Category Archives: education reform

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

“Not enough science in the ‘science of reading”’?: Missing the Warnings in Frankenstein, Again

[Header Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash]

Science as a field or method is neither a neutral good nor a neutral bad.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein powerfully unpacks the moral complications of science in what many believe is the first work of science fiction (which perceptively and critically interrogated science in its early evolution).

Victor Frankenstein embodies the frailties and very human limitations of science as a human behavior. And The Monster animates the horrifying potential dangers of science conducted by morally weak or bankrupt humans.

Consider first the responsibility inherent in The Creator for The Creature (The Monster):

A rich theme running through Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is responsibility. In a straightforward—even didactic—way, the novel chronicles the devastating consequences for an inventor and those he loves of his utter failure to anticipate the harm that can result from raw, unchecked scientific curiosity. The novel not only explores the responsibility that Victor Frankenstein has for the destruction caused by his creation but also examines the responsibility he owes to him….

Victor experiences the two basic meanings of the word responsibility. He creates the creature (he causes it to exist), and therefore he has at least some responsibility for what the creature goes on to do. As the creature’s maker, Victor also has both a duty to others to keep them safe from his creation and, Mary seems to be saying, a duty to his creation to ensure that his existence is worthwhile. We will turn to these two ideas now—responsibility for and responsibility to.

Traumatic Responsibility, Josephine Johnston

Next, think about the role of science as simply a tool of the scientist, too easily distracted by their own missionary zeal and hubris, and thus, apt to fail to ground their work in moral and ethical boundaries:

Victor’s crime is not pursuing science but in failing to consider the well-being of others and the consequences of his actions. I contend also that Mary’s great work is a tale not about the dangers of a man’s quest for knowledge but about the ethics of his failure to attempt to anticipate and take responsibility for the results of that quest. There is a strong link between Victor’s failure of empathy for his creature and the particular kind of hubris that allows for the discarding of other people’s lives in service to an ambition. This failure of empathy is closely connected to the moral cowardice of refusing to take responsibility for one’s actions or for the outcomes derived from one’s research….

He undertakes his research in a spirit of self-aggrandizement: it’s not knowledge he seeks but power and renown, and this ambition leads him to become far more of a monster than the creature he creates….

As soon as he achieves his obsession, he rejects the accomplishment, and catastrophe results.

Frankenstein Reframed; or, The Trouble with Prometheus, Elizabeth Bear

Science has a long history of being a veneer for human flaws (sexism and racism masked by IQ as a scientific measure, for example) and being literally weaponized for military conquest (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example).

The US has a baffling and often contradictory relationship with science since in one context many will reject solid science (Covid vaccinations) and then embrace another “science” in the unchallenged rhetoric of media and political storytelling (the “science of reading” [SOR] movement).

One scientist at the center of the SOR movement, Mark Seidenberg, not only wrote a book on the cognitive science of reading but also has testified and advocated for state reading legislation grounded in SOR.

Seidenberg now seems poised to retreat from The Monster he helped create like Dr. Frankenstein himself.

Back in 2020, writing with co-authors in Reading Research Quarterly, Seidenberg offered an odd confession considering his advocacy for SOR policy: “Our concern is that although reading science is highly relevant to learning in the classroom setting, it does not yet speak to what to teach, when, how, and for whom at a level that is useful for teachers [emphasis added].” [1]

And now in late 2023 after nearly every state has adopted some form of new or revised SOR-based reading legislation, Seidenberg seems to be in full and eager retreat (even as he continues to cling to misinformation about a reading crisis and garbled blame launched at whole language and balanced literacy); he admits there is “[n]ot enough science in the ‘science of reading,'” in fact.

This talk notes that the SOR movement isn’t the same as reading science and even states that the SOR story is overly simplistic and grounded in outdated research (some may notice that many of us in literacy made these same claims in the very beginning of the SOR movement, but we have been repeatedly attacked and discredited).

Now that SOR has “won” and the accountability shoe is on their foot, SOR advocates are laying the groundwork like Seidenberg to avoid any responsibility (sound familiar?); see this from Emily Hanford for EWA, who announced the role of journalists as “watchdogs” who must police the incompetent field of reading teachers:

Hanford encouraged reporters not to write stories two years from now with a simple narrative of whether science of reading failed [2], if test scores don’t suddenly skyrocket. Changing systems is hard, she said. 

Journalists, she said, have control over the narrative. 

“Keep your eyes on this one, and don’t let this one go,” Hanford said. “Reporters did, I think, largely turn away from how kids learn to read. And I think that’s part of how we ended up in the situation we’re in now. We get to be the watchdogs. We get to be the ones who can contribute to what happens.”

SOR is essentially the law of the land and drives what schools are adopting and implementing; therefore, all this backpedaling and caution are likely because the preliminary results are not very promising.

England passed sweeping phonics-centric legislation in 2006, but early research and recent PISA outcomes suggest the promises of systematic phonics for all students are misleading stories at best.

Here in the US, a working paper examining SOR policy in California also shows that claims SOR will result in 90% of students achieving reading proficiency is a story we are being sold (that study reveals about 1/3 of students reached proficiency, the same percentage called a crisis by SOR advocates).

