Evergreen Park ESD 124 presents CKLA curriculum focused on the "science of reading"

Megan Franco, assistant principal for the Northeast and Northwest schools in Evergreen Park ESD 124, presented the district’s newly adopted Core Knowledge Language Arts curriculum (CKLA) and described how it aligns with what she called the "science of reading," a research-informed approach that combines phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and background knowledge.

Franco opened the presentation with national literacy figures she said explain the urgency behind curriculum changes: "63 percent of all fourth graders read below grade level, 64 percent of all eighth graders read below grade level, 21 percent of adults in The United States are illiterate, and 54 percent of adults have literacy level below the sixth grade reading proficiency," noting these statistics during the talk but not citing an external source in the session. She used the numbers to frame…