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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. If you didn't spend last night watching some internet feed of the New York State Legislature at work, you have a lot of company. You also may not know that they did pass that bill we discussed earlier in the week to mandate significantly smaller class sizes in the New York City public schools.

What nobody knows is if Governor Hochul will sign the bill or veto it. She's hearing Mayor Adam say it's a bad idea without a lot more state aid to pay for lots of new classrooms and teachers that would be needed to make the math work and that it would necessitate cuts to other important educational functions. We'll talk about the promise of smaller class sizes in a minute for the city's kids along with why some see them as not worth the cost. First, consider this, smaller class sizes would only be one of two changes to the city schools being described right now as seismic shifts.

The other is that Adams and School's Chancellor David Banks have put a stake in the ground for teaching reading to young kids through the method known as phonics. Now that's a reversal for the city and is the latest move and what have often been called the reading wars, the specific instruction in sounding out words letter by letter, that's phonics, versus what's known as whole language, which proponents say can instill more eagerness to actually read. Here's Mayor Adams talking about that.

Mayor Adams: The steps we're taking today are part of our long-term commitment to literacy for all New York City public schools. Chancellor Banks talks about literacy and how we need to get it right in a real way and I'm just really proud of that. We're going to start using a proven phonics-based literacy curriculum that's proven to help children read.

Brian Lehrer: With us now on both phonics and class sizes, WNYC Education Reporter, Jessica Gould. Hi, Jess. A big moment for education policy in the city. Let's talk about class size first. Would you remind us what the law allows now for class sizes at the different grade levels?

Jessica Gould: Sure. Yes. These are two fundamental foundational things in education. For nerds and wanks, today's a big day. What I wanted to say about class size, right now, the caps for kindergarten are 25 students per class. Then, from 1st through 6th grade, it jumps to 32 students per class. Middle schools can have 30 or 33 in their class size depending on the poverty levels of the students who go to the school and high school classes are at 34.

The change would be bringing kindergarten down from 25 to 20. In those other elementary school grades, another huge difference, starting in first grade, you could have as many as 32 kids in your class, now it would be down to 23. That's a huge difference, and in the high school level, 34 down to 25.

Brian Lehrer: That's really big. Is it too obvious a question to ask, what problem are they trying to solve with class sizes that much smaller? Is there a specific failure to achieve basic skills at grade level that's at major proportions in the city? We heard

the Eric Adams clip. Or any other way people would describe the problem that smaller class sizes are supposed to solve?

Jessica Gould: Sure. I think it's both academic outcomes and social behavioral issues. If you talk to teachers and I know you do a lot, they'll say that smaller classes make it easier to connect with students to individualize their education. Also, classes are better behaved when they're smaller. Now, we can talk about some of the data on this because it's complicated but anecdotally, I was talking to a teacher yesterday who said that on snowy days that are not official snow days, when some kids come in, kids get along better, they're more engaged, there's enough materials to go around, there aren't disruptions in the same way.

I'll definitely be interested to hear from callers, as parents or educators, if that's their impression but it certainly makes this rational sentence that a smaller class would be easier to manage and easier to connect with kids. Make sure that they're on-topic and able to absorb the information being given to them.

Brian Lehrer: Well, let's open up the phones, particularly for people who are teachers or anybody who's ever been a teacher, and talk about smaller class sizes and also phonics. Teachers, former teachers, retired teachers, anyone, how much is it a game-changer in your experience to have 20 as opposed to 25 kids in the lower grades, 25 as opposed to maybe 32, 33 in the upper grades? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. I've seen one estimate that this will cost about an extra billion dollars a year. Teachers, former teachers, retired teachers, teachers' aides, anybody?

Another way to ask the question is if you were given another billion dollars a year to spend on education, is this how you'd spend it? 212-433-WNYC. Also, in the city shift to a more phonics-based reading education approach, which we'll get to, teachers, phonics versus whole language or what kind of mix works best for which kids in your experience? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Use your language skills for that or any other question or comment relevant to WNYC Education Reporter, Jessica Gould, on these topics, 212-433-9692. Let me read the Chancellor David Banks's statement against the class size reduction bill.

