P. L. Thomas, Professor of Education (Furman University, Greenville SC), taught high school English in rural South Carolina before moving to teacher education. He is a former column editor for English Journal (National Council of Teachers of English), current series editor for Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres (Brill), and author of Teaching Writing as Journey, Not Destination: Essays Exploring What ‘Teaching Writing’ Means (IAP, 2019) and How to End the Reading War and Serve the Literacy Needs of All Students: A Primer for Parents, Policy Makers, and People Who Care (IAP, in press). NCTE named Thomas the 2013 George Orwell Award winner. He co-edited the award-winning (Divergent Book Award for Excellence in 21st Century Literacies Research) volume Critical Media Literacy and Fake News in Post-Truth America (Brill, 2018). Follow his work @plthomasEdD and the becoming radical (https://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/).
There is a story education journalists love to tell; it is so innocent and compelling that even Florida wouldn’t bother to ban it.
Here is the story:
For decades, reading teachers in the United States have been teaching children to read using balanced literacy.
Balanced literacy was created by the Three Evil Witches—Calkins, Fountas, and Pinnell.
Under the spell of balanced literacy, reading teachers use three-cueing on all the children. What is three-cueing?
Well, three-cueing is putting picture books in front of all the children and asking them to look at the pictures and guess at the words on the page!
Such fun!
Sadly, however, now only two-thirds of children can read proficiently!
Despite how many have eagerly believed this fairy tale, it is nearly entirely caricature, misinformation, and lies. But it works so well that almost every education journalist in the US has recycled the story to fit their area or state, pulling from the original holy text.
Predictably, this retelling includes the usual list of misinformation and lies:
The beginning of the article is a litany of misinformation about NRP, NAEP, and reading proficiency (see below about how this piece focuses on grade 4 but ignores grade 8).
NCTQ is cited as a credible source although the conservative think tank has never released a peer-reviewed report that meets even the minimum standards of valid research.
Orton-Gillingham is referenced as moving toward “‘a more scientific approach'” although O-G (multisensory instruction) is not supported by the most recent scientific studies.
The piece allows Moates to promote her own commercialproduct, LETRS, although, as with O-G, no scientific research exists showing that the program results in higher student reading proficiency.
As I have noted, for at least 40 years, education reform has suffered under a crisis/miracle dichotomy that has failed students, teachers, and education.
The current crisis/miracle dichotomy is the manufactured reading proficiency crisis and the Mississippi “miracle.”
However, MS is based on the Florida model, which is now two-decades old.
Ironically, both FL and MS prove to be not models for reform but models for how political manipulation of education causes great harm to children (like the dark underbelly of fairy tales).
Yes, FL has found a process by which the state’s grade 4 reading scores on NAEP sit high in the national rankings; that “achievement” sacrifices almost 20,000 retained third graders a year (Black, MLL, and poor children disproportionately among those retained).
Here is the key problem not being fully addressed by media or reformers: FL also represents one of the states with the largest drop in achievement from grades 4 to 8, because the retention-driven grade 4 scores are mirages:
· Florida kids regress dramatically as they age in the system. Since 2003, Florida’s eighth grade rank as a state has never come close to its fourth grade rank on any NAEP test in any subject.
· The size of Florida’s regression is dramatic and growing, especially in math. Florida’s overall average NAEP state rank regression between fourth and eighth grade since 2003 is 17 spots (math) and 18 spots (reading). But since 2015, the averages are 27 spots (math) and 19 spots (reading).
So what about VT? Well, despite the handwringing over VT’s grade 4 NAEP and reading proficiency, the state sits high in the national rankings of grade 8 reading on NAEP:
Florida is well behind VT in grade 8 reading:
And MS remains at the bottom of grade 8 reading:
Like the entire US, VT simply is not experiencing a reading crisis. And certainly not because of the witches brew of balanced literacy stealing children’s ability to receive effective reading instruction.
VT may be, in fact, a better model for our need to add patience and nuance to our evaluation of reading proficiency, how we teach reading, how we measure proficiency, and when students need to reach our benchmarks as developing readers.
And thus, VT should not mimic MS since that would be throwing out the baby with the cauldron water.
What happens when years of media misinformation become a powerful talking point for extreme conservative advocacy groups and extreme conservative elected officials?
Consider this:
From the misleading and inaccurate work of Emily Hanford in 2018 to the more recent nonsense written by Nicholas Kristof in 2023, the lie that won’t die (2/3 of children are not reading at grade level) has ultimately—see above—driven a wave of conservative education reform that blurs curriculum and book banning legislation with “back-to-basics” reform touting the “science of reading.”
