Governor Hochul: “[E]very child should have the best shot at life, the best shot to learn how to read, best shot to become completely literate by the time they leave school and make sure that our families deserve better as well.”
Hochul: “For a long time, people realized what was going on was not working, but nobody stood up and said it needs to change. And sometimes it takes a little bit of will and ambition and a bold idea for what our State can be…You are the future of our State, and I want to make sure that you have the best tools and advantages of anybody, so you can be as successful as you want to be. So that's what today is all about: changing how we're doing it.”
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul unveiled her Back to Basics plan to improve reading proficiency in New York as a part of her 2024 State of the State. To transition New York to reading instruction that teaches students the foundational skills they need to become proficient readers, Governor Hochul will introduce legislation that ensures evidence-based best practices are used throughout New York. The Governor will also propose $10 million in state investments to train 20,000 teachers in Science of Reading instructional best practices, and announced an expansion of SUNY and CUNY’s microcredentialing programs for teachers focused on the Science of Reading, to ensure our current and future teachers seeking advanced education are best prepared.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
AUDIO of the Governor's remarks is available here.
PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Nathan, well done, well done, and you weren't nervous at all. Nathan and I just had a very intense conversation about how he's about 4-foot 9 [inches], and he was fishing in North Carolina and caught some, what were they, sharks you caught? He caught sharks that were three feet. So you want to hear the story about how brave Nathan is out there tackling the sharks at the Outer Banks.Maybe he'll write a book about that someday, since he loves books so much.
I'm delighted to be here, and I want to thank everyone for joining us at this wonderful location, the Watervliet School. And today, we're going to turn the page on how we teach young people to read.
And this is a long overdue opportunity to help young people have the best opportunities they can. And I want to thank so many people who have joined us here today. First of all, our students, thank you for joining us. Is it okay to be out of class for a few minutes here? You okay with that? Okay, if you think you need to be back, we're good, right? Stay here.
Melinda Person, the head of NYSUT, she's the head of all the teachers. She is someone I've gotten to know very well. She's a fighter, she's a strong woman and I want to give her a special round of applause, Melinda Person.
We also have some of my partners in government. You've all seen the Capitol, right? You've gone past, you've seen the big dome. The Capitol building? We have Senator John Liu joined us, Assemblymember John McDonald, Assemblymember Pat Fahy, Assemblymember Robert Carroll, Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon,those are all of our elected officials. Let's give a round of applause for our elected officials.
Dr. Donald Stevens, the Superintendent of Watervliet City School District, let's give him a round of applause. Jeanne Lance, who you're going to be hearing from, a fourth-grade teacher here, which is wonderful. We'll be hearing from her in a couple minutes.
And the Mayor of this great community, Mayor Charles Patricelli, and I want to thank him for joining us as well.
We're here to talk about Nathan's favorite topic, which is reading. Do you all have books hidden under your bed like he does? Here's what I was telling the students down the hall. I told them when I was in third grade – and I know you're fourth graders – when I was in third grade, I had this one favorite book, it was called The Story of Harriet Tubman. Who knows who Harriet Tubman is? That's very good. And it was a book I used to check out of the library all the time. I didn't own it. I checked it out so much, the librarian one day said, “why don't you just keep it?”
And what I'd do is, late at night, my parents said, “turn the lights out,” it was dark in my room, I crept out of bed and I'd go grab that book. And I read it over, and over and over because I could not get over how courageous she was.
She was a young woman, she was tiny; she was shorter than most of you. And she was so bold that she went out and helped free slaves and brought them up to New York. And she eventually lived in New York, she lived in New York for 50 years. So someday you need to go to see the home of Harriet Tubman and be inspired by what she did, how she changed the world and saved people.
I learned about her when I was in third grade. And that's one of my favorite stories.
But I know Nathan loves to read. You love to read. I want to make sure that kids can make it – it's easy for children to learn how to read.
And today, I'm announcing a new initiative. We're going to be reforming how we teach reading and bringing our State's curriculum in line with the nation's accepted best practices.
Now, this builds on a lot of work we've done before. We believe in our teachers. We love our teachers. We invested in the Master Teacher Program, investing over $5.3 billion in our education program. It's a huge increase, but there's still a problem called illiteracy. What that means is there's too many people who don't know how to read. And that's a real problem, isn't it? That's a real problem. If you don't know how to read, how do you get along in life if you really can't read and understand things?
So, we're going to tackle this issue. And what I'm talking about is something in my State of the State Address. If you've not seen it, it's real exciting. You're going to want to tune in and watch it live-stream. Maybe we could live-stream it from the school here to have me talk about all the great things that I'm going to work with our State Legislature to accomplish for New Yorkers.
