Wisconsin State Reading Association
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Trumpublicans and the Gotcha Politics of the Right
This is now the third installment that frames the presidency of Trump as a real-life Harrison Bergeron, the often misread totalitarian clown in Kurt Vonnegut’s eponymous dystopian short story.
For the U.S., February 4, 2020, now stands as the peak moment of converting the Republican Party into the Trumpublican Party. No longer are we citizens of this so-called free country confronted by empty-suit politicians or even an emperor with no clothes, but by the most brazen and crass reality that the very worst types of adolescents now run the country bolstered by a loyal base that revels in believing that being stupid is cool and that bullies are funny.
Two moments calcify this new reality of U.S. gotcha politics—Nancy Pelosi ripping up the State of the Union address behind Trump as he spoke and Trump awarding the Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh.
Instead of using the Pelosi ripping meme either to demonize Pelosi (see Trump supporters) or to lionize Pelosi (see partisan Democrats), we would all be better served to pause at this reduction of democracy to the cult of celebrity that ultimately distracts from the real politics of government policies that directly impact people’s lives.
Let me turn again to Vonnegut, his brilliant novel Cat’s Cradle, as I have discussed before:
Readers soon learn that Bokonon creates a religion “’to provide the people with better and better lies’” (p. 172), foma, and a central aspect of that strategy involves the fabricated war between the government of San Lorenzo and the religion, Bokononism. Readers discover that this plan fails:
“’But people didn’t have to pay as much attention to the awful truth. As the living legend of the cruel tyrant in the city and the gentle holy man in the jungle grew, so, too, did the happiness of the people grow. They were all employed full time as actors in a play they understood, that any human being anywhere could understand and applaud.’” (pp. 174-175)
The false choice between McCabe and Bokonon in the other world created by Vonnegut happens to represent well the delusion of choice that exists in the U.S. (not to be examined here, but McCabe/Bokonon reflect the false choice currently in the U.S. between Republican/Democrat; it’s a fake fight, and a false choice).
Pelosi and Trump are the current actors of the moment in the false war between Democrats and Republicans.
However, with Trump, we are not treading the same worn path, but down a newly cut road to hell.
I certainly concede that Trump is a disturbingly know-nothing anti-intellectual president, seemingly having no redeeming qualities that qualify him for this role as leader of the U.S. But many presidents have been noticeably less bright than even the average American—George H.W. and George W. Bush, for example.
And while it is true that Trump is also relentlessly crass and incapable of rising above his essential urge to lie and bully, Trump is no more crass and profane than other presidents, such as Lyndon Johnson.
We mustn’t also omit that Trump is a serial adulterer and abusive to women—not unlike Bill Clinton.
Trump is unique, though, in that his most crass and abusive qualities are front-and-center in his public and private lives; other presidents were able for much of their careers to be empty suits, presenting one mostly dignified persona in public while being vile men behind closed doors barricaded by a loyal machine.
Never just an empty suit, Trump is a totalitarian clown 24-7, much like the high school star athlete flaunting his free pass daily while coaches and administrators contort themselves to keep the player in school and eligible for the big game.
You see, for Republicans in 2020, there is only the ends—winning—regardless of the means—Trump in his disgusting and brazen role as the emperor with no clothes.
That brings us to the Medal of Freedom bestowed upon Limbaugh who recently confessed he suffers from advanced lung cancer.
Limbaugh himself has been a cancer on celebrity media and U.S. politics for decades. On the radio, Limbaugh seemed to represent the worst case scenario of the free market producing celebrity.
His racism, sexism, and general gluttony attracted U.S. conservatives, including a harbinger of things to come; the religious right also became ditto heads despite Limbaugh’s hedonism and (brazen and crass) unethical and immoral lifestyle.
Many, I think, would have never thought that the same dynamic that created and sustained Limbaugh would be how the U.S. elected Trump president in the wake of audio evidence of him making the infamous “grab them by the pussy” comment.
Trump awarding Limbaugh the Medal of Freedom has nothing to do with policy, Limbaugh’s contributions to the U.S., or even politics; this was just another way for Trump to play gotcha with so-called “liberals,” as a ploy to pander to Trumpublicans who revel in such high school idiocies.
Peak Trumpublican Party is upon us and everything has now been fully reduced to celebrity sport, including how the mainstream media (above the consequences of all this in many ways) cover the game without bothering to step back and make some effort to end the hollow us v. them distraction.
As a life-long resident of South Carolina, I have lived my entire adult life in a solidly Republican state; most of my trips to vote have been wasted time in which the vast majority of races had only one person running, empty-suit Republicans who somehow kept their clown selves mostly at bay while running for office (but not while in office).
So as I scroll through Facebook posts by a local news station, I read comment after comment about impeaching Pelosi, about the many crimes and failures of Obama, and about the wonderful state of the country because of Trump. SC political leaders recently called to name an interstate exchange after Trump, the pussy-grabbing president who treated Limbaugh equally to Martin Luther King Jr.
