Todd Collins went from education outsider to literacy expert when he joined his local school board after a career in finance and technology. When Todd saw the literacy assessment number, his data-driven mind said "this isn't good enough" and got to work. Todd went on to organize the California Reading Coalition, a movement of educators, advocates, parents, and policymakers committed to improving reading instruction and outcomes for California's six million students. In this episode, he joins Susan Lambert to discuss what it really takes to make effective change; the importance of clear, ambitious goals and strong leadership in schools; and which numbers within literacy data are most important to focus on.
Show notes:
Quotes:
“We have to help everybody kind of collectively align our voices and help people who wanna find out more about this, find out more about it.” —Todd Collins
“If the pieces of the system aren't all working together, then you just don't achieve sustained change.” —Todd Collins
“Leaders have a critical function. They communicate to everybody in a state or in an organization what's important. You don't have to tell 'em what to do, but you need to tell 'em what the goal is.” —Todd Collins
“Teachers aren't the problem. Teachers are the solution.” —Todd Collins
“We simply can't call ourselves a great school district unless we get great results for our most challenged and least resourced students.” —Todd Collins
“It's not a new thing to be concerned about the low achievement among low-income students but it's a relatively new thing to do something about it.” —Todd Collins
Todd Collins went from education outsider to literacy expert when he joined his local school board after a career in finance and technology. When Todd saw the literacy assessment number, his data-driven mind said "this isn't good enough" and got to work. Todd went on to organize the California Reading Coalition, a movement of educators, advocates, parents, and policymakers committed to improving reading instruction and outcomes for California's six million students. In this episode, he joins Susan Lambert to discuss what it really takes to make effective change; the importance of clear, ambitious goals and strong leadership in schools; and which numbers within literacy data are most important to focus on.
Show notes:
Quotes:
“We have to help everybody kind of collectively align our voices and help people who wanna find out more about this, find out more about it.” —Todd Collins
“If the pieces of the system aren't all working together, then you just don't achieve sustained change.” —Todd Collins
“Leaders have a critical function. They communicate to everybody in a state or in an organization what's important. You don't have to tell 'em what to do, but you need to tell 'em what the goal is.” —Todd Collins
“Teachers aren't the problem. Teachers are the solution.” —Todd Collins
“We simply can't call ourselves a great school district unless we get great results for our most challenged and least resourced students.” —Todd Collins
“It's not a new thing to be concerned about the low achievement among low-income students but it's a relatively new thing to do something about it.” —Todd Collins
This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science of Reading: The Podcast. Well, we finally made it to the end of season six. Over the past months, we've been talking with district leaders, parents, children's TV producers, state officials, and many others about their roles in bringing science-based literacy instruction to more children. We wanted to highlight all of their different stories to show how people across the education system play a part in advancing the Science of Reading movement. In order to make substantial, lasting change, every part of this system is going to have to work together. That's why on this final episode of the season, we're talking to someone who has experience bringing people together. Todd Collins is a member of the Palo Alto School Board and an organizer of the California Reading Coalition. And on this episode, he talks about why it's so critical to have alignment throughout the education system. Here's my conversation with Todd Collins. Well, hello Todd. Thank you so much for joining us on today's episode.
Todd Collins:Thank you. Nice to be here.
Susan Lambert:We would love if you could tell our listeners just a little bit about who you are and how you became interested in the Science of Reading movement.
Todd Collins:Great. Well, the most important thing is I'm not an educator. I sometimes say I'm a business person who took a wrong turn and wound up on his local school board.
Susan Lambert:Or a right turn! A right turn.
Todd Collins:Well, it turns out it was a right turn. I joined my local school board about six or seven years ago, and if you had told me that reading would be one of the things I would get involved with, I wouldn't have believed it. Not only was it not on the top 10, it wasn't even on the list. And the idea that that was something that I could add value to or something my district needed to work on was a novel...it never occurred to me that that would be the case. But what I found was that , I'm on the school board here in Palo Alto, California, and we're a high-performing district, by some measures we're the number one district in California, but we weren't serving all kids really well. And one of the things that I found as I tried to dig into that, was that, for instance, 80% of low-income Latino kids in our district are below grade level in reading. 80% . And we're a district, for those of you who don't know Palo Alto, we're an affluent community, and we've got lots of resources. We're much better funded than most school districts in California. So we've got reading specialists, we've got really experienced teachers, we've got all the resources that a district might want, yet these 80% of these kids were below grade level . So that struck me as something that a) was a serious problem. I mean, we couldn't call ourselves a great school district if we had that kind of results for a group of our students. And b) seemed like a problem that was really a mystery. It's like, why was it that we were so ineffective at teaching kids reading? So that sent me on a long journey as my wife sometimes says, other people have friends and hobbies. I have these kind of questions that I can't let go of. And so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how other people teach reading and why they were effective or ineffective. And that kind of led me to where I am today.
Susan Lambert:Wow. And in the midst of all that process—so, first of all, thank you for taking a turn into the school board and inserting yourself into a place that you didn't expect to be inserted into, which is reading , obviously very important to me. But in the midst of that process, you not only got involved, one, with the school board, started digging into what's happening in literacy, tried to understand how to teach reading and what was happening , you also started this thing called the California Reading Coalition.
