure all students see themselves in the literature they are reading.”  Yet because of Florida law, some students cannot see themselves in Into Reading. 

Famously, Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law prohibits elementary schools from teaching about gender or sexual orientation.  Students are not allowed to read about the LGBTQ+ identity of any person, real or fictional. 

To sell the program in Florida, HMH Into Reading obeys this law, then sells this Florida-approved reading everywhere else.  In Brooklyn or in Tampa, in Manhattan or Orlando, the textbooks are the same. 

New York City doesn’t agree with Florida’s ban.  In fact, our school system created a social studies curriculum featuring so-called “hidden voices,” real-life people who “have been historically under-represented in narratives, textbooks, and other media.”  So why adopt another generation of textbooks that keeps LGBTQ+ figures hidden?  

LGBTQ+ staff and parents deserve full inclusion in our school, including in our core curriculum.  Besides, Into Reading’s advertisement got it right the first time: schools must “ensure all students see themselves in the literature they are reading.”  That’s why we cannot allow another state’s book ban to decide what our community should read.

Into Reading’s Spin on Injustice

Another concern is how Into Reading presents bias and prejudice, particularly with real-life, historical figures.  Here’s an example from an Into Reading article about the famous sociologist and activist, W.E.B. Dubois, who taught in a segregated school in rural Tennessee in the 1890s:

W. E. B. Du Bois felt strongly about people’s rights. When he moved to Tennessee, he found that some people did not have the same rights as others.

Some people?  W.E.B Du Bois – crusader against lynching and Jim Crow, co-founder of the NAACP, author of The Souls of Black Folk – “found” that “some people” had unequal rights?  First, no African American the 1890s needed to move to Tennessee to find out about Jim Crow; W.E.B. Dubois planned to teach in a segregated school.  But more importantly, why can’t HMH Into Reading mention racism?

With Into Reading, story after story praises upbeat characters who are determined to succeed.  While teaching children to be optimistic and hard-working, Into Reading repeatedly refuses to call inequality by its name.  Here’s another example, featuring First Lady Abigail Adams:

Abigail was the wife of our second president, John Adams.  Many women didn’t have a good education then.  Abigail couldn’t go to school when she was little because of illness.

Abigail Adams might have been sickly, but there’s a bigger reason she and most other American women “didn’t have a good education.”  Only boys could attend public school.  By the time the first American public school admitted girls, Abigail Adams was 54 years old.   Into Reading goes on to say Abigail Adams “even bought and sold land” at a time when “only men did those types of jobs.” Actually, under colonial law, most women were prohibited from owning or selling property.  Thus, children can read that Abigail Adams “felt strongly about women’s rights,” but can’t learn how few rights women had. 

Eventually, Into Reading goes from omitting facts to twisting them.  We see that in an article about immigrant Chinese railroad workers, called “The Celestials’ Railroad.”  Back in the 1860s, “Celestials” was a derogatory term for Chinese immigrants in the western United States.  Into Reading explains only that celestial means heavenly, ignoring how that the word commonly mocked Chinese people in the old west. 

This article briefly acknowledges that “white workers tormented the Chinese,” and then puts a positive spin on discriminatory work conditions.  For example, the author mentions Chinese railroad workers “were allowed to choose their food” they bought from the railroad company.  That’s true, but the company also gave free food to white workers… and paid them about 30% more money each week.  The author praises Chinese immigrants for working “without complaint” and taking “jobs no one else would touch.”  Chinese immigrants who “were lucky” survived dynamiting through mountains “and lived to tap more holes.”  Those words make the hundreds of workers who died sound expendable.

Over 80% of the workers on the Central Pacific railroad were Chinese immigrants.  Children should know how their extraordinary labor transformed the United States.  But we cannot use this history to teach lessons about doing your best to help the company.  Above is a note from the Into Reading teachers guide.   Work conditions on the railroad were racist and brutal – railroad supervisors literally whipped some Chinese workers.  It’s inappropriate to ask children to daydream about making those workers feel “valued.”  We don’t honor history by inventing kinder facts. 

Into Reading definitely contains worthwhile readings, including books our school has purchased for classroom libraries.  By themselves, those individual stories are good, but only one part of a balanced reading diet.  HMH Into Reading favors readings that downplay real problems, especially prejudice and injustice.  To teach morals responsibly, we need the right stories.

Adapting the Program: Similar Methods, New Texts

After serious consideration, the staff of Central Park East I will adapt this new reading program.  HMH Into Reading features about one challenging text per week for students to read and re-read.  We are recreating this program with different texts.

Staff are studying Into Reading to create a faithful adaptation.  The difficulty of the text we select for students will be comparable to the textbooks of Into Reading.  That program measures text sophistication with a Lexile number.   Lexile numbers for our whole-class texts will be very similar to those in HMH Into Reading.  No matter the time of year, our text will be equivalently challenging.

Our adaptation also will include daily vocabulary work, closely following the exercises found in HMH Into Reading.  We are drawing comprehension questions and exercises from Into Reading as well.  In fact, as we have begun our work, we have begun by copying and pasting some questions directly from the Into Reading’s teacher guides. 

What We’re Reading Instead: Identity, History, Legacy

For all grades, the first module of the year would focus on identities.  Explicitly affirming diverse identities – family structures, cultures, genders, etc. – is vital for children’s social-emotional development and learning about the world. 

This teaching aligns with much of the work we already do early in our school year, such as self-portraits of torn-paper collage and narrative writing about personal experience.  Reading to help children see beauty in all of their identities makes for joyful learning.  That joyous start sets up the fourth module of the year: reading history critically.

Antiracist curricula invariably lead children to ask, “How did racism even start?”  The answer makes us confront painful history.  In age-appropriate ways, guided by the Teaching Hard History framework from Learning for Justice, we are planning to help children read about the origins and impacts of slavery in North America, along with other events in our history that involve bigotry and injustice.  We would respond if children bring up facts they already know, but again, the reading we plan will be age-appropriate.  We would not introduce the most graphic details.  However, children do need enough information to respect how much damage racist talk – even so-called ‘jokes’ – can do. 

This history could be traumatic.  That is why we will alternate each reading about difficult history with a text about strong legacy.  Reading about brilliant historical figures who emerged out of the painful past help children see that every culture is much more than its hardships.  Across the year, reading positively about identity and legacy create good conditions to teach the history most reading programs avoid.  We can teach honestly about the past because we also read to learn about the powerful legacies built by survivors and descendants.

What We’re Reading Instead: Supporting Student Projects

Some of our reading adaptation will build on familiar topics.  For example, we are updating the reading in our early grades bird study and our middle grades insect study in the style of Into Reading modules.  We would continue building knowledge through regular trips to Central Park, Orchard Beach, and the other places we go for field work.  As always, reading plus firsthand research will enrich children’s hands-on project work.

Appreciating Staff

I am so happy that our school will meet the demands of this initiative with reading that truly fits CPE1. 

Of course children will continue to read independently; we’re keeping our excellent classroom libraries, which contain thousands of great new books purchased within the last few years.  We are adapting curriculum to ensure our whole-class readings are also great.

A small group of people will make this happen: CPE1 teachers.  Teachers are stepping up to adapt this program.  Teachers’ extra planning and coordination will make this big initiative work for our community.  Because teachers are stepping up, the texts we read as a whole class will be just right for our kids.

Thank you, teachers, for that commitment.

Appreciating Families

You just finished a very long letter.  Thank you for reading.  

I put so much information into this letter because our families deeply care what CPE1 students are learning.  It’s a pleasure to be part of a community of strong beliefs.

Thank you.