"To try to make up for pandemic learning loss, educators and policymakers have searched for solutions that work and — just as important — are cost effective.

Now a new study, released Monday, reports positive results from a reading program in California that emphasized training teachers in the principles of the science of reading, a movement focused on foundational skills such as phonics, vocabulary and comprehension.

The program in about 70 low-performing schools yielded test-score gains for third graders in 2022 and 2023, on par with students having attended school for an additional quarter of a year in English and 12 percent of a year in math, according to a working paper by researchers at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education.

For about $1,000 per student annually, the program retrained teachers and administrators and paid for new classroom materials, better aligned to cognitive research."