Let’s start with paired texts, one from X/Twitter and one from media:
With more than half of Connecticut’s third-graders failing to meet reading benchmarks, education stakeholders across the state agree that existing strategies must change in order to boost student scores.
How to go about that change is where the consensus ends.
State education officials are doubling down on their support of “Right to Read” legislation they believe will provide equal opportunity for all children learning how to read, despite local school leaders’ misgivings about the implementation of the law.
One of those critics is Westport Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice, who after state officials refused to grant the town a waiver from the new program, expressed “disappointment as a result of the endless hours our faculty and leaders have spent on this waiver process.” He was responding to a request for comment from the Westport Journal in December.
In Westport, 73.8 percent of third graders achieved reading proficiency last year — 10 percentage points lower than the year before — but still among the highest in the state.
The state Department of Education “moved the goal posts throughout the process, and we continued to flex to meet those expectations,” Scarice contended.
“Programs do not teach kids. Materials do not teach kids. Highly skilled professional educators teach kids, and that is what we have in Westport,” he said.
In the midst of the reading program shuffle that the second text above is addressing, we must answer Katie’s question with a not-so-fun fact: “Science of Reading” (SOR) foundational claims that balanced literacy programs have cause a reading crisis in the US are not supported by science.
In fact, research for decades (including NRP reports) have shown that whole language, balanced literacy, and systematic phonics are about equally effective for student reading proficiency (comprehension); for example:
Bowers, J.S. (2020). Reconsidering the evidence that systematic phonics is more effective than alternative methods of reading instruction. Educational Psychology Review, 32(2020), 681-705. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10648-019-09515-y
Wyse, D., & Bradbury, A. (2022). Reading wars or reading reconciliation? A critical examination of robust research evidence, curriculum policy and teachers’ practices for teaching phonics and reading. Review of Education, 10(1), e3314. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3314
The really frustrating fact about the SOR movement is that “science” is the rhetoric of the advocacy and legislation, but anecdote is the primary evidence used to perpetuate essentially ideological claims:
Hoffman, J.V., Hikida, M., & Sailors, M. (2020). Contesting science that silences: Amplifying equity, agency, and design research in literacy teacher preparation. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S255–S266. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353
Like CT, most states and notably NYC have passed legislation mandating districts and schools drop existing programs falsely labeled as “failing” and choose among a few reading programs falsely labeled SOR.
As one vivid example of this charade is the fate of the program Open Court, which has had a recent turn as program-of-the-day in the wake of the NRP/NCLB mandate that all programs had to be scientifically-based.
Although written in 2017, this overview of Open Court by McQuillan could have been written today, or sadly, several years from now:
Translation: Open Court does no better, and often worse, than the alternatives.
This most recent study is by no means the only evidence against phonics instruction or programs such as Open Court. The list of studies that show the failure of phonics is too long to repeat here, but you can whet your appetite by looking at what happened with the U.S. Department of Education’s spectacularly expensive and utterly ineffective Reading First program (here, here, and here, for starters).
Journalists and politicians get to move on to the next Great Cause, but the teachers and kids stuck in Open Court classrooms often have no such option.
And thus, the really not-so-fun fact is that despite ample evidence to the contrary, some states have included Open Court in the new mandates!
Here is the real issue that is at the core of our obsession with manufacturing a reading crisis and then demanding the exact same reform strategies, again—mostly declaring some programs failures and mandating new programs instead: Reading programs have not caused a reading crisis, and different reading programs are not the reform solution regardless of our reading goals.
Since I have been making this argument literally for decades, I end here with a reader to emphasize that I endorse no reading programs—never have, never will:
And it bears repeating: “’Programs do not teach kids. Materials do not teach kids. Highly skilled professional educators teach kids, and that is what we have in Westport,’ [Westport Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice] said.”
All PK-12 teachers in our public schools—especially those who teach reading and language arts; those who work with English Language Learners; and those whose practice includes teaching content-area reading—as well as their administrators, plus those who prepare teachers, are part of this plan Illinois State Board of Education notes is designed to “guide and unify literacy efforts across the state.”
Our panel will help attendees understand the national context within which this plan was developed, along with how ISBE defines the problems in current Illinois literacy teaching. The core components of the plan, and how they will affect the curricular and instructional choices made by classroom teachers and teacher education program faculty, will be described and discussed.
One focus of the panel will be on examining critiques of the plan, what was left out, what the next steps will be for school districts, and the extent to which its provisions promote the complexity and nuances of literacy acquisition and teaching. The crucial question—What do teachers really need to support their literacy instruction? —will be considered from multiple viewpoints by the panel and attendees.
PANELISTS INCLUDE:
Dr. Marie Donovan, Associate Professor & Program Director, Early Childhood, College of Education, DePaul University
Cathy Mannen,Professional Issues Director, Illinois Federation of Teachers; Early Childhood and Literacy Teacher & Mentor
Cristina Sanchez-Lopez, Co-President Paridad Education; Bilingual, Bicultural Instructor, College of Education, DePaul University
This forum will build upon the Spring 2023 forum on the ‘reading wars,’ where expert panelists discussed the ‘science of reading’ as well as what we now know from research are hallmarks of effective literacy instruction. Here is the link to that forum’s recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/wlM4kOgXikU?si=4m8AzgttSKDzj-Rp
All attendees must register individually. If you register and can’t attend you will receive a recording of the forum the following week. Please share this notice and flyer with colleagues and friends.
One brief analogy I use when asking students to consider both literacy and teaching literacy (as well as teaching and learning in general) is to recall a time when they had to assemble something like a bookshelf or a large toy for children.
The point is to consider the ways in which we navigate the directions and assembling the item. I nudge them by asking how well they feel the written directions help them and then what they do when they find themselves confused while assembling.
A typical moment of community in this thought experiment is that many of us rely on the picture on the box to help guide us.
Yes, we turn to look at the picture to help us make meaning of the process.
I recently assembled two large filing cabinets and cannot express the relief of having the detailed directions, the image of the completed filing cabinet in several angles on amazon, and a video of someone assembling the cabinets.
My point is that the most compelling part of assembling an item for many people is the whole, finished product. We really want and even need is to see the whole authentic thing.
But that does not mean that the step-by-step instructions do not matter; they certainly help, and following the instructions carefully often makes assembly successful.
