Category Archives: education reform

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

Disaster Reform and Shadow Reading Legislation: The Politics of Reading Crisis pt. 2 [UPDATED]

Republican/conservative education reform has been a subset of disaster capitalism for decades now, most prominently after Hurricane Katrina when Republicans used the natural disaster to dismantle public education and erase the existing teacher workforce in New Orleans.

In 2023, Republicans have continued to manufacture educational crises in order to reform education, where “reform” is a veneer for dismantling education.

The twin conservative attacks on schools include the anti-CRT/curriculum gag order movement and the “science of reading” (SOR) movement—both depending on false claims of educational failures by teachers and public schools.

What flies under the radar is that anti-CRT and reading legislation are being promoted by conservative organizations and ideologies in the form of “model legislation” and fact sheets that are devoid of facts.

In the context of the crisis/miracle narratives about education in the media, among the public, and by politicians, disaster reform has evolved into its own powerful and harmful machine.

Not surprising, a key example comes from Florida and Jeb Bush: ExcelinEd.

The disaster education reform organization is Orwellian in its claims but insidious in its carefully packaged information and templates for policy. The key point here is that the SOR movement as a media and parent advocacy event has now fully been folded into the existing Republican education reform machine that is more about dismantling education than supporting student learning or teacher quality.

In short, the materials about reading presented by ExcelinEd are false but very well designed and compelling to the general public and politician looking for ready-made legislation and effective talking points.

As the NCLB/NRP era showed us with Reading First, however, the entire Bush family is driven by market interests, not a pursuit of democratic education for all.

ExcelinEd offers online a series of PDF resources:

The short version of concern here is that nearly all of the information above is misinformation; however, as the SOR movement has shown, most people remain easily targeted by claims of a reading crisis and a set of simplistic blame and solutions.

As I have shown, there simply is no reading crisis in the US, but there is a very long history of political negligence in terms of providing marginalized students and their teachers with the learning and teaching environments as well as social conditions that would support earlier and more developed reading in our students.

Two aspects of the materials above deserve highlighting (again).

First, the Republican commitment to SOR is grounded in doubling-down on punitive policy, grade retention.

The two states identified over and over in the materials above are Florida and Mississippi; however, those states are examples of mirages, not miracles.

ExcelinEd only cites work by Winters [1] to “prove” the effectiveness of grade retention. This strategy is cherry picking “research” by a conservative “scholar” who (surprisingly) only finds positive results for the conservative reform of the day—school choice, charter schools, VAM evaluations of teachers, and now, grade retention.

The research on grade retention is complicated but politically attractive since grade retention (the likely sources of “success” in FL and MS) can raise reading scores in grades 3 or 4, but those “gains” disappear by middle school.

Grade retention distorts the population of students being tested by removing the lowest scoring students and reintroducing older students to grade-level testing. As I have noted before, students achievement can vary significantly by just a month of age difference:

A review of the Florida Model that depends on grade retention has concluded that research does not show whether any short term gains are from retention or additional services. Further, a comprehensive study still notes that grade retention is harmful, especially to marginalized populations of students:

The negative effect of retention was strongest for African American and Hispanic girls. Even though grade retention in the elementary grades does not harm students in terms of their academic achievement or educational motivation at the transition to high school, retention increases the odds that a student will drop out of school before obtaining a high school diploma.

Hughes, J. N., West, S. G., Kim, H., & Bauer, S. S. (2018). Effect of early grade retention on school completion: A prospective study. Journal of Educational Psychology, 110(7), 974–991. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000243

A second problematic aspect is the hyper-focus on three-cueing, which fits into the Rufo “caricature” approach to attacking CRT.

Republicans have latched onto the SOR misinformation campaign that perpetuates a cartoon version of three-cueing and fabricates a crisis around claiming that teachers are telling students to guess words instead of using phonics/decoding strategies.

Three-cueing, in fact, is a research-based approach better referred to as “multiple cueing”:

Compton-Lilly, C.F., Mitra, A., Guay, M., & Spence, L.K. (2020). A confluence of complexity: Intersections among reading theory, neuroscience, and observations of young readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S185-S195. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.348

ExcelinEd’s prepackaged misinformation campaign and templates for legislation are yet more proof that the SOR movement is another nail in the coffin of public education, an anti-teacher and anti-public school movement that depends on crisis rhetoric and fulfills the goals of disaster reform driven by Republicans and conservatives who serve the needs of the educational marketplace—not students, or teachers.

[1] UPDATE: Another Mississippi “miracle” article in the NYT highlights grade retention positively, again citing only a new study by Kirsten Slungaard Mumma and Marcus A. Winters.

First, this is a working paper supported by Mississippi Department of Education and the acknowledgements add: “This project was made possible by a grant from ExcelinEd.”

Here are some key additional caveats beyond how biased this report likely is in terms of meeting the ideological aims of ExcelinEd:

  • The policy brief concedes: “That said, though the results are distinctly positive for the policy treatment overall, the analysis cannot entirely disentangle the extent to which the observed benefits in ELA are due to the additional year of instruction or to other specific features of the approach Mississippi took to providing literacy-focused supports and interventions to students.”
  • In the full working paper, section “2.1 Within-Age vs Within-Grade Comparisons” details a common failure of analyzing grade retention: “Comparing the later outcomes of students retained at a point in time to students in their cohort who were promoted is complicated by the fact that the two groups are enrolled in different grade levels during later years.” The findings of this working paper must be tempered by this fact of the study: “Unfortunately, within-age comparisons of student test scores are not possible in Mississippi because scores on the state’s standardized tests are comparable within grades over time but not across grades.” In other words, as noted above, higher test scores may be the result of students simply being older in a tested grade level, and not because grade retention or any of the services/instructional practices were effective. Again, these “gains” are likely mirages.

