ILEC Vision: To promote literacy learning practices that enable all children and youth to realize their full potential as literate, thinking human beings.
ILEC Response: Reading Reform Across America (The Albert Shanker Institute, July 2023), Susan Neuman, Esther Quintero, and Kayla Reist
The report asserts, “Our goal is to provide a basic yet systematic description of states’ efforts to improve reading instruction.” And is grounded in the following:
Furthermore, legislative efforts have at times been criticized widely, but our analysis reveals significant variation among states, rendering blanket characterizations unhelpful….Whether we see the current state of American students’ reading achievement as a new crisis or as part of a stable trend, the truth remains that more than one-third (37 percent) of the nation’s fourth-graders performed below the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) “Basic” level in 2022. Because there is no achievement-level description for below “Basic,” it is difficult to make full sense of this statistic. (p. 1)
While the report is ambitious, the increase in reading legislation is framed as a positive reform effort motivated by “answering teachers’ calls for better support with regard to reading.” This positive spin ignores the media, market, and political influences on another reading war and avoids confronting how many states are passing legislation that mandates and bans reading practices based on advocacy and not the full body of reading science.[1]
Positive Aspects of the Report:
The report makes a strong case for reading achievement being significantly inequitable among marginalized groups of students.
The report acknowledges the concerns raised about grade retention policy.
ILEC Concerns:
State reading legislation is not a response to teachers, but to an orchestrated political reform movement grounded in misinformation about reading achievement, teacher expertise, and teacher education.
The report fails to fully engage with patterns of extreme measures in several states’ legislation that bans three cueing, reading programs, balanced literacy, etc., as well as legislation that mandates universal dyslexia screening, structured literacy programs, etc.—both of which are based on advocacy and not the full body of research.
The report does not address the contradiction of calling for scientific practice while mandating and funding programs and practices not fully supported by research; for example, mandating LETRS training for all teachers of reading.
Posing the current reading legislation movement as positive is idealistic bordering on irresponsible.
The report concedes “legislative efforts have at times been criticized widely,” but chooses to applaud the “science of reading” (SOR) movement without considering the considerable scholarly criticism raising cautions about claims of a reading crisis and mandates in that legislation.
While the report lacks critical grounding, it also offers a couple key points to consider. First:
There are no quick fixes: The path to improvement will require time, consistent investment and a holistic approach to reform. The magnitude of the task should motivate us to persevere and collaborate more effectively. Yet, we are concerned about the polarizing rhetoric surrounding reading and hope that this review can foster a more measured dialogue about the strengths and limitations of state efforts and reading improvement more broadly.
The emphasis on avoiding one-size-fits all solutions is important and supported by many critics of the SOR movement. And certainly the “polarizing rhetoric” of the SOR debate is harmful; yet, this report’s positive spin on harmful legislation is certain to trigger, not ameliorate that caustic debate.
Valid criticism isn’t any more “polarizing” than idealistic endorsements.
Next, and more importantly for this post:
Whether we see the current state of American students’ reading achievement as a new crisis or as part of a stable trend, the truth remains that more than one-third (37 percent) of the nation’s fourth-graders performed below the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) “Basic” level in 2022. Because there is no achievement-level description for below “Basic,” it is difficult to make full sense of this statistic.
Here is the central problem with the SOR movement as well as nine decades of reading wars: The truth is that we know very little empirically about reading proficiency in the US because we have no stable or unified metric or assessment to understand what proficiency is or how well students are developing as readers.
There simply has never been a single day in the US since at least the 1940s that the media, public, and political leaders have declared reading proficiency adequate.
What does it mean to have been in a continual reading crisis in the US for almost a century and yet the country has experienced no major or catastrophic decline?
What does it mean to have been in a continual reading crisis in the US for almost a century because we claim reading is essential for student and societal success and yet the dooms day messaging never materializes?
That leads us to this: What do we really know about reading proficiency in the US?
As the report notes, one aspect of reading proficiency in the US is quite clear and easy to document with multiple data points: Reading proficiency data expose a significant inequity among marginalized groups of students—notably Black and brown students, students in poverty, multi-lingual learners (whom the report advocates for admirably), and special needs students.