In my case, I also found that the second cabinet was a breeze because I had the experience of building the first one.
All of this is to say that literacy, like the assembling analogy, is a holistic and authentic human behavior that is both natural (speaking and listening) and requires a learning process (reading and writing).
And like my experience with building two cabinets, literacy development is best learned when grounded in its holistic state but greatly aided by attending in some ways with identifiable parts (so-called skills). Ultimately, as well, literacy development requires a great deal of authentic experiences as part of that growth.
I have again been thinking about all this after presenting at LitCon 2024 and having several people approach me about my stance on nonsense words as a way to asses students’ phonics knowledge.
The reason issues about how to teach phonics in reading instruction (parallel to how to teach grammar, mechanics, and usage in writing instruction) remains a point of debate, I think, is that most literacy debate is driven those who are missing the forest for the trees, committed to implementing inauthentic and decontextualized practices.
My standard position is that using nonsense words to assess phonics knowledge in students is misrepresenting the purpose of reading skills (all of which are ways in which readers seek to make meaning) and misrepresenting reading achievement (testing phonics knowledge is not testing reading, which must include comprehension).
For a century, alas, we have remained mired in a literacy debate that itself is mostly nonsense.
I know of no one who advocates for no phonics (or no grammar) instruction.
Again, the debate is mostly between those hyper-focusing on the trees (such as the “science of reading” [SOR] mandates for phonics-first and systematic phonics for all students) and those arguing that regardless of how we teach, we must keep the forest in sight (the holistic and authentic acts of literacy, reading and writing).
A key question is not whether students have acquired phonics knowledge but if students can read for meaning and are eager to do so.
The SOR movement and the concurrent rise in SOR legislation, policy, instructional practices, and programs are mostly a recycling of many eras of reading crises followed by reading reform.
We have in recent history a reading crisis/reform movement grounded in scientifically-based mandates, NCLB, that has led to, yes, the exact same reading crisis and nearly the exact same reform agendas.
And once reading research and science have been diluted by ill-informed media and even more ill-informed politicians, we are faced with mandates that are banning some practices as not “scientific” (often without any citation to that science) and mandating practices and programs that are themselves not supported by scientific evidence—LETRS training, Orton-Gillingham, so-called SOR programs (see blow), decodable texts, phonics checks using nonsense words, etc.
In short, reading wars often fail reading, students, and teachers because ideological biases are wrapped in veneers such as “science” and research. The agents of that failure are often non-literacy experts and non-educators—notably journalists, politicians, and corporate entities eager to rebrand and market new educational materials and programs.
As I documented in my SOR policy brief, the problems with SOR are mostly not that we should avoid reading reform (specifically the need to do a much better job of serving the needs of marginalized and minoritized students since literacy, like all of formal education, remains inexcusably inequitable), but that reform must be (1) grounded in accurate identification of the problems, (2) informed by educators and educational researchers without market stakes in that reform, and (3) designed to serve the individual needs of all students (and not one-size-fits all mandates).
The current wave of SOR stories and legislation fails all of those guidelines and is proving to be another attempt at doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.
Let’s now consider a couple examples of why SOR is misguided.
First, assessments using nonsense words and systematic phonics for all students are not supported by reading science; further, these practices can in fact cause harm:
Advocates of the phonics screening tests claim that they are fun. In fact, for fluent readers, it can destroy their recognition as competent readers. In one school example, a boy who came to school reading, and who continued to flourish as a fluent reader, scored 2/40! Since the test includes nonsense words in the quest to focus on decoding (he read “elt” as “let,” “sarps” as “rasp,” and “chab” as “cab,” to foreground a few!) What he seemed to be doing was re-arranging the letters or sounds and reconstructing them into recognizable words that he knew made sense. Meanwhile, another child whom the teacher regarded as not being a fluent reader was able to sound out the nonsense words as well as regular words and achieve a score of 16/40, all without knowing their meaning. Thus, the raw scores from the test of each child give us no information about them as readers and how they can make meaning from text; they simply show how they decode words out of context.
When any instruction starts with the content or skill without regard for what the student knows or needs to know, that practice is wasting precious time better spent on what that student needs and in some cases mis-teaching students (nonsense words make the phonics knowledge the goal and misleads students to see making meaning as unneeded).
Next, as noted above, the SOR reform movement is once again making the fatal mistake of misreading the importance of reading programs while simultaneously falsely blaming some programs as failures while endorsing programs that have (ironically) been discredited through research.
Once at the center of the Reading First scandal during NCLB, Open Court is now being mandated in states such as Virginia (as one of a few districts can choose).
Endorsing Open Court is evidence that the SOR movement remains mostly ideology and not “scientific”; in fact, the resurfacing of Open Court is deja vu all over again:
Back in the 1990s, the Los Angeles Times was a big fan of the scripted reading curriculum, Open Court, designed to teach reading in the elementary grades through a heavy dose of explicit, systematic phonics. The Times reporters wrote lots of favorable articles about phonics instruction in general, especially then-education reporter, Richard Lee Colvin. Others got in on the act, too, including Jill Stewart of the LA Weekly, whose “The Blackboard Bungle” article should be a case study in the lack of “fact checking” in reporting.*
Open Court ended up being adopted by Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), among many other districts around the country – never mind that the evidence for the effectiveness of phonics was (and is) severely lacking. (LAUSD eventually abandoned the program in 2011.)
And after Open Court was adopted in a major US city (think about the outsized anger leveled at Units of Study in NYC), what does the scientific evidence show?:
Translation: Open Court does no better, and often worse, than the alternatives.
This most recent study is by no means the only evidence against phonics instruction or programs such as Open Court. The list of studies that show the failure of phonics is too long to repeat here, but you can whet your appetite by looking at what happened with the U.S. Department of Education’s spectacularly expensive and utterly ineffective Reading First program (here, here, and here, for starters).
Journalists and politicians get to move on to the next Great Cause, but the teachers and kids stuck in Open Court classrooms often have no such option.
As McQuillan warned, we are now in the throes of the “next Great Cause,” and students and teachers are trapped, again, by mandates driven by ideology, politics, and market interests.
If you take the time to look, the greater the missionary zeal about a reading crisis and reading reform, the more likely the person is blinded by beliefs, motivated by political gain, or cashing in.
