Education, education reform, Educational Research, reading, Science of Reading

Recommended: Why We Cannot Go Back to Basics (Rethinking Schools)

April 3, 2025 plthomasedd

[Header Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash]

Note

The article below appears in Rethinking Schools and brings together several problems with and connections between the “science of reading” and book banning/censorship movements that I have been address since 2018.

Why We Cannot Go Back to Basics: Reclaiming The Right to Teach Literacy, Daniel Ferguson, Laurie Rabinowitz, and Amy Tondreau

Although the “culture war” and “reading war” have been described as separate causes promoted by disparate organizations, their stories are more connected than they appear. Both book banning and SoR dogmatism limit what teachers can teach and what students can read, narrowing the ability of public schools to address children’s diverse needs. We see this most explicitly in conservative parent groups, including Moms for Liberty, who have made it clear they endorse both. This should be a wake-up call to critically examine the potential impact of phonics-based policies on public school students and teachers.

Beware Scripted Curriculum: More Trojan Horse Education Reform

April 1, 2025 plthomasedd

[Header Photo by José León on Unsplash, cropped]

It took a few years, but there was always a long game.

And there was a few decades of preparation along the way.

George W. Bush built the foundation for Trojan Horse education reform in the 1990s, including a false “miracle” narrative and efforts to establish scripted curriculum (a colleague and I examined that here).

Education reform, however, was never about improving learning or teaching, but about ideological agendas, conservative agendas.

The crisis/miracle cycles started with that Texas “miracle,” but included the Chicago “miracle” (to bolster Arne Duncan), the DC “miracle” (to promote Michelle Rhee’s grift), and the Harlem “miracle” (that solidly merged education reform as bi-partisan under Obama with the help of grifter Duncan).

What may prove to be the most successful (and harmful) “miracle,” however, is the media manufactured Mississippi “miracle,” grounded in 2019 NAEP scores.

Six years later, the real end game of these manufactured and false “miracles” are merging with an initial effort by W. Bush—de-professionalizing teachers with scripted curriculum. Note the connection in a recent misleading but recurring endorsement by Patrinos (from the Department of Education Reform, funded by Walton money in Arkansas) of that Mississippi “miracle”:

Teaching at the right level and a scripted lessons plan are among the most effective strategies to address the global learning crisis. After the World Bank reviewed over 150 education programs in 2020, nearly half showed no learning benefit.

And then, this disturbing piece by Korbey: Why US schools have fallen in love with scripted lessons.

After taking a swipe at NCTE, Korbey makes the same but false connection as Patrinos above:

Nearly all the states that have seen reading scores improve recently – including Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama – have changed state law to encourage districts to choose from approved lists of HQIM.

Conveniently omitted in public advocacy and endorsements of scripted curriculum, is that this is a correlation; however, research has shown that curriculum, instruction, and teacher training are not the keys to increased test scores. Grade retention is:

[S]tates whose policies mandate third-grade retention see significant and persistent increases in high-stakes reading scores in all cohorts…. [T]here is no consistent evidence that high-stakes reading scores increase in states without a retention component.

And another omission is that research has shown scripted reading programs de-professionalize teachers, fail to serve the individual needs of students, and have “whitewashed” the curriculum, alienating the most under-served students in our schools [see Recommended below].

And thus, the end game:

Musk: If you have a classroom of 25 or 30 kids, it is literally impossible to spend time with every kid individually or you can spend to little time.. But what you can do is set them up with ai.. pic.twitter.com/tAcySW2zTE
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 31, 2025

Education reform is dedicated to perpetual education crisis for market and political goal.

Scripted curriculum, then, is not designed to improve reading proficiency, but to create one more step toward AI replacing teachers the same way self-checkout replaced cashiers in our grocery stores.