SOR advocates have created a monster in the form of misguided and overly prescriptive reading legislation, a monster stitched together from a series of false stories about a reading crisis, reading programs and theories failing children, and reading teachers not knowing reading science. That monster also includes unrealistic promises that will never be met, and thus, SOR will lead to another reading crisis in five or ten years (just as the NCLB/NRP years led to the SOR reading crisis).

SOR advocates are already running, but they can’t hide.

SOR has many Dr. Frankensteins and many Dr. Frankenstein wanna-be-s who have all created monsters in the form of state legislation based on false stories but with “[n]ot enough science in the ‘science of reading.'”

This is their monster—and their responsibility.

[1] 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

[2] Please note that Hanford has made a career doing exactly what she warns other journalists not to do—perpetuate a “simple narrative” about reading failure and the blame for that failure.

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

UK PISA 2022 Results Offer Cautionary Tale for US Reading Reform

From the SAT and National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in the US to Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), student test scores tend to prompt over-reactions in the media and among political leaders.

Even Finland, recently the Golden Country for educational outcomes, now finds itself with the release of PISA 2022 facing headlines like this: PISA 2022: Performance in Finland collapses, but remains above average.

However, the best lesson from PISA 2022 for the US is England (UK), especially in the context of the “science of reading” (SOR) movement driving state-level reading legislation across the country:

First, for context, England implemented phonics-centered reading policy in 2006 that rejected balanced literacy and parallels in most ways the elements of SOR-based reading legislation in the US. Research on those policies shows that students have received systematic phonics for almost two decades now, but that outcomes have not produced the promises of that reform.

UK PISA scores in reading, none the less, rank below the US along with Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Ireland; as well, the UK suffered a large score decrease in the wake of Covid:

While how reading is taught, what reading theory is embraced, and what reading programs are being implemented vary significantly across these countries, they all have one thing in common—perpetual reading crisis.

In fact, since A Nation at Risk, the US has endured several cycles of education crisis and reform that often hyper-focuses on reading (notably the impact of the National Reading Panel in No Child Left Behind).

Yet, none of these reforms have fulfilled promised outcomes, just as we are witnessing in the UK.

PISA 2022 and England’s reading results, then, offer some lessons we have refused to acknowledge about reading and education reform:

  • Education reform that exclusively implements in-school-only reform is guaranteed to fail. The value-added methods (VAM) era under Obama revealed that teacher impact on measurable student achievement is only 1-14%, and NAEP data show that the most successful schools in the country are Department of Defense (DoDEA) schools where the inequity of children’s lives are mitigated by access to healthcare, stable housing, food security, etc.
  • Media coverage and political rhetoric proclaiming “crisis” have repeatedly misidentified the barriers to reading proficiency and teaching reading, and thus, have resulted in policy that doesn’t address those roots causes. As the UK shows, making promises that are not fulfilled only further fuels cycles of crisis and reform. Currently in the US, SOR advocates are promising 90% of students will be at grade level proficiency; however, a recent working paper on reading reform in California show only about 1/3 of students as proficient after SOR implementation, the same percentage that media has used to claim a reading crisis and a far cry from 90%.
  • PISA is a measure of 15-years-old students (see also NAEP LTT data), which offers a way to evaluate misleading short-term score gains that are more mirage than miracle. In the US, states such as Florida and Mississippi demonstrate that while grade 4 scores in reading can be inflated, that learning isn’t real, and by middle and high school, the improvements have vanished. Thus, there are no miracles and no silver bullets in education reform.

Whether NAEP or PISA, standardized test scores are less about learning and teaching but more about the incredible inequity in the lives and schooling of children.

That inequity is no crisis; that inequity is a historical fact, especially in the US where we do not have the political will to confront both the out-of-school and in-school influences on teaching and learning.

If we are concerned about the disproportional vulnerable populations of students who routinely test well below the many different criteria for reading proficiency—and we should—reading and education reform must start with addressing inequity in the lives and education of all children.

Reading theories and reading programs are neither the problems nor the solutions to increasing student reading proficiency.

The real reading crisis in the US and internationally is the refusal by those with power to read what test scores actually show us—and the failure to act in ways that can and will make attainable gains in the best interest of children, teachers, and each nation.

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

Media Misreads Reading Science (Again)

For more than five years, mainstream media has been obsessed with two false but compelling stories: (1) there is a national reading crisis caused by balanced literacy programs that rely on three cueing, and (2) the solution is the “science of reading” (SOR).

So it is no surprise that a working paper on the outcomes from a right-to-read lawsuit in California has prompting immediate high-profile coverage in The Hechinger Report and The New York Times.

Before I examine the paper itself, let’s remind ourselves of two foundational aspects of the SOR movement that is primarily media- and politically based.

First, The Reading League has established what counts as “scientific”:

Second, advocates for SOR instruction such as NCTQ promise that SOR policy and practices will result in 90% of students reading at grade level proficiency:

Reading Foundations: Technical Report

If we maintain the essential foundations established by the SOR movement itself, we must conclude that the working paper itself should garner no media coverage because it fails to meet the standard of “scientific” and that even if we consider the findings of the paper credible, SOR policy has significantly failed in CA:

Now I want to unpack why the paper should never be covered at this level and with such a positive spin by journalists (including within the paper itself).