The State of the Union Address of February 4, 2020, was all theater, the most extreme and debased theater of the absurd, in fact.
Except there are real consequences to all the theatrics, Pelosi overacting just behind the orange menace spouting his usual litany of lies.
In January of 2016, Trump proclaimed, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
Crass? Yes. Outlandish for a politician of this magnitude? Absolutely.
And even then, we were warned about the consequences of such an unhinged president: Trump couldn’t be prosecuted if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, lawyer claims.
We aren’t quite there, but we are pretty damned close.
The U.S. Senate, with a majority of Republicans, will insure that Trump takes one more step toward that hypothetical, except slightly reversed here as Trump is dodging the impeachment bullet.
Beware looking too hard and cheering too loudly for our current McCabe/Bokonon—Pelosi, the speech shredder, versus Trump, the high school bully.
This is by far the worst reality TV yet, and as Trump himself believes, there appears to be no promise of it being cancelled any time soon.
I’d stay away from Fifth Avenue, in fact, just in case.
See Also
UPDATED: Understanding the “Science of Reading”: A Reader
UPDATE
See Fact checking @DanaGoldstein phonics article @nytimes – a thread
See Also: Gerald Coles, Cryonics Phonics: Inequality’s Little Helper
In one way, ground zero for the “science of reading” movement can be traced to Emily Hanford in 2018, but cognitive scientists (Daniel Willingham and Mark Seidenberg, for example) focusing on reading and advocacy for students with dyslexia (or struggling to read in ways that some label as dyslexia) have also played key roles in the movement.
The “science of reading movement” has not been simply a media event, however. That advocacy has resulted in state education/reading legislation that has included third-grade retention of students based on reading test scores, mandating systematic intensive phonics (phonics first) for all students, and new mandates for teachers of reading and teacher education programs.
What is absent in most of the media and political endorsement of the “science of reading” is a critical lens for the claims as well as historical context.
The “science of reading” narrative, at best, is incomplete, and at worst, is deeply misleading.
Below are the key elements and links to help anyone better understand the issues:
Historical Perspective
What Shall We Do About Reading Today?: Looking Back to See Now More Clearly
Back to the Future of Reading Instruction: 1990s Edition
Recommended: Literacy Crises: False Claims and Real Solutions, Jeff McQuillan
The “Science of Reading,” an Overview
The Big Lie about the “Science of Reading” (Updated)
The Big Lie about the “Science of Reading”: NAEP 2019 Edition
Systematic Intensive Phonics (Phonics First, Phonics versus Whole Language/Balanced Literacy)
Reconsidering the Evidence That Systematic Phonics Is More Effective Than Alternative Methods of Reading Instruction, Jeffrey S. Bowers (2020)
To Read or Not to Read: Decoding Synthetic Phonics, Andrew Davis
Does Phonics Deserve the Credit for Improvement in PIRLS? Stephen Krashen
The Problem with Balanced Literacy
Progressivism and Whole Language: A Reader
National Reading Panel (NRP)
The Enduring Influence of the National Reading Panel (and the “D” Word)
Reading Programs (Lucy Calkins)
Reading Programs Put Reading Last
Teacher Education and National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)
If Teacher Education Is Failing Reading, Where Is the Blame?
Mississippi 2019 NAEP Reading Scores
UPDATED: Mississippi Miracle or Mirage?: 2019 NAEP Reading Scores Prompt Questions, Not Answers
See Also
SCCTE 2020: Teaching Writing as a Journey, Not Destination (F.9, Saturday February 1, 8:30-9:15 am)
Embassy Suites Conference Center
Myrtle Beach, SC
Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 8:00 AM –Sat, Feb 1, 2020, 1:30 PM
Session F.9, Saturday February 1, 8:30-9:15 am
PowerPoint available HERE
See Also
Kobe Bryant’s Celebrity Shield in the #MeToo Era
I experienced the disbelief and fascination in real time Sunday January 26, 2020 (my birthday) as my friends and I walked into Catawba Brewery on the South Slope in Asheville, NC. The place was eerily quiet; soon our smartphones alerted us that Kobe Bryant had been killed in a helicopter accident.
Strangers made eye contact and talked about their shock as if we all had somehow magically been linked because we know of Bryant, because he is a celebrity.
I followed along on Twitter as the story became more garbled and disturbing. Five dead became nine, and Bryant’s daughter along with some of her teammates were identified.
Bryant is recently retired from an elite NBA career. He is too young and too well-known, it seems, for such a tragic end to his life. While the story tended to be either “Kobe Bryant and others” or “Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and others,” I sensed we all were also mourning the entirety of a senseless loss of life.
When it was revealed his daughter was on board, I felt the pain rise in my chest; I had to resist crying.
But I also immediately recognized Bryant’s death was presenting something more than a challenge about how outsized interest in celebrities exists in the U.S. Yes, some quickly noted that the attention afforded Bryant was absent when military deaths were reported—or the hundreds of lives lost daily across the U.S. due to other tragedies left mostly ignored.
