One of the most significant failures of media, public, political, and educational responses to the Covid/post-Covid era of traditional schooling is claiming that the Covid disruption created the problems being addressed about student mental health and student achievement.
The Covid/post-Covid era has heightened those problems in many ways, but the core issues were always the worst features of traditional schooling, notably the reductive behaviorism that drives testing/grading and classroom/school discipline.
Although I taught in K-12 education 18 years, I have been in higher education now for 22 years, working often with first-year students in my writing seminar (and this semester, in our advising program).
My first-year writing seminar students this fall are both very predictably similar to those I have taught for a couple decades and significantly exaggerated versions of those students.
We are at midterm, and students have just submitted Essay 2, a public essay in on-line format designed to help students ease into a formal cited essay (Essay 3). Essay 2 requires students to use hyperlinking for citation (and thus practice evaluating on-line sources, etc.) and incorporate images.
My first-year writing course is grounded in both writing workshop and minimum requirements instead of grades. This minimum requirements include the following:
Submit all essays in MULTIPLE DRAFTS per schedule before the last day of the course; initial drafts and subsequent drafts should be submitted with great care, as if each is the final submission, but students are expected to participate in process writing throughout the entire semester as a minimum requirement of this course—including a minimum of ONE conference per major essay.
Each essay rewrite (required) must be submitted after the required conference and BEFORE the next original essay is due (for example, E1RW must be submitted before E2 submission can be accepted).
Demonstrate adequate understanding of proper documentation and citation of sources through at least a single well-cited essay or several well-cited essays. A cited essay MUST be included in your final portfolio.
I recognize that I must not only teach students how to write at the college level, but also how to fully engage in a process writing course.
That last point is where students have always struggled, but Covid/post-Covid students are struggling mightily.
I provide students a wealth of support material and models for assignment, such as the following for general support:
For context, I should note that I do not grade assignments throughout the semester (I must submit a course grade, which is based on a final portfolio as the final exam), and I do not take off for late work because I require that all work must be completed.
Historically, despite no grades or late penalty, my students have submitted work fully and on time at about a 90+% rate. Students typically receive As and Bs in the course with a sporadic student or two who do not meet the minimum requirements and thus fail (which is a consequence of simply not being able to fully engage in process writing).
A couple weeks ago, my first-year students submitted Essay 2; only 4 out of 12 did so on time.
So, yes, Covid/post-Covid education is different, but the issues are not new, just heightened.
What I am noticing is that students struggle to follow guidelines (see above), and I spend a great deal of time prompting students on their essay submission to review the sample and checklist provided.
One recent example struck me because a student submitted their Essay 2 rewrite, which was not significantly different than the initial submission—although I provided comments, directed them to the sample/checklist, and conferenced with the student (conferences end with revision plans and students choosing their rewrite due date).
I did not respond to the rewrite, but returned it with the original submission, noted my concern about almost no real revision, re-prompted the student to review the sample/checklist, and recommended another conference to insure the student and I are using our time well with another resubmission.
Two aspects of the essay were not addressed at all; the essay failed to mention the focus/thesis throughout the body of the essay (three subhead sections), and despite the checklist explicitly requiring students use journalistic paragraphing structure (noting restricting paragraphs to 1-3 sentences), the resubmission included (as in the original submission) opening and closing paragraphs of 5-6 sentences.
The student’s response is notable because they explained how hard they worked on the rewrite, including working with our writing lab, and then apologized.
I want to emphasize that I have over 40 years of teaching writing had to help students let go of the fear of mistakes and the urge to produce “perfect” writing in one submission. Most students simply can’t engage in process writing because the dominant culture of their schooling has been reductive behaviorism that hyper-focuses on student mistakes, fosters a reward/punishment culture, and shifts student concern from authentic artifacts and learning to securing grades.
As I have examined before, students are apt to view all feedback as negative even as I carefully and consistently urge them to see feedback as necessary for growing as writers.
One strategy I incorporate is showing students the real-world process of submitting and publishing academic writing; for example, my own experience publishing a policy brief:
This context, I think, helps some with the anxiety students feel about feedback and their tendency to view that feedback as negative (even though I am not grading them and they are performing in a low-stakes environment).
None the less, students at the college level have been so powerfully trained into the reductive behaviorism of success/failure, tests/grades, and avoiding mistakes that authentic process writing and writing outcomes (students write on topics by choice) are too foreign for them to fully engage.
What concerns me beyond why and how my students are struggling (in justifiable ways) is that I also see teachers and professors complaining about “students today” on social media.