The most important issue is that a working paper is not peer-reviewed or published, thus not “scientific” per expectations identified above:

About EdWorking Papers

And as noted by Barshay: “The working paper, ‘The Achievement Effects of Scaling Early Literacy Reforms,’ was posted to the website of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University on Dec. 4, 2023. It has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and may still be revised.”

Next, since there is a great deal of misinformation in the paper about NAEP and literacy, we should be concerned that the authors have backgrounds in social studies and economics, not literacy:

For scholars and journalists, not knowing enough to know what you don’t know can erode the credibility of research and journalism. This paper represents misrepresentations far too common in both research and media—misunderstanding NAEP reading proficiency:

Since “Basic” and not “Proficient” approximates grade level reading proficiency, NAEP data show that about 2 out of 3 students are at or above proficiency—not 1 out of 3.

Whether or not the US has a reading crisis and how scientific research can address reading proficiency in the US is negatively impacted by this simple fact: There is no standard metric for “proficiency” in reading, and NAEP along with each state sets the cut scores for proficiency differently.

Another misrepresentation or oversimplification in the paper is the failure to define clearly what counts as SOR as well as recycling oversimplified characterizations of whole language and balanced literacy:

At the center of misrepresenting reading theory and practices, this paper again significantly skews both what three cueing is and how it has or hasn’t impacted reading proficiency. [1]

The paper acknowledges two important points often misrepresented in the media: the Mississippi “miracle” is more story than science, and the last twenty years include research showing little to no positive impact from SOR policies grounded in NCLB, Reading First, and NRP:

Yet despite the high standard SOR has set for reading proficiency and the minimal gains shown in this paper, the authors slip into advocacy for SOR:

The paper lacks a clear definition of what counts as SOR (except it appears anything not including three cueing counts) [2] or reading proficiency, and skirts over that the policy implemented in CA includes far more than SOR literacy practices (suggesting any gains could be more from extra funding and other practices):

Media’s outsized coverage of this paper also raises questions about outliers and selective coverage.

The paper again notes a history of SOR practices not resulting in promised gains:

However, neither the paper nor mainstream media choose to focus on substantial evidence from England about failed SOR policies over almost two decades, and one must wonder why there isn’t the same media coverage for research on high-volume reading that has been peer-reviewed and published: The Effects of Bookworms Literacy Curriculum on Student Achievement in Grades 2-5.

The paper’s caveats also deserve far more emphasis than the findings:

Again, decades of research and contemporary examples from MS and FL have shown repeatedly that raising reading scores in the short term and early grades almost never continues into middle school, and thus are mirages, not miracles.

Finally, the paper represents two significant problems with so-called high-quality research in education: (1) using metrics such as “X [time] of learning” and (2) judging policy and practice in terms of “cost effective” (one researcher, again, has an economics background):

Finally, then, if we circle back to the standards and promises within the SOR movement, this working paper should not be covered at all by media (a working paper is more press release than science), but if anything, the results signal a significant failure of SOR practices to meet the 9 of 10 students reaching reading proficiency.

The media coverage of this working paper could be considered much ado about nothing except it will serve to continue the manufactured crisis campaign about reading that is ultimately, and again, mis-serving children, teachers, and the promises of public education.

[1] See the following:

[2] Since no standard exists for what counts as SOR practices, many states and schools seem to cherry pick what to ban and what to implement. For example, three cueing is often banned, but state and schools implement practices and programs also not supported by science such as LETRS training for teachers, grade retention, decodable texts, and multi-sensory (O-G) programs; see Teacher Prep Review: Strengthening Elementary Reading Instruction (NCTQ) and The Science of Reading: A Literature Review:

Crisis, Education, education reform, Educational Research, Media, politics, reading, Science of Reading

Lost in Translation: Science of Reading Edition

When Anders Ericsson, an internationally renowned cognitive psychologist, died in 2020, a New York Times article included as a subhead: “His research helped inspire ‘Outliers,’ Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book on the keys to excelling.”

In short, the general public was more aware of Gladwell’s popularized version of Ericsson’s work than Ericsson, and likely, nearly no one in the general public had read Ericsson’s scholarship.

As a result, Ericsson penned a clarification that includes a key point:

Although I accept that the process of writing an engaging popular article requires considerable simplification, I think it is essential that the article does not contain incorrect statements and misinformation. My primary goal with this review is to describe several claims in Jaffe’s article that were simply false or clearly misleading and then discuss how APS might successfully develop successful methods for providing research summaries for non-specialists that are informative and accurately presents the major views of APS members and Fellows. At the very least they should not contain factually incorrect statements and avoid reinforcing existing misconceptions in the popular media.

The Danger of Delegating Education to Journalists: Why the APS Observer Needs Peer Review When Summarizing New Scientific Developments

Ericsson is confronting an essential problem when journalists and mainstream media seek ways to translate scholarship, research, and science into accessible and engaging media for the public. Journalists prioritize narratives, stories, as the primary mode to accomplish that translation.