But Bryant’s life and death are far more complicated than even that. Jeremy Gordon confronted it directly in his coverage for The Outline:
The facts are not up for interpretation: On June 30, 2003, at the Lodge & Spa at Cordillera in Eagle, Colorado, Kobe invited a 19-year-old employee of the spa into his room after she’d shown him around the facility. They began kissing consensually, but when he took off his pants, she tried to leave. He then groped her, ignored her multiple requests to leave, choked her hard enough to leave bruises on her neck, physically blocked her from leaving the room, ignored more of her requests to stop, and forcibly penetrated her, only stopping when she aggressively resisted. “Every time I said no he tightened his hold around me,” she told police. The day after, a nurse observed the woman and, according to a detective from the sheriff’s office, “stated that the injuries were consistent with penetrating genital trauma. That it’s not consistent with consensual sex.”
Gordon later explains:
I don’t recap this exhaustively to be one of those smarmy people who, in the immediate wake of his death, leapt out of the woodwork to smugly assert “Uh, he was a bad person” to anyone who expresses sadness, but to point out the simple fact that Kobe committed sexual assault — which he literally admitted, in front of the entire country — and any exhaustive recapping of his life should include and reckon with this instead of basically mentioning it as an aside.
Jill Filipovic focused as well on the double assault experienced by the woman victimized by Bryant and then the effort to exonerate him:
The full weight of Kobe Bryant’s money, power and influence came down on this teenager. His lawyers suggested she was sexually promiscuous — I have no idea if that’s true, or even how we define a value-laden term like “promiscuous,” but either way, the number of sexual partners someone has had doesn’t determine whether or not they were raped by one particular person (I would also humbly suggest that someone who has had a lot of consensual sex without making false rape claims has pretty well demonstrated a history of being able to have consensual sex without making false rape claims). They emphasized how excited she was to meet Bryant. They brought up her history with depression and suicide attempts, casting her as a crazy person, a woman not to be trusted. Bryant’s lead defense attorney, Pamela Mackey — the optics of a female lawyer defending an accused rapist are just so irresistible, which is why we see Harvey Weinstein doing the same thing — used the woman’s name six times in the preliminary hearing; she brought up the number of recent sexual partners the woman had. One psychology professor studied the coverage of the case and found that more than 40 percent of news stories questioned the truthfulness of the woman’s account; only 7.7 percent questioned Kobe’s honesty. About a quarter included positive comments about his athletic career; more than 20 percent included positive comments about him as a person. By contrast, only 5 percent of news articles had anything positive to say about the woman.
The Bryant assault and his eventual rehabilitation in the media as a sports hero and celebrity were well before the #MeToo movement. Certainly, Bryant benefited from his celebrity shield over those years.
His death, however, as Filipovic’s mentioning Weinstein denotes, comes in the wake of #MeToo, demanding that greater care is taken with Bryant’s legacy than was afforded in the time after the rape.
The eulogies for Bryant overwhelmingly address his elite stature as an NBA superstar as well as his relationship with his daughter and family as evidence of his much more mature and gracious public self after his retirement from the NBA in 2016. Notably, international accounts tend to include immediately references to Bryant’s sexual assault, but U.S. media seem content with occasional token references to the incident, usually offered by a female reporter (see ESPN).
The helicopter crash that claimed Bryant’s life is tragic, including, of course, the loss of eight additional lives. Despite his celebrity, however, these deaths are no more or less significant than other deaths—some we acknowledge, some we ignore.
What we do with Bryant’s legacy is extremely important. At the very least, his death and the facts of his sexual assault raise important questions.
The first level of those questions is for every single man to interrogate his role in rape culture, sexual assault, sexual coercion, the male gaze, sexist and misogynistic language, and sexism.
Some men are deeply guilty, but all men are culpable, complicit to some degree in these realities for all women. Men must admit their roles, but they must also take action against the ways in which men devalue the humanity of women.
At another level, we all need to rethink the celebrity shield. Men of wealth and celebrity in the U.S. may not be disproportionately sexually abusive, but they certainly are shielded from the consequences when they do assault, when they do discriminate.
A final level that I think is significant in considering Bryant involves how we judge any person in the big picture of their life.
I wrote a biography for my doctoral dissertation so much of my research in grad school involved scholarship on biography and reading a large number of biographies.
Simply put, exploring the full and exposed life of almost anyone will leave you greatly disappointed in someone you may have admired or considered “great.”
In Bryant’s case, we may argue that the sexual assault was a one-time but tremendous mistake, one that irrevocably changed the life of a woman beyond her control, and that Bryant’s exceptional athletic accomplishments and seemingly good life otherwise can counter that incident so that we should mostly celebrate him after his death.
Or, as I am prone to accept, Bryant’s one-time assault cannot be excused because of his efforts to deny and hide it, and the inexcusable treatment the woman experienced in his efforts to seem innocent; celebrity and athletic excellence cannot justify the immediate physical and emotional harm he caused or his self-serving callousness in its wake.
The irony of Bryant’s celebrity shield is that his life and death against his sexual assault shine a direct light on all of us. He can no longer influence his legacy with his wealth or celebrity.