The key problem with the reading proficiency lie is that student reading proficiency is possibly the exact opposite of the lie because NAEP achievement levels are incredibly (purposefully?) confusing:
NAEP student achievement levels are performance standards that describe what students should know and be able to do. Results are reported as percentages of students performing at or above three NAEP achievement levels (NAEP Basic, NAEP Proficient, and NAEP Advanced). Students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level on NAEP assessments demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter. It should be noted that the NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards (e.g., state or district assessments). See short descriptions of NAEP achievement levels for each assessment subject.Scale Scores and NAEP Achievement Levels
While still a complicated statistic and claim, the reality is that if we use NAEP data as evidence, about 2/3 of students in the US read at or above grade level.
A better pair of claims, however, is that we do not have a universal definition of reading proficiency and that “grade level” is a far less valuable metric than “age level” for assessing reading proficiency.
This reading proficiency lie that won’t die is helping feed one of the worst waves of conservative assaults on schools even considering the 40-plus years of conservative education reform also based on the Nation at Risk lie.
Here is a reader for both reading proficiency and conservative education reform:
Grounded in the federal mandate for “scientifically based” instruction in No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001), anchored by the misrepresented National Reading Panel (NRP) report, the more recent “science of reading” (SOR) movement has successfully erased segments of the reading program market (Units of Study) and mandated as well as banned instructional practices in nearly every state of the US.
At the core of this SOR era of education reform is an orchestrated agenda to impose scripted curriculum onto reading instruction, often called “structured literacy”:
At its July 1st meeting, the IDA Board of Directors made a landmark decision designed to help market our approach to reading instruction. The board chose a name that would encompass all approaches to reading instruction that conform to IDA’s Knowledge and Practice Standards. That name is “Structured Literacy.”…
If we want school districts to adopt our approach, we need a name that brings together our successes. We need one name that refers to the many programs that teach reading in the same way. A name is the first and essential step to building a brand….
The term “Structured Literacy” is not designed to replace Orton Gillingham, Multi-Sensory, or other terms in common use. It is an umbrella term designed to describe all of the programs that teach reading in essentially the same way. In our marketing, this term will help us simplify our message and connect our successes. “Structured Literacy” will help us sell what we do so well.
Literacy scholars, however, have issued strong and research-based warnings about how structured literacy often devolves into scripted curriculum:
We recognize that some teachers using structured literacy approaches will find ways to respond to the interests, experiences, and literacy abilities of individual students; however, we are concerned about the indiscriminate and unwarranted implementation of the following practices:
Directive and/or scripted lessons that tell teachers what to say and do and the implementation of lesson sequences, often at a predetermined pace (Hanford, 2018)
Privileging of phonemic awareness and phonics as primary decoding skills (Hanford, 2018, 2019; IDA, 2019; Paige, 2020; Pierson, n.d.; Spear-Swerling, 2019)
Use of decodable texts that do not engage multiple dimensions of reading (Hanford, 2018; IDA, 2019; Paige, 2020; Spear-Swerling, 2019)
Specialized forms of reading instruction designed for particular groups of students as core literacy instruction for all students and teacher educators (Hanford, 2018; Hurford et al., 2016; IDA, 2019; Pierson, n.d.)
Mandating structured literacy programs despite the lack of clear empirical evidence to support these programs
Privileging the interest of publishers and private education providers over students.
Compton-Lilly, C.F., Mitra, A., Guay, M., & Spence, L.K. (2020). A confluence of complexity: Intersections among reading theory, neuroscience, and observations of young readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S185-S195. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.348
Compton-Lilly, et al.’s warnings are now being confirmed, notably in terms of bullet points 1 and 4 above as well as in terms of different reading programs now being mandated:
Overwhelming whiteness: a critical analysis of race in a scripted reading curriculum Amanda Rigell, Arianna Banack, Amy Maples, Judson Laughter, Amy Broemmel, Nora Vines & Jennifer Jordan (2022) Overwhelming whiteness: a critical analysis of race in a scripted reading curriculum, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 54:6, 852-870, DOI: 10.1080/00220272.2022.2030803
Scripted curriculum not only de-professionalizes teachers, but also whitewashes the curriculum, confirming the significant overlap of conservative education reform agendas addressing bans and censorship along with the SOR movement.
As I have noted here and here, the SOR movement is a significant part of dismantling the social justice movement.
While the outsized attacks on some reading programs—those by Calkins along with those by Fountas and Pinnell—have been uncritically embraced by the media and politicians despite no evidence of a reading crisis or failure linked to those programs, there is little logic in claims that structured literacy programs are the solution to a manufactured crisis.
In fact, the move to structured literacy as scripted curriculum is demonstrably a shift in the wrong direction if we care at all about reading proficiency, our increasingly diverse population of K-12 students in the US, or our beleaguered teaching profession.
One of the foundational claims throughout the history of calling for education to be “scientific” is identifying instructional practices as either scientific (or evidence-based) or not.