Several months ago, I thought again about Ericsson’s valid concerns about Gladwell’s very popular but reductive Outliers:

[An article by Jaffe] goes on to state that “Ericsson and his colleagues found in a 1993 study that professional musicians had accumulated about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice over the course of a decade. The results became the basis of Ericsson’s deliberate practice theory of elite performance, also called the 10,000 hour rule” (Jaffe, 2012, p. 13). With these two sentences Jaffe reinforces misconceptions in some popularized books and internet blogs that incorrectly infer a close connection between deliberate practice and the “10,000 hour rule”.  In fact, the 10,000 hour rule was invented by Malcolm Gladwell (2008, p. 40) who stated that “researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” Gladwell cited our research on expert musicians as a stimulus for his provocative generalization to a magical number. 

The Danger of Delegating Education to Journalists: Why the APS Observer Needs Peer Review When Summarizing New Scientific Developments

Ericsson came to mind as I was having an extended phone conversation with a producer at 60 Minutes about the current “science of reading” (SOR) movement and the significant amount of misinformation being presented in mainstream media and then driving state-level reading legislation (now in about 47 states).

While the producer was thoughtful and receptive to my concerns about media misrepresenting NAEP data, student reading proficiency, and the so-called failure of popular reading programs and balanced literacy, he ultimately concluded after we talked almost two hours, that there is no story in the truth, thus he would not be able to produce a story about that truth.

As Ericsson’s career demonstrates, the public finds misinformation in the form of simplistic stories more compelling than nuanced and messy research; further, most people, including politicians, have read or viewed the journalism, but not the actual research (notably because too much research is behind a pay wall and/or nearly impossible for the average person to comprehend).

The Ericsson/Gladwell/”grit” dynamic is now being replicated with even greater consequence in the SOR movement that has been codified in legislation banning and mandating programs and practices primarily or even exclusively grounded in media misinformation, and not the full reading science.

For example, the recent controversy about a co-authored article in The Reading Teacher perfectly highlights the essential problem.

Let’s do a thought experiment for a moment: Which do you think the general public and political leaders are more familiar with (or familiar with at all), Emily Hanford’s Sold a Story or Nell Duke’s (with colleagues) work on the active view of reading?

And, importantly, which of those two do you think is a better representation of the current state of reading science (or full body of research on reading and teaching reading)?

Now let’s explore some artifacts to answer those questions.

First, Hanford in her journalism has repeated that SOR is “settled science” called the simple view of reading (SVR):

Covering How Students Learn to Read: Tips to Get Started
There Is a Right Way to Teach Reading, and Mississippi Knows It

The “simple and settled” mantra has been a central part of Hanford’s print journalism and her more popular podcast.

But that same mantra is central to the claims made by The Reading League, likely the leading organization promoting SOR:

Science of Reading: Defining Guide

Now let’s note how these misleading and oversimplified claims about reading science have manifested themselves in political rhetoric and then state legislation:

WATCH:  Youngkin says education will drive midterm elections amid poor student performance
‘The evidence is clear’: DeWine pushes for ‘Science of Reading’ as only approach in Ohio classrooms

While this is only one example [1] of the caution Ericsson raised, the misrepresentation of reading science as “simple and settled” has become holy text and then spurred misguided reading legislation and policy.

The more nuanced and on-going body of reading science is much better represented by the research from literacy scholars:

Duke, N.K., & Cartwright, K.B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the simple view of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25–S44. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.411

From Arkansas to New York City, political leaders have misrepresented dyslexia, reading proficiency, reading instruction, and reading programs in ways that parallel the stories found in mainstream media.

Like Gladwell, Hanford and dozens of mainstream journalists are reaping the rewards of compelling stories that misinform while also feeding commercial and political interests that are mis-serving students, teachers, and public education.

Once again, we find ourselves not only in the tired and false rhetoric of reading crisis but also lost in translation because a sensationalistic podcast tells a melodramatic story that runs roughshod over anything resembling a fair representation of student reading proficiency, teacher expertise, or our obsession with finding the next reading program.

Note

[1] For a more detailed examination of the misinformation in media, see the following:

Recommended

The Danger of Delegating Education to Journalists: Why the APS Observer Needs Peer Review When Summarizing New Scientific Developments, K. Anders Ericsson 

Reading Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered, Gerald Bracey

Setting the Record Straight: Responses to Misconceptions About Public Education in the U.S., Gerald Bracey

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

Reading Programs Always Fail Students and Teachers

[Header Photo by Nappy on Unsplash]

Despite growing up in a working-class family with two parents who never finished college, I entered formal schooling with a turboboost provided primarily by my mom.

I was a reader, and by traditional school norms, I was a reader way above grade level.

Both my mother and my teachers taught me to read through whole-word methods that were popular in the 1960s. I am of the Dick and Jane reader generation.

I always tested in the 99th-percentile and made As and Bs, but I found school only mildly tolerable, at best; I did, however, love my teachers.

It was a jumbled journey that led to me being a high school English teacher. I recognize now that the foundation of that path included my high level of literacy that eventually drew me to literature, a love of reading, and being a writer.

When I entered the classroom in the fall of 1984, I soon realized that I was not prepared to teach. Almost all of the literature I had studied in college was not or could not be taught in public high school; I also was almost completely ill-equipped to teach adolescents to write.

