New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks says he and Mayor Eric Adams are trying to provide teachers the tools to improve a jarring statistic the mayor often cited on the campaign trail: 65% of Black and brown children attending public schools never achieved reading proficiency.

“We have not given the teachers the kinds of tools that they need in the practice of reading and how to teach reading,” Banks said Thursday. “I believe it’s been the single greatest impediment to our kids being successful in the system.”

Banks said he and the mayor are now expanding programs like the Structured Literacy Schools pilot from two schools to four.

“At these schools, educators across subjects were trained in evidence-based literacy practices,” Banks said. “And after all, we know that reading isn’t limited to just one classroom and one subject or has to be connected and interwoven.”

For years, schools have used what’s called a balanced literacy approach — encouraging students to memorize sight words, use context clues and take guesses while reading. But Banks says it has not worked. Now, the city is moving to focus on structured literacy, which emphasizes phonics and sounding words out.

It’s a technique that has been used at private schools serving children with dyslexia — where the city sometimes sends students at its own expense. Brooklyn Assemblymember Robert Carroll attended some of those schools as a child. Now, he’s allocating $100,000 dollars to expand the city’s pilot to P.S. 295 and P.S. 107 in Brooklyn.

“We can do it for every student. There’s no reason you need to be segregated, to your friends from your neighborhood, be shipped off to the Upper East Side or elsewhere,” Carroll said. “We can do it right here in local schools.”

The pilot is welcome news to P.S. 295 parents Greg and Shanna Lublin. Greg was diagnosed with dyslexia as a child, and has watched his own son, Greyson, struggle.

“Not knowing where and how to start to find help has been an absolute nightmare,” Greg Lublin said. “But then just recently we were told that the help that we are looking for is going to find our son."

Help, they hope, will make a big difference for their family.