Assessment, accountability, and access: Constrained skill mastery as instructional gatekeeper

The nature of the literacy assessments valued in the persistent accountability climate within U.S. public education, coupled with an increasingly polarized discourse around what counts as the science of reading (SOR), have resulted in instructional gatekeeping that privileges constrained skill teaching and learning in K-3 settings. The gatekeeper phenomenon is an urgent issue of equity, with children from minoritized populations bearing the...