My first years included what I now perceive as the fatal flaw of teaching—seeking The Way to teach students to read and write.

My saving grace came in the late 1980s and early 1990s, significantly because I entered the regional National Writing Project summer workshop (Spartanburg Writing Project) and was introduced to the workshop model.

Two books and two people were foundational for my journey into workshop teaching—Nancie Atwell’s reading workshop and Lucy Calkins’s writing workshop.

Atwell and Calkins offered a great deal of practices and structures in their seminal works, but, honestly, I paid little attention to the details—fortunately.

I did take away a philosophical structure that included a frame for teaching—time, ownership, and response—and a nearly compulsive commitment to be a student-centered teacher.

Over my 40 years as a teacher, I have witnessed wonderful concepts, theories, and philosophies in education gradually be reduced to programs, structures, and scripts that necessarily fail students and teachers.

Throughout my career, I have resisted and challenged all programs and templates for teaching and learning.

By the 1990s, I had more opportunities to publish and present as a practitioner-scholar, and then after I completed my doctorate in 1998, that credential further reinforced my ability to advocate against programs and, worst of all, educational faddism.

For many years, I had to caution teachers and administrators about the missionary zeal around Four Blocks® and 6+1 Traits of Writing.

In traditional schooling, we lack the political will to provide students and teachers with the learning/teaching conditions that could support best practice and thriving students. Instead, we remain committed to in-school only reductive practices such as adopting new standards, implementing new standardized tests, and shuffling through an ever-revolving series of reading programs.

Here’s the problem: All reading programs fail students and teachers because when we center reading programs, we de-center the individual needs of students and the professional autonomy of teachers.

Let me be very clear: All reading programs fail students and teachers.

During my teaching career across five decades, I have watched as advocates scapegoat X and promise the success of Y—whether the scapegoat is whole language or balanced literacy (the two favorites over those years).

The “science of reading” movement fits into the manufactured reading crisis cycles that have occurred in the US for a century; almost nothing new is being claimed or promised, but the outsized attack on specific reading programs (Fountas and Pinnell, Calkins’s Units of Study) does represent a disturbing lack of logic (across the US dozens of different reading programs have been implemented over decades with reading proficiency remaining stable) and another fatal mistake of centering reading programs.

To be blunt, reading programs labeled as whole language, balanced reading, or structured literacy carry no guarantee that those programs or the implementation of the program does in fact reflect the theory/philosophy of the label.

One marketed, theory/philosophy is corrupted or erased.

But more importantly, all centering of reading programs is a distraction because teachers are held accountable for teaching with fidelity to the program and students are reduced to mere metrics of that fidelity.

I have remained outside the ideology and program game for 40 years (that’s what critical pedagogy is), but all those trapped inside that game cannot hear my persistent message: Don’t depend on reading programs and reading theories to teach children to read.

I do not support or adhere to whole language, balanced literacy, or structured literacy; I do not endorse (and certainly would never create) any reading program.

As a critical scholar and educator, i recognize that the moment we reduce philosophical structures to scripts or programs, both the ideologies and the humans impacted (students and teachers) are erased.

Most literacy instruction I do these days is with college students and adults, who are still learning to read and learning to write.

I remain guided by time, ownership, and response as my philosophical structures, but I always start with and center who each student is and where is student is.

I have a teaching tool kit that is incredibly full and diverse from my many years as a practitioner, yet I continue to seek new and different ways to teach because each student is a new challenge and a new possibility.

The current media, market, and political story that Reading Program X has failed children but Reading Program Y will save those children is a lazy argument that lacks logic or evidence.

If anyone can step off the reading program merry-go round, they could see that if there was a problem with Units of Study it was that teachers were held accountable for fidelity to that program and not provided the teaching conditions to serve the needs of individual students.

If anyone can step off the reading program merry-go round, they could see that banning some scapegoated reading programs and mandating new structured literacy programs that are scripted (thus erasing teacher autonomy and individual needs of students) is jumping out of the reading program frying pan into the fire.

The rhetoric of missionary zeal exposes the failure of centering when we argue about “teaching phonics” or “teaching comprehension” or “teaching fluency,” for example, because our goal should never be a so-called reading skill, but teaching children how to be eager and critical readers.

In formal schooling we have for decades and currently are failing disproportionately marginalized and minoritized students who are over-represented in those students identified as below proficiency in reading.

As long as we center reading ideologies and reading programs, we are de-centering those students’ individual needs and de-centering the autonomy of their teachers to serve those neglected children.

Reading programs are the folly of petty adult allegiances that are manipulated for political and market purposes.

Reading and writing like teaching reading and writing are complex and unpredictable journeys that are ultimately human behaviors that should be the center of all we do—not beliefs, practices, or, especially, yet another false promise packaged as a silver-bullet reading program.

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

Revisiting the SOR Multiverse

Although I have made the distinction many times, the “science of reading” (SOR) as a term denotes three distinct meanings simultaneously:

  1. SOR as a movement, grounded in a pervasive yet misleading media narrative primarily associated with the journalism of Emily Hanford and then the manifestation of the narrative in political rhetoric and legislation/policy.
  2. SOR as marketing and branding, a concurrent flood of reading programs and materials (very similar to the branding of materials during the Common Core era).
  3. SOR as a blanket term for the broad and deep research base on reading than spans at least a century.

