As California wrestles with a statewide literacy crisis, a bill poised to hit Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk could fundamentally change the way students learn to read in California. The bill, AB 1454, would move the state one step closer to implementing evidence-based reading instruction in California classrooms, which has been hotly debated for decades. Authored by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, who represents Salinas, and Assemblymembers Al Muratsuchi of Torrance and Blanca Rubio of Baldwin Park, AB 1454 would adopt new evidence-based reading instructional materials and training. Often referred to as the “science of reading,” evidence-based reading focuses on foundational reading skills like phonics and vocabulary rather than word recognition and memorization. Unlike many other states, California has previously stopped short of mandating evidence-based reading instruction. Past efforts to overhaul the state’s reading curriculum have stalled in the state legislature, with a former bill by Rubio (AB 2222) failing to garner critical support from the teacher’s union and English-learner advocates, who worried it would not meet the needs of English learners and limit educators’ creativity and innovation in the classroom. The California Teachers Association supports AB 1454, which gives school districts more flexibility to select instructional materials and the option to decline state-funded teacher training, unlike previous versions of the bill. For decades, educators and state leaders have gone back and forth on the best way to teach young students how to read, a battle often referred to as “reading wars.” California public schools, which have a large amount of control over instructional materials and methods compared to other states, have alternated over the years between two main methods: an emphasis on phonics and whole language. Danielle Gomez, an education and policy research associate at the Stanford-based nonprofit research center, the Policy Analysis for California Education, said structured literacy emphasizes phonemic awareness — the sounds letters make — along with phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. “When we actually pick up a book, actually learning how to tie the written representations of the alphabet and of words…to the way that they sound must be taught. We must be taught how to learn to read,” Gomez said. “We have decades of interdisciplinary research across the world that support this idea of reading…this evidence of how the brain develops.”