It is upon us to value the humanity of women in all circumstances, regardless of how much we may value any man or the celebrity status we have afforded him.
Note
Often, people will raise concern about false reports of sexual assault and rape. However, research shows the following:
The majority of sexual assaults, an estimated 63 percent, are never reported to the police (Rennison, 2002). The prevalence of false reporting cases of sexual violence is low (Lisak, Gardinier, Nicksa, & Cote, 2010), yet when survivors come forward, many face scrutiny or encounter barriers. For example, when an assault is reported, survivors may feel that their victimization has been redefined and even distorted by those who investigate, process, and categorize cases….
A review of research finds that the prevalence of false reporting is between 2 percent and 10 percent.
Reading as a First-Mile Problem: Recognizing the Role of Poverty and Inequity in Literacy Development
Literacy scholar Tim Shanahan answers the question Why Is It So Hard to Improve Reading Achievement? with the following: “Classroom implementation is the last mile in reading reform.” He eventually adds, “The last mile rhetoric shouldn’t be a hair-on-fire message, but one that acknowledges both the current successes and the need to do better.”
Shanahan’s consideration of the persistent public and political concern over low reading achievement appears to offer a balanced admission that many approaches to reading instruction can be successful, but framing reading as a last-mile problem is finding yourself in a hole and deciding you just need to dig a little deeper.
Shanahan seems to accept a number of different “levers” as valid approaches to improving student reading, including a somewhat veiled endorsement of Common Core standards; in fact, he concedes: “Let’s face it. Our problem in reading isn’t that nothing works. It’s that everything does.”
In 2020, what Shanahan’s last-mile argument reveals, however, is that there is a mistake in teaching reading that can be addressed, but as a society, we refuse to acknowledge that reading is a first-mile problem.
That first mile is much larger than formal schooling, and what we refuse to recognize is that measurable reading achievement is a marker for the disadvantages of poverty and inequity in both the lives and schooling of vulnerable populations of students (students in poverty, black and brown students, English language learners, special needs students).
The accountability movement driven by ever-new standards and ever-new tests has been paralyzed by in-school only reform. That movement is both an example of last-mile reform and why last-mile reform has failed.
First, let’s acknowledge that Shanahan does make a key argument about how reading is taught; for example, a recent review of meta-analyses of systematic intensive phonics has shown that most approaches to teaching reading are about equally effective, as Shanahan suggests.
However, the current “science of reading” version of the Reading War argues that systematic intensive phonics must be required for all students; this phonics-first claim has been concurrent with pathologizing most struggling readers as probably dyslexic.
If we shift from last-mile reform to first-mile reform, then, we must avoid both “all students must” and “everything works,” choosing instead to admit that every student deserves the reading instruction they need (regardless of what programs or standards mandate), and we must acknowledge that students living in relative privilege often acquire reading rather easily, suggesting that the conditions within which students live and learn need to be reformed—not the students or the teaching methods.
First-mile reform in reading must start with addressing poverty and inequity in every child’s life. Alleviating poverty, addressing food security, improving work opportunities and security, adopting universal health care—these are issues of equity that would allow all students to acquire reading in ways that are now common for affluent students (often before entering formal schooling).
Stable communities and homes not overburdened by poverty and inequity would have the opportunities to provide children with language-rich environments that send children to formal schooling already highly literate, often reading before direct instruction.
First-mile reform of reading, however, is not a narrow commitment to out-of-school only, but it makes primary equity-focused out-of-school reform while also including equity-focused in-school reform as secondary but essential.
Instead of digging the accountability hole deeper by seeing reading reform as a last-mile challenge, we must climb out of that silo and think differently about in-school reform.
Equity-focused reading reform starts with the conditions of teaching and learning—guaranteeing students small student/teacher ratios in early literacy classes, insuring all students have experienced and highly-qualified teachers, and funding fully the materials needed for rich literacy experiences (authentic texts for all students and robust libraries in the schools and in children’s homes and communities).
This new approach to reform would also avoid tracking students and then would monitor more directly equitable learning opportunities as opposed to narrow measurable outcomes. For example, all students should be in rich and challenging courses—and not in test-prep classes or highly prescriptive programs (reading programs or systematic phonics for all).
Last-mile reading reform continues to focus on students as inherently flawed humans who need to be fixed; first-mile reading reform recognizes that systems are flawed, and that all students can flourish if their living and learning environments are equitable and conducive to learning.
Ultimately, continuing down the current road to reading reform as if we just need to be more demanding of teachers and students in the crucial last mile is continuing to recognize the negative impact of poverty and inequity on children’s ability to read and teachers’ effectiveness in teaching reading.
We mustn’t keep our heads down, we mustn’t keep digging.
We need finally to acknowledge that reading is a first-mile problem.
Fact-checking Phonics, NRP, and NCTQ
The “science of reading” movement often claims that a systematic intensive phonics-first approach to teaching reading is endorsed by science that is settled, that the National Reading Panel (NRP) is a key element of that settled science, and that teacher education is mostly absent of that “science of reading” (a message that has been central to NCTQ for many years).