I have been contesting the most problematic aspects of SOR—the movement and the marketing/branding—because the misinformation has gained a status as “holy text”; more troubling is that nearly every state has now passed legislation and implemented SOR policy and practice.

In no uncertain terms, there is no longer a debate about the credibility of SOR because that credibility is its own odd multiverse—the movement claims are simultaneously false or misleading while existing in the real world as fact and narrow mandates (for example, structured literacy as the newest reading theory is often packaged as scripted curriculum).

The SOR movement has been driven primarily by people with no expertise or historical context for the narrative established in “Hard Words” and then amplified by “Sold a Story.”

Journalists, politicians, parents, and think tanks/advocacy groups have created a nearly unstoppable force because of a series of beliefs that have been perpetuated in the US for decades: public schools are failing, teachers are failing, and students are failing.

The SOR movement is little different than any other education movement in the US since the template is well established in crisis/miracle rhetoric that appeals to cultural and public beliefs.

Also the SOR movement has weaponized a reductive use of the term “science,” which shields the movement from criticism.

Anyone who dares to criticize—even with evidence—the SOR narrative is discounted as being against “science,” particularly effective in the wake of Covid era fraught with public and political debates about masking and vaccinations.

The missionary zeal of the SOR movement combined with market interests has erased all nuance and complexity from discussions of or implementing the broad and deep body of research on reading that is still evolving and better characterized by debate than being “simple and settled” (the earliest mantra driving the SOR movement in the media).

Over the past decades, SOR advocacy has made any criticism or debate come with great costs to the critics because of the zeal and even anger among SOR advocates on social media, a network of stake holders associated with dyslexia, phonics, and mainstream education reform (such as Jeb Bush’s ExcelinEd).

As I just recently posted, a survey of parents demonstrates the effectiveness of the SOR movement to turn false narratives into holy text.

The survey shows both that parents held relatively positive views of their children’s reading achievement and their teachers. But once those parents were exposed to the false narrative of SOR, their opinions were more negative. The misrepresentation of NAEP data and cueing/guessing was presented to parents as facts, and the change in opinions confirmed that the SOR false information is incredibly effective and mostly embraced uncritically:

Reading Education Messaging: Findings and Recommendations from an Online Poll of K-5 Parents in America

The most shocking aspect of the developing SOR multiverse is that journalists, the public, and political leaders believe that 2/3 of students are not proficient readers and that same NAEP data show that 2/3 of students are reading at grade level or above—inverse “facts” simultaneously “true.”

Nearly as stunning is the Urban Legend around cueing and guessing that, again, simultaneously is believed by almost everyone while not existing in reality:

Narratives that speak into cultural beliefs are incredibly powerful, and bandwagons are difficult to slow down or reroute.

As a consequence truth and nuance are lost.

In a recent co-authored scholarly piece, colleagues and I confront the imbalance between the SOR movement/marketing and the full body of research on reading.

The responses to that article on social media and even among literacy scholars reflect the same problematic dynamic exposed in the survey of parents; nuance struggles to keep its head above water during a tidal wave.

I am currently at the annual NCTE convention and will present on a panel tomorrow about SOR; however, even at a professional conference, being critical of SOR is an outlier stance.

The SOR misinformation has won—at least for now.

In 5 or 10 years, the next reading crisis will somehow overwrite this one—simultaneously all of the century’s worth of reading crises existing and never having happened.

Just like now.

Now seems impossible, in fact, since “kids today” (no matter when “today” is) have never been proficient readers.

Yet, here we are, inexplicably harder to believe than Bigfoot.

Crisis, Education, education reform, Education Week, Educational Research, Media, reading, Science of Reading

NAEP, Media Fuel Manufactured Reading Crisis

Consider how people would respond to the two following statements for a survey:

  1. About 2/3 of US students read below “proficient” on national testing.
  2. About 2/3 of US students read at or above “grade level” on national testing.

We don’t need to imagine, however.

Coverage in Education Week of a new survey on parents’ perceptions of reading reveals incredibly damning findings—damning not about reading achievement or teaching but about NAEP and media:

The survey’s findings reflect that damning dynamic:

Yet, despite the misinformation about NAEP, these survey findings reflect decades of surveys showing parents generally have positive views of their children’s schools and teachers but believe public education nationally is failing:

This survey, though, exposes the source of that disconnect—media coverage of NAEP data, which seems to be designed more to manufacture a crisis than to assess student reading achievement.

The opening two hypothetical statements show where the problem lies because the first is an accurate statement about NAEP and the second is an accurate statement about reading at grade level.

As NAEP explains and others have addressed for years (see below), NAEP “proficiency” is well above grade level and “basic” represents something close to grade-level proficiency. However, the larger problem is the US has no standard criteria for “grade-level proficiency” and states set their own levels with NAEP using terminology that is at least confusing if not intentionally misleading.

Another problem, as I have argued, is that “grade level” is likely a worse metric than “age level” since many states now implement grade 3 retention based on reading tests, corrupting populations of students being assessed since data show that student scores on early reading are strongly correlated with birth month.