Todd Collins:Yeah. The genesis of this was working in my own district and these kids that I'm responsible for. But what I found is, as I started to understand what was going on with our kids, I realized this wasn't a problem just in my district. It was a problem all over the country and certainly all over our state of California. And as I talked to people across the state, I found that some of the things that I had learned about, about how things had gone in Mississippi, about what they were doing in England, about what they were doing all over the country to improve reading results, that a lot of this was news to people I talked to in California, that the word just hadn't reached our community. But there were a small number of people working in their own communities, their own school districts, their own organizations, who were trying to make progress on this. And so, one of the things, like I said, I'm not an educator, so I don't have a lot of tools to bring to that discussion, but what I do know, how to organize things. And so what I thought my contribution could be is helping organize these people working on their own to try to align their voices and create something that was bigger than all of us individually so we could start impacting more people and ultimately impact state policy and the way we teach reading in California. And so that, in 2021, was the start of the California Reading Coalition.
Susan Lambert:So, can you tell our listeners, for those listeners that aren't in California, or maybe for those that are in California, what is the state of reading there in California or any kinda Science of Reading efforts that are happening across the state?
Todd Collins:Well, let me tell you , I'm a data-driven person. So let me first give some basic facts about the state of reading in California. Over half, and in 2022, it's 58% of California students in third grade, are below grade level in reading. 58%. For low-income Latino third graders, which is I think the Bellweather group, and by the way, low-income Latinos are 43% of all students in California. It's the largest single group that we track. 74% of low-income Latino third graders are below grade level in reading. For African American students, it's 78%. And both of those are significantly worse than they were in 2019. They were already very bad. We already had more than 50% of students below grade level in 2019, but it's gotten dramatically worse with the pandemic. We did a thing called the California Reading Report Card, where we ranked 300 districts on their performance for low-income Latino third graders. There are only two districts out of the 300 that we looked at that have over half of low-income Latino students at grade level, only two. There are zero districts in California that have 50% of low-income African-American students above grade level, zero. So, you know, when you look at those kind of numbers, it's kind of hard to, it has an existential effect on me. I mean, not only can we not feel good about what we're doing and feel like we need to change, I think it kind of raises some existential questions about both fairness and sustainability of kind of our economy, our civic society. If we're really failing at the most fundamental thing in education, teaching children to read on such a large scale, that's gonna have a reckoning. You know, that's one of the reasons that I've invested so much of my time, and I think a lot of Californians have started to invest their time, to try to bring new approaches to this real existential problem. So let me just tell you a couple of things that happened in 2022 that sort of have moved things along.
Susan Lambert:Yeah.
Todd Collins:We made some progress. The first step, one of the things I like to say is the first step of addressing any problem is admitting that you have a problem. And we did that faster than I thought we would. We had, in 2022, we saw tremendous work by groups like FULCRUM , Kareem Weaver, my good friend in Oakland, and the Decoding Dyslexia California group, which have done tremendous work in both districts and the state, and getting the word out and bringing attention to this issue. We saw fantastic journalism. We have a California state education online journal called EdSource, which created a series called California's Reading Dilemma. So far, they put out 11 articles looking at different aspects of the reading crisis in California. And that's put it on the front page of every educator in California. We had our second annual California Reading Summit, which is our virtual conference. We had over 1500 people registered for that conference. We had speakers, including our state superintendent, Tony Thurmond, the superintendent of L.A. Unified , Alberto Caballo . What it has shown is that there is a growing interest in this among Californians, even up to the highest levels of our administration. But these are really just the very first steps. I mean, we're so far from, we're just getting started. You know, there are are a thousand school districts in California, a thousand school districts. Out of that thousand, there are fewer than 20 that we can find that are making a sustained commitment to improving literacy outcomes. And most of those are literally just getting started. So we're really just at the beginning of what I think needs to be a very long and sustained effort to change the way reading is taught.
Susan Lambert:So when you started this California Reading Coalition to jumpstart some of this work both in your state, and honestly, you've had an impact nationally too. So there's a lot of folks that I know that regularly visit your site, that have joined you in some of these conferences, these two virtual conferences. But when you first pulled together, what were you specifically hoping to accomplish? Like, I know you had this big goal of wanting to get the word out, but I'm sort of interested in what you thought you could do first. What kind of first steps that you could take?
Todd Collins:Well, I think it's useful 'cause you know, if other people in your audience like think, "Hey, I'd wanna do that in my state."
Susan Lambert:Exactly.
Todd Collins:Let me tell you , let me just say, I'm probably the least likely person in the world to ever pull this kind of thing together. I'm not an educator. I'd never done anything like this before. I'd never organized a conference. I'd never done any of this before. It started with, I had found what had happened in Mississippi and other places, and I said, "Gosh, there must be some of that in California. Let me find the people in California doing that." So I started beating the bushes, calling people that I knew who might know. And it turned out there really was almost no one. But I occasionally would find somebody. I found Kareem Weaver in Oakland. I found Leslie Zoroya at the L.A. County Office of Education. I found Michelle Rodriguez, who's the superintendent in Pajaro Valley out on the coast. And I would talk to these people and they were doing interesting things, but two things were true. One is they were working in their local community. Kareem was working in Oakland Unified. Leslie was working in L.A., Michelle was working in Watsonville. And, you know, they were doing their thing and they were doing great work, but no one really knew about what they were doing. They didn't even know about each other.
Susan Lambert:Oh!
Todd Collins:And so, you know, as I talked to these people, I said, "Gosh, we ought—" It's crazy that I'm the person that's talking to these people and they don't even know about each other. So I literally just organized a phone call. I think the first conference call had 10 people on it.
Susan Lambert:Okay.
Todd Collins:And we had a conference call with these various people and said, "Let's just share what we're doing and talk about, you know, the reading issue in California and kind of figure out if there's anything that's useful to talk about."
Susan Lambert:Mm-hmm.
Todd Collins:That conference call went well. And I think most of the people said, "Wow, this is really exciting. I had no idea these things were going on." We then did a second conference call where, my ambitious goal was we invited 35 people to the conference call.
