Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath told school board members from around the state on Saturday that districts need to commit to the science of reading and to approved, high-quality instructional materials if they want more children reading on grade level.
Morath spoke in Houston at txEDCON, the annual conference for school trustees and administrators, the Houston Chronicle reported. Roughly half of Texas students fall short of grade-level reading by third grade, a gap that raises their odds of dropping out of high school and struggling in the workforce later, according to the Chronicle.
He described a link between weak reading results and poverty as "undeniable." Districts that serve more low-income students tend to post lower literacy rates and weaker grades under the state's A-F rating system, the newspaper reported.
"This is a systematic problem," Morath said. "We are not consistently delivering outcomes for our kids … in ways that would seem to be consistent with our mission as the great equalizer."
What the state already requires
Since 2020, Texas has leaned on the science of reading, the research on how children learn to read and write. State law now sends teachers through reading academies, requires phonics curriculum in the early grades and has districts track the reading progress of their youngest students, according to the Chronicle.
