Massachusetts
Senate to vote on long-awaited reading overhaul aimed at boosting achievement for high-needs groups – The Boston Globe
The Senate bill echoes legislation unanimously passed by the State House in October, part of a multi-year effort in Massachusetts to overhaul reading instruction methods.
Senator Sal DiDomenico, the Senate leader on the legislation, said the bill is vital to ensure the state’s high educational achievement applies to all groups.
“We rest on our laurels a lot about being #1 in education across the nation, but when you dig a little deeper, it’s a tale of two cities,” DiDomenico said. “Only four out of 10 third-graders are reaching benchmarks at reading.”
The numbers are worse for subgroups such as Black students, low income students, and English learners, DiDomenico noted. Just 14 percent of students with disabilities, for example, are meeting benchmarks, he said.
The bill has the backing of Governor Maura Healey and Senate President Karen Spilka, alongside a coalition of groups known as Mass Reads that includes education reform-linked groups like charter schools, civil rights groups like the Boston branch of the NAACP, and business groups. (A number of the members of MassReads have received grants from the Barr Foundation, which also helps fund the Globe’s Great Divide education reporting team.)
The bill faces opposition from some organizations, however, including the state’s largest teacher’s union and an education professor whose curriculum could be prohibited in Massachusetts schools.
The Senate proposal diverges most notably from the House by requiring the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to provide a complete kindergarten-to-Grade 3 curriculum for free to schools. That provision could in part address the concerns of local district that the legislation is a unfunded mandate on local governments.
The Senate plan also eliminates a ban, which the House bill included, on “three-cueing,” a widely disparaged technique that involves using context like pictures instead of phonics to figure out unfamiliar words.
If the bill passes, the House and Senate will need settle any differences before sending the legislation to Healey for her signature. In a statement, the governor praised the bill.
“We have been proud to partner with the Legislature to increase literacy funding, and this bill is another important step toward ensuring every student has high-quality literacy education,” she said.
The Senate will address dozens of proposed amendments to the bill before voting Thursday, including one that would largely defang it by removing the requirement that all curriculums get state approval. Others would increase the state’s responsibility to cover costs, along with various proposals not directly related to reading.
As part of its bill, the House passed a union-backed set of amendments centered around promoting librarians, reading specialists, and other school-based literacy staff. Similar amendments are also before the Senate.
Similar bills have failed in the Legislature for years in the face of opposition from the Massachusetts Teachers Association and some local school districts. Critics have decried proposals as restricting teachers’ autonomy to adapt to student needs and disputed the validity of the “Science of Reading” movement, a body of research in part underlying the bills that emphasizes phonics as a key to early reading success.
“Curriculum mandates are an oversimplified response to a complex problem,” said Max Page, president of the union, in a statement. “There is no proof that such mandates yield sustained success in any of the states that have passed so-called literacy laws.”
The legislation has drawn less coordinated opposition than it did in some prior years. The Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents opposed similar legislation in 2024, for example, but has largely sat out the current battle.
Supporters argue a mandate is needed to stop districts from using curriculums the state considers low-quality, a widespread practice covered by the Globe’s Great Divide education team in a 2023 investigation. Mary Tamer, the founder and executive director of MassPotential, a Boston-based education advocacy organization that is part of the MassReads coalition, said teachers will benefit from the curriculum requirement.
“We know, having followed what other states have done, the tremendous difference it can be make when a district is not only using the proper instructional materials but when teachers are trained in the use of those materials,” Tamer said. “We want to make sure every principal, every teacher has access to high-quality instructional materials.”
Most states have passed some sort of “Science of Reading” law in the last few years, many with limited results. But proponents of the Massachusetts bill point to states like Louisiana and Mississippi, which have bucked the nationwide decline in achievement over the past decade in part via comprehensive reading instruction reforms.