Susan Lambert:Wow. That's a big call.
Todd Collins:It was for me! And, and we had six districts lined up to talk about what they were doing in their individual districts. We had somebody from L.A., somebody from Oakland, somebody from Pajaro Valley, three other districts. And I said, I have no idea. I don't know if anybody will show up for this. I don't know if anybody will care . All 35 people showed up and we scheduled it for two hours. Every single person stayed for the entire two-hour session.
Susan Lambert:Wow.
Todd Collins:And at the end of it, I said, "Gosh, people are really interested in this stuff. We need to do something better." And everybody else said, "Yeah, Todd, that's a great idea. You should go make something bigger."
Susan Lambert:A nomination!
Todd Collins:Yeah. It's like I, you know, I was volun-told that I had to do it. And we then had this idea of doing a statewide event that we later came to call the California Reading Summit. And I had never organized anything like that before. I had no idea how to do it, and it was gonna be all virtual. We didn't know how to do an in-person event. And it was 2021 anyway, nobody was doing in-person events.
Susan Lambert:Right.
Todd Collins:So I just thought, okay, I'll just invite all the people that I've talked to over the last two years. People like Kymyona Burke and other people who were doing state policy, people who were involved in dyslexia research. John Gabrieli from MIT was kind enough to get online and talk, Kareem Weaver from Oakland. Everybody, you know, everybody loves hearing Kareem . So we just invited everybody that we could think of. And we ran this event. And I said, at the time, it's like, "If we get 50 people to show up for this, I'll be happy. If we get a hundred, I'll be over the moon." We had 500 people sign up for that event. It was amazing how many people watched it after it was done. Those videos now all have several thousand views.
Susan Lambert:Wow.
Todd Collins:And it just showed me, I mean, it was a perfectly nice event, but what it showed was that people in California were dying for this kind of information.
Susan Lambert:Hmm.
Todd Collins:They weren't hearing about what was happening in other places. They weren't hearing what was happening even across the state in California. And there was a tremendous interest in, how can we improve reading results? The mission of California Reading Coalition sort of emerged from that. It's like, we have to help everybody kind of collectively align our voices and help people who wanna find out more about this, find out more about it by bringing information to California and making it available to people so they can take action on it.
Susan Lambert:So when you think about the Coalition now, are you the only one involved in this organization of this coalition? Or do you have other folks that are helping you now?
Todd Collins:No. The way it works is that the coalition is really, it's a coalition of organizations. So, for instance, our summit was co-sponsored by our friends at Fulcrum , Decoding Dyslexia, Pivot Learning, which is Pivot/CORE, and Collaborative Classroom all helped out in various ways as well as a bunch of other people who helped organize the panels and organize the event. I perform more like a coordinating function. Many hands make light work. But we have a very lightly structured organization.
Susan Lambert:So it's truly a coalition then.
Todd Collins:It is . Yeah. And that was the idea. It's like, we don't need another group. We've got plenty of groups.
Susan Lambert:Right.
Todd Collins:What we need is to organize the groups we already have and to make it so their voices can be heard and people can find them.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. That's amazing. So that was the very first summit that you did. And, funny story, I remember, I met you just, I think I found out just after you had that very first summit and went onto your website and I'm like, "Oh, it's a summit. I'm gonna register." And you sent me an email and said, "Mm, we already had it. I better take that registration down."
Todd Collins:I remember that! It was like, "Oh my God, I have to take that down."
Susan Lambert:It was so great. So when you think about the differences in years, so what happened when you sort of first started this coalition and did that first ever summit , and then you just have finished your actual second annual summit. When you think about the differences from that year one to year two, what changes have you seen?
Todd Collins:Things have gone faster in California in some ways than I anticipated. I originally thought we'd spend two or three years just getting people to acknowledge that this was a problem. In fact, I don't think it was anything to do with what we did. I think it was just the timing was fortunate. I think that happened almost right away. Superintendent Tony Thurmond formed a task force focused on early literacy. Now I'm not very excited about what's come out of that task force . I don't think it's, I think it's more patches on a patchwork system, but in terms of acknowledging that there's a big problem, having a state-level task force focused on it, that's pretty good acknowledgement.
Susan Lambert:Yeah.
Todd Collins:Our state superintendent, our head of our state Board of Education Linda Darling-Hammond, famous education researcher, has talked, published a two-piece series in EdSource talking about the state's approach to early literacy and mostly in response to the EdSource articles, which were critical of the state. And has talked openly about, the words I never thought I heard, that California has things to learn from Mississippi about how to [teach] reading. And so, you know, if you roll the clock back to our conference calls in 2021, I don't think any of us would've expected to see any of those things happen in 2022. So I think we made great progress during that time. That said, talk is cheap. Right? Acknowledging the problem is a critical first step, but it's literally only the first step.
Susan Lambert:Right.
Todd Collins:And we are still very, very far from actually changing the practices with kids in classrooms, which is the only thing that matters in this kind of effort. And so, you know, I think we've made some good progress. We've got everybody's attention. I think this is an emerging issue in California. People are starting to pay attention to it, but we're very far from actual policy and even further from actual effective change.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. And I've heard you make some interesting comments about that. So, you know, this whole season on the podcast, we've been really talking about, it's not just a single teacher in the classroom realizing that he or she needs to provide a different kind of instruction to those students sitting in front of them. It's also a building administrator understanding that a district leader getting it, school board members to be on board with changes that have to happen, parents, state-level policy. So when you think about all those layers of the system from the top all the way down to the bottom, what do you think it really takes to make some effective change?
Todd Collins:Well, I mean, yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head. And you've probably, I'm sure you've had Kymyona Burke on your—
Susan Lambert:Yeah. Kymyona Burke is amazing.