He said, "The proposed multibillion-dollar unfunded mandate in this bill force the school leaders to prioritize class size above critical school safety programs, dyslexia screenings, social workers, school nurses, summer program, supports for special student populations, and even the expansion of community schools. Make no mistake, it will lead to large cuts in these critical programs. This should not be a choice that school leaders have to make." From Chancellor David Banks in a written statement. Jess, it's not he's saying class size is bad but he's saying we're going to have to cut all these other things because it's going to be so expensive.

Jessica Gould: Right. He's also said in his statement that he supports smaller class sizes but he'd like to work with stakeholders to find a way to do it that wouldn't break the bank in the way that he's concerned about. The financial component has to do with where the city wants to invest its money. The city budget process is still ongoing. Mayor Adams had proposed-- it's complicated but a slight increase in funding for education in city funds but what ultimately amounts to cuts at schools that have

shrinking enrollments and that would be phased in over time.

Before Mayor de Blasio with the influx of federal cash that's coming from the stimulus has held schools harmless for shrinking enrollments, which actually is related to class size because class size has gone down a little bit this year. The average class size is now 25, although that's average. Some are higher, some are lower. There's going to be a pulling back of some of that additional funding that schools have had to buffer, even though they have smaller enrollments right now.

The question is whether the city wants to invest its money for this or for other things both in terms of whether it wants to keep its education budget the way that Mayor Adams has said and then that would mean tough choices between things like dyslexia screening and class size or other programs or then it becomes a choice between the policing budget versus the education budget. It's true that the city has more funding from the state coming in because of an increase that lawmakers did last year in the state budget coming in overtime that some lawmakers say was actually intended specifically for class size reductions.

Then there's also the cash that's come in from the federal government through stimulus that hasn't been spent yet. There is money but it's a question of what is it for? Then again, also, will it be enough. The experts that I've talked to like the independent budget office, they don't know yet how much this really significant change in class size would cost in terms of space and teachers. It would take a lot of analysis that they haven't had a chance to do yet.

Brian Lehrer: One estimate of about a billion dollars a year. Is that something you've seen?

Jessica Gould: Yes, I've seen that too. The teachers union is saying that based on their analysis of school buildings, 90% of schools could make this work given the space that they have but there was another class size bill that failed on the city council level in the winter and not to throw around a lot of percentages and fractions but at the time, the independent budget analyst said that half of schools wouldn't be able to achieve these goals. It's a complicated space budgeting question. I talked to the head of the principal's union yesterday, and he was saying that he's concerned that even though everybody within the education space, like teachers and principals, like smaller class sizes, they want to do it. He's worried about principals having to figure this out on their own without enough funding.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and I don't want to just talk about money. I want to get back in a minute to some of the specific expected educational rewards if they do implement this but when I see that number a billion dollars a year, well, the average person doesn't know how to think about a billion dollars a year. It just sounds like a big number but when I see that number, I actually think that isn't that much for something that could be so beneficial.

The city government's annual budget, as you know, is around 100 billion a year. It would be only 1%. The education budget is already around 30 billion of that 100

billion total a year. If it's roughly going from 30 billion to 31 billion, if it really improves literacy and other basic academics so much, what could be more important to invest in? I imagine there are other people who see the billion dollars differently.

Jessica Gould: Yes, I think if you talk to parents with kids in the system right now, you'd probably hear a lot of enthusiasm about this. Parents have listed smaller class sizes as a top priority for a long time. They say now is the time to invest in kids because yes, there's some chunks of money available, broadly speaking for education, and also because kids have really had a hard time, they're struggling academically. Some, according to some analyses are pretty far behind where they would be academically and also behaviorally, it's been a really challenging period, and kids are not caught up yet.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a call from a retired teacher in Central Harlem, Tina. Tina you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Tina: Hi, Brian. Thanks for letting me say something about this. Yes, as a former teacher book and a former parent and my children went through the city school system. I think it's unrealistic those numbers, reducing class size to the degree and with such a low overhead that you're quoting. I don't think that that's feasible, but what I do think is feasible is something that I observed over and over again, when I was teaching that two teachers in the room can make an enormous difference.