Yet this fact about reading is replicated in all other educational measurements, and thus, is not a unique reality about reading proficiency, suggesting something other than reading legislation (or any educational legislation) is needed in the US.
Also, it seems fair and supported by the evidence that we have to note that reading progress by students (how well any students gains reading proficiency in relationship with their peers) is a strong marker for educational progress in general.
While over-emphasizing reading proficiency at grade 3 is problematic, no one suggests that early reading progress should be ignored. Yet, many states persist in adopting harmful grade 3 retention that has been shown to correlate strongly with negative consequences.
The report does concede about grade retention: “Consequently, there are reasons to be cautious about the policy.”
Beyond these two points, however, claims about reading proficiency are at best speculation and at worst ideological assertions without empirical support.
The latter, regretfully, is the crux of most reading wars for decades.
So here is what we don’t have but urgently need in order to address reading in ways that are supportive of students and teachers and avoids the “polarizing rhetoric” with which the report seems deeply concerned:
A standardized definition of “proficiency” that is age-based and not grade-based.
A comprehensive documentation of reading programs and instructional practices implemented in the US over the last decade.
A set of diverse assessments grounded in a standardized definition of “proficiency.”
Patience and a willingness to admit that human behaviors occur on a spectrum; not all students learn at the same rates.
Reading legislation that neither mandates nor bans practices or policies, but provides a funding framework that supports educators as autonomous professionals.
The polarization in public and political debates about reading is in part driven by all that we do not know and do not have regarding reading proficiency, allowing too many people (some without good intentions) to make melodramatic claims that reinforce political, media, and market interests, not student achievement or teacher/teaching quality.
Ultimately, this current trend in reading legislation is far more dangerous than promising since the decisions being made for teachers and students are not grounded evidence-based claims.
The inequity exposed in data on reading achievement is itself enough to justify that we do something, but continuing to do the same thing over and over while expecting different results is a tremendous political and educational mistake.
We simply do not know what we need to know about reading proficiency, but we do know that reading achievement is not uniquely inequitable; and thus, education reform broadly has failed for decades, and we are far past time to re-evaluate political educational reform.
This report eagerly endorsing more of the same political educational reform; therefore, it fails in its central mission.
Cliches become cliches often because they do capture a truth, and “fish don’t know they are in water” may sound trite, but the saying captures well our five decades of education reform in the US.
Since A Nation at Risk under Ronald Reagan and then reinforced and expanded under George W. Bush (with Rod Paige and Margaret Spelling as Secretaries of Education), education reform in the US has been grounded in neoliberal ideology, the foundational beliefs of Republicans and conservatives.
“Neoliberalism” is a challenging term. First, it is hard to define, and second, the use of the word “liberal” has two contrasting meanings in the US—”liberal” as in “classic liberalism” is “conservative” or politically “right,” yet in common usage “liberal” is typically associate with “progressive” or politically “left.”
However, to simplify, in education reform, we can fairly interchange “neoliberal” with “conservative” and “Republican”—even though, as I want to discuss here, it is incredibly important to understand that neoliberal education reform is embraced and perpetuated by both Republicans and Democrats.
Look at the education reform landscape since the 1980s to understand.
A Nation at Risk established the neoliberal education reform playbook: manufacture an education crisis; declare that students, teachers, and public schools are failing; and mandate accountability policies to “fix” students, teachers, and schools (in-school reform only).
Insiders exposed that Reagan gave marching orders to the committee that created A Nation at Risk; Reagan wanted the US to embrace school choice (neoliberalism is a market ideology) and to “put prayer back in schools” (although voluntary prayer has always been allowed in public education, Reagan and Republicans depended on culture wars).
A key component of neoliberal education reform is the buy-in of the media. Until decades later, after numerous scholars discredited the report as a “manufactured crisis,” the media uncritically declared US education—teachers and students—failures.
And thus we set out on several cycles of the same accountability reform grounded in new standards, new tests, and new political mandates.
Governors scrambled to show they took education seriously, and George W. Bush in Texas turned his role as education reform governor into a launching pad for the White House.