Todd Collins:Yeah. I mean , I'm a big fan, and she has a great slide and a nice narrative that goes with it, about how you have to think of this as a system. If the pieces of the system aren't all working together, then you just don't achieve sustained change. You may not even achieve temporary change. For instance, I'm sure some of your listeners remember Reading First, back in the early 2000s in California, that took the form of people getting handed Open Court and told to teach it. And they did. And results did go up. I mean, Open Court Reading First was a success in California. You can look at the program evaluations. But there was no groundwork laid to help teachers understand why they were doing what they were doing or getting building administrators to support what they were doing or getting teacher preparation programs to align with what they were doing. So the minute that those programs were no longer mandated, almost all of them went to the dumpster. And then in California, by the time I came along, 10 years later in 2018, started looking at this, it took me a long time to even figure out that that had ever happened. That Miriam Joseph had ever been the biggest name in California reading. And that California had been a leading promoter of phonics-based instruction, foundational skill instruction. It took me years to figure that out because it was buried so deep because they didn't take a sustainable approach. And that was one of the things I think needs to be different this time. You need to align the teacher preparation institutions you need to align, which means you have to get legislative action and you need to get your state leaders aligned. You need to train your existing group of teachers so they understand both the hows and the whys around this kind of instruction. You need to get building administrators fully on board 'cause they can't support what they don't understand and have never done themselves. You need to get assessment tools in place that are aligned with what you're trying to do, and then allow you to use the data so you can align your instruction with what the kids actually need to learn. All these things need to to happen together. You know, and there aren't a lot of examples of that. I think when you look at Mississippi, it's one of the very few examples that you can find in the world. England's the other one that I think of, that have actually pulled all those pieces together and created meaningful and sustainable change. And that's really what I think the thing we need to do in California. And there's a real danger around it because I think the instinct is, well, let's just do something. For instance, in California, we passed a law, or it was in the budget last year, that we have 250 million dollars for early literacy coaches.
Susan Lambert:Okay.
Todd Collins:And that sounds pretty good. Wow. 250 million dollars for literacy coaches, who would complain? Well, a couple things. One, it's 50 million dollars over five years, and 50 million dollars seems like a lot. But in the context of California, is a modest amount. California's got over 6,000 elementary schools, a thousand school districts.
Susan Lambert:Wow.
Todd Collins:So 50 million dollars doesn't go that far. The second thing is, in Mississippi, for instance, when they hired literacy coaches, that was done by the State Department of Education who trained them in what they want 'em to do, and then deployed them into the schools where they were needed. In our case, we're funding literacy coaches to be hired by the districts and not giving them any direction on what kind of reading instruction that they should focus on. So the most likely result, I think, without some further intervention, is they'll just double down on the programs they already have. And since almost everybody in California is a balanced literacy district, you know, using traditional basal readers, we did a study last year that you may have seen, the California Reading Curriculum Report, that showed that 85% of districts use one of three programs, Wonders, Benchmark, and , Journey. And less than 2% use any programs that are aligned with the Science of Reading. So if we deploy literacy coaches without giving them any direction, they're gonna teach based on the curriculum that the districts already have. And we're gonna end up just doubling down on what we already have. It just shows that if you don't think about this as a system and don't touch all the parts of the system at the same time, the chances of getting success and sustaining success are actually pretty low. And my worry is that in many places, and California is one of them, we'll see people [saying], "I'm gonna try this," or "I'm gonna pass this legislation," or "I'm gonna ban three queuing," or "I'm gonna do this little thing and I'm gonna expect some kind of result." And they're gonna be disappointed. They won't get the result that they're looking for. And then people are gonna say, "I told you that wasn't gonna work." And then Science of Reading will go on the education reform pile of things that might have worked if they'd ever been done correctly, but no one ever bothered to actually do it. That's my big concern about going forward, is if we don't do the full system approach, we won't get the results that we want.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Now, I think though, didn't California just recently pass some legislation for teacher training?
Todd Collins:They did , Senate Bill 488, which is a huge success, which requires the California Teaching—the CTC. I'll blow the acronym if I try to spell it out.
Susan Lambert:That's all right .
Todd Collins:Which is responsible for accrediting institutions that prepare teachers. That they had to incorporate what amount to Science and Reading concepts into their curriculum. That's part of the assessment. And the people at Decoding Dyslexia have been amazing. They were the co-sponsors of the bill and they have been amazing at both getting that bill passed and now helping oversee the implementation of it or helping drive the implementation of it. But that's a big effort. I mean, just making sure that the CTC faithfully incorporated the requirements into their documents that become the requirements for the district, for the institutions of higher ed, a very big effort. Then making sure that once it's incorporated in that, that they actually follow through and hold the teacher prep programs accountable for doing the things that are now in the standards. We're asking people to do things they haven't done before. And so, without continuous oversight and really leadership from the top, I think it's very hard to sustain those kind of hard-change efforts. And that's, let me just mention that, 'cause I think that's an ingredient that doesn't get talked about enough, that they had in Mississippi. Leaders have a critical function. They communicate to everybody in a state or in an organization what's important and of all the things that are competing for their time and their attention, what they really should spend their effort on. In Mississippi, they had a series of governors, legislators, they had Carey Wright, the head of the Department of Education there, all preaching from the same hymnal year after year after year, talking about how important literacy was and how they needed to , we needed to change how literacy was done in Mississippi. That's, in my view, and I think if you talk to the people in Mississippi, they agree, critical to their success. It's easy to take that for granted. And we don't have that in California, but I think until your state gets everyone kind of saying, "No, this is really one of our state's top priorities, and it's going to be this year, next year, five years from now, we're still gonna be talking about this." Until you do that, you can't get the kind of sustained change across a very large number of people like any state school system. So I think that's a critical element that we need to develop in California.