Finally, we must wondering why Kristof chose to highlight a flawed and biased think-tank funded report on grade retention instead of this: Following the Letter of the Law: 2020-21 Retention Outcomes Under Michigan’s Read by Grade Three Law.

Westall, Utter, and Strunk find much more problematic outcomes with retention, findings that fit within decades of research:

Early literacy skills are critical to the educational outcomes of young students. Accordingly, 19 states have early literacy policies that require grade retention for underperforming readers at the end of third grade. However, there is mixed evidence about retention’s effectiveness and concerns that retention may disproportionately impact traditionally disadvantaged student groups. Using regressions and a regression discontinuity design, we examine retention outcomes under Michigan’s early literacy law, the Read by Grade Three Law. We find that Black and economically disadvantaged students are more frequently eligible for retention and retained than their peers. While controlling for students’ test performance, particularly their math scores, eliminates this disparity for Black students, it persists for economically disadvantaged students. We show that differences in average math performance, exemption characteristics, district characteristics, and eligibility-induced student mobility across districts do not explain the disparities in the implementation of retention by economic disadvantage status.

Abstract
Education, education reform, reading, Science of Reading

Open Letter: S.418 Reading Bill in SC – Diane Stephens

[This is a detailed rebuttal of S.418, a reading bill in SC, by Diane Stephens, Distinguished Professor Emerita, John E. Swearingen, Sr. Professor Emerita in Education, University of South Carolina]

To members of the House and Senate Education Committees:

On April 19, 2023, I sent you a letter about the success of the South Carolina Reading Initiative (2000-2010). SCRI focused on helping teachers broaden their knowledge base so they could make informed scientifically-based curricular decisions based on student’s strengths and needs. Then I sent a second, shorter letter (see attached), because I thought shorter letters had a better chance of being read. This is my third letter and was based on a close read of S.418. (For your convenience, a copy of this letter, in word, with page numbers is attached as are copies of my first two letters).

Please postpone action on S.418 until there is time for everyone to provide informed feedback.

Meanwhile, here is my informed feedback.

I worked with struggling readers for 48 years. Although each individual is unique, when I listen to them read and ask them about what they read, I’ve learned that readers (K–adult) generally fall into two distinct categories: 

Category #1. The reader does not yet accurately use the visual information on the page. For example, the text shows a child about to put a spider in a box. The text is: Sally put a bug in a box. The child read, “Sally put a spider in a box.” The child was attending to some of the print (Sally, put, a, in, a, box) and to the picture (of a spider) but not attending to the word bug. The teacher can subsequently draw attention to the word bug and help the child use their knowledge of sound/symbol relationships to figure out that the word is bug; knowledge the child previously learned from the teacher.

An older student read, “Mr. Baker is a weatherman. He takes a lot about the weather.” However, the text was “He talks a lot about the weather.” 

In this case, the student was using four of the letters t, a, k, s and not attending to the l. The teacher can subsequently draw the student’s attention to all the letters and letter sounds in the word.

Category #2: What the student says when reading aloud fluently is an exact match to what is on the page, but the student can neither retell what they read, nor can they answer questions about it.

These students need to learn that reading is supposed to make sense—that they are supposed to be thinking when reading, not just call words. Teachers use a variety of strategies to help with this.

Teachers need autonomy to decide the best way to respond to these two different kinds of readers.

Therefore, while the proposed language for 5-155-110 (2) is:

(2) classroom teachers each school district periodically reassess their curriculum and instruction to determine if they are helping each student progress as a proficient reader and make modifications as appropriate. No PK-5 textbook or instructional materials that employ the three-cueing system model of reading, visual memory as the primary basis for teaching word recognition, or the three-cuing system model of reading based on meaning, structure and syntax, and visual, which is also known as “MSV” should be used in reading instruction

I suggest:

(2) Classroom teachers and school district periodically assesses their curriculum and instruction to determine if they are helping each student progress as a proficient reader and to make modifications as appropriate.

Rationale

Teachers need to be responsible for evaluating their curriculum and instruction. This should not solely be a district responsibility.

As this section it drafted, it implied that there is an instructional method called the three-cueing/MSV and there is not such a method. The information about three-cueing/MSV represents a misunderstanding about three of the cues to which all readers pay attention.

“M” refers to meaning and it is certainly critical that students focus on meaning in order to comprehend. The category #2 student above needed help learning that reading is supposed to make sense. Certainly, legislators do not intend for teachers to stop helping children with comprehension.

“V” stands for Visual. This is also referred to as “phonics” (the relationship between phonemes/sounds and graphemes/letters). The readers in Category #1 needed help paying more attention to the print on the page. Certainly, legislators do not intend for teachers to stop helping children with phonics.

“S” stands for structure/grammar and some students pay so little attention to meaning that they insert words that are grammatically incorrect. For example, if the sentence was “I looked out my window and saw the __ at the bird feeder,” some students might provide the word “black.” Teachers then respond appropriately based on what they know about the person as a reader. Certainly, legislators do not intend for teachers to stop helping children with grammar.

