[Header Photo by Alejandra Rodríguez on Unsplash]

I began my teaching career in 1984, coinciding with the current era of high-stakes accountability driving education reform in the wake of A Nation at Risk.

One of my favorite units as a teacher of American literature to tenth and eleventh graders in the rural South was the Transcendentalism era—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and (the often ignored) Margaret Fuller.

Students did not enjoy reading these authors, I must confess, but the unit itself was often very compelling.

In the late 1980s, I added a consideration of the “Reeboks let U.B.U” campaign featuring Emerson:

I tracked down the advertising agency responsible for the ad, and my students wrote a letter calling out the campaign for being contradictory.

Shockingly, we did receive a letter from the person over the campaign. They confessed that my students’ were on target with their criticism, but added that Reebok believed they were a unique shoes company and felt their campaign highlighted that fact.

As a part of that unit also I had a recording from MTV News covering a Madonna look-alike contest.

Among the dozens of prepubescent girls, one was interviewed and she excitedly stated that the girls were there to express their individuality.

While students were no more eager to read Emerson, teens soon found themselves compelled by Emerson’s “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

Over the past 40-plus years, I think about this unit and my students often—as well as Emerson’s enduring arguments in “Self-Reliance.”

The world of education reform, I regret to acknowledge, is dominated by “little minds,” drawn to and selling the same false stories of educational crisis and miracles.

I would amend Emerson’s list a bit, adding to “statesmen” education journalists.

The current reading crisis, often identified as the “science of reading” (SOR) movement, is yet another example of selling the manufactured reading crisis and education reform miracles that are actually mirages.

Since the 1980s, no education reform has worked.

New standards after new standards have not worked.

New high-stakes tests after new high-stakes tests have not worked.

Accountability for students, teachers, and schools has not worked.

No a single fear-mongering prediction or promise has been fulfilled.

With each new hot reform, the missionary zeal doesn’t fades; it just switches teams.

I am drawn to a line from Blade Runner as I contemplate the fate of the current SOR movement: “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long – and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy” (Tyrell).

The uncritical support for the SOR story has been as fervent as any reform movement, so I must wonder if we are on the cusp of buyer’s remorse.

Are these canaries in the coalmine foreboding an end to yet another era of unfounded claims of a reading crisis?

• A judge in Massachusetts rejected a frivolous lawsuit grounded in the story being sold that a reading crisis was caused by a few reading programs and the scapegoat of the moment, balanced literacy (and three cueing).
• Unlike mainstream media, Snopes corrected Trump-appointed Secretary of Education’s claim about student reading proficiency based on the Big Lie about NAEP.
• Possibly most surprising is this call from Perry Bacon Jr. to set aside the crisis rhetoric around education, including this acknowledgement about NAEP:

The overwhelming majority of American students are reaching “baseline proficiency” in math, reading and science, according to PISA. That’s almost certainly because of our public school systems, where about 87 percent of students in grades K-12 get their education. U.S. politicians for a while were pushing the aspirational idea that most students should score proficient or above on the NAEP tests. That is a very high and probably unrealistic standard. Most of America’s students are reaching the NAEP “basic” level, mirroring the PISA results.

The impending buyer’s remorse for buying the reading story being sold will come with tremendous costs.

As Bacon warns: “But the alarmist portrayals of our schools are wrong and undermine support for public education.”

The SOR movement has wasted huge amounts of public funding and time; students are also paying a high price because of the caustic nature of scripted reading programs and grade retention.

As I read mainstream journalists and political leaders parrot the same false reading story over and over, I cannot help thinking about the preteen girls dressed like Madonna and the Reebok add that even my high school students were able to shake their heads at in disappointment.