Regretfully, centering the use of nonsense words in the SOR movement does capture what all the reading crisis histrionics ultimately are—nonsense.
As is typical of education reform, SOR advocates are missing the forest for the trees.
Megan Chaffin, Holly Sheppard Riesco, Kathryn Hackett-Hill, Vicki Collet, Megan Yates Grizzle & Jacob Warren (25 Oct 2023): “Phonics Monkeys” and “Real Life Reading”: Heteroglossic Views of a State Reading Initiative, Literacy Research and Instruction, DOI: 10.1080/19388071.2023.2271085
Overwhelming whiteness: a critical analysis of race in a scripted reading curriculum, Amanda Rigell, Arianna Banack, Amy Maples, Judson Laughter, Amy Broemmel, Nora Vines & Jennifer Jordan (2022) Overwhelming whiteness: a critical analysis of race in a scripted reading curriculum, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 54:6, 852-870, DOI: 10.1080/00220272.2022.2030803
For many years I have been raising concerns about the use of “crisis” rhetoric around education [1], specifically challenging the default use of “crisis” and “miracle” in mainstream media.
The central role of “crisis” rhetoric in the accountability era of education reform has been characterized as a “manufactured” [2] crisis.
The current subset of education reform, the “science of reading” (SOR) movement, fits into the same patterns of the broader accountability era of education reform, I have argued.
Here, I am using Edling excellent work on the relationship between mainstream media and education to reinforce the claims that SOR as a reform movement is both mainstream accountability reform and essentially conservative.
I want this overview to be accessible, but I also highly recommend reading the piece in it entirety (click title above for access).
Edling’s first sentence establishes: “What is of particular interest in this paper is how professional teachers repeatedly, although not always, seem to be pictured in a de-contextualized and non-relational manner by actors outside education, and especially how the media often fails to take educational complexity and practice into account.”
Media representations of education, then, are often overly simplistic. Note that a key aspect of the SOR movement [3] is the claim that reading science is simple (the simple view of reading) and settled, effectively erasing the complexity of reading science and of reading instruction.
Edling’s explanation about the relationship between media and education also describes well the story of reading found in the SOR movement:
Newspapers do not just write about education, they also represent to their readers what education is ‘about’ (p. 392, see also McLure, 2003; Thomas, 2004). Similarly, Fairclough (1995) stresses that the media has the power: ‘to shape governments and parties … influence knowledge, beliefs, values, social relations, social identities’ (p. 2). From this way of reasoning, the media can be seen as an important power source for the construction of certain ideologies that can either exclude or include (Fairclough, 1995, p. 14), depending on how they are positioned and what sets the agenda for what is to be framed as true or false in society (cf. Johnson-Cartee, 2005).
There is no doubt that critical analyses of education in general are necessary in order to improve quality. Education is here understood as a broad concept that includes institutions such as (pre)schools, teacher education and the ideas behind them (cf. Sa ̈fstro ̈m & Ekerwald, 2012). However, what is highlighted here is not criticism of the media itself, but how the media’s recurring simplifications and often negative images of education and teachers are understood and how they might affect people who are seen or define themselves as teachers. Moreover, teachers in teacher education and teachers at (pre)schools are dialectically interconnected, in that teacher education aims to educate teachers, who are capable of acting as professionals in various educational positions—not the least in (pre) schools. For that reason, the term teacher includes teachers at (pre) schools and teacher education (cf. Hallse ́n, 2013).
In the paper, four interrelated propensities are problematized concerning the media’s portrayals of teachers and education:
Viewing education as being in more or less permanent crisis
Taking the role as a spokesperson for teachers and on behalf of the field of education
Excluding the knowledge and experiences of teacher(s), educators and/or educational researchers in the public press
Simplifying the notion of being a good teacher through stereotypes and dualistic frameworks that overlook task and relational complexity.
The SOR movement is yet another reading crisis in a long line of similar reading crises reaching back to the 1940s. Also the SOR movement is being driven by journalists who are identified as literacy experts, and those journalists have repeatedly characterized teachers as ill-equipped to teach reading because the entire field of teacher education has failed those teachers.
As the fourth bullet point above notes, as well, the SOR movement depends on simplistic characterizations of balanced literacy and reading programs as well as cartoonish caricatures of “three cueing” and “guessing” as pervasive failures of reading instruction across the entire US.
Edling details next “educational crisis discourse”:
Although crisis in the media is generally pictured as having specific causes that can be limited to a certain time in history (Wiklund, 2006), research indicates that the notion of educational crisis has been used as a more or less constant image ever since the 1950s and 1960s, and can be associated with the progressive school vs. conservative school problematic…. [C]risis is something that originates in the clash between different world views. As it is reasonable to assume that different world views will exist as long as there are humans, it is equally reasonable to assume that crises—including educational crises—will too.
The repetition of the word crisis is closely related to ideas that teachers and teacher education are incapable of dealing with education in a proper way. Crisis is used as a blanket to cover the field of education and, as in a situation of social crisis, groups outside education feel the need to step in and take control. The phenomenon can be described as an outside-in vs. an inside-out professionalism (cf. Stanley & Stonach, 2013). It is argued that the way in which people from the outside have assumed the right to define what is good and bad education has created a systematic disbelief in teachers in ways that have reduced their professional autonomy (Ball, 2011; Beach & Bagley, 2012; Krantz, 2009; Lauder, Brown, & Halsey, 2009).
Other researchers point to how the media refers to teacher education and teachers as lacking the necessary qualities and blames them for the crisis in school without taking the purposes and contexts of education into account (cf. Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2008; MacLure, 2003; Thomas, 2004; Warburton & Saunders, 1996).
The SOR movement has manufactured a reading crisis (mostly from misrepresenting NAEP data) and then placing soft or indirect blame on reading teachers and direct blame on teacher educators.
Edling notes that blame for educational crises do vary across countries (Sweden, for example, portrays teachers as victims of the crisis as well as the authorities who can overcome that crisis, contrary to the SOR story of teacher blaming). However, Edling adds that in most crisis discourse about education “teacher educator(s) and educational researchers were degraded and silenced,” similar to the current SOR movement.
