Reading Reality in America’s Classrooms with Baltimore Superintendent Sonja Santelises
LaTonya Goffney is superintendent of the Aldine Independent School District in Houston, Texas. Sonja Santelises is CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools. Iranetta Wright is superintendent of Cincinnati Public Schools. All three are members of Chiefs for Change, a nonprofit bipartisan network of school superintendents and state education leaders.
America is finally acknowledging a harsh truth: The way many schools teach children to read doesn’t work. Educators, and indeed families, are having a long overdue conversation about how one of the nation’s most widely used curricula, “Units of Study,” is deeply flawed — and where to go from here.
The problem became a mainstream topic of conversation after parents got a closer look at their children’s lessons over Zoom during the pandemic, and journalist Emily Hanford released a podcast exposing how schools and teachers were “Sold a Story.”