We're supposed to differentiate both for students who learn at accelerated rates and students who are lagging behind, students who need extra time with their work and the rest of the classroom has to move forward because of curriculum mandates and so on and so forth. Having two teachers in the room and also for mainstreaming special ed students that we do in a lot of schools and for behavioral problems in some-- they have one kid takes up all this teachers time. If you have two adults in the room, two qualified teachers, you would get a lot more bang for your buck and you wouldn't have the physical space concerns that I think that this is unrealistically.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. That's interesting, Tina. Let me ask you a follow-up question. You say two teachers in a room. I read a reference to an article on the data on smaller class sizes and how they help kids, that said, adding a teacher's aide or a teacher's assistant did not make much of a difference. You're saying two teachers, do you think it matters whether it's two actual teachers or a teacher and a teacher's aide, which would be cheaper?

Tina: I think part of that is the perception of students. They don't give the respect to the secondary adult in the room when they perceive that person as having no impact on their grades or behaviorally and so on. I think that the students need to see teachers like co-teaching so that their perception is one of a balance between the two adults in the classroom. The teacher's aide is definitely helpful for the teacher and so that things curriculums can continue to move along and mandated timing but again, I think there's too many other issues that you need two actual teachers in the room, which is what you're doing if you're doing half the class size so--

Brian Lehrer: Right, [crosstalk] you're changing the student-teacher ratio. It's

another way to do it. Tina, thank you so much. Jessica, we have another tweet like this too. Listener writes, I recommend team teaching. For example, two teachers not assistance, this listener writes, per 26 kids, all grades pre-K through eight, you would cut down on additional spaces. Kids would be well known by two adults in the room. Former teacher here, writes that listener. Did the legislature consider that alternative mandating the ratio through team teaching, adding more teachers in existing classrooms rather than trinking the class size?

Jessica Gould: There actually is an exemption or there are these temporary exemptions written into the legislation to bridge schools that can't achieve these goals immediately. One of those exemptions or exceptions would be allowing for reducing the student-teacher ratio, placing additional teachers in the class on a temporary basis.

I was talking to Leonie Haimson who has been beating this drum. She's the executive director of Class Size Matters and her whole organization, and really her life's mission has been to reduce class size because of the benefits she sees for students, and education as a whole. She was telling me that pushing in a teacher is not as effective as reducing class size. I'm not familiar with the data. It may not be as effective. I do think that co-teaching can be very effective and is often an improvement over one teacher struggling with a very high-class size.

Brian Lehrer: I read that statement from Chancellor Banks on all the things that would probably need to be cut to implement this because they won't have the money simply to add. William on Twitter adds another thing that he's concerned about being cut. He writes, "Ah, it's an unfunded mandate, won't work without cuts. We can never afford to do it. Art and music classes will probably be the first things to go." The chancellor, unless he said it somewhere else, didn't even mention art and music classes as being threatened by the class size mandate but, of course, that comes into the mix.

Jessica Gould: Yes. I have to review the wording and the bill again, but I believe that certain specials, gym, comes to mind, but it might have been the other specials as well, can be larger than these class sizes. I think that people who advocate for this and have a potential major victory on their hands are going to have to be eagle-eyed in the months to come, years to come to see how it's actually accomplished.

Brian Lehrer: Let's talk about the expected rewards. It looks like from what I've read that the biggest measurable difference with smaller class sizes when they've been implemented and studied is on the academic outcomes for younger grade kids and especially lower income younger grade kids. We certainly have a lot of them in New York City. What have you seen about where the biggest benefits have proven to be?

Jessica Gould: Yes, I think I probably looked at some of the same research that you did. There's this famous study that came from Tennessee in the '80s that looked at elementary classrooms that reduced their size from 25 down to between 17 and 13 kids and found that it did boost learning and that kids were months ahead of where they would've been, which when you think about kids who lost months, if not years of

school, is compelling but you mentioned that the studies they don't all stack up in clear favor of this.

There was a New York study that did show also that when you reduce class size that it boosts achievement for younger students but if you have to hire an inexperienced teacher in order to handle one of the new classes, once you break them down into smaller pieces, that those benefits can diminish. I was thinking about that study though. I was thinking, sure, that makes sense.

