NEW JERSEY — Governor Mikie Sherrill is putting reading skills at the center of her education agenda, warning that the United States is facing a serious literacy crisis and arguing that the most important intervention may need to happen before students leave elementary school.
In a series of posts on her official X account, Sherrill pointed to national reading scores showing that almost seven in ten fourth graders did not reach the proficient level on the most recent national assessment. She then turned the focus to what New Jersey is doing to address the problem.
Her message begins with a familiar education principle:
“Before third grade, you learn to read. After, you read to learn.”
The distinction matters because once students move beyond the early elementary years, reading is no longer simply one subject among many. It becomes the tool they need to understand math problems, science, history and virtually everything else they encounter in school.
Sherrill warned that when children fall behind at that critical stage, catching up can become extremely difficult. She also cited research showing that students who struggle with reading in third grade are four times more likely to leave high school without a diploma than stronger readers.
According to the governor, the problem has become even more urgent in the years following the pandemic.
Students, she said, still have not fully recovered from pandemic-era learning disruptions, while many are also spending less time reading outside school. Sherrill pointed in particular to social media as one factor contributing to that change.
New Jersey is betting on high-impact tutoring
Sherrill said that when she ran for governor, she promised to address the literacy crisis and that her first budget made high-impact tutoring a major part of that effort.
But she emphasized that this is not simply another study hall.
High-impact tutoring is designed as a more targeted and personalized approach in which students work consistently with the same tutor over an extended period rather than receiving occasional help when they fall behind.
Sherrill highlighted Franklin Township as an example.
During a visit there in June, she said elementary school students participating in the program had gained two full grade levels in reading in a single year.
For Sherrill, however, the point goes beyond test scores.
She said these programs can also give struggling readers something that is harder to measure: confidence. A child who begins to believe that reading is something they can actually do may be more willing to keep reading and learning even after the tutoring program ends.
More than 13,000 additional students
Sherrill says her budget doubles New Jersey’s investment in high-impact tutoring, with the goal of reaching more than 13,000 additional students across 100 school districts.
Her stated goal is ambitious: to make New Jersey students the best prepared in the country.
The push comes as literacy has become one of the most pressing education issues nationally, particularly after years of disrupted schooling and concerns about how much time children spend reading compared with time spent on phones and social media.
For New Jersey, the question now is whether intensive tutoring can produce the same kind of gains on a much larger scale.
If Franklin Township is the example Sherrill wants the state to follow, the strategy is straightforward: identify struggling readers early, give them consistent individual support and try to close the gap before reading difficulties begin affecting everything else they learn.
Because by third grade, reading is no longer only about learning how to read.
It is about whether a child can use reading to learn everything that comes next.
Source: Governor Mikie Sherrill’s official X account, @GovSherrillNJ. (X (formerly Twitter))
By NJ RADAR Team