Opinion: New York City’s next mayor can’t go back on literacy

Eric Adams’ tenure as mayor has been marred by scandal, and his early poll numbers are bleak. It seems less and less likely that he can win reelection. His cozying up to President Donald Trump and his decision to attend Trump’s inauguration instead of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day events in New York City suggest that he may no longer see a future for himself as mayor. 

The candidates running against him in the Democratic Primary will be piling on and painting his mayoralty as a failure while rolling out policy ideas that they claim will address the myriad problems facing the city. However, in at least one crucial area, whoever wins the mayoral election this year should build on what the Adams administration has done rather than attempting to “reinvent the wheel.” 

Adams and former Schools Chancellor David Banks rightly focused on the need to reform the city’s approach to teaching literacy in our public schools – where, according to state tests, half of third through eighth graders are reading below grade level and a significant number struggle to read at all.

 Adams has often cited his own struggles with dyslexia when championing literacy reforms, and early in his administration, he called for universal screening in elementary school for dyslexia followed by interventions for those identified as at-risk. He and Banks then made the bold move to require schools to adopt literacy curricula that follow the science of reading, and they clearly articulated that the “whole language”-based literacy approaches that the majority of schools had previously adopted should not be the standard.

Reading is intrinsic to both personal growth and economic opportunity, and illiteracy is correlated with America’s shockingly high rates of poverty, depression and incarceration. While the societal and individual costs of illiteracy are well documented, the city also pays a very direct cost for the failure of our public schools to put in place a system that teaches all kids to read.  

Under federal law, students with dyslexia and other disabilities are entitled to a “free appropriate public education.” In practice, this has meant that parents who have the means and wherewithal end up suing the city Department of Education for private placement for their children, and the city ends up paying hundreds of millions each year as a result. The majority of these students are children struggling with dyslexia and other phonologically-based learning issues. At this juncture, parents of these children continue to feel like their only recourse is to sue the city because they are not able to get even basic services for their children in public schools. This adversarial cycle that alienates vulnerable children will never stop unless leadership from City Hall demands it. 

The fact is that Adams has failed children with dyslexia. These students can and should have their needs met in public school and they can be successful, but it will require far more follow-through than the Adams administration has been able to muster thus far.  

First, it will take the appointment of a new schools chancellor who has demonstrated real commitment to and knowledge of evidence-based reading pedagogy. Second, it will take a high-level official in City Hall committed to literacy programming in our schools, our libraries, our community-based organizations and our prisons to ensure sustained and coordinated effort. Then, schools must move forward with implementing uniform and universal dyslexia screening with a roadmap to providing neuropsychological exams to those children deemed at risk of dyslexia. Those students identified as having dyslexia will need daily small group interventions using an Orton-Gillingham or other similar approach that combines direct, multi-sensory teaching strategies with structured, sequential phonics-based instruction. Screening coupled with placing well trained reading teachers in every elementary school would not only be more cost effective than paying for private school tuition for a select few, it would be significantly more equitable. 

I myself am a person with dyslexia; when my first-grade teacher at P.S. 230 in Brooklyn told my parents that she thought I might have a learning disability, they had me tested. When my dyslexia was confirmed, they enrolled me in specialized schools that used the above model, enabling me to become a fluent reader. I was lucky, but you shouldn’t have to be lucky to learn how to read. 

Truly progressive educational policy means addressing the needs of all our students through a pedagogy and culture of inclusion. Literacy education may not seem like a galvanizing issue like crime, housing affordability, or homelessness but should be no less a priority. All students will benefit from building the school day around literacy.