See the following to better understand NAEP and media misinformation about reading proficiency:

The US has a long and troubling history of media and political leaders being more invested in a manufactured education crisis than actually investing in better public education.

As a result, parents and students are trapped between their own genuine appreciation and need for effective, responsive reading instruction and a media-fueled political campaign to misinform the public because a constant state of reading crisis benefits a contracting media and generates political capital.

The reading crisis in the US is that the public is reading misinformation about reading and teachers, grounded in a national testing program designed to manufacture crisis.

NOTE

The survey also shows how misinformation about three cueing and phonics misleads parents and distorts their perception of reading instruction:

The framing of the survey misrepresents both cueing and guessing; see the following:

Education, education reform, Journal of Reading Recovery, literacy, NCTE, NEPC, reading, Science of Reading, The Reading Teacher, Voices from the Middle

Recent Publications on Reading [Open Access and Updated]

[Header Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash]

Thomas, P.L. (2025). Black Widow underestimated and hypersexualized: “I am what I am.” Brill.

Thomas, P.L. (TBD). Haruki Murakami’s 7 stories: “It’s quite easy to become Men Without Women.” In J. Milburn (ed.), Haruki Murakami and philosophical concepts (pp. TBD). Palgrave.

Thomas, P.L. (TBD). Crisis as distraction and erasure: How SOR fails diversity and urban students.  Journal of Literacy and Urban Schools.

Thomas, P.L. (2025). Navigating (another) reading crisis as an administrator: Rethinking the “science of reading” movement. Journal of School Administration, Research and Development, 10(1), 38-48. https://ojed.org/JSARD/article/view/6706

Thomas, P.L. (2024, November). We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: For all ELA teachers, “the time is always now.” English Journal, 114(2), 21-26. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024114221

Thomas, P.L. (2024, September). We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: The media continue to misread teaching reading and literacy. English Journal, 114(1), 14-19. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024114114

Thomas, P.L. (2024, May). Teaching English in the “science of reading” era: We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: Selling a story of reading. English Journal, 113(5), 16-22. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024113516 [Open Access https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej202411342]

Thomas, P.L. (2024, March). We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: The long (and tedious) history of reading crisis. English Journal, 113(4), 21-26. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024113421

Thomas, P.L. (2023, November). Everything you know is wrong: The “science of reading” era of reading legislation. Perspectives and Provocations, (11), 1-17. https://drive.google.com/file/d/12fAfLV1pCh7ZXV-UFsTftFd7y_MLSK-O/view

Compton-Lilly, C., Spence, L.K., Thomas, P.L. & Decker, S.L. (2023). Stories grounded in decades of research: What we truly know about the teaching of reading. Reading Teacher, 77(3), 392-400. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2258

Thomas, P.L. (2023). The science of reading era: Seeking the “science” in yet another anti-teacher movement. Journal of Reading Recovery, 22(5), 5-17.

Thomas, P.L. (2023). The “science of reading,” education faddism, and the failure to honor the intellectual lives of all children: On deficit lenses and ignoring class and race stereotyping. Voices in the Middle, 30(3), 17-21.

How to End the Reading War and Serve the Literacy Needs of All Students: A Primer for Parents, Policy Makers, and People Who Care (2nd Edition) – IAP – [first edition]

The Science of Reading Movement: The Never-Ending Debate and the Need for a Different Approach to Reading Instruction (policy brief) – NEPC

A Critical Examination of Grade Retention as Reading Policy (white paper). Prepared for the Ohio Education Association in response to Ohio’s “Third Grade Reading Guarantee”, September 15, 2022

The Never-Ending Debate and the Need for a Different Approach to Reading Instruction – NCTE Blog

“Science of Reading” Media Advocacy Continues to Mislead – RRC

A conversation with Paul Thomas. (2021). Talking Points, 32(2), 24-30.

Education, education reform, Educational Research, Poverty, reading, Science of Reading, Social Context Reform

The Ignored Truth about Reading Proficiency in the US

[Note: This has been submitted to state and local newspapers. So far no responses. Mainstream media resists any narrative other than blaming teachers and schools, regretfully.]

Like dozens of stories in mainstream media, Marion Blank declared in Scientific American, “Biennial testing through NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] consistently shows that two thirds of U.S. children are unable to read with proficiency.”

Reading proficiency crisis has been at the forefront of media coverage and state-level policy for over a decade now. However, the basic claim—2/3 of children not at grade-level proficiency—is misleading at best and false at worst.

The misunderstanding lies in NAEP achievement levels. NAEP warns, “It should be noted that the NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards.”

Tom Loveless calls this the “NAEP proficiency myth,” adding Basic represents grade-level proficiency, and thus, 2/3 of students in the US are reading at grade level or above.

Further, Blank begins the article touting achievement in Mississippi, focusing on impressive gains in NAEP reading. The media embracing of the Mississippi “miracle” further compounds the misinformation about both a reading crisis and one state’s ability to beat the odds.

To understand the US is not experiencing a reading crisis and MS is not a “miracle” template for reading reform, we must consider the recent call for Vermont to mimic MS.

