Longview’s Early Phonics Switch Became the State’s Preview

Longview School District is in year five of a phonics-heavy reading program it started in 2022, and Washington has now written the same method into statute. Classroom writing got stronger early. The scoreboard is slower.

A Stanford file covering 2022 through 2025 still has the Cowlitz County district more than a grade behind the 2019 national average, even as students there gain skills faster than the country. Other districts will meet that split when they next buy books.

Longview Dropped Balanced Literacy in 2022

By February 23, 2024, the district was already in year two of materials built around how the brain maps print to sound. It left balanced literacy, the mix of phonics, context clues, and independent reading that had sat in many U.S. classrooms since the 1990s.

Ann Valanzuolo, then the district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, put the core claim in one line. “Reading has to be taught,” she said, because speech arrives from listening and print does not.

The package was two sets, not one fat anthology. Teachers were not told to guess which tool fit the child that hour. They were told to teach the code, then put that code to work on real topics.

THE TWO MATERIALS LONGVIEW PAIRED

• Skills block: Letter shapes, letter sounds, and phonics, practiced with handwriting and magnetic word building so the hand helps the memory stick.
• Themed units: Decodable texts inside science and other content, including space and the heart, so children sound out words they have already been taught and write about the same topic.
• What left the room: Three-cueing, the habit of using a first letter, a picture, and a guess from context when a word is unknown.

Valanzuolo warned that picture guessing collapses once the pictures disappear. “In real life, most of the text we read doesn’t have pictures, so if you don’t learn how to read the word, you’re going to be in trouble when you get to third grade,” she said.

The district’s annual report for that period counted 6,413 students, 64.7 percent White and 22.5 percent Hispanic. Kindergarten classes ran 18 students per teacher. Grades 1 through 5 ran 22 to 1.

Longer Sentences Arrived Before the Test Scores

Kristie Wall, principal of Robert Gray Elementary, did not lead with a state percentile. She led with paper.

My greatest gain I’ve seen is that students are writing more. They’re writing their ideas down, they’re writing longer sentences. They’re putting their own ideas, connected to the learning topic, on paper.

Kristie Wall, Principal, Robert Gray Elementary

Wall also told staff that year two is when a new program “really comes alive,” because no teacher can memorize a full year’s script on day one. The work felt harder for students at first. Accuracy in pronunciation and spelling rose anyway, she said, and so did the length of written work and the stretch of attention during lessons.

Jodie Wygant, the school’s literacy coach, heard the shift in effort. “At first it’s all so hard and now it’s getting easier,” she said. “And so now they’re willing to give it a little more.”

Kids started asking questions because they wanted to know the content, Wall said, not only because a worksheet demanded an answer. Wygant tied that to every other period on the clock. Math in Longview was moving into word problems, and job applications still require print.

Wall was already looking past third grade. “We want our kiddos to leave our system in high school, graduate and be ready to contribute to our society in Longview,” she said.

She also said it was still too early, in that February, to read the new program off the state tests. That caution aged well.

Stanford’s File Still Shows a Grade-Level Hole

The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford, working with Harvard’s Education Scorecard, posted a Longview trend report generated on April 28, 2026. It averages grade 3-8 results for 2022 through 2025, the same window as the new reading program’s first years, and it does not split the first-year cohort from later ones.

On the level of performance, the hole is still large. On the rate of learning, the district is not standing still.

STANFORD’S 2022-2025 LONGVIEW FILE

National learning sits at 1.0 grade of skill per year. Longview’s 1.18 rate is 18 percent faster than that mark, and faster than the similar-district set Stanford named (East Valley and West Valley in Spokane, Bremerton, Walla Walla, and Spokane). The same file still places Longview 1.07 grade levels below the 2019 national average.

Reading rank for 2022-2025 is 6,924th of 10,076 districts, the 31st percentile. The reading trend rank is 2,214th of 5,673, the 61st percentile. Math sits even lower on level, at the 27th percentile, with a stronger trend rank at the 72nd.

Those units are not the same as Washington’s Smarter Balanced “met standard” cut. The district’s own annual report, a separate snapshot, said 44 percent met ELA standards in 2022-23, the first year of the new books. Grade 3 was at 38 percent, grade 4 at 34 percent, and grade 5 at 40 percent. That is year one on the state test, not year five, and it should not be read as a 2026 proficiency rate.

A later look at the district’s phonics bet in year five is the place to watch how those early classroom claims sit against newer state cuts. The Stanford learning-rate line is the part of the ledger that balanced-literacy critics will cite. The 1.07-grade hole is the part that will not let anyone call the job finished.

Olympia Wrote the Method Into State Law

Washington was late to put this fight into statute. Other states had already required phonics-heavy programs while Olympia stayed local-control on core reading. That lag was a live complaint in the state well before Longview’s year-two interviews, and it was still being thrown at Gov. Bob Ferguson in 2025.

Rep. Gerry Pollet, a Democrat, introduced House Bill 1295 on January 14, 2025, with Republican co-sponsors including Skyler Rude and Travis Couture. The House passed it 96-1 on February 17, 2026. The Senate passed an amended version 47-1 on March 6, then 48-1 on March 12 after a concurrence fight. The House’s final vote that day was 95-0.

Ferguson signed the bill on March 24, 2026. It is Chapter 190 of the 2026 Laws, with an effective date of June 11, 2026. At the signing he said students need to read by fourth grade and that too many still do not.