These claims, however, misrepresent what evidence actually shows. Here, then, are some evidence-based fact-checks of phonics, NRP, and NCTQ.
Phonics
Reconsidering the Evidence That Systematic Phonics Is More Effective Than Alternative Methods of Reading Instruction, Jeffrey S. Bowers (2020)
Abstract
There is a widespread consensus in the research community that reading instruction in English should first focus on teaching letter (grapheme) to sound (phoneme) correspondences rather than adopt meaning-based reading approaches such as whole language instruction. That is, initial reading instruction should emphasize systematic phonics. In this systematic review, I show that this conclusion is not justified based on (a) an exhaustive review of 12 meta-analyses that have assessed the efficacy of systematic phonics and (b) summarizing the outcomes of teaching systematic phonics in all state schools in England since 2007. The failure to obtain evidence in support of systematic phonics should not be taken as an argument in support of whole language and related methods, but rather, it highlights the need to explore alternative approaches to reading instruction.
[For context, note some of the problems remaining in how whole language is addressed in this post.]
National Reading Panel
The Federal Government Wants Me to Teach What?: A Teacher’s Guide to the National Reading Panel Report, Diane Stephens (NCTE, 2008)
An Ever-So-Brief Summary with Book Recommendations
1. Phonemic Awareness. According to the studies cited in the NRP report, this is best taught to very young children (K–1) using letters, and when letters are used, PA instruction is considered to be phonics. Therefore, it is not necessary to have a separate instructional time for PA. Rather, children should have opportunities to learn about how language is made up of parts (e.g., onsets and rimes, or word families) as part of phonics instruction. An effective way to do this in the classroom? Provide time for students to write using invented spelling (pp. 2-1 through 2-86). (See Strickland, 1998, for further information about invented spelling.)
2. Phonics. According to the studies cited in the NRP report, there is no evidence that phonics instruction helps in kindergarten or in grades 2 to 9. It does help first graders learn the alphabetic principle—that there is a relationship between letters and sounds. No one method is better than any other. For example, for at-risk first graders, a modified whole language approach and one-on-one Reading Recovery–like instruction both helped children with comprehension (pp. 2-89 through 2-176). This phonics instruction should be conducted in the context of whole, meaningful text. (See Moustafa, 1997, for information on embedded, whole-part-whole instruction.)
3. Fluency. According to the authors of the Fluency report, the practice of round robin (at any age) does not help children and can indeed hurt them. However, according to the studies cited in the Fluency report, repeated oral reading (K–12) helps with comprehension because reading to readers fluidly instead of word-by-word reading helps them better understand the text. Ways to help with this? Try such things as readers theater (pp. 3-1 through 3-43). (See Opitz and Rasinski’s Good-bye Round Robin: 25 Effective Oral Reading Strategies [1998] for additional instructional suggestions.)
4. Vocabulary (grades 3 to 8). One method is not better than another. Children learn most of their vocabulary incidentally (pp. 4-15 through 4-35). (For further information about vocabulary learning, see Nagy, 1988.)
5. Comprehension (grades 3 to 6). Children need to learn that print makes sense and to develop a variety of strategies for making sense of print (pp. 4-39 through 4-168). (For further information on teaching for comprehension, see the references listed in Chapter 8: Beers, 2002; Sibberson & Szymusiak, 2003; Taberski, 2000; Tovani, 2000; see also Harvey & Goudvis, 2000.)
Across all of these recommendations? According to the studies cited in the NRP report, if we want children to learn something, we need to teach them that something. Want great readers? Then teach children what great readers do.
NCTQ (Teacher Education)
NOTE: This is more complicated, but first I am posting an older (2006) and new (2020) report from NCTQ both making essentially the same claims that teacher education fails to teach the “science of reading.” Then, I include a link to several reviews that show that NCTQ’s “reports” are methodologically flawed and essentially propaganda, not “science.”
What Education Schools Aren’t Teaching (2006)
2020 Teacher Prep Review: Program Performance in Early Reading Instruction
If Teacher Education Is Failing Reading, Where Is the Blame?
The current “science of reading” climate surrounding public education in the U.S. has its roots, ironically, in misreading (or at least reading uncritically) A Nation at Risk, a report during the Ronald Reagan administration that was widely reported by mainstream media. The politically driven and deeply flawed report also prompted the accountability movement in the U.S.—state standards and high-stakes testing—that eventually enveloped the entire country by the 1990s.
The report established a false but compelling cultural truism that is too rarely interrogated: Public schools in the U.S. are failing. Since the early 1980s, political leadership has decided that the failure is due to a lack of accountability, but accountability of whom or what has shifted over the past 40 years.
The first blame narrative focused on students and schools, ushering in high-stakes testing at 3rd grade, 8th grade, and high school (exit exams) as well as school and district report cards. Eventually high-stakes accountability of students and schools seemed not to change the measurable outcomes that advocates had promised; there were also unintended consequences such as exit exams increasing drop-out rates.
