Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath called on the state’s school board members to embrace the science of reading and “high-quality instructional materials,” including the state’s own new curriculum, at an annual education conference in Houston Saturday.
Around half of Texas’ students are not reading on grade level by third grade — increasing their risk for dropping out in high school and facing career challenges as adults. School districts with higher rates of low-income students are more likely to have lower literacy rates and lower ratings in the state’s A-F accountability system.
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There is an “undeniable” connection between lower reading proficiency and poverty in Texas school districts, Morath told attendees at txEDCON, an annual conference for state school board members and administrators.
“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.”
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