Those complaints are quintessentially American responses—blaming the individuals while ignoring the systemic influences.
Our students are struggling in heightened ways because of the disruptions of Covid/post-Covid formal schooling. But traditional and uncritical commitments to reductive behaviorism are also at the core of their struggling as well.
Many if not most of the traditional approaches to schooling in the US are antagonistic not only to learning but also to the basic humanity of students and teachers.
Learning to write is a journey, a process, but so is all learning.
Students are the canaries in the coal mine warning us that education is too often dehumanizing and reductive. When students choose not to fully engage with that education, they may be making the most reasonable decision by choosing themselves.
[Note: This has been submitted to state and local newspapers. So far no responses. Mainstream media resists any narrative other than blaming teachers and schools, regretfully.]
Like dozens of stories in mainstream media, Marion Blank declared in Scientific American, “Biennial testing through NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] consistently shows that two thirds of U.S. children are unable to read with proficiency.”
Reading proficiency crisis has been at the forefront of media coverage and state-level policy for over a decade now. However, the basic claim—2/3 of children not at grade-level proficiency—is misleading at best and false at worst.
The misunderstanding lies in NAEP achievement levels. NAEP warns, “It should be noted that the NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards.”
Tom Loveless calls this the “NAEP proficiency myth,” adding Basic represents grade-level proficiency, and thus, 2/3 of students in the US are reading at grade level or above.
Further, Blank begins the article touting achievement in Mississippi, focusing on impressive gains in NAEP reading. The media embracing of the Mississippi “miracle” further compounds the misinformation about both a reading crisis and one state’s ability to beat the odds.
To understand the US is not experiencing a reading crisis and MS is not a “miracle” template for reading reform, we must consider the recent call for Vermont to mimic MS.
On the 2022 NAEP reading test, VT has 62% of students at or above grade level proficiency (grade 4), compared to MS with 63%. Yes, this is an impressive similarity for MS with a state experiencing a significantly higher rate of poverty and minority students.
But that is not the whole story.
States such as MS and especially FL have very impressive grade 4 NAEP scores that plummet by grade 8: Compare VT (73% grade-level proficient and above) with MS (63%) and FL (69%), notably resulting in VT in the top 6 states in the US, MS in the bottom four, and FL ranking in the middle. Researchers have noted that FL students experience some the greatest drops in achievement from grade 4 to 8, in fact.
Another ignored fact is that MS, like FL, likely achieves the test score bump from extreme levels of grade retention—impacting from about 9,000 – 12,000 students per year across grades K through 3. The MS “miracle” is a test data “mirage.”
But the most important ignored truth about reading in the US can be found in the publicly funded schools run by the Department of Defense (DoDEA)—DoDEA schools NAEP outcomes include in 2022 (grade 4) 80% and (grade 8) 90% at or above grade-level proficient.
Now here is the most ignored truth about reading achievement. DoDEA schools are not distinct from traditional public schools because of reading instruction or reading programs, but as Mervosh reports:
How does the military do it? In large part by operating a school system that is insulated from many of the problems plaguing American education….
For starters, families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job….
[T]eachers are also well paid, supported by a Pentagon budget that allocates $3 billion to its schools each year, far more than comparably sized school districts.
The most important and ignored truth about reading proficiency in the US is that reading is a marker for socioeconomic inequity in both our society and our schools. There is no crisis and there are no miracles. But as DoDEA schools demonstrate, if we have the political will, we can and should better serve all our children as developing readers and citizens.
“The administrations in charge,” writes Gilles Deleuze in Postscript on the Societies of Control, “never cease announcing supposedly necessary reforms: to reform schools, to reform industries, hospitals, the armed forces, prisons” (p. 4).
Deleuze’s generalization about “supposedly necessary reforms” serves as an important entry point into the perpetual education crisis in the US. Since A Nation at Risk, public education has experienced several cycles of crisis that fuel ever-new and ever-different sets of standards and high-stakes testing.
Even more disturbing is that for at least a century, “the administrations in charge” have shouted that US children cannot read—with the current reading crisis also including the gobsmacking additional crisis that teachers of reading do not know how to teach reading.
The gasoline that is routinely tossed on the perpetual fire of education crisis is test scores—state accountability tests, NAEP, SAT, ACT, etc.
While all that test data itself may or may not be valuable information for both how well students are learning and how to better serve those students through reform, ultimately all that testing has almost nothing to do with either of those goals; in fact, test data in the US are primarily fuel for that perpetual state of crisis.