Here is another key element.
Although Bush claimed a Texas “miracle,” again as with A Nation at Risk, after the political success and media as well as public buy-in, scholars showed that the “miracle” was a “mirage” (or better yet, a lie).
None the less, Bush took Paige into his administration and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was modeled in the Texas “miracle”/”mirage”—and just as Democrats rushed to embraced Reagan’s lie, Democrats joyfully made NCLB one of the most prominent federal bi-partisan accomplishments in recent US history.
Few things show how pervasive neoliberal (Republican/conservative) education reform has become the water to the fish (education) than the Barack Obama/Arne Duncan education era.
Instead of ushering in a progressive or critical response to the Bush education policy, Obama/Duncan doubled down—fueling the draconian value-added method era of teacher evaluation, launching the deceptive and austere education career of Michelle Rhee, and supercharging the charter school movement (a “school-choice lite” movement that fulfills the market beliefs of neoliberalism).
At 40 years since A Nation at Risk, all we have to show for the constant reform in education is a series of claims of “crisis” and a smattering of “miracles”—both of which are always manufactured.
SOR has its roots firmly in NCLB and the National Reading Panel (SOR cites the NRP report as much or more than any other evidence)—the peak of neoliberal education reform.
SOR was also fueled throughout the 2000s by the Florida model, which depends heavily on grade retention and laser-focusing on grade 3 reading.
Around 2013, states began to revisit or reimagine reading legislation, but in 2018, the media supercharged the SOR movement, echoing the “manufactured crisis” approach of A Nation at Risk.
Notably, the “manufactured crisis” of the SOR movement is firmly grounded in NAEP testing; first, the media misrepresents NAEP data, and second, NAEP is purposefully designed (the test is a neoliberal tool) to create the veneer of failure by students, teachers, and schools.
NAEP allows media and political leaders to shout that 2/3 of students are not proficient in reading even though that claim isn’t what most people think.
Therefore, at its core, the SOR movement is another neoliberal education reform movement, a tool of Republican/conservative ideology and politics.
SOR has the student/teacher/school failure rhetoric, the “miracle” that is a “mirage,” the eager and uncritical compliance of the media, and the compelling use of standardized tests data (NAEP). But most importantly to understand how SOR is neoliberal education reform, the policies are repackaging Jeb Bush’s Florida model, emphasizing punitive reading policies such as grade retention.
However just like all the other neoliberal education reform since the 1980s, it will not work because it isn’t designed to work.
We are only 20 years since NCLB/NRP which mandated scientifically based reading instruction, yet there is a reading crisis?
Here is the dirty little secret about neoliberal education reform: It is a distraction for political gain.
Neoliberalism keeps the public’s gaze on individuals (students, teachers) and away from systemic forces; SOR wants people to believe that a couple reading programs are to blame for reading failures instead of poverty and inequity.
And the neoliberal attacks in SOR on people are yet another swipe at progressive and critical educators.
Like fish, many educators cannot see they are willing participants in neoliberal education reform; almost all Democrats cannot see they are willing participants in neoliberal education reform.
Fish don’t know they are in water, but with the SOR movement (and whatever crisis comes next), the better analogy may be lobsters in a slowing boiling pot.
Note that the connections include policy in Florida (often called the “Florida Model” and anchored by third grade retention) and Mississippi and the influence of Jeb Bush’s ExcelinEd (which funded the report on retention in MS that Kristof cited).
Here are some of the ugly numbers concerning grade retention and its disproportionate impact on Black students:
The short response to all this must be that grade retention is gaming the system and it is harmful to children, disproportionately harmful to Black, brown, and poor children.
Reporting for NPR in 2018 about A Nation at Risk, Anya Kamenetz noted:
When it appeared in April 1983, the report received widespread coverage on radio and TV. President Reagan joined the co-authors in a series of public hearings around the country.
The report’s narrative of failing schools — students being out-competed internationally and declining educational standards — persists, and has become an entrenched part of the debate over education in the U.S.
In 2023, writing for The Answer Sheet in The Washington Post, James Harvey explains that the report under Reagan was “gaslighting” for political purposes, and not the clarion call to address education reform that media, the public, and political leaders claimed.