Both sides agree that much will depend on the bill’s implementation. The state-provided curriculum, for example, could come in any number of forms: The state could expand its existing Appleseeds literacy materials, which currently cover only Kindergarten to Grade 2; it could develop something new; or it could license and adapt other existing materials, such as the free University of Florida Literacy Institute Foundations Toolbox.
One of the biggest concerns from critics has been cost, with the union opponents arguing that the proposals to date do not go far enough in paying for the transition. The Senate bill would create a new special fund, seeded with $25 million in Millionaires’ Tax funds, which the state’s education department could use to develop or adapt the free curriculum, and provide grants to districts to help them implement the law.
Healey and the state Legislature have already provided tens of millions of dollars in funding for curriculum improvements, teacher training, and tutoring over the last few years. In her 2027 budget proposal released on Wednesday, Healey proposed further increasing that investment.
Similarly, the state already publishes a list of curriculums it considers high-quality, based on reviews by Massachusetts teachers and by groups such as EdReports, a North Carolina-based nonprofit that evaluates teaching materials. But that list could grow or change in the future, particularly as new curricula are published in response to similar laws across the nation.
Both bills allow districts to seek waivers from the state list by demonstrating their curriculums align with the law’s definition of evidence-based instruction. Several amendments before the Senate would expand waivers to cover districts or schools that prove they have strong reading results, regardless of curriculum.
“At the very least, let the schools and districts that are doing really well off the hook,” said Lynn Schade, a former teacher and teacher training provider who opposes the bill. “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.”
Christopher Huffaker can be reached at christopher.huffaker@globe.com. Follow him @huffakingit.
Massachusetts
New Bedford MS-13 Member, Illegal Alien Pleads Guilty to Role in Brutal Murders In Massachusetts, Virginia
Frankli
Police shot and killed a man who officials say rushed officers with a knife during a call in Lexington, Massachusetts, on Saturday.
Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan said the situation started around 1:40 p.m. when Lexington police received a 911 call from a resident of Mason Street reporting that his son had injured himself with a knife.
Officers from the Lexington Police Department and officers from the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council (NEMLEC), who were already in town for Patriots’ Day events, responded to the call.
Police were able to escort two other residents out of the home, initially leaving a 26-year-old man inside. According to Ryan, while officers were setting up outside, the man ran out of the home and approached officers with a large kitchen knife.
She added that police tried twice to use non-lethal force, but it was not effective in stopping him. The man was shot by a Wilmington police officer who is a member of NEMLEC. The man was pronounced dead on scene and the officer who fired that shot was taken to a local hospital as a precaution.
The man’s name has not been released.
Ryan said typically in a call like this where someone was described as harming themselves, officers would first try to separate anyone else to keep them out of danger, which was done, and then standard practice would be to try to wait outside.
“It would be their practice to just wait for the person to come out. In the terrible circumstances of today, he suddenly rushed the officers, still clutching the knife,” Ryan said.
The investigation is still in the preliminary stages and more information is expected in time. Ryan said her office will request a formal inquest from the court to review whether any criminal conduct has occurred, which is the standard process.
This happened around the same time as the annual Patriots’ Day Parade, and just hours after a reenactment of the Battle of Lexington, which drew large crowds to town.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Massachusetts
‘An impossible choice’: With little federal help to combat rising costs, Head Start looks to Massachusetts for more help – The Boston Globe
In Massachusetts, roughly 1,300 slots for children across Head Start’s 28 agencies have been eliminated in the last three years because federal funding has plateaued over that time, while the cost of running the program continues to rise, according to the Massachusetts Head Start Association. Nationally, Head Start enrollment dropped from 1.1 million kids in 2013 to around 785,000 in 2022, according to research by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
“If they didn’t get into a Head Start program, they would be sitting at home,” said Brittany Acosta, a Head Start parent in Dorchester.
It’s teachers are drastically underpaid, and there’s a serious need for a rainy day-type fund should the federal government shut down again, the association says. As they’ve done in years past, state lawmakers have offered to provide financial relief, but the Massachusetts Head Start Association’s request for 3 percent above the amount it received last year, an additional $4.6 million to help its staff keep up with the state’s rising cost of living, so far has not been allocated.
