Literacy is fundamental to the growth of students coming of age in a rapidly changing world. The increased diversity within our borders and global interactions beyond them make literacy skills of the utmost importance for dealing with emerging and ongoing challenges. Reading, and in particular the components of early reading development, such as phonetic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and motivation, is both foundational to all learning and seamlessly connected to all the language arts. Literacy: reading-language arts teachers have a responsibility to ensure that all students gain full access to the reading-language arts curriculum in order to prepare students to succeed academically and communicate effectively in a complex world.