Gradually after No Child Left Behind, the blame narrative moved to teachers, in part driven by George W. Bush’s popularizing the slogan “soft bigotry of low expectations,” the rise of charter schools embracing “no excuses,” and the same messages and buy-in for Bush era education policy by Barack Obama’s administration and Department of Education.
For about a decade the blame narrative focused on teachers, and political leaders rushed to intensify teacher evaluation, notably the use of value-added methods (VAM). Once again, the outcomes promised by advocates did not come to fruition. Recently, in fact, the tide is turning hard against the use of VAM and other types of punitive teacher evaluations.
The vacuum left in the blame narrative did not remain long. Concurrent with the “science of reading” movement that claims public school teachers are not teaching reading guided by the “science of reading” is the next round of blame—teacher education [1].
The blame narrative makes for strange bedfellows. While mainstream media have begun to pound the drum of blame about teacher education fairly consistently, the leading literacy professional organization, the International Literacy Association (ILA), has join the story as well.
Education Week has led this charge; for example, Madeline Will writes in Preservice Teachers Are Getting Mixed Messages on How to Teach Reading:
Decades of research have shown that teaching explicit, systematic phonics is the most reliable way to make sure that young students learn how to read words. Yet an Education Week analysis of nationally representative survey results found that professors who teach early-reading courses are introducing the work of researchers and authors whose findings and theories often conflict with one another, including some that may not be aligned with the greater body of scientific research.
EdWeek‘s survey data are being confirmed, it seems, by ILA’s survey data: 60% of respondents claim their teacher education programs did not prepare them well to teach reading.
First, we should pause at media and professional organizations citing survey data while also embracing a very rigid and narrow demand for the “science of reading.” Survey data have many problems, and in this case, we may want to know if disgruntled teachers were disproportionately motivated to reply.
None the less it is quite a different thing to say “60% of respondents claimed X” than “60% of teachers claimed X.” Are these survey data representative of all teachers of reading?
Let’s assume this is true, that more than half of teachers charged with reading instruction are not properly prepared to teach reading. But let’s also unpack how that came to be, and ultimately answer in a fair way, where is the blame?
For the past 30-40 years, teachers and teacher educators have had less and less professional autonomy; or stated a different way, the professional autonomy of teachers and teacher educators has been reduced to how well they can implement mandated standards and produce measurable outcomes that prove those standards were implemented and effective.
In the high-stakes accountability era, then, if we are going to accept that 60% of teachers were not well prepared in their teacher education programs, we must be willing to acknowledge that those programs were governed most often by the accreditation process. Organizations such as NCATE and CAEP have been holding teacher education accountable along with the coordination of professional organizations.
How teacher education approached literacy broadly and reading specifically was grounded in standards designed by ILA (elementary) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) (secondary), and those programs were periodically monitored by ILA and NCTE for if or how well the programs met those standards.
If we currently believe that the teaching of reading in our public schools is failing our students, we must also acknowledge that teachers are implementing state standards of reading and preparing students for state tests of reading; those teachers were also taught how to teach in teacher education programs implementing national standards determined by ILA and NCTE.
Accepting the survey data as valid, then, the blame for these failures lie in the accountability and accreditation process, of which teachers and teacher educators are mere agents.
After being a classroom teacher of ELA for 18 years and then a teacher educator for the last 18 years, I believe I have a strong and well informed view of what is really happening. This is a better explanation, but not a simple one that the media would prefer or a politically expedient one that politicians would prefer.
Education was never the type of failure determined by A Nation at Risk, and a lack of accountability was never the cause of what the true failures in education were then and are today.
Formal education is a reflection of and a perpetuating force for inequity in the U.S. Public schools are not game changers.
Therefore, it is true that far too many students are not being taught to read well enough, and that on balance, public education is failing far too many students.
Those failures are about inequity—inequity of opportunities both outside and inside schools that disproportionately impacts poor students, black and brown students, English language learners, and special needs students (the “science of reading” movement has correctly identified these vulnerable student populations, in fact).
And as jumbled as the journey has been, the logic experiment I offer above reaches a credible conclusion: the accountability era has failed. Miserably. Once again disproportionately impacting vulnerable populations of students.
But accreditation has failed just as much. Accountability grounded in standards and high-stakes assessment are not conducive to teaching, learning, or scholarship.
As a former classroom teacher, I can attest to that fact; as a current teacher educator, I can confirm that complying with accreditation mandates dilute my courses and overburden my professional work to the exclusion of scholarship and research.
Accountability structures are mostly bureaucracy, mostly a distraction from real teaching, learning, or professional behavior.
While I am frustrated with mainstream media misrepresenting reading and reading instruction, I am baffled that ILA would enter a fray that turns the blame narrative back on the organization itself. Maybe they didn’t think this through, but it is really almost impossible not to blame professional organizations who govern teacher education if we determine teacher education has failed.