One part of that, and we talk about a lot of important issues, one part of it is we're going to be talking about how young people need to have a better chance. And if you can't read, people struggle in school, it's hard to find a good paying job someday. But if you can read, so many doors open for you, right? You can go to college, you can go get skills, you can go work any place you want to work. But too many young people aren't succeeding.
And here's the reason. Our teachers are great, they work hard. Our schools are great, we give them a lot of money to make sure that they have what they need. But also, what are they teaching? What is the curriculum? And not just math, we're talking about reading today. And so, there was a problem because people were being taught a certain way for a long time. When I was younger, we used to learn about phonics. There's a basic way. It's called back to basics. How you learn to read. And what happened was, they decided to change it.
There was this idea about 20 years ago. They thought, “Hey, there's a whole different way of learning. Why don't we just put kids in a room with books? And they'll figure it out.” You think that's very smart? It's what they're talking about when they deemphasize phonics-based learning and they push students to learn by using contextual clues instead. I don't even know what that means. Do you know what contextual clues mean? No, let's teach us how to say the words. Let's teach the kids what they mean. And that's the difference that has not been taught. Now, kids with learning disabilities and have English as a Second Language, they're really disadvantaged here.
Teaching programs in colleges have focused on that program as well. So, the teachers were taught, this is how you're supposed to do it, and they did. They were told, this is what works. And they carried out the duties they're supposed to do. But despite the best efforts, it's showing that it's not working anymore. It's not working. So, study after study has emerged over the last few years, showing it's not getting the job done. This outdated curriculum is still, even though we know it's not good, it is still the most common way they're teaching reading and literacy in our schools. It's the most widely used. It's called the Lucy Calkins Balanced Reading Approach, and many experts have said it doesn't work, they've discredited it.
So, we're going to take an important step. One was that we signed a new law to improve how reading is taught to students with dyslexia, and I want to give a special shout out to Assemblymember Bobby Carroll and Senator Brad Hoylman, who have sponsored this bill. Let's give them a round of applause, they worked hard for this.
But we have more work to do. Our job is not done. Third grade is a critical point, you just came through that. And I want to tell you that's when people can make the difference. By third grade, if you're not reading good, it's hard to read better later. It's bad if young people don't learn how to read at that age, and there's something that we need to be doing, and that's teaching with phonics.
Direct instruction, guidance: it’s not just science, it's common sense. It's like if you're– anybody here play music instruments? Do you play musical instruments? Yeah? Well, if you're taking piano lessons, for example, you have to learn the basics first. You don't just go listen to some beautiful concert music from Beethoven and say, “Oh, I can go do that.” You have to learn the fundamentals. You have to learn the basics. No one questions that.
But we're going to make sure that our kids learn the basics. Other states are doing this – Connecticut’s doing it, New Jersey's doing it, even the City of New York's doing it. And as Governor of the entire State of New York, I think every child should have the best shot at life, the best shot to learn how to read, best shot to become completely literate by the time they leave school and make sure that our families deserve better as well.
That's what we're going to do. The first day of school is like a fresh start. We're going to have a fresh start. We're going to do things differently, and we really expect different outcomes. So, when I do my State of the State next week, which I told you all about, we're going to talk about my Back to Basics initiative.
It's a set of solutions to, to design, to reset how our schools approach reading. We're setting a bold goal to transform how reading is taught in the State of New York. And we'll make sure that students receive what they learn. So, we're going to be teaching phonics, decoding, vocabulary and comprehension.
Just like the older adults in this room know all about. They skipped a long time. They missed an opportunity and now we're going to get back to common sense basics. I also want to acknowledge that Commissioner Rosa of the State Education would love to be here. She is out of town right now but she's has her representatives here today.
I give them a special shout out and I want to thank all the teachers at this school who've been working so hard to do this and that's why to help our teachers we're going to be investing $10 million in teacher training programs to make sure we can fund over 20,000 more teachers to learn how to do this.
That's what we're doing. It doesn't sound like a big deal maybe to you sitting in the front row, but it is. It is, okay? This is a very big deal because for a long time, people realized what was going on was not working, but nobody stood up and said it needs to change. And sometimes it takes a little bit of will and ambition and a bold idea for what our State can be.
And that's what we're doing here today, saying we can do better – we will do better and I'm going to set high goals for us to make sure that we achieve highest because this is New York, my friends. This is New York State. This is the greatest State in the nation, and I'm looking at a room full of young people that represent young people all over New York.
You are the future of our State, and I want to make sure that you have the best tools and advantages of anybody, so you can be as successful as you want to be. So that's what today is all about: changing how we're doing it. We're going to throw away the old method, say “goodbye, it didn't work,” and get back to basics and learning and make sure that you have a great chance to learn the easiest and best way you can.
Again, I want to thank all the teachers involved here and representing them. Of course, as I mentioned, is Melinda Person, who has done a great job as the head of the teacher organization. Let's give her a round of applause and invite her up.