Last year, President Trump’s leaked budget proposal revealed he considered eliminating Head Start entirely. Then, in the summer, he cut off Head Start enrollment for immigrants without legal status. And during the fall’s government shutdown, four Head Start centers in Massachusetts closed because they couldn’t access their funding.
Trump’s latest budget proposal shows a fourth year without increasing funding for the program, which was established in the mid-1960s.
Michelle Haimowitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Head Start Association, said the program doesn’t want to eliminate more child slots than it already has, but paying teachers a competitive salary is equally important in order to keep them from leaving for higher paying jobs. Head Start teachers make under $50,000 annually compared to over $85,000 for the average Massachusetts kindergarten teacher.
“It’s an impossible choice,” Haimowitz said. “When we reduce the size of our programs, we’re not reducing the size of the need.”
Massachusetts is one of few states that supplements federal funding for Head Start, and last year it increased the program’s state grant from $5 million to $20 million, adding to the $189 million in federal aid it receives in this state.
“We can’t run a program without giving staff a raise for three years,” Haimowitz said. “Our next fight now is not just for survival, but it’s for thriving and growth.”
The Massachusetts House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday released its budget, which doesn’t grant Head Start’s request of a 3 percent boost. But state Representative Christopher Worrell filed an amendment for additional funding. Worrell, whose district covers parts of Dorchester and Roxbury, said he loves Head Start’s embrace of culture, recalling one visit to a center where he could smell staff cooking stew chicken, a traditional Caribbean dish.
“I’ve been to dozens of schools throughout the district, and you don’t get that home-cooked meal,” Worrell said. “[The state is] stepping up and doing the best we can with what we have.”
At the Action for Boston Community Development’s Head Start and Early Head Start center in Dorchester, the children of Classroom 7 arrived one Monday morning and dove into bins of magnetic tiles before their teachers, Paola Polanco and Leolina Rasundar Chinnappa, served breakfast. Acosta dropped off her 4-year-old daughter, Violeta, before reporting to her teaching position at the center, where several other Head Start parents also work.
“It’s important for all Head Start parents to have the opportunity to give their child an experience in a learning environment before they actually start kindergarten,” Acosta said.
Beyond providing early education and care to children of low-income families, from birth to age 5, the program helps them access other resources, including mental health services, SNAP benefits, homelessness assistance, and employment opportunities.
It also serves as daycare for parents who might not be able to afford it, while they’re at work.
Research has shown the importance of preschool in a child’s development with one 2023 study, focused on Boston public preschools, finding that it improves student behavior and increases the likelihood of high school graduation and college enrollment.
For Rickencia Clerveaux and Christopher Mclean, the Dorchester Head Start center is the only place they feel comfortable sending their 3-year-old son, Shontz, who is on the autism spectrum. Shontz’s stimming — repetitive movements that stimulate the senses — has reduced, and his speech has improved since he joined the center in 2024, Clerveaux said.
His parents say he’s also come out of his shell. Mclean now drops his son off and gets a simple “bye” as Shontz joins his classmates, he said.
He and Clerveaux said they appreciate the specialized attention Shontz can receive from teachers, such as when staff identified that Shontz might have hearing issues. His parents were able to follow up with their doctor and get Shontz to have surgery to improve his hearing.
“It’s a safe net for parents,” Clerveaux said. “There’s so many ways that him being here helps him grow better.”
Without Head Start, Clerveaux said a lot of pressure would be put on parents to find care for their children, “knowing that they’re already struggling or not getting the ends to meet.”
“That’s a burden for everybody in the community,” she said. “If there’s no funding, there’s no daycare and parents cannot work.”
Lauren Albano can be reached at lauren.albano@globe.com. Follow her on X @LaurenAlbano_.
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