Here, then, is a larger lesson of this entire four-decades mess: Let’s stop looking for people to scapegoat in the blame narrative, and recognize instead that the accountability/accreditation systems are failing us, especially when we are complying well to them.
Professional autonomy for K-12 teachers and teacher educators is a process we have not tried, but one far more likely to give our schools and our students a better chance if we also acknowledge that social and educational equity need the same financial and administrative focus we have given accountability since the early 1980s.
[1] See: Contesting Science That Silences: Amplifying Equity, Agency, and Design Research in Literacy Teacher Preparation
In contrast to the claims made by the SOR community, research in literacy teacher preparation has been exten- sive, scientific, and useful for guiding reform efforts. CITE-ITEL, an online database (https://cite.edb.utexas. edu/) of published research articles on literacy teacher preparation, offers a window into contemporary scholar- ship on the same.3 CITE-ITEL is updated regularly and is freely accessible. There are currently 677 research studies in the database, published between 1999 and 2019 in over 90 scholarly journals. These include journals sponsored by professional organizations in literacy (see Table 1) and other highly respected, independent journals (e.g., Teaching and Teacher Education, Reading Psychology).
The term science of reading appears in only four of the 677 research reports, and none of the studies examined the reliability or validity of the assessment tools used to mea- sure the knowledge that preservice teachers hold about the SOR. Despite the political and media attention given to the SOR and the tools on which the SOR community relies, there is no body of evidence that reflects the SOR perspective on literacy teacher preparation by members of the literacy teacher preparation research community
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. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353
See Also
Of Rocks and Hard Places—The Challenge of Maxine Greene’s Mystification in Teacher Education, P. L. Thomas
The Fatal Flaw of Teacher Education: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
How Diverse Is Your Syllabus?
During an impromptu pre-department meeting chat with literacy colleagues, we began to think about examining our syllabi for diversity of required and recommended texts. We noted that often people examine reading lists for K-12 students in terms of diversity, such as children’s literature, adolescent literature, and the secondary canon.
Below are the texts listed on my course syllabi for all courses I currently teach on a regular basis. I have put white male authors in red text for a quick glance at diversity.
Assigned and Recommended Texts in Taught Courses
[In many courses, students choose among these texts, and in some courses, students have choice outside this list. These are texts offered on course syllabi as limited choice but required in courses.]
White male author
Why We Teach Now, Sonia Nieto
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism, Robin DiAngelo
For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Y’all Too, Chris Emdin
The Poverty and Education Reader edited by Paul C. Gorski and Julie Landsman
Hope Against Hope: Three Schools, One City, and the Struggle to Educate America’s Children, Sarah Carr
Police in the Hallways: Discipline in an Urban High School, Kathleen Nolan
Scarcity, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir
Beware the Roadbuilders: Literature as Resistance, P.L. Thomas
Me-Search and Re-Search: A Guide for Writing Scholarly Personal Narrative Manuscripts, Robert Nash and DeMethra LaSha Bradley
Reading Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered, Gerald Bracey
Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay
Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 12th Edition, Joseph M. Williams and Joseph Bizup
The Writer’s Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing, John Warner
James Baldwin: The Last Interview: And other Conversations
Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin
Nobody Knows My Name, James Baldwin
The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
No Name in the Street, James Baldwin
I Am Not Your Negro, James Baldwin and Raoul Peck
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man’s Education, Mychal Denzel Smith
A House of My Own, Sandra Cisneros
Known and Strange Things: Essays, Teju Cole
The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson
The End of Imagination, Arundhati Roy
Sex Object, Jessica Valenti
We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Men Explain Things To Me, Rebecca Solnit
Best Practice: Bringing Standards to Life in America’s Classrooms, Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde
Classrooms that Work: They Can All Read and Write, Cunningham and Allington
Girls, Social Class and Literacy: What Teachers Can Do to Make a Difference, Stephanie Jones
Writing and Teaching to Change the World: Connecting with Our Most Vulnerable Students, Stephanie Jones
When Kids Can’t Read—What Teachers Can Do, Kylene Beers
Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys: Literacy in the Lives of Young Men, Michael Smith and Jeffrey D. Wilhelm
Finding Joy in Teaching Students of Diverse Backgrounds: Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Practices in U.S. Classrooms, Sonia Nieto
Teaching English by design, Peter Smagorinsky
Writing Instruction That Works: Proven Methods for Middle and High School Classrooms, Arthur N. Applebee and Judith A. Langer
Critical Foundations in Young Adult Literature: Challenging Genres, Antero Garcia
Critical Media Literacy and Fake News in Post-truth America, Chris Goering and P.L. Thomas, eds.
Comic Connections: Reflecting on Women in Popular Culture, Susan Eckard, ed.
Course Syllabi
EDU 111: Perspectives on American Education
EDU 115 (MAYX): The Reel World: The Depiction of Schools on Film
EDU 250/ EDRD 750: Scholarly Reading and Writing in Education
FYW 1259: Reconsidering James Baldwin in the Era of #BLACKLIVESMATTER
EDU 452: Teaching English in Grades 7-12
EDU 451: Literature for Young Adults; EDRD 748: Adolescent Literature Survey
School Choice Fails Students and Parents
It has been a decade since I raised this question, Parental Choice?, after spending about a year examining all the research available as well as the public and political debate about school choice.
