California Literacy Training Programs for Teachers Debated

California literacy training programs for teachers face a quality debate before Wednesday's vote

California's State Board of Education votes Wednesday, September 9, on whether to approve a list of 37 California literacy training programs for teachers, a decision that will determine how school districts access $200 million in state professional-development funding for TK-5 reading instruction. The list hasn't been approved yet. It stays pending until the board acts, according to EdSource.

The vote is the latest step in a state effort that has funneled more than $1 billion into literacy programs since 2020, at a time when fewer than half of California's third graders were rated proficient in English in 2024, EdSource reported.

Advocates say the dispute isn't really about the number 37. It's about whether the state set the bar for inclusion low enough that districts end up doing much of the work of telling strong programs apart from merely adequate ones, even though funding eligibility depends on picking from that list.

What's in California's proposed literacy training list

WestEd, the organization that developed the list for the California Department of Education, reviewed 46 applicant programs from private companies, nonprofits, county offices of education, and universities. Thirty-seven met the state's eligibility criteria, according to Elizabeth Zagata, a special education program manager for WestEd, cited by EdSource.

Proposed programs are expected to cover phonics, phonological awareness, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and background knowledge, along with oral and written language development, EdSource reported.

The money behind the list comes from the 2025-26 state budget, which sets aside $480 million in Prop 98 funding for a package of literacy initiatives, according to the California Department of Education. Of that total, $200 million is one-time funding for TK-5 professional development, the specific pot tied to Wednesday's vote.

That's separate from another $200 million that augments the existing Literacy Coaches and Reading Specialists Grant Program, allocated by K-3 enrollment to school sites with an unduplicated-pupil percentage of at least 94%, with a minimum grant of $450,000. The remaining funds cover K-2 literacy screening, a county office training grant, statewide literacy networks, and the California Dyslexia Initiative.

Training isn't mandatory for districts. But a district only qualifies for the $200 million in TK-5 training funds if it selects a program from the list the board approves, per EdSource. Budget staff at individual districts should confirm that rule applies to their specific funding stream once the board finalizes the list.

How California literacy training programs for teachers were scored

The 37 programs on the proposed list scored between 24 and 53 out of a possible 54 points across 18 required rubrics, EdSource reported. Advocates say that range raises questions about how much "meeting state criteria" actually distinguishes strong programs from weak ones.

Marshall Tuck, chief executive officer of the advocacy group EdVoice, argues the list should be trimmed to 17 programs. The current list "includes a lot of really high-quality programs, but also includes a lot of programs that were not ranked by the state as high quality," some rated at "minimum" or "minimal-to-moderate" quality, he told EdSource.

Yolie Flores, president and CEO of Families in Schools, put it more bluntly. "It's frankly unacceptable that California would settle for the minimum," she said, per EdSource.

In a letter sent to the board last Friday, Efrain Mercado, EdVoice's chief government affairs officer, questioned why programs only had to "meet the minimum standards of review" to qualify. "California kids, particularly struggling readers and English learners, are depending on the state to approve only high-quality programs," he wrote, per EdSource.

That 24-to-53 range shows how the 37 programs stack up against the state's own rubric. It doesn't, by itself, prove that any single lower-scoring program fails to deliver effective reading instruction, a distinction advocates say still falls to district officials once they're choosing from the list.

Flores also raised concerns about the rubric's design. Scoring for evidence of program effectiveness was optional rather than required, and rater identities weren't disclosed, which she said makes conflicts of interest hard to spot, per EdSource. Those are advocacy critiques of the review process, not independently verified defects in the rubric.

Parents, educators, and advocacy groups wrote to the state board asking that the list be pared down or paired with clearer program comparisons. In response, the state changed the list from alphabetical order to a ranking by weighted evidence score, and posted individual scoring memos plus a comparison table on the CDE website, EdSource reported. Tuck said he wants the state to go further and build "a user-friendly" online tool so district staff can see rankings and reasoning at a glance.

The research reviewed for this article doesn't include a direct, on-the-record response from CDE or WestEd addressing the specific criticisms of the minimum-score threshold, the optional evidence score, or the missing dyslexia-certification credit. The re-ranking and published memos are the state's documented response so far.

Documents district leaders can review before selecting a program

Todd Collins, founder of the nonprofit California Reading Coalition, said reviewing the full list takes time and staff capacity many districts don't have. "Districts do not have the time and the resources to comb through a list of 37 options and evaluate them in any meaningful way," he told EdSource. He'd rather see a shorter "skinny list" of top performers the state has already vetted.

Collins warned that districts with the fewest resources have the least capacity to research their options on their own. Those districts, he said, may end up picking "based on familiarity or what the district uses or what the county office told them," rather than program evidence, per EdSource.

The materials the state has already published give district staff a starting point regardless of what happens Wednesday. The CDE's website now includes individual scoring memos for each of the 37 programs and a comparison table ranking them by weighted evidence score.

District curriculum leaders reviewing those memos can check whether a finalist's evidence-of-effectiveness rating was actually completed, since that score is optional under the current rubric. Teachers and literacy coaches can ask their district's decision-makers which program was selected and how its published score factored into the choice.

What's unresolved for multilingual learners and structured literacy support

Inclusion on the list shouldn't be read as proof that a program adequately serves multilingual learners, Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, wrote in a letter to the board. The review required only limited evidence that programs align with California's English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework, meaning districts serving large numbers of English learners "will need additional guidance to make informed decisions," per EdSource.

Flores raised a separate concern specific to students with dyslexia: the rubric awards no points for certification from the International Dyslexia Association, which she called an important marker of structured-literacy quality the review doesn't capture, EdSource reported. That's a distinct issue about dyslexia-specific credentialing, separate from Hernandez's point about English-learner alignment.

A related but separate funding stream is worth knowing about. Subject to State Board approval, the CDE plans to award $15 million to a county office of education, or a consortium of county offices, with expertise in both literacy instruction and multilingual education, according to the California Grants Portal. That grant would support training for literacy coaches with attention to English learners and dual-language immersion programs.

It hasn't been awarded yet, it isn't part of the 37-program list, and it wouldn't substitute for vetting the TK-5 training programs districts choose from.

Given those gaps, districts serving significant numbers of English learners or students with dyslexia may want to ask finalist providers directly how their curriculum addresses those groups. The review's alignment check was limited, and the rubric doesn't separately credit dyslexia-specific certification.

What to check after Wednesday's vote

The board will decide whether to approve the proposed list. The materials reviewed for this article don't establish whether members will approve it as published, revise it, or reject it outright.

Either way, the timeline for the money is already moving. The CDE plans to release an apportionment reflecting 100% of the TK-5 professional-development allocation by mid-October 2026, a target that shifted from an earlier late-September estimate across successive updates (CDE, issue 12, last week; CDE, issue 10, last month). That's a detail worth tracking rather than treating as fixed.

Once the board acts, district curriculum leaders and literacy coaches should confirm the final approved list and funding rules on the CDE's Literacy Professional Development Programs webpage, pull the scoring memo for any program under consideration, and ask finalist providers directly how their training supports English learners and students with dyslexia before committing training funds.