Susan Lambert:I think that's a really, really important comment. Not just for California, but anybody doing this work. I mean, for Mississippi, from my understanding, it took years. Right? So it doesn't happen overnight. It's dedication, it's commitment, keeping this focus ever in front of us. And it's a reminder that the work is so important, that it's not one and done . It's actually something that we have to continue year over year over year, over year over year.
Todd Collins:So, somebody I admire, and I don't know if you've ever had anybody from Colorado on your podcast, Colorado passed the, what they call the Read Act in, I wanna say 2014, 2013. And they implemented it, it was a reading reform effort along the lines of Mississippi, not as rigorous and as fully fleshed out as Mississippi, but a high-profile effort on their part. And they went and implemented it and they were very disappointed. They did not get the results that they were looking for. And there's, I think, some specific things that they did differently than Mississippi that kind of went there. But that's not the main point of the story. But in 2019, when they looked back at what they did, they found that they were disappointed. They had thought this would be a real game changer . In fact, results did not improve much at all. But instead of giving up, instead of giving up, the legislature there doubled down and went back to the original legislation and amended it to address what they, the weaknesses that they had then seen. Now, that's just now getting implemented because obviously the pandemic intervened. I have tremendous admiration for that because the easiest thing in the world to say is, especially in legislatures where the people turn over and it's not the same governor anymore, everything's changed, the easiest thing to say is, "Well, that was somebody else's failed initiative, I guess I'll never do that." And go work on something else that you can take credit for. They didn't do that. They said, "No, this is really important. We've gotta finish what we started. We've gotta fix what doesn't work." And I've done meaningful changes to the Read Act that I think they hope, and I certainly hope, benefit the kids in Colorado. That's the approach, that's the right approach. You can't, it's not a one-and-done approach.
Susan Lambert:And that's really interesting, taking that concept of looking at what didn't work and doubling down on trying something else. That's a great message. Not just at the state level, but at the district level and the school level. And the classroom level, right? For all of us to say, "No, literacy is too important to our kids sitting in front of us and to the future. We, we gotta figure out how to make it work, not just throw it out and say we can't figure it out."
Todd Collins:Well, I'm a school board member. Let me talk about the school board's role in this. Something my school board has done, some other school boards in California have done, is set specific goals around reading improvement by subgroup over the next, in my district's case, three years, I've seen other districts do it for five years and say, you know, this is one of our, San Francisco Unified just recently did this for instance. Los Angeles Unified has done it, is they have specific measurable goals on the state achievement tests that said for third graders, or for all kids , or for whatever subgroup, however way they divide it up, "We're gonna move from this number to this number over the next three or five years and here's our year by year . This is what we expect year by year ." And they're not telling the superintendent what to do. They're not saying, "And therefore go implement Science of Reading" or "Get this curriculum or do this," but "You better do something, because we are gonna hold you, Mr. Superintendent or Ms . Superintendent, accountable for results on this particular thing." And I know, you know, I'm a school board member. We deal with that in my district. I think superintendents are very attentive to that kind of direction, and frankly appreciated above it, because everybody wants to be successful in their job. The only way to be successful if you know what your boss thinks is important. And know what their performance expectations are. That kind of work by the board makes it very explicit what that person should be working on in the next year. And helps them when they go talk to their staff, to principals, to teachers who say, "Well I don't wanna change, why are we doing this?" It's like, "Hey, the board told me that we have to get these results. So we have to do something. Business as usual is not gonna be good enough. We're gonna have to do something." I think board members, and that also applies to state policy makers, and it can also apply to principles, can make those kind of goals for their schools or for their districts or for other states that help people focus on, "Hey, I've gotta figure this out." You don't have to tell 'em what to do, but you need to tell 'em what the goal is.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. That's important. A little aside on that, you've been involved in this school board work for a while now. How have you found yourself encouraging other school board members? Have you been doing work in that space, too, of encouraging them, helping them understand how to focus? Seems to me like it's an important role.
Todd Collins:I do. I think I ran into you once at the National School Board Association meeting. So yes, I've done that and I do it also in California. One of the things that the Reading Coalition is taking on for this year, one of our resolutions for 2023, is we're promoting to other districts in California that they should pass resolutions. And we're gonna develop a model resolution for them that specifically incorporate what we just talked about, setting early literacy goals for their district and getting the leadership of the district to rally around early literacy as a top priority. Oakland was the first district I saw do that. And they did a fantastic job. San Francisco has now done it. And so there, there's some good examples out there. And we just need to bring that to, one of the things that I found about being on school board is you get elected, but no one really tells you what the job really is. And most school board members, I don't think I'm saying anything that most people don't know, most school members are just trying to figure out what there is they're supposed to be doing. They arrive at all kinds of different solutions, ideas. They ran for school board for all kinds of different reasons. They don't necessarily all have good examples around them of what school boards are supposed to do. They don't get a lot of training. They mostly get training about how to avoid violating the law. But how to be an effective school board member is sort of up to you to figure out. And I think helping school board members understand that my job is to set the priorities for the district and manage the performance of the superintendent. Those are the two non-negotiables. If I don't do that, nobody does those things. And so understanding that that's arguably your main job and that early literacy can be one of the bellwether things that your district can focus on and kind of model that behavior. I think school board members are pretty happy to hear about that because it's like, it makes sense. It's not controversial. It's not pushing an agenda. It's just, "Hey, do we all agree we should teach kids to read? Let's make that a top priority. And let's hold our superintendent accountable for improving the results of our district." I think most school board members, when they hear that, are like, "I can sign up for that."
