Evidence-based core instruction partnered with evidence-based supplemental interventions are vital for students' literacy learning, particularly for students who need additional support (Petscher et al., 2020). Identifying instructional materials that reflect the translation of effective practices is challenging, (Solari et al., 2020) and made…

Educators and researchers have been fighting the reading wars for the last century, with battles see-sawing literacy instruction in American schools from phonics to whole language and, most recently, back to phonics again. Over the last decade, 32 states and the District of Columbia have adopted new "science of reading" laws that require…

Argues that if cultural literacy does not mean a list of works, it is a list, whether in the form of a canon or syllabus. Concludes that the goal of common background knowledge is worthy but distracts educators from questions that offer a chance of achieving such a goal and achieving literacy. (SRT)

In reaction to articles by J. Warnock and W. Bennett, argues that a common background knowledge required for literacy does not depend on specific texts, or a literary canon, rather one needs to know a few facts about some of them. Concludes that cultural literacy is not text-bound. (SRT)