In a first-grade classroom at Acorn Woodland Elementary, a teacher calls on three students simultaneously to practice reading. They stand and read in unison. When they stumble on a word, the teacher offers a quick correction—and something remarkable happens. The rest of the class doesn’t disengage or get distracted. Instead, they lean in, eager to repeat the word correctly together. The energy in the room isn’t about getting it wrong; it’s about getting it right, together.This was one of many moments during a December 9th learning walk that highlighted what strong foundational reading instruction looks like in the classroom.

The dozen literacy practitioners and district leaders who joined the site visit were impressed to learn that the effective first and second grade teachers they observed were only in their second year of teaching, not only at that school, but their second year teaching anywhere.

What We Saw in Classrooms

Walking into classrooms at Acorn Woodland, observers saw instruction that felt both energizing and precise. Students moved through phonics lessons with tight pacing, multiple participation protocols, and a palpable sense of safety. Teachers used equity sticks to ensure participation, and employed choral reading, whisper reading, and partner work to keep every child engaged.

Several themes emerged in the debrief:

Strong foundations enable engagement. The comfort and connection between teachers and students created the psychological safety needed for risk-taking. Students weren’t afraid to make mistakes, and teachers didn’t move on until mastery was achieved, and they still kept every child engaged in the process.

Teacher moves matter enormously. Explicit modeling with mouth positions and gestures, specific feedback, and a focus on academic language and conversation skills all contributed to what observers described as phonics instruction that felt “exciting” rather than rote.

Systems and support make it possible. These results don’t happen by accident. Acorn Woodland provides teachers 200 minutes of prep time per week (compared to the standard 150), built-in coaching time, and strategic use of specialists who push into classrooms to create planning and collaboration time. Teachers are brought back early each year for intensive planning. And literacy coach Tala Kauzer meets with every teacher weekly for at least 30 minutes to unpack data and plan instruction.

Data drives key decisions. “If you’re not ever looking at data, you’re waiting until it’s too late to make those decisions. We don’t want to do that to students,” said Literacy Coach Tala Kauzer. “That’s a huge disservice to wait until the very end and say, ‘Huh, they didn’t get it. What do I do? I guess it’ll be different next year.’”

Understanding the Data Landscape

The afternoon panel at the California Endowment, “Making Literacy Data Matter,”  shifted to a broader view of how Oakland Unified is using data to inform literacy instruction across the district. Before the panel began, Mark Heringer, East Bay Managing Director at GO Public Schools, framed three categories of assessment data that matter:

All three types matter, and they need to be looked at together over time, not as isolated snapshots. “Each individual data point is just one small snapshot and doesn’t give you the full image. We’re constantly triangulating data, looking at different sources to get the full picture of what’s actually happening,” explained Tala Kauzer.

This means combining curriculum assessments with formative classroom observations with benchmark assessments—and using all of it to identify misconceptions and scaffold instruction before it’s too late. 

Where Progress Is Happening – Bright Spots

After an introduction from Oakland Literacy Coalition Executive Director Sanam Jorjani, the audience heard from four panelists: OUSD School Board Member Clifford Thompson, OUSD Early Literacy Director Jamilah Sanchez, OUSD Deputy Network Superintendent Kate Sugarman, and Literacy Coach Tala Kauzer, who led the learning walk at her school earlier that day.

While OUSD’s overall SBAC data hasn’t shown the growth educators want to see, three schools in Elementary Network 3 stood out as outliers, using the distance from standard as an indicator. Sugarman explained that Distance from Standard is a helpful way to see schools “both raising the ceiling and lifting the floor,” rather than looking only at the percentage of students reading proficiently.

Burckhalter Elementary improved their ELA Distance from Standard by 14 points over two years—significant growth driven by staff stability and their role as an EL Education hub school, according to Sugarman. They engaged in deep collective learning about the curriculum and built a culture of “scholarliness” focused on understanding text and using evidence.