In addition to the above changes, I suggest that:

2.  While the proposed language for 59-155-110 (6) is:

(6) classroom teachers receive pre-service and in-service coursework which prepares them to help all students comprehend grade-level texts in foundational literacy skills, structured literacy, and the science of reading; how to analyze data to inform reading instruction; and provide scientifically-based interventions as needed so that all students develop proficiency with literacy skills and comprehension; classroom teachers certified in early childhood, elementary, or special education must complete board approved coursework in foundational literacy skills, structured literacy, and the science of reading or successfully complete the scientifically research-based reading instruction assessment approved by the board

I suggest:

(6) Early childhood, elementary, and special education teachers receive board-approved, scientifically based, pre-service and in-service coursework that prepares them to help all students comprehend grade level texts. This includes instruction in foundational literacy skills, reading assessment (so they know how to analyze data to inform reading instruction), and the reading interventions needed so that all students develop reading proficiency.

Rationale

First, it is not clear to me why the legislature would not want teachers to help all students to comprehend grade level texts, so I suggest that language not be deleted.

Second, the meaning of the term “structured literacy” is not commonly used in the reading research literacy and using it here is unnecessarily confusing.  What, for example, would “unstructured literacy” be?  See also suggestion for 59-155-120 (13).

Third, “science of reading” is often used to refer to a particular ideology and is not synonymous with “scientifically-based reading research “—research which has been shown in be effective in multiple peer-reviewed studies (see National Reading Panel Report, 2000).

Fourth, this paragraph could be more concise so that the meaning of the section is clearer.

3.  While the proposed language for 59-155-120 (4) is:

(4) “Foundational literacy skills” means phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension; this definition of foundational literacy skills specifically excludes the “three-cueing system”, which is any model of teaching students to read based on meaning, structure and syntax, and visual cues, which may also be known as “MSV”.

I suggest:

(4) “Foundational literacy skills” means phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency and reading comprehension.”

Rationale

For reasons noted above, the wording “this definition of literacy skills excludes the ‘three-cuing system,’ which is any model of teaching students to read based on meaning, structure and syntax, which may also be known as ‘MSV” should be deleted. The “three cuing system” is not a method and certainly the legislature does not intend for teachers to stop helping children with meaning, grammar, and phonics.

4.  While the proposed language for 59-155-120 (7) is:

(7) “Reading interventions” means individual or group assistance in the classroom and supplemental support based on curricular and instructional decisions made by classrooms teachers who have proven effectiveness in teaching reading and a literacy endorsement or reading coaches who meet the minimum qualifications established in guidelines published by the Department of Education.

I suggest:

(7) “Reading interventions” means individual or group assistance in the classroom and supplemental support based on curricular and instructional decisions made by classrooms teachers who have proven effectiveness in teaching reading and who have a literacy endorsement or by reading coaches who meet the minimum qualifications established in guidelines published by the Department of Education.

Rationale

These changes clarify the meaning.

5.  While 59-155-120 (12) currently offers a definition of Science of Reading as:

 “.. the body of research that identifies evidence-based approaches for explicitly and systematically teaching students to read, including foundational literacy skills that enable students to develop reading skills as required to meet state standards in reading.

I suggest instead that the definition of Scientifically-based Reading Research be used instead:  

(12) “Scientifically-based reading research” (SBRR) refers to research that appears in peer-reviewed journals of reading and whose findings are consistently established across a substantial number of peer-reviewed studies. SBRR identifies evidence-based approaches for explicitly and systematically teaching students to read, including foundational literacy skills that enable students to develop reading skills as required to meet state standards in reading.

Rationale

“Science of reading” is not equated in the reading research literature as synonymous with “scientifically-based reading research” – although it is used interchangeably in this bill. Using the broadly understood term, scientifically-based reading research (SBRR), clarifies the basis on which decisions about curriculum and instruction should be based and avoids potential confusion.

6. While the proposed language for 59-155-120 (13) is:

(13) “Structured Literacy” means an evidence-based approach to teaching oral and written language aligned to the science of reading founded on the science of how children learn to read and characterized by explicit, systematic, cumulative, and diagnostic instruction in phonology, sound-symbol association, syllable instruction, morphology, syntax, and semantics.

I suggest that (13) be eliminated.

Rationale

“Structured literacy” is not a term commonly used in reading research. The definition provides no new information and using it here is unnecessarily confusing.  59-155-120 (4) already stipulated that foundational literacy skills “means phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency and reading comprehension.” That seems both clear and sufficient.

7.  While the proposed language for 59-155-130 (1) is:

(1) providing professional development to teachers, school principals, and other administrative staff on reading and writing instruction and reading assessment that informs instruction the science of reading, structured literacy, and foundational literacy skills based on the science of reading

I suggest:

(1) providing professional development to teachers, school principals and other administrative staff on scientifically-based reading research on both reading instruction and reading assessment.

Rationale

Teachers need to know about reading assessment so they can adequately address the strengths and needs of their students. And, as noted earlier, in this bill, “science of reading” is treated as the equivalent of scientifically-based reading research (SBRR) and using them interchangeable is a potential source of confusion. SBRR is consistent with the language used in reading research. “Structured literacy” is not commonly used in the reading research literature and using it here is unnecessarily confusing. 59-155-120 (4) already stipulated that foundational literacy skills “means phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency and reading comprehension.” That seems both clear and sufficient

8.  While the proposed language for 59-155-130 (3) is:

(3) working collaboratively with institutions of higher learning offering courses in reading and writing for initial teacher certification in early childhood, elementary, and special education, and those institutions of higher education offering accredited master’s degrees in reading-literacy to design coursework in the science of reading, structured literacy, and foundational literacy skills leading to a literacy teacher add-on endorsement by the State. Institutions of higher learning that offer initial teacher certification in early childhood, elementary, and special education must provide the Department, and publicly report on their website and to all potential teacher candidates, the success rate of the institution’s teacher candidates who attempt the scientifically research-based reading instruction assessment approved by the board required for teacher certification

I suggest:

(3) requiring institutions of higher learning that offer initial scientifically-based reading research teacher certification in early childhood, elementary, and special education to provide the Department, and publicly report on their website and to all potential teacher candidates, the success rate of their teacher candidates on the board approved scientifically-based reading research reading assessment required for teacher certification.