Yet, education reform has become a central part of the political process for governors and presidents since the 1980s, reaching a critical peak under George W. Bush who turned the discredited “Texas Miracle” into groundbreaking and bipartisan federal legislation, No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
In fact, public education in the US has been under an intense public and political microscope for forty years of high-stakes accountability. For educators, that accountability is indistinguishable regardless of the political party in the White House.
At the core of education crisis/miracle rhetoric has been the use and misuse of standardized test data.
For many decades, the media and public fretted over public education based on SAT data (and then ACT data), which represents the central issue of misunderstanding test scores (the College Board warns of not ranking states by SAT averages, yet the media persists) and misusing test data (SAT/ACT tests are designed to predict college success, not evaluate the quality of public education).
With the decrease in the influence of SAT/ACT testing, however, the media, public, and political leaders have focused more on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data.
Since 2019, there have been NAEP-inspired claims of educational crisis based on 2019 reading scores, 2022 math scores, and 2022 history/civics scores.
As one powerful example, high-profile media, The New York Times, and journalist, Nicholas Kristof, proclaim:
One of the most bearish statistics for the future of the United States is this: Two-thirds of fourth graders in the United States are not proficient in reading.
However, despite warnings from 2016, Tom loveless explains:
In February, 2023 Bari Weiss produced a podcast, “Why 65% of Fourth Graders Can’t Really Read” and Nicholas Kristof, New York Times columnist, wrote “Two-Thirds of Kids Struggle to Read, and We Know How to Fix It.” Both headlines are misleading. The 65% and two-thirds figures are referring to the percentage of 4th graders who scored below proficient on the last reading test of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), administered in 2022.
The problem is this: scoring below proficient doesn’t mean “can’t really read” or “struggling to read.” It also does not mean “functionally illiterate” or identify “non- readers” as some of the more vituperative descriptions on social media have claimed. It doesn’t even mean “below grade level in reading,” one of the milder distortions.
Further, scholars Reinking, Hruby and Risko (2023), in fact, assert: “[T]here is no indisputable evidence of a national crisis in reading, and even if there were a crisis, there is no evidence that the amount of phonics in classrooms is necessarily the cause or the solution.”
Two problems currently exist with the stories being told about schools and the education reform movement—the data do not support claims of “crisis” and NAEP perpetuates the “crisis” myth by design.
The US is now mired in decades of punitive education legislation (standards and high-stakes testing as well as third-grade retention and VAM-based teacher evaluation) that has not worked because the central claim of “crisis” is simply not supported by the evidence.
Especially in the wake of the devastating impact of Covid on public education, students, and teachers, the Biden Administration has the historic opportunity to change direction in US public education reform.
This open letter, then, is an urgent call to do the following:
Acknowledge and reject the false narratives of manufactured public education “crises” and media-created education “miracles.”
Declare accountability-based, punitive reform a failure—despite good intentions—and call for equity-based, supportive reform that forefronts the impact of systemic forces outside and inside our public schools.
US public education has a long and inexcusable history of political negligence in terms of supporting the most vulnerable children in our society; that includes negligence of vulnerable students in our public education system.
Our children and the country deserve robust and substantive education reform, not false stories of failure and misguided blame and punishment.
Regretfully, the last forty years have been a perpetual cycle of manufactured crisis and punitive policy.
The Biden Administration—notably a rhetorical “friend” of education embodied by Dr. Jill Biden—can and should chose a different story about our schools, our students, and our teachers.
As celebrated author James Baldwin urged: “The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now.”
In 2018, a simplistic but compelling story was established: Teachers do not know how to teach children to read (60+% are not proficient readers!) because teacher educators have failed to teach the “science of reading” (SOR) in teacher prep programs.
These false narratives about teacher ed, NAEP data, and reading have gained momentum and now drive reading policy and legislation in practically every state in the US.
There is an ironic truism—“a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes”—most often misattributed to Mark Twain that certainly describes the misguided SOR movement’s central claims wrapped up in the initial mantra that SOR is both simple and settled.