A key concern with such claims is that they tend to overstate in a black-and-white way that practices are scientific or not, but also, a narrow view of “evidence” is certainly a problem (see Wormeli for example).
Note here that the lists are different with some overlap, raising concerns about what science matters and what agenda any organization has (NCTQ releases reports that fail basic scientific validity to push a narrow agenda, for example).
The first list from NCTQ is overly dogmatic and an example of cherry-picking masquerading as scientific.
The second list has some promise since it allows for that some practices are not supported yet, a better characterization of science—although the lit review itself suffers from limited use of evidence.
One important element in the SOR movement and the legislation as well as practices that is driven by that movement is holding SOR claims to valid expectations of “scientific” that do not suffer from oversimplification.
The “science of reading” (SOR) movement has now impacted reading practices and reading legislation in essentially every state in the US. While the SOR movement claims lack credibility, the essential template of the media narrative remains compelling for the public and politicians.
Some of the key claims in the SOR movement can now be interrogated, however, since several states have implemented SOR legislation since 2012; those key claims include the following:
Mississippi has produced “miracle” results with SOR policy and should serve as a model for all states’ reading legislation.
SOR practices, structured literacy, can produce 95% of students reading at grade level.
SOR policy does not accept poverty as an “excuse.”
The following data from Mississippi on reading proficiency and grade retention exposes that these claims are misleading or possibly false:
Large numbers of students over four years of schooling (K-3) continue to be retained, calling into question how well SOR/SL actually works.
States such as MS and FL that have seen NAEP scores and rankings increase at grade 4 have not seen a similar increase at grade 8, suggesting the score increases are a mirage, not a miracle. Grade 8 NAEP data suggests that, in fact, poverty and other out-of-school factors remain significant in terms of student achievement (poverty is not an excuse, but something that also should be addressed).
Retention disproportionately impacts Black students and students in poverty:
SOR/SL are unlikely to have produced a miracle in MS or any other state (see Florida) , but grade retention is increasingly a political tool that harms children in order to corrupt test data to serve the needs of the education market place and politicians.
[NOTE: A PDF of this post as a presentation can be accessed HERE. See also a slightly revised presentation HERE. Please do not edit and please acknowledge this is my work if you use for instructional or public purposes.]
The answer is the anatomy of how media misinformation in 2018 wrapped in sensationalistic anecdotes has been replicated uncritically by dozens and dozens of journalists, resulting in that misinformation becoming “holy text,” or in other words, sacrosanct Truth.
Here, I offer the template that “Hard Words” created, and unlike journalists, I include links to research showing why the claims throughout the piece (and in its cousin, “Sold a Story”) are both false and shoddy journalism.
I.
The article begins with the Big Lie, one of the three biggest lies (along with citing the NRP report and NCTQ reports) in the “science of reading” (SOR) movement:
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of NAEP data. NAEP “proficient” is well above grade level, but “basic” is approximately what most states consider “grade level,” and thus, if anything, about 60-65% of students for several decades have been at or above grade level. That isn’t sensational enough for reporters, however.
The Evidence:
From NAEP:
NAEP student achievement levels are performance standards that describe what students should know and be able to do. Results are reported as percentages of students performing at or above three NAEP achievement levels (NAEP Basic, NAEP Proficient, and NAEP Advanced). Students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level on NAEP assessments demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter. It should be noted that the NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards (e.g., state or district assessments). See short descriptions of NAEP achievement levels for each assessment subject.
As I have pointed out about NCTQ (see more below on NCTQ and LETRS/Moats), much of the SOR advocacy has a market interest behind it and the SOR movement is grounded in the myth of the bad teacher, attacking classroom teachers and teacher educators:
Here and throughout mainstream media, including “Sold a Story,” the SOR movement relies on anecdotes, regardless of how well those stories reflect accurate claims:
The Evidence:
Claims of miracles in Pennsylvania (similar to those made about Mississippi) fall apart once the full picture is examined. Inflated gains at early grades routinely disappear in later grades; this score increases are mirages, not miracle, and ironically, the NRP report showed that reality despite SOR advocates ignoring that fact; see again: Cryonics Phonics: Inequality’s Little Helper, Gerald Coles.
V.
A persistent set of lies in the SOR media campaign concerns misrepresenting “guessing” and three cueing:
Compton-Lilly, C.F., Mitra, A., Guay, M., & Spence, L.K. (2020). A confluence of complexity: Intersections among reading theory, neuroscience, and observations of young readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S185-S195. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.348 [access HERE]
The SOR misinformation campaign relies on making false claims and definitions about balanced literacy (and whole language, see below):
The Evidence:
Spiegel, D. (1998). Silver bullets, babies, and bath water: Literature response groups in a balanced literacy program. The Reading Teacher,52(2), 114-124. www.jstor.org/stable/20202025
VII.