Rationale

Again, the universally accepted meaning of scientifically-based reading research is not the equivalent of the science of reading. “Structured literacy” is not commonly used in the reading research literature and using it here is unnecessarily confusing. 59-155-120 (4) already stipulated that foundational literacy skills “means phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency and reading comprehension.” That seems both clear and sufficient

9. While the proposed language for 59-155-130 (4) is:

(4) providing professional development in reading grounded in the science of reading, structured literacy, and foundational literacy skills and coaching for already certified reading/literacy coaches and literacy teachers

I suggest:

(4) providing professional development in scientifically-based reading research reading and coaching for already certified reading/literacy coaches and literacy teachers

Rationale

Again, it is preferable to use the commonly accepted term “scientifically-based reading research.”  There also seems to be no reason to repeat the terms “structured literacy, and foundational literacy skills”. “Structured literacy” is not commonly used in the reading research literature and using it here is unnecessarily confusing. 59-155-120 (4) already stipulated that foundational literacy skills “means phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency and reading comprehension.” That seems both clear and sufficient

10. While the proposed language for 59-155-140 (A) (2) is:

(2) The state plan must be based on reading research and proven-effective practices, aligned to the science of reading, structured literacy, and foundational literacy skills and applied to….

I suggest:

The state plan must be based on scientifically-based reading research and applied to . . .

Rationale

Again, the use “scientifically-based reading research” instead of “the science of reading”, is that standard wording used in reading research. “Structured literacy” is not commonly used in the reading research literature and using it here is unnecessarily confusing. 59-155-120 (4) already stipulated that foundational literacy skills “means phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency and reading comprehension.” That seems both clear and sufficient

11.  While the proposed language for 59-155-140 (B) (2) (a) is:

(2) (a) Each district PK-12 5 reading proficiency plan shall document how reading and writing assessment and instruction for all PK-5 students is aligned to the science of reading, structured literacy, and foundational literacy skills

I suggest:

(2) (a) Each district PK-5 reading proficiency plan shall document how reading and writing assessment and instruction for all PK–5 students is aligned with scientifically-based reading research.

Rationale

Same comment regarding scientifically-based reading research, “structured literacy” and the fact that foundational literacy skills have already been defined.

12.  While the proposed language for 59-155-140 (B) (2) (f) is:

(2) (f) Each district PK-12 5 reading proficiency plan shall explain how the district will provide teacher training in reading and writing instruction the science of reading, structured literacy, and foundational literacy skills

I suggest:

(2) (f) Each district PK-5 reading proficiency plan shall explain how the district will provide teacher training in reading and writing instruction based on scientifically-based reading research

Rationale

Same comments regarding scientifically-based reading research, the use of the term “structured literacy” and the fact that foundational literacy skills have already been defined.

13. While the proposed language 59-155-160 (5) (D) is:

Retained students must be provided intensive instructional services and support, including a minimum of ninety minutes of daily reading and writing instruction, supplemental text-based foundational literacy skill instruction, and other strategies grounded in the science of reading . . .

I propose:

Retained students must be provided intensive instructional services and support, including a minimum of ninety minutes of daily reading and writing instruction, supplemental foundational literacy skill instruction, and other strategies based on scientifically-based reading research.

Rationale

Same comment regarding scientifically-based reading research, the use of the term “structured literacy” and the fact that foundational literacy skills have already been defined.

15.  While the proposed language of 59-155-170 (B) is:.

These practices must be mastered by PK-5 teachers through high-quality training and addressed through well-designed and effectively executed assessment and instruction implemented with fidelity to research scientifically-based instructional practices presented in the state, district, and school reading plans. All PK-5 teachers, administrators, and support staff must be trained adequately in reading comprehension the science of reading, structured literacy, and foundational literacy skills in order to perform effectively their roles enabling each student to become proficient in content area reading and writing.I

I suggest:

These practices must be mastered by PK–5 teachers through high-quality training and addressed through well-designed and effectively executed assessment and instruction implemented with fidelity to scientifically-based instructional practices presented in the state, district, and school reading plans. All PK–5 teachers, administrators, and support staff must be trained adequately in scientifically-based reading research in order to effectively perform their roles and to enable each student to become proficient in content area reading and writing.

Rationale

Same comment regarding scientifically-based reading research, the use of the term “structured literacy” and that foundational literacy skills have already been defined.

With deepest thanks for all the hard work you do,

Diane Stephens, Ph.D.

Distinguished Professor Emerita

John E. Swearingen, Sr. Professor Emerita in Education

University of South Carolina 

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

The Proficiency Trap and the Never-Ending Crisis Cycles in Education: A Reader

The newest NAEP crisis (until the next one) concerns history and civics NAEP scores post-pandemic.

Similar to the NAEP crisis around reading—grounded in a misunderstanding of “proficiency” and what NAEP shows longitudinally (see Mississippi, for example)—this newest round of crisis rhetoric around NAEP exposes a central problem with media, public, and political responses to test data as well as embedding proficiency mandates in accountability legislation.