Anytime you have a new teacher, there's a learning curve. The kids may not necessarily achieve at the same level of, with a more experienced teacher, but that new teacher will be a more experienced teacher soon enough. I'm curious about how some of these studies are structured and also what do they look at not just the grade level, but the needs population, the effectiveness of the teacher. It's looked at a lot of academic elements like test scores, and that thing, but there's also these very real questions about behavior and social, emotional learning collaboration in a classroom.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call from a retired teacher. We're getting the retired teachers, I think for an obvious reason, Jess. The current teachers are teaching at this hour.

Jessica Gould: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: We often do call-ins for teachers on school holidays, but we wanted to get this segment going today with the news. Sheila in the West Village, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sheila.

Sheila: Hi. I'm so glad that you took my call. I was teaching art in the junior high schools. One of the schools I was in I had two kinds of art classes. One of them was the academic, and the kids were anywhere from 33 to 36 in number. Then there was another one that was called Sharp and it was only 24 kids. It's the same kids, but with only 24 kids, I had no problems with their behavior at all. They got along beautifully. They learned so much more quickly, and they were so much happier than the larger classes where there was-- sometimes we didn't even have enough chairs to go around. They felt very crowded, and they were unhappy. Anyhow, I wish I'd had video, it was almost like some kind of a scientific experiment.

Brian Lehrer: Experiment. Interesting.

Sheila: Yes, it was marvelous. I learned so much just from that year of teaching that way. Just throwing that in because that was my experience.

Brian Lehrer: That's a great story, Sheila, thank you very much. One more along these lines. Margaret in Hartsdale, a former teacher, you're on WNYC. Hi, Margaret.

Margaret: Hi, there. I'm so interested in listening to this. I've been retired for some time, but from the first days of my teaching to the last, I've always believed that class size was the single element that could be a game-changer. We've seen, with every mayor and every new superintendent, there are new initiatives, new interventions,

programs brought in. We had programs that were brought in from Australia, for goodness sakes, to tell us how to teach reading. I tell you, if the class sizes were smaller, and you had an old fashioned basal reading book, you could get better student outcomes with 23 children than you could with 32.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you, if in your experience, you develop different approaches to different children when you had the smaller class sizes, and here's why I ask and I'll ask our guest, Jessica Gould, our education reporter too, but Margaret, since we have you on the line with your experience, from what I've read, it also matters if teachers are trained well, in a small class environment, to teach to fewer students. They actually have to know how to approach different kids differently, if they haven't had that luxury as much in the past. In your experience, when you had bigger classes versus smaller classes, did you have to actually develop different approaches that maybe you weren't even trained in to do more individual instruction?

Margaret: Well, absolutely. With a larger class, in theory, it was expected that you would group them according to needs because they were heterogeneous groupings. In a situation like that, you might only see a group of kids once a week. If the class sizes were smaller, yes, you could interact with the student more often, and on a one-to-one basis. Did the skill set of the teacher have to be different?

Brian Lehrer: Not something you've given much thought to?

Margaret: No, I haven't, and I don't think so. I think it could only be positive. It could only be a positive outcome because you're having an intimate conversation with a student, instead of that student working independently.

Brian Lehrer: It's certainly intuitive, seems obvious, seems like common sense that the fewer kids in the class, the more attention a teacher can give each child, the more likelihood that each child will learn. Margaret, thank you very much for your call and your experience. Jessica, on that point, I guess just from this one thing that I read about studies, to really maximize the benefit from smaller class sizes, it takes a different kind of teacher training. That's interesting.

Jessica Gould: Or at least that whether you're an effective teacher really has perhaps the biggest impact on a class's ability to succeed. That was how I read it. I wanted to mention two things based on what the caller just said. One was that, a long time ago, a friend of mine who made the switch from teaching in public school to private school, said that she thought class size was the difference in what made higher quality education. I'm sure that there's a lot of nuance to be had there and shading, but it is something that parents across the city and across the country spend a lot of money for when they are able to switch their kids to private school, smaller class sizes is part of that. This could be seen as a step towards more equity if it works.

The other thing I was thinking about was that, I've been talking about how kids have struggled, kids are either behind academically or struggling emotionally, but teachers too have had an incredibly hard couple of years, and are strung out many of them.

That's what they tell me. If we can make teaching easier for them or more effective so that they feel like their students are really getting the best out of them, I think that's something to consider right now, too, because there are just a lot of teachers who are burned out at this point.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I know the teachers union loves this, both for the quality of life reasons that you were just describing, and they're going to have more members, for sure. Which doesn't mean it's a giveaway to the teachers union, but obviously, it helps teachers.