Pollet’s line was sharper. “We know scientifically how people learn to read, and we are not using it,” he said.

The findings in the enrolled bill are a state portrait, not a Longview one. In 2023-24, 37 percent of third graders and 40 percent of fourth graders were identified as reading below grade level. The 2021-22 dyslexia screening system, built under an earlier law, had already flagged more than 20 percent of K-2 students as at risk.

Longview did not wait for that statute. It is now the mill-town preview of a rule the rest of the state will meet when the next boxes of books are ordered.

What the 2026 Literacy Law Requires

ESHB 1295 does not seize every classroom this fall. The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction says the new purchase rule starts on September 1, 2027, and only when a district, charter, or state-tribal compact school buys or updates K-4 literacy materials. Districts are not ordered to throw out a program that is already on the shelf.

When they do buy, the books must include OSPI’s six essential components of comprehensive literacy: language comprehension, phonological and phonemic awareness, orthographic knowledge, reading and writing fluency, vocabulary, and oral language. The materials must also be diagnostic, multisensory, aligned to Washington’s English language arts standards, and consistent with teacher endorsement rules.

THE SWITCH AND THE STATUTE

1. Fall 2022: Longview opens year one of the phonics-and-knowledge materials in elementary classrooms.
2. February 23, 2024: Principals and coaches describe more writing, longer sentences, and better attention in year two.
3. January 14, 2025: Pollet introduces HB 1295.
4. March 24, 2026: Ferguson signs ESHB 1295 as Chapter 190.
5. June 11, 2026: The law takes effect.
6. September 1, 2027: New or updated K-4 literacy curriculum must meet the statute’s components.

The Professional Educator Standards Board has to rewrite endorsement language so new teachers are trained in those pieces. OSPI is told to keep a literacy training program and to collect, by December 2030, counts of educators who take it through the educational service districts. Family engagement is written in as a system duty, not a flyer in a backpack.

K-2 dyslexia screening from Senate Bill 6162 stays in place. HB 1295 adds annual screening for at-risk readers through grade 4 without stretching the dyslexia-specific screen to those later grades. Students who show weakness are supposed to get multisensory structured literacy help inside a multitiered system, delivered by a trained educator.

That is the machine Longview already tried to build with magnets, decodables, and science units. The statute now tells every other district to buy a version of it the next time money goes out the door.

Phonics Lost Ground After Horace Mann

Valanzuolo walked staff through a fight that is older than the district. A phonics method that teaches the sounds letters make can be traced to 1690. In the mid-1800s, Horace Mann, secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, argued that sounding out was dull and that children should start by memorizing whole words.

Whole language held through the 1980s even after mid-century studies cut against it. Balanced literacy rose in the 1990s as a blend, with phonics in the mix but also a wide grant of teacher discretion. Three-cueing rode along with it.

Around 2018 the argument sharpened again as researchers and parent groups pressed for systematic phonics as the foundation, not an optional station. Longview joined districts that were already leaving the older blend. Washington’s 2026 law is the state catching that wave without naming a vendor and without forcing an overnight dump of old kits.

Supporters told senators the structured approach reaches about 95 percent of children. The enrolled bill also flags an equity problem the screeners can miss: African American and Hispanic children who show signs of dyslexia are less likely to be identified than White children, even after income is held constant. The legislative bet is that a common, research-aligned code will catch those students instead of waiting on a label.

Longview’s own file is the local test of that bet. Students there are adding more than a grade of skill per year. They are still standing in a hole deeper than the state’s.

Dr. Karen L. Cloninger, in her second year as superintendent in the 2025-26 annual report, named academic achievement as one of two pillars in a strategic plan due in April 2026. Belonging was the other. The reading program is no longer a pilot. It is the ground that plan has to stand on, and it is the ground Olympia just told the rest of Washington to walk.

Frequently Asked Questions

When Do Washington Districts Have to Buy Science of Reading Curriculum?

Only when they purchase or update K-4 literacy materials on or after September 1, 2027. ESHB 1295 does not set a drop-dead date to replace a program already in use, and OSPI’s guidance says districts are not required to buy new curriculum just because the law took effect on June 11, 2026.

Did Longview Have to Switch Again After the 2026 Law?

No. The statute is triggered by the next buy, not by a statewide recall of existing kits, so a district that already installed a phonics-and-knowledge program in 2022 can keep it. Teacher endorsement rules and K-4 screening duties still apply on top of whatever books are on the shelf.

What Counts as Comprehensive Literacy Under HB 1295?

OSPI’s list is language comprehension (including knowledge building), phonological and phonemic awareness, orthographic knowledge, reading and writing fluency, vocabulary, and oral language. New kits also have to be diagnostic and culturally relevant, aligned to the 2025-revised state ELA standards, and consistent with the Professional Educator Standards Board’s rewritten endorsements.

How Many Washington Third Graders Were Below Grade Level in 2023-24?

The enrolled bill’s findings say 37 percent of third graders and 40 percent of fourth graders were identified as reading below grade level that year. A separate OSPI release on the spring 2025 tests said 71 percent of students statewide showed foundational grade-level knowledge or higher in ELA when Level 2 is counted with Levels 3 and 4.

Year five in Longview is no longer an experiment sitting off to the side of state policy. It is the closest thing Washington has to a finished rehearsal, with more writing in the folders and a grade-level hole that has not closed.