As many have noted, announcing a reading crisis is contradicted by longitudinal NAEP data:

But possibly a more problematic issue with NAEP is confusing NAEP achievement levels with commonly used terms such as “grade level proficiency” (notably as related to reading).

Yet, as is explained clearly on the NAEP web site: “It should be noted that the NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards (e.g., state or district assessments).”

Public, media, and political claims that 2/3 of students are below grade level proficiency, then, is a false claim based on misreading NAEP data and misunderstanding the term “proficiency,” which is determined by each assessment or state (not a fixed metric).

Here is a reader for those genuinely interested in understanding NAEP data, what we mean by “proficiency,” and why expecting all students to be above any level of achievement is counter to understanding human nature (recall the failed effort in NCLB to mandate 100% of student achievement proficiency by 2014):

Crisis, Education, education reform

NAEP-mania! 2023: US History and Civics Edition

Way back in the late 1970s, I changed my schedule—either in grade 10 or 11—and found myself in two class periods without my friends; I had been trafficking among the top-ranked students in my class (I graduated number 8 out of about 150 students), but the schedule change put me in a so-called “regular” history class.

The class was taught by a football and track coach. He had a very simple and even elegant instructional strategy.

In the center of the classroom stood an overhead projector. Beside it, daily, he had a designated stack of overheads.

After the first couple classes, he assigned the slowest note taker (or better named, note copier) to sit beside the stack of notes to rotate as that student completed copying.

After one day of this tedium, I rushed to guidance and returned to my original schedule along side my friends.

Something that is rarely discussed in the many public discussions of US education is that history, social studies, civics, and government courses in public schools are disproportionately taught by coaches.

Most coaches are coincidentally teachers—and a few teachers are coincidentally coaches. A significant number of US public school students get begrudging instruction in history, social studies, civics, and government—and that instruction is superficially facts, easy to test (or at least easy to put on tests that are easy to score).

So while Republicans have been dismantling history curriculum and banning books, US students produced our latest NAEP education crisis: Eighth-Graders’ History, Civics Test Scores Hit Record Low, cries the WSJ.

Yet, here is an interesting tidbit (especially for those of us mired in the manufactured reading crisis over the past five years or so):

This relatively flat data line for NAEP history scores should remind you of reading NAEP data:

Despite evidence to the contrary, once again, mainstream media, the public, and political leaders have only two ways to react to anything about US public education—crisis or miracle.

We might anticipate that the drop in US history and civics NAEP scores (despite the obvious connection to Covid, as noted above in NAEP reading) will prompt “science of history” and “science of civics” movements.

But, honestly, those will not materialize because politically the US does not care about history or civics—at least not about the quality of teaching and learning in history or civics.

Politically, we only care about anything that allows a public outrage and melodramatic media response to further prove that students suck, teachers suck, and schools, well, suck.

Similar to the false stories around reading, however, the actual problems with history and civics teaching and learning in the US have little to do with a very bad test (that, we should note, is what NAEP is, a very bad test).

History, social studies, civics, and government courses have for decades been part of an open secret—a set of content eagerly sacrificed to the scholastic sports Gods.

And more recently, history, social studies, civics, and government are the political tool of the Republican Party who wants schooling to indoctrinate children in the fairy tales that maintain the status quo of inequitable power, freedom, and humanity that is the good ol’ U.S. of A.

The real purpose of NAEP is to give periodic space to the only way journalists know how to respond to education:

Ironically, that journalists and the public are so easily fooled by this nonsense is the strongest indictment of the failures of US public education.

We all should know better. We all should do better.

But we won’t.

That, by the way, is one predictable lesson of history.

Crisis, education reform, reading, Science of Reading

SOR Movement Maintains Conservative Assault on Teachers and Public Schools [Updated]

[Header Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash]

Although Gerald Bracey and Gerald Holton exposed A Nation at Risk many years ago, James Harvey calling the Reagan-era “report” “gaslighting” is possibly the best way to frame the manufactured crisis that set off five decades of misguided education reform in the US.

The crisis rhetoric of A Nation at Risk has become the norm for how media covers education, how the public perceives public education (mostly “other people’s schools”), and how politicians gain political points.

Harvey notes: “One of the tragedies around ‘A Nation at Risk’ was not simply that it misdiagnosed the problem and put forth ersatz solutions, but that it refused to face up to the financial implications of its argument.”

The elements of that crisis approach to education include the following:

  • Teachers are failing students.
  • Teacher education is failing teachers and students.
  • Public education is failing.
  • But this “miracle” school is doing the right thing!

As many scholars have noted, these claims are baseless but made primarily as a political move to dismantle public education and teacher education (and also teachers unions).

The media has now spoken directly into that conservative machine with the “science of reading” (SOR) movement that follows the tired and destructive pattern begun under Reagan in the 1980s.

For example, there is now a clear merging of the SOR movement and conservative politics as well as education market interests—from charter schools to the Bushes and Republican governors:

What is very disturbing is that the false claims of crisis and the misguided policy solutions being passed in almost every state now were already exposed twenty years ago by Richard J. Meyer’s Captives of the Script: Killing Us Softly with Phonics:

The SOR movement is yet more teacher bashing and school bashing, serving the conservative anti-school agenda of Republicans and market interests that feed off our public schools.

This has never been about reading.

This has never been about serving the needs of children.

This is more partisan politics; this is about conservative ideology at the expense of children, teachers, and public education.

Update May 24, 2023

From Texas, more pieces to the puzzle:

‘Woke’ filter? Texas teachers face less creative control under pair of bills

Update July 2, 2023

The connection between Moms for Liberty and the SOR movement continue to grow stronger:

Update May 24, 2024

Conservatives continue to double-down on the media misinformation because SOR is a deeply conservative movement grounded in a manufactured crisis.

