Morning light filtered into the first-grade classroom in Benton, Columbia County. Summer break would start soon — but the students had reading skills to practice.
Joanne Steltz praised her students at L.R. Appleman Elementary School as they changed the middle sounds of words — from bed to bird, from math to mouth.
“You’re doing a good job,” she said during the lesson on phoneme substitution. “We have a busy morning, but we're excellent listeners in first grade.”
As reading skills become a greater focus nationwide and Pennsylvania schools update curriculum, the Benton Area School District stands out. Nearly all school districts in Pennsylvania have seen drops — some severe — in English language arts proficiency scores since the COVID-19 pandemic, WVIA News found in its annual PA School Report Card analysis.
With only a slight decline — 2.5% — since 2019, Benton Area has essentially maintained language arts scores while other districts struggle.
“No matter where you go or what you do, you have to be able to read. You have to be able to write,” said Daniel Yarnell, principal at Appleman. “We're making sure that we're laying that foundation solid for the kids, so they're successful moving forward.”
Literacy crisis
Experts fear the United States faces a literacy crisis.
Data released this month revealed that 33% of Pennsylvania's fourth graders read proficiently — a 20-year low, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The data, known as the Nation's Report Card, also shows reading proficiency levels at 20% for Black students and 18% for Hispanic students.
Nationally, reading scores from the test are not significantly different from performance in the first-ever administered test in 1971. Pennsylvania’s decline on the Nation’s Report Card outpaces the national average, according to Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition, a “nonpartisan, cross-sector network of educators, caregivers, advocates and community leaders” launched last year to increase literacy.
This year’s PA School Report Card from WVIA News compares proficiency levels from 2025 PSSA tests to the levels from 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education. Public school students in third through eighth grades take Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests each spring. Tests taken in spring 2026 should be released later this year.
The WVIA analysis found:
- Four of 500 districts made gains in English language arts proficiency compared to 2019, with some proficiency levels cut in half post-pandemic.
- Districts have fared better in math scores, with 187 maintaining or increasing proficiency levels since 2019.
Since the pandemic, educators have focused on ways to make up for the learning lost during virtual instruction. The pandemic revealed where schools needed to improve — including how they teach children to read.
In Pennsylvania — it’s a new law.
New way to teach reading
Suzie Shaffer’s students at McNichols Plaza Elementary gathered around a circular table in her reading classroom this month before summer break. The students identified rhyming words, and — similar to the lesson in Benton — changed sounds in words.
In the 15 years Shaffer has worked as a reading specialist in the South Scranton school, the way she teaches has transformed.
“It's changed from a balanced literacy approach, where you would say, ‘Use a context clue, or look at the picture, or take your best guess,’ to really attacking each and every word,” she said. “They're looking at letters and sounds and blending them together, giving them the confidence to tackle a word that they've never seen before.”
Shaffer’s method now reflects the “science of reading” — an approach that looks at decades of research on how children successfully learn to read and write. The approach focuses more on phonics — linking letters to sounds — and phonemic awareness — the ability to hear and identify sounds in spoken words.
That method is now a mandate in Pennsylvania.
As part of the 2025-26 state budget, Gov. Josh Shapiro signed legislation that requires school districts to adopt evidence-based reading curriculum and identify and provide targeted assistance to students with reading deficiencies. Act 47 of 2025 has a deadline of the 2027-28 school year for implementation, which includes literacy instruction training for teachers.
Advocates, including the Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition, have called on the state Legislature to provide funding to implement science of reading instruction. They seek $50 million in the 2026-27 budget for training, instructional materials and literacy coaches.
“There's nothing more bipartisan than literacy, the ability to read and chart your own course,” said Rachael Garnick, Pennsylvania Coalition Manager at Teach Plus PA, where she leads the Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition.
Literacy in Scranton
A banner on Shaffer’s classroom wall reads “When kids read, PA succeeds.”
Literacy Coalition members visited the Scranton School District in May, releasing a report that highlights gains made in four districts in the state, including Scranton.
When Erin Keating became superintendent two years ago, she found inconsistent curriculum and strategies among the district’s 10 elementary, three intermediate and two high schools. The district partnered with the Scranton Federation of Teachers and its national union to bring change and consistency. All teachers have now received training on the science of reading, she said.
“Literacy became something that, to me, was the crux of where we were going to make school improvement,” Keating said at the May event. “If you cannot read, you cannot learn, and that is as simple as it is.”
Reading instruction now focuses on how the brain learns to read, including decoding and awareness of sounds.
Shaffer’s first-grade students explained the difference between vowel teams — two vowels that work together to make the same sound — and diagraphs, two consonants that come together to make a single sound.
She held the students’ attention for over an hour, even with the anticipation of fun end-of-year activities and summer break.
“After decades in the classroom, I can say this with certainty: structured literacy works,” she said. “When instruction, educator training and materials are aligned with the science of reading, student outcomes improve. We're seeing that shift in Scranton, and it's powerful.”
Close-knit community in Benton
Benton sits in northern Columbia County. The borough’s 800 residents know their neighbors. Average class sizes of 15 at the elementary school give teachers a chance to give children the attention they need.
This year, students learned about influential people from Benton, including Frank Laubach, a Christian missionary credited with teaching millions how to read. He developed the “Each One Teach One” program in 1915. He died in 1970 and is buried in Benton. He appeared on a U.S. postage stamp in 1984.
Teachers in Benton see teaching students how to read an integral part of their own mission. The district, which includes six different municipalities, has about 600 students.
“We really wanted to see kids become readers, and I feel like everyone in our building is working towards that goal of putting books in kids' hands and getting them the help they need if they need help," said Cathy Williams, a reading specialist. "Some people refer to us as the best kept secret in Columbia County.”
The school hosts an annual book bingo and offers reading incentives, such as trips to a book vending machine, snowball fights and water battles. A local ice cream shop provides free cones to students who read 10 books or more.
Summer break neared, but learning didn’t stop. In Lena Roberts’ second grade classroom, students wrote descriptive paragraphs about how the fizzy candy Pop Rocks tasted and felt in their mouths.
In Steltz’s classroom, students took their magnifying glasses out of their desks — a symbol for taking a closer look at words and their sounds. The teacher is piloting the new curriculum aligned with the science of reading. Other teachers will join her in the fall.
Leaders expect the new curriculum to enhance their mission.
“We're small. We don't always have the resources that other places have,” said Yarnell, the school’s principal. “I think we do a very good job making sure we prioritize what our kids need to make sure that they're successful.”
PSSA databases
The following databases show 2025 standardized test scores for the state's 500 school districts, compared to 2019 scores.
