• Recent data show that half of Utah’s students are not reading at grade level.
• S.B. 241 – Early Literacy is currently proposing more student interventions, individualized reading plans, third-grade retention, resources for paraprofessionals, and more.
• Education choice can help families find solutions to their child’s reading challenges at the individual level as well.

A highly anticipated literacy bill went public last week and passed out of a Utah legislative committee on Friday. Gov. Spencer Cox prioritized overcoming the literacy crisis in his 2025 State of the State address, and key education legislators have also elevated the issue. It’s clear that state leadership is taking this seriously.

Rightly so. Recent data show that half of Utah’s students are not reading at grade level. This literacy crisis has persisted for several years and does not appear to be budging fast enough. Certainly, progress is too slow for students currently enrolled in school, who risk falling behind.

I am eager to see how this new legislation might help the public school system improve, and since the overwhelming majority of Utah parents choose the public system, I hope it does.

I’m equally interested in seeing other education choices flourish as parents seek to ensure their students can read. More options – not fewer – will help find a solution to this literacy crisis.

Different education choices can contribute to the solution.

What’s in the new literacy bill?

The latest heavyweight literacy bill is S.B. 241 – Early Literacy. It sets a more audacious literacy rate goal while extending the timeline. Rather than requiring schools to have 70% of students with reading proficiency by 2027 (the original goal), the bill sets a 2030 target of 80%. It builds on the 2022 law, which emphasized the science of reading and tracking literacy rate data.

This current bill focuses on student interventions. For students who aren’t meeting the benchmark for reading, the school, teacher, and parents will create an “individualized reading plan.” A list of interventions can be used to meet that plan to provide a targeted set of supports for that student so they can meet the benchmark each year. Specifically, the goal is to ensure that students reach the third-grade benchmark by the end of that grade.

The most controversial piece is that the bill proposes retaining students at third grade if they are not reading at grade level. This proposal is controversial because of concerns that it stigmatizes children and undermines their ability and desire to learn. But supporters see it as a strong incentive for teachers and parents to rally around students to help them achieve proficiency. In fact, as an intervention in earlier grades, the bill says parents can consider retaining their students in grades even before third grade if they aren’t proficient. For what it’s worth, a third-grade retention was part of the “Mississippi Miracle,” where the state brought up reading scores from 49th in the nation to 9th in about a decade.

The bill also bans “three-cueing,” an approach to reading instruction that relies on memorizing words or using deductive reasoning to figure it out. This seems to be a more definitive end to the “whole language” approach. For years, there has been a debate over reading instruction between the “whole language” philosophy and the “science of reading” (traditional approaches like learning phonics). While the debate has been brewing for decades, there has been a legislative wave across the states since 2019, with bills focusing on the science of reading.

If a given school is below the state goal, the LEA must ensure that the school’s teacher and student success plan allocates 50% of the school’s total distribution on evidence-based strategies for addressing low literacy rates.

The bill is aimed at ensuring students are being taught by fully trained school staff. It allocates money for paraprofessionals who support literacy, but also seeks to ensure current and future teachers are trained in the science of reading. For one, it boosts literacy training for educators and makes the science of reading and literacy part of a teacher’s evaluation. It also targets future teachers. Not only is the Utah Board of Higher Education required to be part of the teacher preparation plans, but Utah State University and the board are also required to develop a plan to improve science of reading knowledge in teacher graduates.

The bill is a whole system tweak for public district and public charter schools.

What do other education alternatives offer in tackling the literacy crisis?

The goal of the current literacy bill is to personalize an approach for students. A wide range of options might offer this too. That’s why education choice can be a solution for families; it can offer targeted, personalized options to tackle the reading crisis with their individual child.

Public choice is important because there are different reading rates and success stories throughout the public school system. A very clear example is in the success story of Mona Elementary School in the Juab School District. News coverage highlighted how the school saw a 20 percent increase in 3rd graders reading on grade level, meeting the state-created 70% goal. This public district school excelled while many others did not.

This kind of disparity can highlight the need for parents to be able to choose schools that are excelling in ways that matter for their child’s strengths and weaknesses. This is one of the key benefits of open enrollment, a public school choice policy that allows kids to transfer between different schools.

Furthermore, Mona Elementary School’s unique approach served as a proven model for legislators to observe and use as a template. Their unique priorities and choices included: getting their teachers certified in the science of reading, changing curriculum, creating student-specific profiles and consistently tracking student progress before end-of-year assessments, regularly holding one-on-one meetings, and, importantly, intentionally partnering with parents. Some of these approaches are clearly reflected in legislation.

Charter schools serve as another key public-school option, an alternative that 13% of Utah students are using. Because their design allows for increased flexibility and expanded opportunity to innovate, they can become leaders and trailblazers in solutions.

For example, charter schools are regularly over-represented on the yearly ranking of best schools in the state by U.S. News & World Report. When it comes to literacy, for example, American Preparatory Academy published that nearly 75% of students were reading on grade level, well above the state goal.

These successes are important for families to be aware of as they make choices about where to send their children to school. Charter schools also serve as learning grounds where best practices can be learned and shared with the greater education community.

Private schools offer parents important options as well. Private school data is harder to find and more complex to analyze because not all use the same assessments, making apples-to-apples comparisons difficult.

The National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), called the Nation’s Report Card, does share private school data, but only national averages, not state by state, due to limitations around required participation rates. The NAEP comparison tool shows that private Catholic schools outperform public schools in reading.

If private schools offer reading programs that excel, families should be aware so they can find what works for their students.

Furthermore, state-funded education choice programs like the Utah Fits All Scholarship program can help parents tailor education in highly individualized ways. Things like homeschool curriculum, therapies, tutoring, and private school tuition can all be used to create an education for students with their unique needs in mind. For example, parents of a student struggling to read might seek reading instruction based on the “science of reading” and extra tutoring. While standardized data is also difficult to find for these programs, families can determine how well an educational choice is working by the lived experience with their child. All of these choices are important.

Conclusion

Overcoming this literacy crisis will require a concerted effort, and the legislature’s approach to zeroing in on individualized plans makes a lot of sense. Education choices can help parents seeking to overcome this same challenge for their own families be better equipped to do so.