Recommended

Politics of phonics: How Power, profit and politics guide reading Policies

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

[Submitted]: South Carolina Needs a New Story and Different Political Responses to Reading

[Below is an OpEd submitted to newspapers in SC; no response yet.]

Writing in Teachers College Record, literacy scholars Reinking, Hruby, and Risko explain: “Since 2015, 47 state legislatures have enacted, or are currently considering, a remarkable total of 145 bills that address reading and reading instruction in public schools.”

A few days apart, an article in the New York Times again announced the US has a reading crisis, and in EdSource, a school’s exceptional success with multilingual learners was celebrated.

The problem with new reading legislation, another reading crisis, and highlighting education “miracles” is that they all are factually untrue.

For example, Reinking, Hruby, and Risko demonstrate that reading achievement as measured by NAEP grade 4 reading scores have remained flat for many years in the US:

The same is true of South Carolina:

South Carolina has also been an early and eager adopted of standards, high-stakes testing, and embracing the current trend to legislate reading. However, these models of crisis and reform have never produced the sort of reading achievement that the media, the public, or political leaders have promised.

After multiple versions of different standards and tests as well as several rounds of reading wars, South Carolina like the rest of the US continues to lament low reading proficiency in students.

As a lifelong literacy educator in SC over five decades, I recommend that we first stop focusing on crisis and “miracle” stories about our schools, our teachers, and our students. These extreme stories almost always prove to be misleading or false.

Next, and most importantly, we need to do something different—at the school and classroom levels, but also at the political level of legislation, funding, and mandates.

South Carolina has a historical challenge of extreme pockets of poverty, and recent data from the value-added era of education reform under Obama confirmed that about 86 – 99% of measurable student achievement is linked to out-of-school factors, not teacher practice or quality.

The historical negligence of political leadership in SC highlighted in the documentary Corridor of Shame has simply never been addressed.

Further, what do students, teachers, and public schools needed from legislators in SC?

Political leaders must resist the current trend to ban teaching practices and reading programs while also mandating narrow approaches to reading and a new batch of preferred reading programs.

Simply put, there is no silver bullet for teaching reading, and neither the problem nor the solution is a magic reading program.

Students and teachers instead need political leaders to address learning and teaching conditions in our schools concurrent with addressing poverty and inequity in the homes and communities of our children.

Equitable learning and teaching conditions would include repealing grade retention, reducing significantly class sizes in the earliest grades and for the populations of students struggling to read, funding better all aspects of public education (teacher pay, school facilities, learning and teaching materials), and refusing to succumb to the current trends of legislating curriculum through bans and censorship.

The two most powerful commitments that a state can make in terms of supporting education and reading instruction is ensuring that the individual educational needs of all students are supported and that teacher professionalism is directly and fully supported.

For my entire career in SC as a literacy educator, political leaders have failed to address poverty and inequity, ignored the needs of our most vulnerable students, and eroded the profession of teaching in the state.

The stories we have told and the political responses to those stories have failed all of us for decades. We must do better and that means we must do something different.

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

COE Spring Forum: Are We in the Midst of “Reading Wars” – Again?

COE Spring Forum: Are We in the Midst of “Reading Wars” – Again?

Access this PowerPoint for my part of the forum. Access expanded PowerPoint also.

YouTube RECORDING

Rachael Gabriel SLIDES

See RESEARCH supporting my presentation:

Reading Science Resources for Educators (and Journalists): Science of Reading Edition [UPDATED]

Crisis, Education, education reform, miracle schools, reading, Science of Reading

No Crisis, No Miracles: The False Narratives of Education Journalism

With a sort of humility rarely found when someone of prominence speaks to or about education in the US, celebrated author Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man) found himself speaking at a teachers conference in 1963 “to discuss ‘these children,’ the difficult thirty percent,” the identified population making up the drop-out crisis of the time [1].

One of the most impressive aspects of Ellison’s talk is his emphasis on systemic influences on children and their language acquisition: “The American scene is a diversified one, and the society which gives it its character is a pluralistic society-or at least it is supposed to be,” explaining:

The education which goes on outside the classroom, which goes on as they walk within the mixed environment of Alabama, teaches children that they should not reach out for certain things. Much of the education that I received at Tuskegee (this isn’t quite true of Oklahoma City) was an education away from the uses of the imagination, away from the attitudes of aggression and courage. This is not an attack. This is descriptive, this is autobiographic. You did not do certain things because you might be destroyed. You didn’t do certain things because you were going to be frustrated. There were things you didn’t do because the world outside was not about to accommodate you….

It does me no good to be told that I’m down on the bottom of the pile and that I have nothing with which to get out. I know better. It does me no good to be told that I have no heroes, that I have no respect for the father principle because my father is a drunk. I would simply say to you that there are good drunks and bad drunks. The Eskimos have sixteen or more words to describe snow because they live with snow. I have about twenty-five different words to describe Negroes because I live principally with Negroes. “Language is equipment for living,” to quote Kenneth ’Burke. One uses the language which helps to preserve one’s life, which helps to make one feel at peace in the world, and which screens out the greatest amount of chaos. All human beings do this.

