Written by Gabbi Rodriguez
“I just don’t want to fail because of it.” Those words haunted me after my 9th grade student James quietly told me that he did not know how to read.
In my science classroom, he asked insightful questions: How do our bodies convert oxygen to carbon dioxide? How does lead get into water systems? James often made connections between his classes and the world around him, noticing ecosystem interactions in the park by his house and the ways that history has repeated itself in recent years. In many ways, James was ahead of his peers. And yet, when it came to literacy, he was years behind, reading at a preschool level. When informally assessed by our school’s head of special education, he struggled to sound out simple words like “that” and “was.” He had mastered the art of surviving school without learning how to read.
After James shared his fear of failing, I promised him that I would not let that happen in my classroom. But as I adapted my daily lessons to help him get by, I felt the weight of a hard truth: making my own materials accessible was merely a band-aid on a systemic wound. I knew that once he left my class—left our school—this gap in literacy would catch up to him and those survival skills wouldn’t serve him anymore.
Low literacy levels impact so many areas of life after school, from the ability to fill out job and apartment applications, to reading doctors instructions, and keeping up with your own child’s education. Studies have found that roughly half of adults in Philadelphia lack basic reading and writing skills. While this crisis is widespread, the opportunity to solve it starts where the journey began: our schools.
Nationwide, roughly 70% of 8th grade students read below grade level, with that number hovering at 82% in Philadelphia. While the district has invested in evidence-based early literacy strategies such as building students’ home libraries and individualized adaptive testing, its efforts are arriving too late for older students like James. These programs are focused on elementary schools while high schools work primarily with computer-based testing and interventions. For struggling high school readers, a screen-based intervention is no substitute for a teacher who can model the mechanics of reading in real-time.
We must move beyond elementary-only solutions and equip our secondary schools with the specialized staff needed to teach foundational literacy.
An essential first step is to ensure dedicated reading specialists support teachers and their students in every grade level. Since research in my district shows that these literacy-trained educators improve academic outcomes for elementary school students; they also could make a world of difference for older ones. A reading specialist, for instance, could help me teach my students like James how to decode science vocabulary, identify root words and common prefixes, and improve their understanding of what they read.
To expand the number of reading specialists across all schools, incentives—especially monetary support in the form of scholarships or state-covered fees—should be offered so that more teachers get their certification in reading. It typically costs educators at least $10,000 for this credential. I have multiple colleagues who would jump at the opportunity to earn this certification if tuition assistance was available.
READ: Bucks County Schools Roll Out AI Pilots, Training and Policies for the Classroom
Beyond certification, Pennsylvania should offer training for all high school teachers—just like that mandated for elementary and special education teachers—so they understand how we learn to read and what evidence-based strategies are best for older students with literacy gaps. If I had been equipped with the same diagnostic tools as my elementary colleagues, I could have moved beyond helping James “get by” and started teaching him how to read the world he is so eager to understand.
James dreams of being an animator when he graduates. On his way to this goal, he did not fail my science class, learning, for example, that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. By investing in the staff and resources James needs today, we can ensure he is not just surviving the school day—he is reading fluently and writing the next chapter of his life.
Gabbi Rodriguez is a high school science teacher in the School District of Philadelphia and a 2025-2026 Teach Plus Pennsylvania Policy Fellow.
