Welcome to the Fall 2022 edition of the CORE Academic Quarterly newsletter! In this edition of the Academic Quarterly, the Reading Expert discusses early screening for students who may be at risk for reading difficulties or dyslexia and evaluating a child for a diagnosis of dyslexia. The Marvelous Mathematician explores effectively utilizing student mistakes for […]

Welcome to the Spring 2022 edition of the CORE Academic Quarterly newsletter! In this edition of the Academic Quarterly, the Reading Expert resurfaces an important topic related to the language comprehension portion of Scarborough’s Reading Rope—language structures, or syntax. The Marvelous Mathematician explores how developing teachers as self-directed learners can help organizations make the necessary […]

Professional learning and job-embedded coaching on how to deliver explicit reading instruction are essential to improving literacy outcomes for all students. But just as critical is the use of high-quality, evidence-based reading curricula, particularly when supporting striving readers at all grade levels. In a time when one in three K–3 students require major and systemic […]

The newest front in the never-ending wars and squabbles over how to teach reading involves English language learners (EL), students learning to read (and write) in English while simultaneously learning to speak and understand it. In the wake of renewed prominence of research supporting an early focus on phonics and decoding (aka the “science of […]

Welcome to the Winter 2022 edition of the CORE Academic Quarterly newsletter! In this edition of the Academic Quarterly, the Reading Expert provides recommendations for Tier 2 reading interventions in a time when universal screening data show that upwards of 80 percent of first- and second-grade students are performing below grade level on foundational literacy […]

100 AK educators will have the opportunity to strengthen their science of reading instructional practices  Portland, Ore., Oakland, Calif., Juneau, Alaska – February 3, 2022 – NWEA, CORE® and Alaska Staff Development Network (ASDN),  in partnership with the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development (DEED), announced today a new learning, collaboration, and coaching program […]

We all know it, but we still don’t want to believe it. Many of our students have fallen further and further behind in reading after nearly two years of disrupted learning. A report by McKinsey & Company, “COVID-19 and Education: The Lingering Effects of Unfinished Learning” (July 2021), estimates that on average students started this […]

Near the start of the 2020-21 school year, El Rancho Charter Middle School in Anaheim, California, opened its doors to a hybrid model of instruction, with some students attending classes in person and some students attending simultaneously online. In this interview with Dean Ballard, CORE’s Director of Mathematics, principal Michele Walker shares the experiences at […]

by Dr. Carrie Thomas Beck, Director of Literacy, CORE Almost 30 years ago, I had the opportunity to work with a student I will never forget. The year was 1993 and I was a new middle school teacher in a large district in the Midwest. I was a special education teacher, providing support to students […]

As a young child, Keyon Anderson knew that his brain didn’t work like other people’s. His peers were learning to read and he wasn’t. His teachers told him to try harder. His mother was told he would grow out of his reading difficulties. Keyon was diagnosed with a processing disorder and held back in the […]

by Linda Diamond, President, CORE and author of Teaching Reading Sourcebook and Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures “Once you learn to read you will be forever free.” Frederick Douglass As I get ready to retire from CORE in late December, I have been looking back at all of those who guided us along the way. CORE started inside an […]

Pajaro Valley Unified School District (CA) students whose teachers participated in training and instructional coaching provided by CORE achieved greater growth in their reading skills. Many factors contribute to student achievement but research conducted by SEG Measurement, an education research, evaluation, and assessment firm, has found that professional development provided by CORE moves the needle […]

A must-read blog by Barbara Crook, an ELA editor at Victory Productions, that clearly articulates the flaws in balanced literacy. An uneasy peace has settled over the land regarding phonics instruction and its critical contribution to reading competency. Since the heyday of whole language, phonics has returned to classrooms as part of a “balanced literacy” […]

By Dean Ballard, Director of Mathematics, CORE Remote instruction has moved to the top of almost everyone’s list of concerns. We are asking ourselves how to do it, will students be there, what will actually be learned, and what will this mean when we return to face-to-face instruction? I cannot tackle all of this in […]

by Linda Diamond, founder & former president, CORE and author of Teaching Reading Sourcebook and Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures I just finished listening to Emily Hanford’s last podcast on APM, What the Words Say. My husband wanted to know why I was crying.  I answered, “because I am so angry and so frustrated.” We have known for […]