What These Children Are Like

And then Ellison goes right to the core issue about language in marginalized and minoritized populations:

Some of us look at the Negro community in the South and say that these kids have no capacity to manipulate language. Well, these are not the Negroes I know. Because I know that the wordplay of Negro kids in the South would make the experimental poets, the modern poets, green with envy. I don’t mean that these kids possess broad dictionary knowledge, but within the bounds of their familiar environment and within the bounds of their rich oral culture, they possess a great virtuosity with the music and poetry of words. The question is how can you get this skill into the mainstream of the language, because it is without doubt there. And much of it finds its way into the broader language. Now I know this just as William Faulkner knew it. This does not require a lot of testing; all you have to do is to walk into a Negro church….

Thus we must recognize that the children in question are not so much “culturally deprived” as products of a different cultural complex. I’m talking about how people deal with their environment, about what they make of what is abiding in it, about what helps them to find their way, and about that which helps them to be at home in the world. All this seems to me to constitute a culture. If you can abstract their manners, their codes, their customs and attitudes into forms of expression, if you can convert them into forms of art, if you can stylize them and give them many and subtle ranges of reference, then you are dealing with a culture. People have learned this culture; it has been transferred to them from generation to generation, and in its forms they have projected their most transcendent images of themselves and of the world.

What These Children Are Like

On social media, I had a cognitive scientist SOR-splain to me literacy in my home state of South Carolina, recommending I look at narrow assessments of reading (a popular program) to admit that SC has a reading crisis. Like Ellison, I pointed out I don’t need a test to know the truth about reading and literacy in SC, all across the South, and even in the US.

In my 39th year as a literacy educator in SC, where I was born in 1961 and attended formal education from 1967 through 1998, I have lived and witnessed firsthand a fact that the media narratives never capture, but let me ask you to help me before I explain the real story.

Here are longitudinal data for SC NAEP reading scores in grades 4 and 8 from 1992 to 2022; could you please identify where the “crisis” is?:

I lived, learned, and taught in the three decades before these three decades, and I can only conclude that reading achievement (whatever that is) as measured in formal testing has been about the same forever.

In my home state and across the nation, this is the real story: We have become content with a historical and current negligence about the reading acquisition of some populations (Black and brown students, poor students, special needs students, multi-lingual learners), and we lack the political will to address the systemic forces of inequity in the lives and schooling of these students to do anything about it.

Historical negligence is not a crisis; it simply is how things are, what we have come to accept as “normal.”

As I have examined in my scholarship [2], journalism in the US has only two false stories about education—crisis and miracle.

The problem is that neither narrative is true; they are anecdotal and melodramatic so they are compelling to the public, politically useful, and likely to drive reader/viewership for the media.

The US remains in a false crisis cycle begun by A Nation at Risk, and then powerfully expanded under the Obama/Duncan era of shouting education crisis while propping up the false charter school miracle machine (for example, the Harlem “miracle” celebrated by David Brooks citing the Obamas).

The crisis/miracle narrative approach from the Obama era has recently been replicated by the media obsession with SOR; Hanford’s seminal story planted both seeds by falsely claiming the US has a reading crisis and promoting a miracle school that wasn’t.

Again, please point out the crisis here:

And as I have explained, the miracle of the moment, Mississippi, like all the other educational miracles, simply doesn’t exist; MS has had steady growth and some jumps, often well before any SOR reading legislation:

And MS remains below NAEP proficient and continues to have drops between grade 4 and 8:

For many years, I have had to help my students navigate the media obsession with the melodramatic—crisis! miracle!—often found in films such as Waiting for Superman (false union crisis v. charter miracles) and the compelling documentary about education in SC, Corridor of Shame (an emotionally manipulative film about the powerful connection between poverty and educational negligence in the state).

The media, public, and politicians love and benefit from the crisis/miracle rhetoric about education. But those stories do not serve the needs of children, teachers, or schools.

Ellison ends his talk powerfully:

I don’t know what intelligence is. But this I do know, both from life and from literature: whenever you reduce human life to two plus two equals four, the human element within the human animal says, “I don’t give a damn.” You can work on that basis, but the kids cannot. If you can show me how I can cling to that which is real to me, while teaching me a way into the larger society, then I will not only drop my defenses and my hostility, but I will sing your praises and help you to make the desert bear fruit.

What These Children Are Like

Education journalism has reduced education to crisis or miracle, and like the reductive formula Ellison rejects for children, I must reject this false pair of stories.

There is no reading or education crisis, and there are no miracle schools.

There is historical and current political negligence for addressing inequity in the lives and schooling of “other people’s children” in the US.

But that reality doesn’t sell or garner votes.

[1] Toward end, Ellison is scathing:

The great body of Negro slang–that unorthodox language–exists precisely because Negroes need words which will communicate, which will designate the objects, processes, manners and subtleties of their urban experience with the least amount of distortion from the outside. So the problem is, once again, what do we choose and what do we reject of that which the greater society makes available? These kids with whom we’re concerned, these dropouts, are living critics of their environment, of our society and our educational system, and they are quite savage critics of some of their teachers.

What These Children Are Like

[2] Thomas, P.L. (2016). Miracle school myth. In W.J. Mathis & T.M. Trujillo, Learning from the Federal Market-Based Reforms: Lessons for ESSA. Charlotte, NC: IAP.

Thomas, P.L. (2015). Ignored under Obama: Word magic, crisis discourse, and utopian expectations. In P. R. Carr & B. J. Porfilio (Eds.), The phenomenon of Obama and the agenda for education: Can hope (still) audaciously trump neoliberalism? (pp. 45-68). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

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

Open Letter on Reading Legislation

A recent scholarly commentary by professors Reinking, Hruby, and Risko note: “Since 2015, 47 state legislatures have enacted, or are currently considering, a remarkable total of 145 bills that address reading and reading instruction in public schools.”