Susan Lambert:Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I wonder, to hear you talk about literacy now, well first of all, I'm just dying to know, like 10 years ago, you probably would've never thought, "I'm gonna be like sort of a quasi-expert on what it takes to get kids to learn how to read." You never anticipated that for yourself, I'm sure.
Todd Collins:Uh, definitely not. Five years ago, three years ago. It really was just driven, I mean, like I said, I was trying to do my job as a school board member and figure out where my district needed to improve. And I just found this glaring thing. And it's like, and that's one of the things I, one of the things that puzzles me about education, I mean, you're an educator, maybe you can explain it, is I looked at these numbers, you know, and some of the numbers that I quoted earlier, I'm always surprised when people don't have a visceral reaction to those numbers.
Susan Lambert:Mm-hmm .
Todd Collins:Like, there are people who take California as a model for the rest of the country and say, "We're doing great." And I look at those numbers and I don't understand that. I can't, I think we're doing terrible. I think this is terrible. I mean this , I , this is like, can't sleep at night, terrible. I don't understand why people aren't screaming and yelling. It's like, so why do you think that is? 'Cause I find that educators, are they just used to seeing these numbers? Why is it that it doesn't get the visceral reaction that it does with me?
Susan Lambert:I don't. A million million dollar question, I think. I'm not exactly sure. I talk a lot about, you know, the, anytime anybody talks about early literacy at a conference, we talk about the NAEP scores and how flat they've been for so many years. And I think sometimes it's just like the elephant in the room. Like we just, it's there, but we don't wanna talk about, about how it smells or tastes or sounds or looks or any of that. So, I mean, I think that's a reason we started this podcast is to start saying, "Hey, we've, we've got an issue. Let's help teachers understand what it takes and let's bring attention to the issue on all kind of levels." So I wish I had a good answer for that, but I don't.
Todd Collins:Let me just say 'cause you had mentioned, I think this is really important to say, teachers aren't the problem. Teachers are the solution.
Susan Lambert:I agree.
Todd Collins:Because I mean, when I talk to teachers and when I look at what teachers do, it's like, it's not their job . You know , districts choose curriculum, teacher preparation programs train you for your profession. District provided PD gives you, it's supposed to give you the tools you need to be successful. If you're not given the tools to be successful, they can't then turn around and blame you for the result. That's not the way it works. Right? So I think this is really, I mean, I look at it and I think it's a failure of leadership and they haven't just failed the kids. They failed the teachers as well. 'Cause, God, I mean, every teacher I know, you know, teachers work, I don't have to tell you and your audience, they work incredibly hard. They're incredibly dedicated to their profession. They care deeply about the kids that are seated in front of them every day . And it's like, they wanna be successful as much as anybody I've ever met. So I think giving them the tools and giving them the constructs where they actually can be successful, I find most of them are, you know, every teacher I've ever run into that was greeted with that kind of support was welcoming of it . So, you know, teachers aren't the problem here. Teachers are the solution.
Susan Lambert:Mic drop to that one. I, you know, a hundred percent agree with that. You know, I wonder how going through this process, both as the school board member starting this coalition, understanding the data, digging into how kids learn how to read, how has this whole process changed your thinking about literacy instruction and maybe what's possible?
Todd Collins:Yeah. That's an interesting question. I, and like I said, I'm not an educator, so I didn't really come into this with expectations. In fact, one of the things I asked when I saw that 80% of the low-income Latino kids in my district were below grade level, I mean, I'll be honest. I said, "I don't know if that's, it seems terrible, but I don't know if it's terrible or not. Maybe we're the best district in the state. Maybe everybody gets 20%." So I actually, I'm a data-driven person. I went out and got the data that became the California Reading Report Card that ranked districts across the state on that very measure. And found out that my own district was in the bottom 5% of all districts in California. So we weren't just bad on an absolute basis, we were bad relative to all the other districts in California. So then I knew something was not right about the way we were doing things. But I, one of the things I've found is I've gone around and I've looked at other programs and I've looked at other states that have changed and other countries that have changed, is that our expectations seem to be too low. When I look at Mississippi, which went from absolutely at the bottom, and people look at the overall NAEP scores, but in my view, that's not the right way to look at it, because when you're comparing NAEP scores overall, you're really comparing the demographics of different states.
Susan Lambert:Yep.
Todd Collins:Mississippi has 75, 76% of the students are low income. And Massachusetts is like 36. So if you compare Mississippi and Massachusetts, you say, "Wow, Massachusetts is better." No. They're just, they're richer. And you know, California , 18% of the students are English learners.
Susan Lambert:Mm-hmm.
Todd Collins:So, you have to incorporate the demographic differences between 'em . So I only compare subgroups to subgroups.
Susan Lambert:Okay.
Todd Collins:When you look at subgroup scores for Mississippi, Mississippi is in the top five states in the nation for black students, the top five states in the nation for Latino students, top five states in the nation for English learners. That's all for fourth-grade reading. I mean, I look at that and that just blows me away. And you know , the people of Mississippi would be the first to tell you , it's like, "We swung for the fences 'cause we were at the bottom and we were sick of everybody telling us that we were at the bottom. We were sick of it ." And so they said, "No, we can shoot for the stars here." And they did . And I think that's, we have low expectations both of students, I mean, I think even the levels that high-performing districts in California have, are not nearly high enough. And like I said, the high, so in my California Reading Report Card, Bonita Unified, which is a lovely district, I really admire them. They had 63% of low-income Latino students at grade level for third grade. That's great. They're the number one in California, but it's only 63%. I mean that's, you know, if you brought a 63 home on your report card, mom's not gonna be very happy. So I think there's, we have low expectations of what we can achieve and we ultimately, that translates into low expectations of our students. And we know low expectations is the nail in the coffin of student success. If the teachers don't believe they can succeed, why would the kid ?