Broadly, Edling emphasizes “a tendency to repeatedly fixate the debate on education in a dualistic and simplified image that omits the task and relational complexity,” resulting in “[s]tructural violence”:
Structural violence is generated through social practice and law, and hence becomes closely entwined in a specific culture and the norms that govern it, which implies that people in general, including members of group who suffers from their consequences, risks upholding the norms in their every-day actions since the norms are taken for granted as true. From this sense, people or groups of people, such as teachers, are not neutral or simply passive victims but partakers in the weaving of social structures. Violence is produced as a recurring beat through endorsed ideals, speech, gestures, choice of focus and solutions to world problems. The violence that becomes materialized as a consequence of these structures does not necessarily have to do with ill-will, as in deliberately wanting to do harm. On the contrary, what characterizes these acts is that they appear to be normal, harmless and sometimes have the ambition to do good, whereas in reality, they make life difficult for certain groups of people (cf. Cudd, 2006, p. 127, Epp & Watkinsson, 1997, p. 6).
Here is a key point: Journalists and teachers do not need to be bad actors for the media stories and resulting consequences to be bad actions. Hanford and other journalists as well as elected officials likely see their work as good work even as their messaging and policy endorsements are oversimplified, misguided, and harmful (to teachers and students).
This helps explain why Hanford and other journalists have teacher support:
She argues that our identity is not just shaped by how we see ourselves, but also through the way others see us, and that seeing is often coloured by stereotypes and norms (Young, 1990, p. 46–47). In accordance with the associative model, teachers can choose to see themselves as part of the professional group of teachers, which research describes as complex and multidimensional. At the same time, the group affinity model helps to illuminate how teachers’ identity as a group is shaped from the outside based on stereotyped and simplified images of teachers and educational researchers. Hence, people can identify themselves as members of the group known as ‘teacher professionals’ that is associated with certain practices. At the same time, they may have to face contrasting images of a teacher created by the media.
Parallel to the role of NAEP in the media-manufactured reading crisis, the role of standardized tests is acknowledged by Edling: “In a sense, one could argue that reports such as TIMMS and PISA have presented evidence of the failure of education in many countries, which might suggest that the negative criticism of teachers and education is justified. The results in the reports have been used to motivate several reforms focusing on measurability, accountability and control.”
Ultimately the stories perpetuated by media are stereotypes: “Once people have become accustomed to stereotypical thinking, they may not be able to see individuals or situations for what they are. Accordingly, a problem with stereotypes is that they are used to judge and pigeonhole people, without really taking into account context and unique individuals.”
The crisis story of reading in SOR is a simplistic story of caricature about teachers, teacher educators, balanced literacy, and reading programs. the complexity of the real world of teaching and learning reading are erased. As Edling notes:
Parallel with the recurring waves of crisis that wash over the field of education and the recurring stereotyped images of teachers, the curriculum complexity of the purposes and practices of education generally goes unnoticed in the media debate on education. What is forgotten is that teachers are not free to do as they want, even though their profession often allows them some kind of freedom to judge. Indeed, as the teaching profession is politically defined, it is obliged to pay attention to a multitude of different policies (Ball et al., 2012) and curriculum purposes (Hopmann, 2007). In a sense, it is possible to assert that teaching in many countries have come to be restricted to a standard and accountability movement; and hence, rendered more mechanical and simplified than before—very much following the logic presented in media (cf. Apple, 2011; Berliner, 2013).
Consequently, Edling explains: “Rather than beginning the discussion with the various demands that are embedded in teachers’ professional assignments, there are tendencies within the media to portray the good teacher as someone who is capable of efficiently transferring knowledge to pupils, where the epistemology of knowledge stems from science rendering it equal with truth and fact about a world (Wiklund, 2006, p. 177).”
The weaponizing of “science” in the SOR movement, in fact, has begun to creep broader into the science of learning, the science of writing, and the science of math.
The great paradox of crisis rhetoric in media coverage of education is it insures failure:
The implication is that whatever they do, they will end up as failures in the sense of being unable to embrace the multitude of requirements at the same time. Hence, drawing on the task and relational complexity of teachers’ work, one might ask whether it is possible to be an impeccable teacher in the relational midst of education if a multitude of educational purposes and relational inconsistencies have to be taken into account. If it is not, perhaps there is a point in adhering to more nuanced judgements of teachers’ quality in accordance with curriculum content, purposes and the ways in which relations are played out in educational spaces.
Edling warns: “[T]he power of the media and the damaging consequences of repeatedly judging groups of people through a grid of stereo- types need nevertheless to be taken seriously,” concluding:
Consequently, when the media systematically define teachers as working in a field of crisis and need exterior help to sort things out, it automatically excludes the professional knowledge and experiences of teachers and educational researchers and their task and relational complexity, which are already present in their day-to-day work, from the debate.
In the light of these tendencies, research on structural violence helps to remind us that: (a) teachers are unwillingly forced into a paradoxical (in)visibility (even in Sweden, where it is pointed out that their voices need to be heard), (b) they are squeezed in-between two pressuring external demands, namely the complexities in their professional assignment that are politically steered and stereotypes of the good and bad teacher produced by, in this case, the media, (c) they risk wasting time and energy on addressing prejudices that have nothing to do with the specific work they are expected to do, and d) the logic of binary stereotypes is a power issue that brands teachers into a position of permanent failure.
While Edling is writing about media coverage of education in general, her examination matches exactly how the SOR movement works as well as how that movement is grounded in misinformation to the detriment of teachers, students, and democracy.
[3] See an overview of the story about reading now commonplace in media, grounded in Emily Hanford’s journalism, specifically her article “Hard Words.”
In the wake of the “science of reading” tsunami, most states have passed new or revised reading legislation over the past decade. Research on the outcomes of those flawed decisions are now being published and exposing a common theme—”unintended consequences.”
While I think for some these consequences are intended, the research is showing that once again, following a similar pattern of accountability reform since the 1980s, the SOR legislative reform movement is simply not fulfilling promised outcomes and is often causing more or different harm.
School systems around the world use achievement tests to assign students to schools, classes, and instructional resources, including remediation. Using a regression discontinuity design, we study a Florida policy that places middle school students who score below a proficiency cutoff into remedial classes. Students scoring below the cutoff receive more educational resources, but they are also placed in classes that are more segregated by race, socio-economic status, and prior achievement. Increased tracking occurs not only in the remedial subject, but also in other core subjects. These tracking effects are significantly larger and more likely to persist beyond the year of remediation for Black students.