Many literacy and policy scholars [1] have also noted that this wave of reading legislation is often grounded in the “science of reading” (SOR) movement that has been characterized as misleading, overly simplistic, and driven by melodramatic anecdotes.

Further, the growing number of states adopting SOR-based reading legislation includes bans of reading practices and programs as well as narrow mandates for different reading practices and programs.

A 2020 policy statement warned about using the SOR movement to inform legislation, however, by:

• Failing to place the current concern for reading in a historical context.
• Overemphasizing recent test scores and outlier data instead of longitudinal data with greater context (for example, NAEP).
• Misrepresenting the “science of reading” as settled science that purportedly prescribes systematic intensive phonics for all students.
• Overstating and misrepresenting the findings of the National Reading Panel report of 2000, without acknowledging credible challenges to those findings.
• Focusing blame on K-12 teachers and teacher education without credible evidence or acknowledgement of challenging teaching and learning conditions and the impact of test-based accountability policies on practice and outcomes.
• Celebrating outlier examples of policy success (in particular, the Mississippi 2019 NAEP data) without context or high-quality research evidence for those claims.

National Education Policy Center & Education Deans for Justice and Equity (2020). Policy Statement on the “Science of Reading.” Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center.
http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/fyi-reading-wars

The policy statement remains an important guide for revising reading legislation in order to avoid continuing to under- and mis-serve the individual needs of all students and to de-professionalize teachers.

The recommendations remain urgent and include the following for what legislation should not/should do:

• Should not fund or endorse unproven private-vendor comprehensive reading programs or materials.
• Should not adopt “ends justify the means” policies aimed at raising reading test scores in the short term that have longer-term harms (for example, third-grade retention policies).
• Should not prescribe a narrow definition of “scientific” or “evidence-based” that elevates one part of the research base while ignoring contradictory high-quality research.
• Should not prescribe a “one-size-fits-all” approach to teaching reading, addressing struggling readers or English language learners (Emergent Bilinguals), or identifying and serving special needs students.
• Should not prescribe such a “one-size-fits-all” approach to preparing teachers for reading instruction, since teachers need a full set of tools to help their students.
• Should not ignore the limited impact on measurable student outcomes (e.g., test scores) of in-school opportunities to learn, as compared to the opportunity gaps that arise outside of school tied to racism, poverty, and concentrated poverty.
• Should not prioritize test scores measuring reading, particularly lower-level reading tasks, over a wide range of types of evidence (e.g., literacy portfolios and teacher assessments), or over other equity-based targets (e.g., access to courses and access to
certified, experienced teachers), always prioritizing the goal of ensuring that all students have access to high-quality reading instruction.
• Should not teacher-proof reading instruction or de-professionalize teachers of reading or teacher educators through narrow prescriptions of how to teach reading and serve struggling readers, Emergent Bilinguals, or students with special needs.
• Should not prioritize advocacy by a small group of non-educators over the expertise and experiences of K-12 educators and scholars of reading and literacy.
• Should not conflate general reading instruction policy with the unique needs of struggling readers, Emergent Bilinguals, and special needs students.

• Should guarantee that all students are served based on their identifiable needs in the highest quality teaching and learning conditions possible across all schools:
o Full funding to support all students’ reading needs;
o Low student/teacher ratios;
o Professionally prepared teachers with expertise in supporting all students with the most beneficial reading instruction, balancing systematic skills instruction with authentic texts and activities;
o Full and supported instructional materials for learning to read, chosen by teachers to fit the needs of their unique group of students;
o Intensive, research-based early interventions for struggling readers; and
o Guaranteed and extensive time to read and learn to read daily.
• Should support the professionalism of K-12 teachers and teacher educators, and should acknowledge the teacher as the reading expert in the care of unique populations of students.
• Should adopt a complex and robust definition of “scientific” and “evidence-based.”
• Should embrace a philosophy of “first, do no harm,” avoiding detrimental policies like grade retention and tracking.
• Should acknowledge that reading needs across the general population, struggling readers, Emergent Bilinguals, and special needs students are varied and complex.
• Should adopt a wide range of types of evidence of student learning.
• Should prioritize, when using standardized test scores, longitudinal data on reading achievement as guiding evidence among a diversity of evidence for supporting instruction and the conditions of teaching and learning.
• Should establish equity (input) standards as a balance to accountability (output) standards, including the need to provide funding and oversight to guarantee all students access to high-quality, certified teachers; to address inequitable access to experienced teachers; and to ensure supported, challenging and engaging reading and literacy experiences regardless of student background or geographical setting.
• Should recognize that there is no settled science of reading and that the research base and evidence base on reading and teaching reading is diverse and always in a state of change.
• Should acknowledge and support that the greatest avenue to reading for all students is access to books and reading in their homes, their schools, and their access to libraries (school and community).

National Education Policy Center & Education Deans for Justice and Equity (2020). Policy Statement on the “Science of Reading.” Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center.
http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/fyi-reading-wars

This current cycle of the reading wars is another example of reducing historical and current failures of reading instruction to unwarranted crisis rhetoric and then resorting to the same failed patterns of education reform enacted for nearly five decades.

The individual needs of all students as readers can only be served by autonomous teachers in educational environments that support learning and teaching—not by mandates for scripted programs that enforce a once-size-fits-all approach to learning and teaching.

Reading legislation has the potential to do great harm or great good for the children of the US and our democracy. Once again, political leaders have chosen to do great harm.

Recommended

School Reformers’ Pledge of Good Conduct

[1] See