Here are two complicated counter-points that are supported by the full body of evidence:
Reading instruction can and should be significantly reformed (in the context of addressing wider systemic inequities), but the SOR version of causes and solutions are false.
Teacher education can and should be significantly reformed , but the SOR version of causes and solutions are false.
I have been a strong advocate for education reform, beginning with my entering the field in 1984, and subsequently a strong advocate for teacher education reform, starting with entering higher education and teacher education in 2002.
Below, then, I offer a reader about critically reconsidering teacher education and why the use of NCTQ “reports” are misguided and fail the test of scientific evidence.
Hoffman, J.V., Hikida, M., & Sailors, M. (2020). Contesting science that silences: Amplifying equity, agency, and design research in literacy teacher preparation. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S255–S266. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353
Yesterday, I spent an hour on the phone with the producer of a national news series.
I realized afterward that much of the conversation reminded me of dozens of similar conversations with journalists throughout my 40-year career as an educator because I had to carefully and repeatedly clarify what standardized tests do and mean.
Annually for more than the first half of my career, I had to watch as the US slipped into Education Crisis mode when SAT scores were released.
Throughout the past five decades, I have been strongly anti-testing and anti-grades, but most of my public and scholarly work challenging testing addressed the many problems with the SAT—and notably how the media, public, and politicians misunderstand and misuse SAT data.
Over many years of critically analyzing SAT data as well as the media/public/political responses to the college entrance exam, many key lessons emerged that include the following:
Lesson: Populations being tested impact data drawn from tests. The SAT originally served the needs of elite students, often those seeking Ivey League educations. However, over the twentieth century, increasingly many students began taking the SAT for a variety of reasons (scholarships and athletics, for example). The shift in population of students being tested from an elite subset (the upper end of the normal curve) to a more statistically “normal” population necessarily drove the average down (a statistical fact that has nothing to do with school or student quality). While statistically valid, dropping SAT scores because of population shifts created media problems (see below); therefore, the College Board recentered the scoring of the SAT.
Lesson: Ranking by test data must account for population differences among students tested. Reporting in the media of average SAT scores for the nation and by states created a misleading narrative about school quality. Part of that messaging was grounded in the SAT reporting average SAT scores by ranking states, and then, media reporting SAT average scores as a valid assessment of state educational quality. The College Board eventually issued a caution: “Educators, the media and others should…not rank or rate teachers, educational institutions, districts or states solely on the basis of aggregate scores derived from tests that are intended primarily as a measure of individual students.” However, the media continued to rank states using SAT average scores. SAT data has always been strongly correlated with parental income, parental level of education, and characteristics of students such as gender and race. But a significant driver of average SAT scores also included rates of participation among states. See for example a comparison I did among SC, NC, and MS (the latter having a higher poverty rate and higher average SAT because of a much lower participation rate, including mostly elite students):
Lesson: Conclusions drawn from test data must acknowledge purpose of test being used (see Gerald Bracey). The SAT has one very narrow purpose—predicting first-year college grades; and the SAT has primarily one use—a data point for college admission based on its sole purpose. However, historically, media/public/political responses to the SAT have used the data to evaluate state educational quality and the longitudinal progress of US students in general. In short, SAT data has been routinely misused because most people misunderstand its purpose.
Recently, the significance of the SAT has declined, students taking the ACT at a higher rate and more colleges going test-optional, but the nation has shifted to panicking over NAEP data instead.
The problem now is that media/public/political responses to NAEP mimic the exact mistakes during the hyper-focus on the SAT.
NAEP, like the SAT, then, needs a moment of reckoning also.
Instead of helping public and political messaging about education and education reform, NAEP has perpetuated the very worst stories about educational crisis. That is in part because there is no standard for “proficiency” and because NAEP was designed to provide a check against state assessments that could set cut scores and levels of achievement as they wanted:
Since states have different content standards and use different tests and different methods for setting cut scores, obviously the meaning of proficient varies among the states. Under NCLB, states are free to set their own standards for proficiency, which is one reason why AYP school failure rates vary so widely across the states. It’s a lot harder for students to achieve proficiency in a state that has set that standard at a high level than it is in a state that has set it lower. Indeed, even if students in two schools in two different states have exactly the same achievement, one school could find itself on a failed-AYP list simply because it is located in the state whose standard for proficient is higher than the other state’s….
