Kevin Kiley: “I rise to convey the good news that a bill that I am an original cosponsor of, the Science of Reading Act of 2026, has…”

“I rise to convey the good news that a bill that I am an original cosponsor of, the Science of Reading Act of 2026, has passed the Education and Workforce Committee with unanimous bipartisan support. This bill says something very simple, which is that funding for literacy should not be used for discredited approaches to teaching literacy. This is particularly urgent in my State. Sadly, California has the highest illiteracy rate in the entire country. A lot of that stems from the fact that we have a lot of challenges when it comes to education in California, and we have not, for a long time, in many schools, taught literacy in the right way. In fact, this has been a nationwide phenomenon where, starting in the 1970s, there was a departure from the traditional approach where students were taught to read by identifying letters and the sounds they represent. Instead, a new idea took hold called whole language, leaving behind the explicit instruction of phonics as old-fashioned. This new method, which came to be known as three-cueing or balanced literacy, encourages students to read by guessing an unknown word based on its context and structure within a sentence or even adjacent pictures in the book. This approach was at odds with the science of reading, which aims to ensure students develop strong foundational skills.”