Susan Lambert:Right.
Todd Collins:So we need to change that. We need to have much higher expectations. I think the idea that 80, 90+ percent kids can be at grade level, that's absolutely achievable. But it won't happen unless we focus on that as a result and we kind of build that into our expectations about what we should be doing.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. Another great message for all layers of the system here that are trying to accomplish this.
Todd Collins:And one of the things I like about Bonita, if I can just toot their horn for a second. Their board adopted a 90% proficiency goal for reading.
Susan Lambert:Wow.
Todd Collins:They did it I think six or seven years ago, way, way before all this, you know, reading fashionability. They weren't really focused per se on the Science of Reading or anything else. They just decided reading was really important. And I think they said setting goals is really important and they decided 90% was a good goal.
Susan Lambert:Hmm . That's amazing.
Todd Collins:And my hat's off to them . I think that's a great way to think, to go about your business.
Susan Lambert:And then taking that goal and really digging into, "Okay, what does that mean day to day to day? And how do we actually solve that?"
Todd Collins:And they did. If you ever wanna talk to another person that maybe you can interview on your podcast , Chris Ann Horsley, who is now actually a newly elected school board member in Bonita Unified. Was until last year the head of literacy, I forget, director of literacy at the school district and had been a principal before that and had brought kind of their literacy regime to the district when she was in her principal role. Very data-driven person focused on results. Just wants to find things that work
Susan Lambert:Right.
Todd Collins:And has developed a group of people in that district who kind of collectively do that now. And that's a model that I think any school district, any building, any school district, any state can follow. So, and she did it, you know, I think Chris Ann would be the first person to tell you she's not superwoman, she doesn't have an S, doesn't wear cape. I mean, she's a person who goes to work like the rest of us every day and just tries to do a good job. And, you know , she accomplished amazing things in that district along with her colleagues. You know , I think it shows that it can be done and we just need to set our expectations high.
Susan Lambert:For sure. Well, shout out to them and the work that they're doing. Thank you for doing that. So when you think about the California Reading Coalition and some accomplishments that you hope for the future, you've already mentioned one for 2023, something that you'd like to do. How do you see this sort of playing out, this coalition, over the next three to five years?
Todd Collins:Well, yeah, that's something we think about. The North Star for us is comprehensive state reading policy. And the reason for that is pretty simple. Like I said before, we have a thousand school districts in California. I think it's unreasonable to ask a thousand school districts to independently develop their approach to reading independently, figure out curriculum independently, figure out training independently, you know, evaluate teacher preparation programs. School districts are pretty busy.
Susan Lambert:Yeah.
Todd Collins:That's a lot to ask. And so, the state needs to do that for them, and frankly, most school districts want the state to do that for them. They want to be told what direction to go in, they rely on the state for that kind of forward-looking view of what's important and how to do it. So if you don't have your state providing that kind of guidance, then you can still make progress. And we're making progress in California. But you're gonna miss a lot of kids because most districts are gonna wait for guidance from the state. So that's our North Star. I think this year, you know, the first thing on the list was , acknowledged there's a problem. I think we've checked that off the list. Now, the harder work begins. It's like, well, what do the solutions actually look like? And I think we'll be spending a lot of time now working with, starting to work with lawmakers and policy leaders in Sacramento to help them understand kind of what the policy alternatives are. 'Cause this is one of the things that seems obvious in retrospect, but I didn't really think about it, most legislators know absolutely nothing about this topic. They understand nothing about education. They know even less about teaching reading. They just don't, why would they? And so educating about why this is so important and why doing it a certain way as opposed to other things that might sound good aren't gonna be good enough, getting that kind of thought leadership among legislators and finding champions who will kind of pick up, understand the whole and try to educate their colleagues, that's gotta happen. And that's one of the things that we're really focused on. The other thing we're really focused on is we're not waiting for that. We're encouraging districts to take this on on their own, districts that are ready. And like I said, we talked about putting together a resolution that districts, that school boards can take up and ask their districts to make, having their districts make this a top priority and have their superintendents focus on it. That's one of the main goals for next year. And the last goal is, I mean, none of this really matters until— I'm a numbers guy. In business, I'm in the finance business, we always say it doesn't really matter until it shows up in the numbers. If you don't see it in the numbers, then why do we think it even happened? This goes with something that you, I know you talk about. It's like, this is really about kids. It's not about adults. The adults are just there to serve the kids.
Susan Lambert:Yeah.
Todd Collins:So if we're not seeing the results that improve student achievement, then it's not clear to me what we've accomplished. And one of the things I worry about, like I said before, is that we'll do, we'll push, there's a lot of initiatives going on in a lot of places, school districts in California states and schools across the nation. I haven't seen as many results as I'd like to see. I mean, I see Mississippi, you know, fantastic NAEP results. But I see other states that had initiatives that didn't have great NAEP results. And I think as we start doing these initiatives, we can't congratulate ourselves on having done initiatives. An initiative never, you know, made a kid successful in school. The only person who makes a kid successful school is a teacher standing in front of that kid, teaching them what they need to know. So we gotta start seeing that happen and seeing it in the numbers. And I think I really hope 2023 brings, both in California and elsewhere, more examples of states that are seeing, or school districts or schools, that are seeing growth and student achievement in reading, and getting 'em to talk about it. 'Cause I think that those results, that's what really makes the difference. That's what convinces policy leaders, principals, teachers themselves, when you see a district actually improve that's using this approach, you're like, "Wow, I guess that really works."