II.
Elena Aydarova; “Whatever You Want to Call It”: Science of Reading Mythologies in the Education Reform Movement. Harvard Educational Review 1 December 2023; 93 (4): 556–581. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-93.4.556
Abstract
In recent years, a wave of science of reading (SOR) reforms have swept across the nation. Although advocates argue that these are based on science-based research, SOR remains a contested and ambiguous notion. In this essay, Elena Aydarova uses an anthropology of policy approach to analyze advocacy efforts that promoted SOR reforms and legislative deliberations in Tennessee. Drawing on Barthes’s theory of mythology, this analysis sheds light on the semiotic chains that link SOR with tradition, knowledge-build ingcurricula, and the scaling down of social safety nets. This deciphering of SOR mythologies under scores how the focus on “science” distorts the intentions of these myths to naturalize socioeconomic inequality and depoliticize social conditions of precarity. This study problematizes the claims made by SOR advocates and sheds light on the ways these reforms are likely to reproduce, rather than disrupt, inequities and injustices.
III. (Math research relevant to reading)
Clements, Douglas H., Renee Lizcano, and Julie Sarama. 2023. “Research and Pedagogies for Early Math” Education Sciences 13, no. 8: 839. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13080839
Abstract
The increasing interest in early childhood mathematics education for decades has increased the need for empirically supported pedagogical strategies. However, there is little agreement on how early math might best be taught. We draw from the empirical literature to paint a picture of research-based and research-validated pedagogical approaches and strategies for teaching early math. Most approaches share core characteristics, including concern for children’s interests and engagement and for working on content matched to children’s level of thinking. Learning trajectories are an especially useful organizing structure because they combine and integrate educational goals, development of children’s thinking, and empirically supported pedagogical strategies. Therefore, they help teachers interpret what the child is doing, thinking, and constructing, and offer instructional activities that extend children’s mathematical thinking. Simultaneously, teachers can see instructional strategies from the child’s perspective, offering meaningful and joyful opportunities to engage in learning.
In this commentary, we identify a phonics-first ideology and its polemical distortions of research and science to promote legislation that constrains and diminishes the teaching of reading. We affirm our own, and a majority of reading professionals’, commitment to teaching phonics. However, we argue that phonics instruction is more effective when embedded in a more comprehensive program of literacy instruction that accommodates students’ individual needs and multiple approaches to teaching phonics—a view supported by substantial research. After summarizing the politicization of phonics in the United States, we critique a legislated training course for teachers in Tennessee as representative of how a phonics-first ideology is expressed polemically for political purposes. We contrast it with a more collaboratively developed, balanced, nonlegislative approach in the previous governor’s administration. Specifically, the training course (a) makes an unfounded claim that there is a national reading crisis that can be traced to insufficient or inappropriate phonics instruction; (b) distorts, misrepresents, or omits relevant research findings and recommendations, most prominently from the report of the National Reading Panel; (c) inaccurately suggests that “balanced literacy instruction” is “whole language” instruction in disguise; and (d) wrongly claims that its views of phonics are based on a settled science of reading.
V.
Compton-Lilly, C., Spence, L.K., Thomas, P.L. and Decker, S.L. (2023), Stories Grounded in Decades of Research: What We Truly Know about the Teaching of Reading. Read Teach, 77: 392-400. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2258
Abstract
The recent dissemination of selective research findings related to reading privileges a narrow body of reading scholarship and a singular, unproven solution—teaching phonics. We offer a research-based correction by presenting two compelling bodies of research to argue that reading instruction must be responsive to individual children. While this confluence of complexity does not deny the importance of phonics, it highlights the significant findings related to: (1) the brain and reading, and (2) the systematic observation of young readers. We argue that reductive and singular models of reading fail to honor the cultures, experiences, and diversity of children. This confluence of research findings reveals an unequivocal need for caution as states, universities, schools, and teachers adopt assumedly universal and narrow approaches to teaching reading.
Megan Chaffin, Holly Sheppard Riesco, Kathryn Hackett-Hill, Vicki Collet, Megan Yates Grizzle & Jacob Warren (25 Oct 2023): “Phonics Monkeys” and “Real Life Reading”: Heteroglossic Views of a State Reading Initiative, Literacy Research and Instruction, DOI: 10.1080/19388071.2023.2271085
Abstract
Framed by Bakhtinian theories of authoritative discourse and heteroglossia, this study examines perceptions of a Science-of-Reading- based state reading initiative five years into implementation. Using interview transcripts, researchers engaged in polyphonic analysis to bring the voices of teachers, reading interventionists, parents, administrators, and state department of education officials into created dialogue. Findings from this qualitative study suggest there were contrasting perspectives about reading and the SRI, that many participants felt the initiative narrowed reading instruction and constrained teachers’ agency, and that, overall, there have been limited opportunities for dialogue about the initiative. Findings demonstrate that a narrow view of reading research may silence and delegitimize some stakeholder voices. This state’s goal of sharpening the focus of reading instruction led to instruction that was perceived by some stakeholders as narrow, boring, and meaningless, unlikely to create the statewide culture of reading that was targeted. Implications for this and future state reading initiatives point to the value of dialogue among varied stakeholders, which might allow for the idiosyncrasies of the teaching and learning of reading and writing to be addressed.
School systems have taken on greater roles in guiding and supporting classroom instruction by redesigning their educational infrastructure—the coordinated resources, structures, and norms that support teachers’ work and drive instructional improvement. However, teachers often adapt or resist common instructional approaches, citing students’ unique needs. Drawing on data from a qualitative, comparative study, I examine how different types of public school systems (charter, suburban, and urban) redesigned their educational infrastructures and how teachers used system-provided educational infrastructure when constructing their practice. I found that teachers experienced their educational infrastructure as providing both affordances and constraints around their instructional decisions, particularly how they responded to their perceptions of students’ needs. Despite differences in each system’s educational infrastructure arrangements, teachers faced a common challenge related to differentiating instruction in diverse classrooms. Findings suggest the need for educational infrastructure redesign efforts to include professional learning around asset-based differentiation strategies and culturally responsive pedagogy.
