International Literacy Educators Coalition

ILEC Vision: To promote literacy learning practices that enable all children and youth to realize their full potential as literate, thinking human beings.

Download a PDF of the response.

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ILEC Response: Reading Reform Across America (The Albert Shanker Institute, July 2023), Susan Neuman, Esther Quintero, and Kayla Reist

The report asserts, “Our goal is to provide a basic yet systematic description of states’ efforts to improve reading instruction.” And is grounded in the following:

Furthermore, legislative efforts have at times been criticized widely, but our analysis reveals significant variation among states, rendering blanket characterizations unhelpful….Whether we see the current state of American students’ reading achievement as a new crisis or as part of a stable trend, the truth remains that more than one-third (37 percent) of the nation’s fourth-graders performed below the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) “Basic” level in 2022. Because there is no achievement-level description for below “Basic,” it is difficult to make full sense of this statistic. (p. 1)

Reading Reform Across America

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While the report is ambitious, the increase in reading legislation is framed as a positive reform effort motivated by “answering teachers’ calls for better support with regard to reading.” This positive spin ignores the media, market, and political influences on another reading war and avoids confronting how many states are passing legislation that mandates and bans reading practices based on advocacy and not the full body of reading science.[1]

Positive Aspects of the Report:

1. The report makes a strong case for reading achievement being significantly inequitable among marginalized groups of students.
2. The report acknowledges the concerns raised about grade retention policy.

ILEC Concerns:

1. State reading legislation is not a response to teachers, but to an orchestrated political reform movement grounded in misinformation about reading achievement, teacher expertise, and teacher education.
2. The report fails to fully engage with patterns of extreme measures in several states’ legislation that bans three cueing, reading programs, balanced literacy, etc., as well as legislation that mandates universal dyslexia screening, structured literacy programs, etc.—both of which are based on advocacy and not the full body of research.
3. The report does not address the contradiction of calling for scientific practice while mandating and funding programs and practices not fully supported by research; for example, mandating LETRS training for all teachers of reading.
4. Posing the current reading legislation movement as positive is idealistic bordering on irresponsible.

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[1] Reading Science Resources for Educators (and Journalists): Science of Reading Edition [UPDATED]; The Negative Legislative Consequences of the SOR Media Story: An Open-Access Reader

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What Do We Really Know about Reading Proficiency in the US?

Neoliberal Education Reform: “Science of Reading” Edition