J. Schuberth, a literacy advocate and one of the founders of Oregon Kids Read, launched a write-in gubernatorial campaign as a pencil to raise awareness about persistent reading challenges among the state's students. (Photo by Alex Baumhardt / Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Oregon’s low youth literacy rates spurred a new candidate to announce a write-in campaign for governor on Monday.
Most Oregonians have at least some experience with the candidate, but it’s never held elected office before. It’s not even human.
Schuberth, a former teacher for Portland State University’s general education program and one of the founders of reading advocacy group Oregon Kids Read, launched the Pencil for governor campaign Monday to raise awareness about persistent reading proficiency issues among the state’s students. To “get education on the ballot” Schuberth created and funded the Pencil Political Action Committee in early February with $14,000 of their own money.
“It sends a message that if Pencil starts showing up in the primary, that the governors might want to pay attention to this issue and start doing something,” Schuberth said. And if Pencil barely makes a mark, it will still be worth it, they added.
“We have a crisis. We want people to be talking about it,” they explained. “It is not children’s fault. It’s not their parents’ fault. The Department of Education in Oregon is failing our students. There’s a systemic problem that we need to address. And we can fix this.”
Oregon’s fourth and eighth graders scored in the bottom half of all states for reading proficiency in the 2025 National Assessment for Educational Progress, often referred to as the nation’s report card. And despite hundreds of millions of dollars of investment during the last 25 years, those levels have not budged.
Despite making major investments in tutoring, curriculum overhauls and teacher training geared toward improving how reading is taught in Oregon, Gov. Tina Kotek’s Early Literacy Success Initiative has not gone far enough to address the most high-needs students, or to hold schools accountable, Schuberth said.
Calls to modernize reading instruction for kids to align with the large body of cognitive and neuroscience research, and evidence — often referred to as “the science of reading” — have led some states to mandate certain literacy curriculum that can be used in schools, and to require new teachers pass an exam demonstrating knowledge of the science of reading in order to get licensed.
Oregon has not gone as far, but schools receiving Early Literacy Initiative grants must use the money on state-approved materials and teacher trainings.
Schuberth pointed to states including Mississippi, Louisiana and Colorado, which saw improvements in student reading proficiency when their education departments mandated schools use approved reading curriculum and began requiring teachers to demonstrate knowledge in the reading science to get licensed.
Pencil’s campaign also calls for ensuring kids in poverty were adequately counted in the state. Reporting from The Oregonian found the state has been using a formula that results in an undercount of such students for years.
Schuberth appeared in pencil costume Monday at Portland State University along with Sarah Dougher, associate executive director of Portland State’s General Education Program. Dougher said she sees the downstream effects of students’ reading struggles.
“We have majority students from the Portland area here and and we’ve seen since COVID, a real sort of softening of some skill areas, especially persistence in reading and also in writing,” she said.
The department has had to create an increasing amount of material responsive to a screen reader, or make videos of people reading material to share with students alongside the readings.
“We don’t have a reading center at Portland State. We expect that when students come here, they’re going to read,” Dougher said.“But the thing is that people’s orientation towards reading, because of their spotty background in the public system, they need more ways in, and it’s our responsibility to meet them where they’re at.”
Schuberth said the campaign is about taking advantage of the “Pencil pulpit” to make education one of the biggest issues in the governor’s race.
“When we look around at so many of the other problems, education is where it starts. If you don’t know how to read, you cannot compete for jobs. Addiction issues, a lot of our homeless issues, a lot of these issues come from people who have not been given the education that they deserve,” they said.
A write-in campaign for a pencil wouldn’t work — Oregon law requires write-in candidates to meet the same criteria as every other candidate. In Oregon, candidates for governor must be human, at least 30 years old and a U.S. citizen who has resided in Oregon for the past three years.
But Oregonians inspired to write in “Pencil” on their primary ballots can still do so — as long as they use a black or blue pen.
Editor’s note: The Urang Schuberth family funded a grant that paid for a 2023 Oregon Capital Chronicle series on the science of reading. States Newsroom, the nonprofit 501c(3) organization based in North Carolina that created and funds the Capital Chronicle, oversaw the project funding, and funders had no involvement in the reporting, editing or framing of those articles or this one.
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