X.
Overwhelming whiteness: a critical analysis of race in a scripted reading curriculum, Amanda Rigell, Arianna Banack, Amy Maples, Judson Laughter, Amy Broemmel, Nora Vines & Jennifer Jordan (2022) Overwhelming whiteness: a critical analysis of race in a scripted reading curriculum, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 54:6, 852-870, DOI: 10.1080/00220272.2022.2030803
Abstract
Teachers in the US are increasingly required to use scripted curricula. Such instructional materials often reflect the overwhelming whiteness of the publishing industry through a lack of representation of authors and protagonists outside of white, middle-class normative characters. Implementation of such curricula stands in direct contrast to studies finding that culturally relevant pedagogy and curricula benefit students across racial and ethnic groups. This paper describes a qualitative analysis of the scripted Wit and Wisdom English Language Arts curriculum for grades K-8 guided by the research question: How might the curriculum reproduce a white supremacist master script? Following a quantitative analysis of racial representation across all core and supplementary texts in the curriculum, the research team used guiding questions grounded in a critical discourse and anti-racist teaching framework to qualitatively analyse teacher-facing materials at each grade level. The findings of this study indicate that whiteness is centred at every level of the curriculum in text selection and thematic grouping of texts, as well as through discursive moves in teacher-facing materials (e.g. essential questions for learning modules). Based on the findings, the research team suggests mechanisms for individual and collective efforts to resist whiteness-centred curricula at the system, school, and classroom level.
XI.
Maroun, Jamil, and Christopher H. Tienken. 2024. “The Pernicious Predictability of State-Mandated Tests of Academic Achievement in the United States” Education Sciences 14, no. 2: 129. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14020129
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine the predictiveness of community and family demographic variables related to the development of student academic background knowledge on the percentage of students who pass a state-mandated, commercially prepared, standardized Algebra 1 test in the state of New Jersey, USA. This explanatory, cross-sectional study utilized quantitative methods through hierarchical regression analysis. The results suggest that family demographic variables found in the United States Census data related to the development of student academic background knowledge predicted 75 percent of schools in which students achieved a passing score on a state standardized high school assessment of Algebra 1. We can conclude that construct-irrelevant variance, influenced in part by student background knowledge, can be used to predict standardized test results. The results call into question the use of standardized tests as tools for policy makers and educational leaders to accurately judge student learning or school quality.
Rios, A., Matthews, S. D., Zentell, S. & Kogut, A. (2024). More being, different doing: Illuminating examples of culturally relevant literacy teaching. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 67, 283–293. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.1329
Legislators are again poised to address reading in South Carolina with “Read to Succeed” scheduled for a subcommittee hearing January 10.
I have been a literacy educator in SC for 40 years, 18 years as a high school English teacher and now in my 22nd year in higher education. My doctoral work at the University of South Carolina afforded me the opportunity to explore the long history of debate about reading in the US reaching back into the 1940s when literacy teacher and scholar Lou LaBrant raised a familiar concern: “A brief consideration will indicate reasons for the considerable gap between the research currently available and the utilization of that research in school programs and methods.”
LaBrant wrote just after a reading crisis was declared in the 1940s due to low literacy rates in WWII recruits, noting: “[W]e hear many persons saying that the present group of near-illiterates are results of ‘new methods,’ ‘progressive schools,’ or any deviation from the old mechanical procedures. They say we must return to drill and formal reciting from a text book.”
Eighty years later, journalists, pundits, and political leaders are announcing another reading crisis, the “science of reading” movement, and pointing at the exact same causes while offering the same solutions grounded almost entirely in phonics and going back to basics.
SC has been targeting reading for a decade through Read to Succeed, and yet, we find ourselves still mired in a reading crisis.
Let’s instead look at the evidence around us to close the gap LaBrant acknowledged.
In Connecticut, legislation has targeted reading mandating the “science of reading,” but now the unintended consequences are coming home to roost: “[T]he new mandate will cost districts collectively more than $100 million in the school year 2024-25.”
Even more concerning is this legislation bans adopted materials while mandating new materials, even for schools with strong reading proficiency: “CSDE ordered the remaining 68 applicants to either augment their existing programs or replace them entirely. These districts include New Canaan Public Schools, where 83.2 percent of their students read proficiently. Darien, Westport Eastford, Wilton, Colebrook, Cheshire, Ridgefield, Bethany were also denied in part or all together, even though their third graders scored near or above the 80 percent level.”
A recent analysis in the Harvard Educational Review reveals a similar pattern in reading legislation in Tennessee: “Since the early 2010s, Tennessee has had ‘a revolving door of reading reforms’—from the Ready to Read initiative in 2016 to the revisions of English language arts standards that in 2017 introduced ‘foundational literacy’ skills.”
Like CT, TN is facing a $100 million price tag, yet most of that funds purchasing commercial reading products not supported by science: “[A]lthough the new legislation overtly addressed changes in literacy instruction, it ultimately served to secure a market share for certain private providers of curriculum, assessment, and teacher professional development.”
This “science of reading” fad repeats the Common Core era of new standards and new teaching and learning materials—a cycle of reform that never achieves what is promised.
Often in SC, we pride ourselves on not simply following the fad, but in education, we have failed to do something different since the 1980s. Yes, we should serve better the individual needs of students as readers, but jumping on the “science of reading” bandwagon is taking the same path we have been traveling and expecting a different destination.
Regretfully, we persist in the historical negligence LaBrant confronted in 1942: “An easy way to evade the question of improved living and better schools for our underprivileged is to say the whole trouble is lack of drill. Lack of drill! Let’s be honest. Lack of good food; lack of well-lighted homes with books and papers; lack of attractive, well equipped schools, where reading is interesting and meaningful; lack of economic security permitting the use of free schools—lack of a good chance, the kind of chance these unlettered boys are now fighting to give to others.”
Legislators should resist the “science of reading” fad and make a different commitment to students and reading.
Legislators are again poised to address reading in South Carolina with “Read to Succeed” scheduled for a subcommittee hearing on Jan. 10.
I have been a literacy educator in South Carolina for 40 years, including 18 years as a high school English teacher. As an Education professor at Furman University, I’m now in my 22nd year in higher education.