Susan Lambert:Mm-hmm.
Todd Collins:So I'm hoping that'll be something we'll see more of in 2023.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. I love that. And you know, I was gonna ask you to sort of close with, w hen I say the phrase, "It's all about the kids," what does that mean to you i n your work? But you clearly already answered that.
Todd Collins:Oh, sorry about that. I didn't mean to preempt it .
Susan Lambert:No, no, no, I love that. And it sort of feels like you've come full circle because you started this work on a school board digging into and really highlighting the fact that there were some kids that weren't being successful. And so now I just appreciate that you give the reminder that policies are an important first step, but it doesn't mean anything if we don't see the student achievement change.
Todd Collins:Yeah. It really , that's all that matters. A credo that I've picked up in my district , I actually got it from one of our assistant Sups who said something like this at a school board meeting. He's like, "We simply can't call ourselves a great school district unless we get great results for our most challenged and least resourced students."
Susan Lambert:Hmm .
Todd Collins:And I really like that. I've got, in fact, I've got it, I usually have a prop with me. I've got it framed in my office.
Susan Lambert:Wow.
Todd Collins:Because I'm not a career educator, so there's a lot about education I don't know, but I know that's true.
Susan Lambert:Yeah.
Todd Collins:And so, if when we look at our results, we don't see the kind of results we want for our most challenged and least resourced students, then we know that we have to focus on that. And talk by itself is not focused enough. I know in my school district, we've historically, it's not a new thing to be concerned about the low achievement among low-income students, but it's a relatively new thing to do something about it.
Susan Lambert:Yeah.
Todd Collins:And doing something, you know, people's apple carts will get upset. People will not like it . It'll require change that they're not gonna be comfortable with. People have to go beyond their comfort zone to find it. But if that's what it takes to make kids successful, that's what we need to do. And that's what sustains me in this work. And I'm sure many of your listeners too.
Susan Lambert:Yes. Well, that feels like a really good place to stop. Todd, we appreciate you joining us and I appreciate the work that you're doing for students in your district, but also , for shedding a light on the issue around the state of California and around the country. So thank you again and we will link our listeners in the show notes to all of the resources that you talked about. But thanks again for joining us.
Todd Collins:Thanks, Susan. This was great.
Susan Lambert:Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Todd Collins, member of the Palo Alto School Board and an organizer of the California Reading Coalition. Check out the show notes for a link to the California Reading Report Card. And thank you so much for listening to season six of Science of Reading the podcast. Before we close it out, we have one last surprise for you. All season long we've been asking our guests, if I say the phrase, "It's all about the kids," what does that mean to you? So before we close out the season, we wanna share again some of our guests' responses to that question. If you're like me, I think you'll find them inspiring to listen to again and again.
Rebecca Kockler:I think to me, what it means is that we have to stop accepting incremental progress.
Jennifer Throndsen:For me, it is all about the students, but also all about the adults supporting those students.
Mimi Stewart:To me, this is a fairness issue, it's an equity issue, it's a social and emotional issue.
Dr. Nyshawana Francis:We have to remember who we are serving and why we are serving them. And the best way to do that is talk to a young person.
Matt Reeves:When we say it's all about the students, it's not just about the students today. Because sometimes, honestly, today is hard. Today they don't necessarily like us and appreciate it. I never had anybody say, "Oh, thank you Mr. Reeves for that rigorous assignment," but I hope you've had the experience, when we say "It's all about the students," of what they tell you, 10 years later, they come back to your classroom and they thank you for how you helped them succeed in college or succeed in the job.
Chester Finn, Jr.:We sort of policy wonks occasionally get all tangled up in our own arguments over kind of which side of the bread is the butter on, and we forget that somebody's ultimately supposed to turn that into a sandwich that nourishes a kid for lunch. I mean, we have 50 million public school kids in America today. That's a whole lot of people. And the future of the country kind of depends on what's happening to them during those 12 grades or 13 grades of school.
Jasmine Rogers:We have got to give our students access to this code so that they can become literate and run our society one day. This includes students who speak multiple dialects, who speak different languages, making sure that, the whole purpose of language is to communicate, that children are able to communicate well with one another, that they're able to communicate their thoughts or ideas and that they're able to receive communication by reading language so that our society can carry on and so that they can grow up to be happy and healthy people who can vote in, order pizza ,and, I dunno , read a magazine or read the captions at the bottom of Netflix, right?
Margaret Goldberg:I think one of the things that I've really realized is that I have to take myself out of the equation. It's not about how I wanna spend my time, not about the things that I like, not about my own personality or my own opinions or theories , like it really is, my work is good when it works for kids, and it works for kids when it works for teachers.
Mitchell Brookins:My calling is so that children can then one day stand on their own without the scaffolds, that children would one day reap the benefits that literacy is liberty, that children would one day be able to teach someone else. The power that only literacy can bring.
Mimi Stewart:Our students are just too important to not learn how to teach them how to read.
Susan Lambert:If you missed any of the 13 episodes in season six, scroll back in your podcast feed or find them on our website, amplify.com/science-of-reading-the-podcast. We'd love to know what you thought of this season. The best place to keep in touch is our Facebook discussion group, Science of Reading: The Community. Before we jump into season seven, we have a couple special episodes coming your way, including the return of our very first podcast guest, Natalie Wexler.
Natalie Wexler:What isn't getting articulated clearly or getting mentioned sometimes is that they're, just as there are serious problems with how we have been approaching decoding instruction, there are equally serious problems with how we've been approaching comprehension instruction, and that's the message that I think is not getting out.
Susan Lambert:That's next time on Science of Reading: The Podcast, and thank you so much for listening.