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New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a set of bills Tuesday aimed at improving student reading proficiency, which dwindled after the COVID pandemic, by mandating literacy screenings for K-3 students and implementing new educator training on reading instruction next school year, among other initiatives.
“When it comes to overcoming barriers to literacy, we do not have time to waste,” Murphy said to a group of education advocates, educators, and lawmakers in the library of Park Elementary School, a pre-K-8 school in Newark’s North Ward where roughly 780 students are enrolled. Newark Superintendent Roger León, school board members, and a few parents and students were also in the audience at the news conference.
The two bills Murphy signed are intended to help improve students’ reading skills, require an early intervention program, and establish a new office in the state’s education department dedicated to equity and academic recovery, all of which hold special significance in Newark where youth literacy rates are struggling.
Reading proficiency for the city’s third graders took a nosedive after the pandemic, and city leaders and educators have been employing various initiatives over the last few years to help students recover. In 2019, 51.6% of Newark Public Schools’ third graders met state reading standards, a rate that dropped by nearly 15 percentage points in 2023, when only 36.9% of third graders were proficient.
Third grade is a particularly crucial time for reading in a child’s development, experts say, and reading proficiency at that grade level can predict what reading levels will be in eighth grade and beyond. Students of color in New Jersey are also more at risk of falling behind as reading proficiency levels among Black third graders in public schools started to decline in 2019, before the pandemic, according to a report by The Racial Equity Initiative.
“From birth to third grade you are learning to read,” Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz said at the news conference. “From third grade and beyond, you are reading to learn.”
Ruiz, an alumna of Newark Public Schools who represents the city as part of her legislative district, has been advocating for years for the literacy initiatives outlined in the two bills that Murphy signed.
One bill, S-2644, establishes a Working Group on Student Literacy within the Department of Education that will be dedicated to researching evidence-based literacy strategies, screenings, interventions for students, and professional development programs on literacy education for teachers. This group will present its recommendations to the state education department, and state officials will then publish guidance for districts on literacy strategies.
After that’s implemented, in the 2025-26 school year, traditional public school districts and charter school networks, which are privately run but publicly funded schools, will be mandated to conduct two literacy screenings annually for all K-3 students, and notify guardians of the results within 30 days.
The other bill, S-2647, establishes the Office of Learning Equity and Academic Recovery in the state education department, which will coordinate resources and research best practices for literacy, learning equity, and learning acceleration.
The legislation signed also includes $5.25 million to implement these literacy initiatives, which was earmarked in the 2025 state budget passed in June.
“We have generations of third graders that are not reading at grade level and if we don’t do something to shift course, we are complicit in that,” Ruiz said.
Several advocacy groups worked with Ruiz and other lawmakers on the policies.
“As we move forward and look to the new school year, there is still much to be done, especially when it comes to serving our most under-resourced learners, who are disproportionately Black and brown children,” said Paula White, executive director of JerseyCAN, an education policy nonprofit that was part of the collaborative effort behind the bills.
Newark school and city leaders have pushed various efforts over the last year to help student reading rates.
Last summer, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka declared an “urgent” literacy crisis throughout the city and launched a 10-point Youth Literacy Action plan that called on local schools, parents, community partners, and programs to get young children reading and writing.
The district also mandated 10,000 students last year to participate in summer programs to target math and reading, and school leaders last fall created a plan aimed to boost student performance in writing and English language arts.
Among the students at the bill signing was Kennedy, 8, a rising fourth grader at Park Elementary School, who was there with her mom, Sharmaine Maxey, of Newark.
Maxey proudly said that her daughter is part of the gifted and talented program at the school, loves to read, and was skipped from first grade to third grade last year.
“When you’re in a public school classroom, there’s such a variety of learning styles, and sometimes a teacher may need to pour more of her time into one student and take learning time away from another,” Maxey said, applauding the intervention programs the bills will trigger next school year. “As a mom of a gifted student, this news is precious to me because it’s the stepping stone that’s needed here in Newark.”
Jessie Gómez contributed to this story.
Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.