My doctoral work at the University of South Carolina afforded me the opportunity to explore the long history of debate about reading in the U.S. reaching back into the 1940s when literacy teacher and scholar Lou LaBrant raised a familiar concern about “the considerable gap between the research currently available and the utilization of that research in school programs and methods.”
Just after a reading crisis was declared in the 1940s due to low literacy rates among WWII recruits, LaBrant wrote: “(W)e hear many persons saying that the present group of near-illiterates are results of ‘new methods,’ ‘progressive schools,’ or any deviation from the old mechanical procedures. They say we must return to drill and formal reciting from a text book.”
Eighty years later, journalists, pundits and political leaders are announcing another reading crisis — the “science of reading” movement — and pointing at the exact same causes while offering the same solutions grounded almost entirely in phonics and a return to basics.
South Carolina has been targeting reading for a decade through Read to Succeed, and yet, we find ourselves still mired in a reading crisis. Let’s instead look at the evidence around us to close the gap LaBrant acknowledged.
In Connecticut, legislation has targeted reading mandating the “science of reading,” but now the unintended consequences are coming home to roost: “(T)he new mandate will cost districts collectively more than $100 million in the school year 2024-25.”
Even more concerning is this legislation bans adopted materials while mandating new materials, even for schools with strong reading proficiency: “CSDE ordered the remaining 68 applicants to either augment their existing programs or replace them entirely. These districts include New Canaan Public Schools, where 83.2% of their students read proficiently. Darien, Westport Eastford, Wilton, Colebrook, Cheshire, Ridgefield, Bethany were also denied in part or all together, even though their third graders scored near or above the 80% level.”
A recent analysis in the Harvard Educational Review reveals a similar pattern in reading legislation in Tennessee: “Since the early 2010s, Tennessee has had ‘a revolving door of reading reforms’ — from the Ready to Read initiative in 2016 to the revisions of English language arts standards that in 2017 introduced ‘foundational literacy’ skills.” Like CT, TN is facing a $100 million price tag, yet most of that funds purchasing commercial reading products not supported by science.
This “science of reading” fad is a repeat of the Common Core era of new standards and new teaching and learning materials — a cycle of reform that never achieves what is promised.
Often in South Carolina, we pride ourselves on not simply following the fad, but in education, we have failed to do something different since the 1980s. Yes, we should better serve the individual needs of students as readers, but jumping on the “science of reading” bandwagon is taking the same path we have been traveling and expecting a different destination.
Regretfully, we persist in the historical negligence LaBrant confronted in 1942: “An easy way to evade the question of improved living and better schools for our underprivileged is to say the whole trouble is lack of drill. Lack of drill! Let’s be honest. Lack of good food; lack of well-lighted homes with books and papers; lack of attractive, well equipped schools, where reading is interesting and meaningful; lack of economic security permitting the use of free schools — lack of a good chance, the kind of chance these unlettered boys are now fighting to give to others.”
Legislators should resist the “science of reading” fad and make a different commitment to students and reading.
Legislation in Connecticut[1] targeting reading that mandates the “science of reading” comes with unintended and expensive consequences: “[T]he new mandate will cost districts collectively more than $100 million in the school year 2024-25.”
Published in the Harvard Educational Review[2], research by professor Elena Aydarova (University of Wisconsin-Madison) offers an analysis of more than a decade of reading legislation in Tennessee[3], which serves as a cautionary tale[4] for reading legislation in all states, including the following key takeaways:
Approximately 3 out of 5 states have passed new or revised reading legislation since 2018, prompted by misleading media coverage of reading. For example, based on NAEP reading scores about 2/3 of students read at grade level or above; however, media misrepresents that figure as 1/3 (due to misunderstanding NAEP achievement levels[5]).
Claiming US has a reading crisis and blaming a lack of phonics instruction have a long and unsuccessful history in US and England[6]. Back-to-basics movements such as the “science of reading” have never worked.
“Since the early 2010s, Tennessee has had ‘a revolving door of reading reforms’—from the Ready to Read initiative in 2016 to the revisions of English language arts standards that in 2017 introduced ‘foundational literacy’ skills.”
Media and political discussions of the “science of reading” have no consistent definition for the term, often misrepresenting the current research, or “science,” about teaching reading. Advocates for the “science of reading” rarely offer sources for claims.
Like CT, TN legislation primarily funds replacing existing materials and programs with new (but untested) materials and programs: “In the first year of implementation, $100 million was allocated for the reform, with $60 million coming from CO VID-19 relief funds. Most of these resources, however, went toward covering the products and services provided by nonprofit and private-sector organizations.”
Key conclusion: “Although misappropriations of ‘science’ for political and private sector gains are not new in reading policies (Pearson, 2004, Schoenfeld & Pearson, 2012), this analysis of ‘science of reading’ mythologies sheds light on why the actual science becomes irrelevant in policy contexts.”
“Together, these symbolic substitutions revealed the parasitic nature of ‘science of reading’ mythologies: although the new legislation overtly addressed changes in literacy instruction, it ultimately served to secure a market share for certain private providers of curriculum, assessment, and teacher professional development.”
[2] “Whatever You Want to Call It”: Science of Reading Mythologies in the Education Reform Movement, Elena Aydarova, Harvard Educational Review (2023) 93 (4): 556–581. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-93.4.556
[6] Wyse, D., & Bradbury, A. (2022). Reading wars or reading reconciliation? A critical examination of robust research evidence, curriculum policy and teachers’ practices for teaching phonics and reading. Review of Education, 10(1), e3314. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3314
I am sitting in my dorm room of a local junior college looking out the window from the third floor of an ornate but old rock building. On that day, I wrote my first real poem, inspired by e.e. cummings’s “[In just-]” that I had recently read in my speech course with Steve Brannon.
I began playing with letter and word placement while watching students throwing a Frisbee on the dorm lawn, weaving the word “Frisbee” to reveal “free,” “is,” and “be”:
Winter 2023.
This has been my journey across five decades to be a writer. I could have never envisioned as a college student that I would in fact become a writer and that my writer life would primarily be grounded in a WordPress blog.
I start blogging reluctantly at my own blog in 2013, a decade ago. Oddly, 2014 was a peak year until nearly being matched in 2023, which saw almost 219,000 views and about 138,000 visitors.