On the 2022 NAEP reading test, VT has 62% of students at or above grade level proficiency (grade 4), compared to MS with 63%. Yes, this is an impressive similarity for MS with a state experiencing a significantly higher rate of poverty and minority students.

But that is not the whole story.

States such as MS and especially FL have very impressive grade 4 NAEP scores that plummet by grade 8: Compare VT (73% grade-level proficient and above) with MS (63%) and FL (69%), notably resulting in VT in the top 6 states in the US, MS in the bottom four, and FL ranking in the middle. Researchers have noted that FL students experience some the greatest drops in achievement from grade 4 to 8, in fact.

Another ignored fact is that MS, like FL, likely achieves the test score bump from extreme levels of grade retention—impacting from about 9,000 – 12,000 students per year across grades K through 3. The MS “miracle” is a test data “mirage.”

But the most important ignored truth about reading in the US can be found in the publicly funded schools run by the Department of Defense (DoDEA)—DoDEA schools NAEP outcomes include in 2022 (grade 4) 80% and (grade 8) 90% at or above grade-level proficient.

Now here is the most ignored truth about reading achievement. DoDEA schools are not distinct from traditional public schools because of reading instruction or reading programs, but as Mervosh reports:

How does the military do it? In large part by operating a school system that is insulated from many of the problems plaguing American education….

For starters, families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job….

[T]eachers are also well paid, supported by a Pentagon budget that allocates $3 billion to its schools each year, far more than comparably sized school districts.

Who Runs the Best U.S. Schools? It May Be the Defense Department.

The most important and ignored truth about reading proficiency in the US is that reading is a marker for socioeconomic inequity in both our society and our schools. There is no crisis and there are no miracles. But as DoDEA schools demonstrate, if we have the political will, we can and should better serve all our children as developing readers and citizens.

ACT, Crisis, Education, education reform, Educational Research, SAT, Testing

Testing for Perpetual Education Crisis

“The administrations in charge,” writes Gilles Deleuze in Postscript on the Societies of Control, “never cease announcing supposedly necessary reforms: to reform schools, to reform industries, hospitals, the armed forces, prisons” (p. 4).

Deleuze’s generalization about “supposedly necessary reforms” serves as an important entry point into the perpetual education crisis in the US. Since A Nation at Risk, public education has experienced several cycles of crisis that fuel ever-new and ever-different sets of standards and high-stakes testing.

Even more disturbing is that for at least a century, “the administrations in charge” have shouted that US children cannot read—with the current reading crisis also including the gobsmacking additional crisis that teachers of reading do not know how to teach reading.

The gasoline that is routinely tossed on the perpetual fire of education crisis is test scores—state accountability tests, NAEP, SAT, ACT, etc.

While all that test data itself may or may not be valuable information for both how well students are learning and how to better serve those students through reform, ultimately all that testing has almost nothing to do with either of those goals; in fact, test data in the US are primarily fuel for that perpetual state of crisis.

Here is the most recent example—2023 ACT scores:

I have noted that reactions and overreactions to NAEP in recent years follow a similar set of problems found in reactions/overreactions to the SAT for many decades; the lessons from those reactions include:

  • Lesson: Populations being tested impact data drawn from tests.
  • Lesson: Ranking by test data must account for population differences among students tested. 
  • Lesson: Conclusions drawn from test data must acknowledge purpose of test being used (see Gerald Bracey). 

The social media and traditional media responses to 2023 ACT data expose a few more concerns about media, public, and political misunderstanding of test data as well as how “the administrations in charge” depend on manipulating test data to insure the perpetual education crisis.

Many people have confronted the distorting ways in which the ACT data are being displayed; certainly the mainstream graph from Axios above suggests “crisis”; however, by simply modifying the X/Y axes, that same data appear at least less dramatic and possibly not even significant if the issues I list above are carefully considered.

Many causal elements could be at work to explain the ACT decrease, including population shifts, social influences (such as the Covid impact), and the inherently problematic element of using test data for purposes not intended as well as making nuanced claims based on singular data points (averages).

For example, the ACT is exclusively designed to measure college preparedness, like the SAT, and not general educational quality of schools or general evaluations of student learning.

Students who take the ACT are a narrow subset of students skewed by region and academic selectivity (college-bound students versus general population of US students).

Also, while a careful analysis could answer these questions, the ACT score drop may or may not represent a significant event, depending on what that single point (average) represents (how many questions and how large is the change substantively).

Likely, however, there is never any credible reason to respond to college entrance data as a crisis of general educational quality because, as noted above, that simply is not what the tests are designed to measure.

The larger issue remains: Testing in the US rarely serves well evaluating learning and teacher, testing has not functioned in service of achieving effective education reform, but testing does fuel perpetual education crisis.

This crisis-of-the-day about the ACT parallels the central problem with NAEP, a test that seems designed to mislead and not inform since NAEP’s “Proficient” feeds a false narrative that a majority of students are not on grade level as readers.

The ACT crisis graph being pushed by mainstream media is less a marker of declining educational quality in the US and more further proof that “the administrations in charge” want and need testing data to justify “supposedly necessary reforms,” testing as gas for the perpetual education crisis fire.