Under NCLB all states must administer NAEP every other year in reading and mathematics in grades 4 and 8, starting in 2003. The idea is to use NAEP as a “check” on states’ assessment results under NCLB or as a benchmark for judging states’ definitions of proficient. If, for example, a state reports a very high percentage of proficient students on its state math test but its performance on math NAEP reveals a low percentage of proficient students, the inference would be that this state has set a relatively easy standard for math proficiency and is trying to “game” NCLB.
In other words, NAEP was designed as a federal oversight of state assessments and not an evaluation tool to standardize “proficient” or to support education reform, instruction, or learning.
As a result, NAEP, as the SAT/ACT has done for years, feeds a constant education crisis cycle that also fuels concurrent cycles of education reform and education legislation that has become increasingly authoritarian (mandating specific practices and programs as well as banning practices and programs).
With the lessons from the SAT above, then, NAEP reform should include the following:
Ending state rankings and comparisons based on NAEP average scores.
Changing testing population of students by age level instead of grade level (addressing impact of grade retention, which is a form of state’s “gaming the system” that NAEP sought to correct). NAEP testing should include children in an annual band of birth months/years regardless of grade level.
Providing better explanations and guidance for reporting and understanding NAEP scores in the context of longitudinal data.
Developing a collaborative relationship between federal and state education departments and among state education departments.
While I remain a strong skeptic of the value of standardized testing, and I recognize that we over-test students in the US, I urge NAEP reform and that we have a NAEP reckoning for the sake of students, teachers, and public education.
From CNN: How long you breastfeed may impact your child’s test scores later, study shows.
This sounds really compelling; it fits into a cultural narrative that breast feeding is superior to using baby formula.
This sounds really compelling until about ten paragraphs in and then:
“Though the results are certainly interesting, you have to bear in mind the limitations that inevitably arise in research using observational data from major cohort studies,” McConway added….
The fact that the study was observational means it followed people’s behavior rather than randomly assigning the behavior in question, McConway noted.
Consequently, the results only show a correlation between breastfeeding and test scores — not causation.
“It’s not possible to be certain about what’s causing what,” he said.
Few people will read that far, and even most who do will likely take away a careless claim that the research doesn’t justify.
Therefore, this article should never have been written—similar to many articles about educational research.
One enduring example of media repeating a misunderstanding of educational research is the word gap myth. Media repeat that number of words in children’s vocabulary is connected to economic status (again, this sounds right to most people).
Yet, the Hart and Risley study this myth is based on has been debunked often, and the word gap myth itself is based on flawed logic about literacy [1].
Media has ben shown, in fact, to cover education quite badly, typically overemphasizing think tank research versus university-based research (the former far less credible than the latter) and featuring the voices of non-educators (reformers and innovators) over educators:
Malin, J. R., & Lubienski, C. (2015). Educational Expertise, Advocacy, and Media Influence. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23, 6. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v23.1706
Currently, the misinformation campaign, ironically, related to education is the “science of reading” (SOR) movement that repeatedly misrepresents NAEP data, makes claims that have no scientific evidence (relying on anecdote [2]), and repeatedly relies on think tank “reports” (NCTQ, for example) that are also not scientific [3].
A subset of the SOR movement is also grade retention. High-profile coverage of Mississippi has made the exact breast feeding mistake from above: “’It’s not possible to be certain about what’s causing what,’ he said.”
Recently in the NYT, a think-tank funded report on MS grade retention is cited; however, the report itself notes that outcomes cannot be linked to grade retention itself [3].
In short, the report proves nothing about retention—just as the study on breast feeding proves nothing about student achievement.
The breast feeding story, the word gap myth, and the SOR story are all compelling because they sound true, but they are all false narratives that fails educational research—and public education.
[2] 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
Thomas, P.L. (2022). The Science of Reading movement: The never-ending debate and the need for a different approach to reading instruction. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/science-of-reading
dr. p.l. (paul) thomas 