The misrepresentation of whole language also has a marketing element; Moats markets SOR-branded materials and thus has a financial interest in discrediting BL and WL:
Semingson, P. & Kerns, W. (2021). Where is the evidence? Looking back to Jeanne Chall and enduring debates about the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S157-S169. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.405.
VIII.
Misrepresenting WL/BL is solidly linked to a complete misreading of the NRP reports (another Big Lie):
Shanahan, T. (2005). The National Reading Panel report: Practical advice for teachers. Learning Point Associates. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED489535.pdf
Shanahan, T. (2003, April). Research-based reading instruction: Myths about the National Reading Panel report. The Reading Teacher, 56(7), 646-655.
Bowers, J.S. (2020).Reconsidering the evidence that systematic phonics is more effective than alternative methods of reading instruction. Educational Psychology Review, 32(2020), 681-705. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10648-019-09515-y
Collet, V.S., Penaflorida, J., French, S., Allred, J., Greiner, A., & Chen, J. (2021). Red flags, red herrings, and common ground: An expert study in response to state reading policy. Educational Considerations, 47(1). Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.4148/0146-9282.2241
Garan, E.M. (2001, March). Beyond smoke and mirrors: A critique of the National Reading Panel report on phonics. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(7), 500-506. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170108200705
Seidenberg, M.S., Cooper Borkenhagen, M., & Kearns, D.M. (2020). Lost in translation? Challenges in connecting reading science and educational practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S119–S130. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.341
Yatvin, J. (2002). Babes in the woods: The wanderings of the National Reading Panel. The Phi Delta Kappan,83(5), 364-369
As many scholars have noted, the SOR movement including “Sold a Story” is driven by sensationalistic anecdotes, stories:
The Evidence:
Hoffman, J.V., Hikida, M., & Sailors, M. (2020). Contesting science that silences: Amplifying equity, agency, and design research in literacy teacher preparation. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S255–S266. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353
X.
SOR advocacy regularly demands only a narrow use of “scientific” in reading instruction while also endorsing practices and programs not supported by that same rigor, such as LETRS:
The Evidence:
Hoffman, J.V., Hikida, M., & Sailors, M. (2020). Contesting science that silences: Amplifying equity, agency, and design research in literacy teacher preparation. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S255–S266. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353
A third Big Lie is using unscientific and discredited reports from the conservative think tank NCTQ to claim that teacher educators are incompetent and/or willfully misleading teacher candidates.
Fuller, E. J. (2014). Shaky methods, shaky motives: A critique of the National Council of Teacher Quality’s review of teacher preparation programs. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(1), 63-77. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022487113503872
Cochran-Smith, M., Stern, R., Sánchez, J.G., Miller, A., Keefe, E.S., Fernández, M.B., Chang, W., Carney, M.C., Burton, S., & Baker, M. (2016). Holding teacher preparation accountable: A review of claims and evidence. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/teacher-prep
One of the most damning aspects of the SOR movement has been the embracing of and rise in grade retention policies; grade retention is not supported by research and both creates false test score gains while harming children:
The SOR movement grossly overstates brain science as well as the essential nature of science:
The Evidence:
Seidenberg, M.S., Cooper Borkenhagen, M., & Kearns, D.M. (2020). Lost in translation? Challenges in connecting reading science and educational practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S119-S130. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.341
Yaden, D.B., Reinking, D., & Smagorinsky, P. (2021). The trouble with binaries: A perspective on the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S119-S129. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.402
XV.
The SOR movement has hyper-focused on dyslexia, but again, mostly offering misinformation:
The Evidence:
Johnston, P., & Scanlon, D. (2021). An examination of dyslexia research and instruction with policy implications. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 70(1), 107-128. https://doi.org/10.1177/23813377211024625
Stevens, E. A., Austin, C., Moore, C., Scammacca, N., Boucher, A. N., & Vaughn, S. (2021). Current state of the evidence: Examining the effects of Orton-Gillingham reading interventions for students with or at risk for word-level reading disabilities. Exceptional Children, 87(4), 397–417. https://doi.org/10.1177/0014402921993406
Hall, C., et al. (2022, September 13). Forty years of reading intervention research for elementary students with or at risk for dyslexia: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.477
Odegard, T. N., Farris, E. A., Middleton, A. E., Oslund, E., & Rimrodt-Frierson, S. (2020). Characteristics of Students Identified With Dyslexia Within the Context of State Legislation. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 53(5), 366–379. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219420914551
“Sold a Story” became a “holy text” because dozens of journalists and politicians repeated the misinformation and lies begun in “Hard Words,” identified above.
This is not good journalism, but it does prove that sensationalistic stories will ultimately trump evidence, even the “science” SOR advocates are so apt to reference.
dr. p.l. (paul) thomas 