Hoover Elementary in West Oakland made a 20-point increase in Distance from Standard in one year. Their strategy focused on the basics: ensuring teachers have time in their schedules for daily curriculum delivery and that a high-quality EL Ed lesson is taught every single day. With a large population of English learners, they’ve also intensified their focus on integrated and designated ELD.

Cleveland Elementary, already a higher-performing school, reduced the distance from standard among African American students by 16 points over two years through a focal students approach. Every teacher identifies specific historically underserved students, and when principals and coaches visit classrooms, they’re always asking: What are those specific kids doing today? Did the teacher check in with them? Did they answer a question? Feedback is centered on ensuring those students are truly engaged.

As Sugarman, Network 3 Deputy Superintendent, reflected: “I believe there’s no one right way to improve. The brilliance of the leader is to really take all that we’re giving them—which is lots from the district—and figure out, ‘What does our school need? How can we make this work for us in our context with the staff we have, the students we have, the families we have?'”

Shifting Practice – OUSD’s Literacy Journey

In 2019-2020, the district adopted foundational skills programs (SIPPS, Heggerty, Handwriting Without Tears). In 2021, they adopted EL Education for comprehensive, knowledge-building curriculum focused on complex texts.

This year, they adopted UFLI for systematic foundational skills instruction and DIBELS, mClass for benchmark assessments. They’ve also implemented a robust tiered support system: strong Tier 1 instruction for all students, Tier 2 small group instruction for students one year below grade level, and Tier 3 high-dosage tutoring for students further behind.

Early data from this school year is encouraging. Initial DIBELS progress monitoring from the beginning of the year to November shows strong growth, especially in kindergarten and first grade. At Acorn Woodland, iReady data shows many students achieving “dark green” status—meaning they’re at mid-grade level or above on foundational skills. This means that by the time students reach third through fifth grade, teachers can focus on comprehension and meaning-making rather than still working on decoding and fluency.

The school’s current focus reflects this shift. As Tala explained: “For the first two and a half months of PD we’ve been focused explicitly on student conversation—not just students talking to each other, responding to each other, but actually hearing, grappling with what their partner said and then building on that to continue a conversation.” The goal is to shift the cognitive work from teacher to student.

The Honest Challenges

The panel also acknowledged persistent inequities. Teacher turnover remains highest in East Oakland. Schools serving the most vulnerable populations lack the staff stability and resources that higher-performing schools have. Research shows that what teachers most want is a positive work culture and support that helps them improve. 

Jamilah Sanchez described the district’s approach: they’re working to provide coherence across all offerings, differentiated support based on need (high-performing schools get less intensive support; new principals at high-need sites get more), and robust data systems that give site leaders the tools to make instructional decisions for their students.

Key Takeaways

The day’s observations and discussions underscored a few essential truths:

Teacher support and job-embedded, ongoing professional learning matter. The support structures that allow teachers to plan, collaborate, analyze data, and refine their practice are not luxuries—they’re necessities.

Data must be actionable. Looking at multiple sources over time, triangulating information, and using it to make immediate instructional adjustments is what moves student learning forward.

Context matters. There’s no single formula for improvement. School leaders need the coherence and support of district structures, but also the autonomy to match strategies to their specific students, staff, and community.

And fundamentally, as one observer noted during the classroom debrief: it starts with culture and safety. When students feel comfortable taking risks, when teachers have high expectations paired with support, when mistakes are safe and mastery is the expectation—that’s when learning happens.

Oakland has a long way to go to turn around the literacy crisis, but attendees of the learning walk and panel got glimpses of what’s possible when curriculum, assessment, professional learning, and instructional leadership align around a common goal.

The Oakland Literacy Coalition extends our gratitude to ACORN Woodland Elementary staff and leadership for hosting the learning walk and giving us a window into what early literacy looks like at their site.

**For families and community members who want to dig deeper into Oakland’s literacy data, GO Public Schools’ Oakland Kids Rise report offers a clear, accessible look at student outcomes, trends over time, and areas of concern and opportunity. The report helps ground these discussions in publicly available data and highlights both areas of concern and key questions we must continue to ask as a community.**