Just one more question on this before we take a break and shift to the phonics piece. That is I wonder if you think we're going to wind up with court cases, maybe even the city suing the state for more aid, there's the famous lawsuit, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which as wound up in the New York State courts mandating that the state of New York more adequately fund education for New York City public school students. That was a bunch of years ago now, but I wonder if the city can go back to call it under CFE, Campaign for Fiscal Equity and say, "Hey, look, if you're mandating that we cut class sizes by 25%, or whatever it is, you have to give us 25% more funding to meet the criteria of this lawsuit."

Jessica Gould: Well, it's interesting that you bring that up. I'm not going to say that there isn't an opportunity to challenge this legally, but it was the Campaign for Fiscal Equity funding, that the state finally agreed to follow through on in a full way last year that the lawmakers say will help pay for this. They say that the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit when it was decided, God, what is it like, 15 years ago?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, something like that.

Jessica Gould: Yes, that it required. One of the reasons that they said students in New York City weren't getting a sound basic education was because their class sizes were too big. When the lawmakers, one might say like a more progressive batch of lawmakers came in last year and they voted to increase funding for schools, some of them said that it was to enact and realize this goal from the court case that many years ago.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. All right. We're going to take a break. We're going to come back and talk about the other thing that's being described as a seismic shift in the New York City Public Schools. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Few more minutes with WNYC and Gothamist Education Reporter, Jessica Gould. Okay, Jess, phonics, Chancellor Banks, and Mayor Adams say they will emphasize phonics and reading. Can you give our listeners who haven't ever been immersed in the so-called reading wars, the basic difference between phonics and what they call the whole language approach?

Jessica Gould: Sure. Phonics is when you break down your words into their letter sounds. Back in my day, we called it sounding it out. The philosophy is that, which I think has been now proven by science and brain scans, that that is the fundamental

approach to learning to read. That you have to learn how sounds work together to form words.

There was a movement in the last couple of decades to not just drill and kill when it comes to phonics, but foster an appreciation for reading by surrounding kids with words and books and giving them ownership over their reading. What it looks like in some classes and this is called more balanced literacy, where the idea was that you have some phonics but you also give kids a lot of time to sit and read books on their own or with partners, page through, and just have the experience of being a reader and cultivate that love of reading.

The problem is that first of all, over the years, as I mentioned, science and brain scans have shown that working on phonics and the letter sounds is what really makes the connections in your brain so that you can learn to read and then this time devoted to surrounding kids with books is often seen as not as effective. It's not efficient. It can be frustrating for kids who imagine a 4 or 5-year-old sitting in school with 10, even 15, 20 minutes with a book that they can't read, and just sitting there paging through.

Some of the balanced literacy approaches have also included some strategies that teach kids to guess at words, so use pictures to infer what the word is or patterns. That's been largely debunked because it can become a crutch for kids. They're not learning how to pronounce the words. Of course, when you're a kid, you want to know what the right answer is.

Of course, you'll go to a picture if you can, but if you're doing that, then you end up potentially papering over some serious gaps. I talked to one Bronx middle school principal who said that 90% of his kids don't come in reading on level in the sixth grade and that in the sixth, seventh and eighth grade, they're sitting right now at like tablets doing some pretty basic phonics work to fill in those gaps so that they could be proficient readers when they get to high school.

Brian Lehrer: Now, the Times had an article last week that I know you read with great interest called In the Fight Over How to Teach Reading. This guru makes a major retreat. Who's the guru and how did they retreat?

Jessica Gould: That's Lucy Calkins and she is a professor at Teachers College at Columbia, and she created reading and writing workshop, which is an extremely popular curriculum for teaching reading and then also writing. I'm just going to talk about the reading part right now. The criticism of Lucy has been that her materials have overemphasized this fostering enthusiasm for reading at the expense of phonics and that basic fundamental work that you have to do and that also some of them teach some of these guessing skills that are called three cueing that you get these cues for how to read.

I also sat down with her a few months ago at her office at Teachers College. She told me what she told the New York Times reporter, which is that she has realized from the research and journalism that's been done in recent years, that there needs to be

a greater emphasis on phonics and that she's going to be introducing that into her materials. However, we have generations of teachers who have come up through training programs where they've learned her approach to teaching, reading the independent reading, the using pictures as prompts and so it's widely, widely used.