Over my 22 years in higher education, I have gradually decreased my traditional scholarly work after authoring, co-authoring, editing, or co-editing almost 30 books and dozens of journal articles. Traditional work feels perfomative and hollow, to be honest.
Instead, I prefer public work, activism that has an open-access audience and may better impact how the world of education works.
My social media audience is over 10,000 and my social media traffic is consistent with hundreds of views per day resulting in 10,000-20,000 views per month.
In 2023, for example, my open-access work on grade retention contributed to removing grade retention in Ohio. My primary work on the “science of reading” has maintained an audience with much less satisfying outcomes.
It means a great deal to me to have this space to be a writer, and I appreciate even more my audience of smart, kind, and dedicated folk who often share with me the need to speak up as one avenue of activism.
The top 10 posts of 2023 include the following with links below:
While I remain primarily committed to my public work here on this blog, 2023 (and 2022) was a fruitful time for producing traditional scholarship that is open-access; let me share those again here:
Compton-Lilly, C., Spence, L.K., Thomas, P.L., & Decker, S.L. (2023, November 2). Stories grounded in decades of research: What we truly know about the teaching of reading. The Reading Teacher. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2258
Thomas, P.L. (2023). The “Science of Reading,” Education Faddism, and the Failure to Honor the Intellectual Lives of All Children: On Deficit Lenses and Ignoring Class and Race Stereotyping. Voices in the Middle, 30(3), 17-21. https://library.ncte.org/journals/vm/issues/v30-3/32439
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
Writing is a solitary venture with an urge to speak to a community beyond the Self. Often it is a lonely act, and too often, it feels pointless (we writers are also an anxious bunch prone to depression and such).
And it is now cool to relentless trash all social media.
However, the virtual community I have built over the past decade through the blog and social media is incredible and important.
My existential leanings allow me not just to survive, but thrive.
Remember, the struggle itself to the heights is enough to fill a person’s heart. In this struggle, yes, I am happy.
Many educational philosophers have set forth relatively brief “What I Believe” statements, such as John Dewey. Also common is asking perspective teachers to express their beliefs about teaching, learning, students, assessment, etc.
Teachers are disproportionately practical and often balk at discussions of educational philosophy. But I argue that if we fail to express and examine our beliefs in the context of our practices, we are apt to behave in ways that contradict those beliefs.
As well, many of the important people in educational thought are consistently misunderstood and misrepresented (Dewey becomes the caricature of “learning by doing,” for example, the simplistic project method confronted by Lou LaBrant); therefore, the need to state in direct and somewhat accessible ways exactly what someone believes can be important, especially in the context of public discourse and debate.
As a critical educator and scholar, I find myself often an alien in almost all discussions and debates on education, not finding a home with any mainstream ideologies. Folk on many sides accuse me of being on the other side, and much of the debate is mired in false assumptions and accusations.
Many years ago when I was speaking in Arkansas about my then current book on poverty and education, some nasty “no excuses” advocates significantly misrepresented me in Education Next. Despite the author admitting the characterization wasn’t fair, the false attack remains in the article to this day.
That pattern of false assumptions has repeated itself in the “science of reading” (SOR) debate in part because SOR as reading reform is a subset of the larger 40-year accountability reform movement that I have long opposed: Fix the students by fixing the teachers, and fix the teachers by fixing the programs they are required to teach (with fidelity or as a script); all policed by standardized tests (that we know are biased by race, class, and gender).
The problem for me is that I oppose both the status quo and that standard reform paradigm, and my position garners me false attacks. The position, however, is expressed well in a work I co-edited almost a decade ago: Social context reform: A pedagogy of equity and opportunity.
The description of that work, I think, has an excellent and brief explanation:
Currently, both the status quo of public education and the “No Excuses” Reform policies are identical. The reform offers a popular and compelling narrative based on the meritocracy and rugged individualism myths that are supposed to define American idealism. This volume will refute this ideology by proposing Social Context Reform, a term coined by Paul Thomas which argues for educational change within a larger plan to reform social inequity—such as access to health care, food, higher employment, better wages and job security.
Also in our Introduction (which you can read here), we included a couple foundational paragraphs from my blogging in 2011:
“No Excuses” Reformers insist that the source of success and failure lies in each child and each teacher, requiring only the adequate level of effort to rise out of the circumstances not of her/his making. As well, “No Excuses” Reformers remain committed to addressing poverty solely or primarily through education, viewed as an opportunity offered each child and within which … effort will result in success.
Social Context Reformers have concluded that the source of success and failure lies primarily in the social and political forces that govern our lives. By acknowledging social privilege and inequity, Social Context Reformers are calling for education reform within a larger plan to reform social inequity—such as access to health care, food security, higher employment along with better wages and job security. (Thomas, 2011b, emphasis in the original)
Mainstream education reform is in-school only, and it makes demands on individual students and teachers, seeks the “right” instruction, the “right” program, and the “right” tests. It feeds what I consider to be racist and classist ideologies such as “grit” and growth mindset because everything depends on individual choices, standards, and behaviors (poverty, they say, is an excuse).
Simply stated, until social and school inequities are addressed, in-school only reform will always fail and continue to feed the crisis/reform cycle we have been mired in like Groundhog Day since A Nation at Risk.
When I show that SOR is a deeply misleading and doomed-to-fail reform movement, I am not endorsing the status quo; in fact, I have been fighting the literacy and school status quo since August 1984 when I entered the classroom.
I don’t really believe, I know that US society is criminally inequitable for children, amplified by social class, race, and gender.
I also know that formal schooling tends to amplify, not ameliorate, that inequity—and one of the greatest forces perpetuating inequity is the education reform movement grounded in accountability based on standardized testing.
I also know that petty adult fights about the “right” instruction or the “right” programs is always at the expense of a much more important question: How can we serve the needs of each and every student both in their lives and in their learning?
The false choice being presented between the status quo and education reform is a distraction from the work we should be doing (a distraction like the manufactured religion in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle).
Both the status quo of formal education and the education reform movement are the work of authority, not the sort of radical change children and democracy deserve.
In the immortal words of John Mellencamp: “I fight authority, authority always wins.”
dr. p.l. (paul) thomas 