Now, Education Week seems to have finally recognized some of the conclusions I presented in that book: Why Don’t Parents Always Choose the Best Schools? I think it is important that this article does not ask “if” parents choose the best schools, but concedes that parental choice is a flawed part of the school choice as an avenue to educational reform argument.
In short, my research and analysis show that parental choice and school choice fail because they suffer from the same problem concerning all choice driven by America’s idealized perception of individual freedom and market economies. If school choice were a powerful and effective lever for positive educational reform (and it isn’t), market forces remain indirect ways to create the sort of equity of opportunity that a democracy could accomplish directly.
Choice, at best, is slow and erratic, depending on the quality and expertise of the consumers to eventually shape the outcomes desired all along. Pop music is exactly what consumers have created through supply and demand, but we are under no illusion that pop music success equals the highest quality of music possible. High-quality music may have a better chance of being produced by musicians fully publicly funded by NEA grants and left free of corrupting market dynamics.
The consumer choice/quality dynamic in school choice is the problem that Arianna Prothero is acknowledging and confronting in EdWeek.
The research and outcomes related to school choice have always been mixed at best, and the school choice debate has been marred by shifting talking points (different types of choice schemes and different outcomes promised). Since support from school choice is often ideological or driven by the inequity experienced in public education, however, the following patterns continue to characterize the debate:
- Parents participating in school choice focus more often on cultural and ideological commitments rather than academic quality. School choice, then, is more likely to create stratified schools and not work as a lever for motivating higher academic quality across all schooling. School choice is not proof that a rising tide lifts all boats, but proof that given the opportunity, people will segregate themselves in a lot of different boats while disregarding the threat of drowning facing some of them.
- School choice unintentionally feeds into the tyranny of parents at the exclusion of children’s autonomy and human rights. Secular public schools should be an opportunity for all children to experience a democracy of ideas and become the humans those children choose to be. Students shepherded into academic settings that perpetuate narrow ideals and ideas dictated by the parents are denied their choices and opportunities.
- Marginalized and underserved populations (impoverished, Black communities, English language learners, etc.) do often welcome school choice as a possible avenue to greater equity of opportunity; that promise has also proven to be empty, but underserved populations’ support for school choice is also misread. School choice and charter schools have driven school re-segregation (clearly not a positive outcome for Black parents and students) and has not guaranteed that all students have the opportunities found in elite private schools (the choice of wealthy and mostly white parents). If public schools simply served all students well and fully, then the support for school choice found among marginalized groups would disappear.
- Rarely do any advocates for school choice acknowledge that the qualities commonly found among expensive private schools—what the wealthy choose—are aspects of school reform that could be implemented in all public schools if there was the political will to do so. However, low student-teacher ratios, challenging course work (such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate), and expansive fine arts programs somehow are not on the education reform agenda for all students.
- The school choice debate ultimately fails because it doesn’t pull back far enough and acknowledge that public schools should be of a universally high quality that makes choice unnecessary. As a culture, we do not allow the market to determine which bridges we drive across are safe or not; all of us driving expect a minimum high quality of bridges on all public roads and highways. As I have concluded before:
People in poverty deserve essential Commons—such as a police force and judicial system, a military, a highway system, a healthcare system, and universal public education—that make choice unnecessary. In short, among the essentials of a free people, choice shouldn’t be needed by anyone.
No child should have to wait for good schools while the market sorts some out, no human should have to wait for quality medical care while the market sorts some out, no African American teen gunned down in the street should have to wait for the market to sort out justice—the Commons must be the promise of the essential equity and justice that both make freedom possible and free people embrace.
- School choice advocates fail to consider the indirect and haphazard mechanisms of market forces. School choice not only re-segregates schools, but also creates a huge amount of wasteful churn—students moving among schools along with teachers and even the shifting of school building. The great charter overthrow experienced in New Orleans post-Katrina, for example, has replaced all the public schools with charter schools—with essentially the exact same educational problems remaining for the students, parents, and community.
- School choice research has been negatively impacted by common problems with educational research (comparing similar populations, confronting problems of scaling up, etc.) as well as the corrupting influence of advocacy. Too much of what is presented in the media as “research” is actually advocacy masquerading as scholarship. Pro-school choice think tanks have been very aggressive and depended on a non-critical media and public, both of which are highly susceptible to press-release and both-sides journalism.
Ultimately, the school choice debate is a distraction from a sobering fact: the U.S. has failed public education by never completely committing to high-quality education for every child in the country regardless of their ZIP code.
There is no mystery to what constitutes a great school, high academic quality, or challenging education, but there is solid proof that almost no one in the U.S. has the political will to choose to guarantee that for every child so that no one has to hope an Invisible Hand might offer a few crumbs here and there.
See Also
dr. p.l. (paul) thomas 