It's also a curriculum that schools pay for and so Mayor Adams and really specifically, Schools Chancellor David Banks was very explicit with me a few months ago and he said that he doesn't want the schools in New York City using the Calkins curriculum anymore. Now, I think that now that she's changing it, there may be some wiggle room, not sure, but he felt that it's not effective and schools need to move away, which is a big deal for a lot of schools and for a lot of teachers who have learned to teach this way.

Brian Lehrer: Here's one of the reasons that Adams gave. This is a clip of the mayor talking about one of the things that anybody who knows Eric Adams knows he talks about a lot.

Mayor Adams: We are feeding the incarceration of our nation and city because of our failure to educate. A 2014 study conducted by the Department of Education found out that about a third of the people incarcerated in the country had difficulty reading simple text, a third. Think about that for a moment. What if we just would have screened them for dyslexia? Imagine what a different pathway they would have been on.

Brian Lehrer: Dyslexia, which again, anybody who knows Eric Adams knows that he talks about having had himself as a kid and overcoming, but just phonics where you're really sounding out each letter is seen as a better method for overcoming dyslexia, which the mayor says is a much more widespread problem than the amount it gets talked about in the media.

Jessica Gould: Right. Researchers say that phonics, this systematic and explicit teaching of phonics is the way to get most kids to read. It's the best way. It's the one that you can see working in their brains when you do brain scans. That's true for all readers, but especially for kids with dyslexia, some kids and many kids have learned to read under the Calkins method or more balanced literacy approaches, but for kids who are struggling, they need that phonics basis even more.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Laurie in Manhattan calling in who studied at Teacher's College, she said, so maybe she learned that system that they're now pulling back on. Laurie, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Laurie: Thank you. I went to Teachers College from '90 to '91 and I learned the Calkins method. The first year that I was teaching, I used it and it was a horror. It's a beautiful program for teaching writing and there are many lovely aspects that make kids happy to be in school, but when it comes down to the basic, basic, basic need to know how to decode a word, there was nothing there. After one year I paid for my own training in phonics and fortunately, I had an enlightened principal who said go to it.

I used that until I retired and then after I retired, I became a teacher trainer in New York City public schools, teaching other teachers how to teach phonics using the Orton Gillingham method. These were low-income schools. I worked in a high middle-class school and I've seen this method used in both kinds of schools with all kinds of students. There's no one who has a disadvantage by being in a classroom that uses phonics, but 50% to 75% of the students have a tremendous, tremendous advantage by being trained on how to sound out words, how to write the letters properly.

Brian Lehrer: Laurie, do you have an impression with all your experience and having gone to Teachers College and learn the Calkins method as long ago as you did, early '90s, you said what? I think this really broke out the so-called reading wars in the '80s. Do you have a sense of why this has been so contentious for the last 40 years? Are there cultural wars overtones?

Laurie: I don't think it's so much cultural wars, I think it was money. There was a lot of money to be made with the Lucy Calkins program, both at the publisher's end and at the Teacher's College end. They were charging, I think, outrageous fees to train the teachers and they weren't doing a very good job of it, but it was a steady source of income for the program at Teachers College.

Brian Lehrer: Laurie, thank you very much. There is, Jess, some in that New York Times article about Lucy Calkins changing her tune about financial aspects of this whether they were teaching-- I don't think they accuse anybody of teaching something they thought was wrong just to make money, but there were some financial benefits for Teachers College, I think, that's been documented in the way our caller says. To wrap it up, do you think there were culture wars overtones, or why did this become so contentious?

Jessica Gould: I see Twitter fights about it, but I think that how a kid learns to read and getting a kid to learn to read is the most fundamental part of learning. It really shapes how a kid sees themself, I think, as a student going forward. I can tell you just that as a parent, for me, as I've learned about it as a reporter and then seen it with my own eyes, it's become something that I'm very passionate about and at times got really angry about when I felt like it wasn't being taught in the best possible way because it's just so important.

Brian Lehrer: WNYC and Gothamist Education Reporter, Jessica Gould. Jess, thanks.

Jessica Gould: Thank you.

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