Here is the most recent example—2023 ACT scores:
I have noted that reactions and overreactions to NAEP in recent years follow a similar set of problems found in reactions/overreactions to the SAT for many decades; the lessons from those reactions include:
Lesson: Populations being tested impact data drawn from tests.
Lesson: Ranking by test data must account for population differences among students tested.
Lesson: Conclusions drawn from test data must acknowledge purpose of test being used (see Gerald Bracey).
The social media and traditional media responses to 2023 ACT data expose a few more concerns about media, public, and political misunderstanding of test data as well as how “the administrations in charge” depend on manipulating test data to insure the perpetual education crisis.
Many people have confronted the distorting ways in which the ACT data are being displayed; certainly the mainstream graph from Axios above suggests “crisis”; however, by simply modifying the X/Y axes, that same data appear at least less dramatic and possibly not even significant if the issues I list above are carefully considered.
Many causal elements could be at work to explain the ACT decrease, including population shifts, social influences (such as the Covid impact), and the inherently problematic element of using test data for purposes not intended as well as making nuanced claims based on singular data points (averages).
For example, the ACT is exclusively designed to measure college preparedness, like the SAT, and not general educational quality of schools or general evaluations of student learning.
Students who take the ACT are a narrow subset of students skewed by region and academic selectivity (college-bound students versus general population of US students).
Also, while a careful analysis could answer these questions, the ACT score drop may or may not represent a significant event, depending on what that single point (average) represents (how many questions and how large is the change substantively).
Likely, however, there is never any credible reason to respond to college entrance data as a crisis of general educational quality because, as noted above, that simply is not what the tests are designed to measure.
The larger issue remains: Testing in the US rarely serves well evaluating learning and teacher, testing has not functioned in service of achieving effective education reform, but testing does fuel perpetual education crisis.
This crisis-of-the-day about the ACT parallels the central problem with NAEP, a test that seems designed to mislead and not inform since NAEP’s “Proficient” feeds a false narrative that a majority of students are not on grade level as readers.
The ACT crisis graph being pushed by mainstream media is less a marker of declining educational quality in the US and more further proof that “the administrations in charge” want and need testing data to justify “supposedly necessary reforms,” testing as gas for the perpetual education crisis fire.
The key here is that the first article feeds into the misleading “miracle” narrative popular in media and political rhetoric about schools and the second asserts the “crisis” rhetoric about public education.
Media struggles with the third article topic—the exceptional achievement found in Department of Defense schools—and possibly the most telling quote in the article hits the nail on the head:
“If the Department of Defense schools were a state, we would all be traveling there to figure out what’s going on,” said Martin West, an education professor at Harvard who serves on the national exam’s governing board.
In a rare moment of almost getting things right about education and testing, the article highlights the outstanding achievement found in DoDEA schools:
Looking at reading achievement levels of NAEP is even more revealing:
While the media has dubbed MS a “miracle,” that same media struggles to understand the DoDEA success.
Why? Well, a few clues are in the article itself:
How does the military do it? In large part by operating a school system that is insulated from many of the problems plaguing American education.
Defense Department schools are well-funded, socioeconomically and racially integrated, and have a centralized structure that is not subject to the whims of school boards or mayors….
But there are key differences.
For starters, families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job.
“Having as many of those basic needs met does help set the scene for learning to occur ,” said Jessica Thorne, the principal at E.A. White Elementary, a school of about 350 students.
Her teachers are also well paid, supported by a Pentagon budget that allocates $3 billion to its schools each year, far more than comparably sized school districts. While much of the money goes toward the complicated logistics of operating schools internationally, the Defense Department estimates that it spends about $25,000 per student, on par with the highest-spending states like New York, and far more than states like Arizona, where spending per student is about $10,000 a year .
“I doubled my income,” said Heather Ryan, a White Elementary teacher . Starting her career in Florida, she said she made $31,900; after transferring to the military, she earned $65,000. With more years of experience, she now pulls in $88,000.
Competitive salaries — scaled to education and experience levels — help retain teachers at a time when many are leaving the profession. At White Elementary, teachers typically have 10 to 15 years of experience, Ms. Thorne said.
Children with access to healthcare and food security, parents with stable incomes and housing, and well-paid faculty—these are all key to educational outcomes, many of us have argued for years, but the mainstream approach in the US for decades has been entirely focusing on in-school reform only—because the education establishment, conservatives argue, have used poverty as an excuse.
The reason DoDEA success is handled with a question and “may be” is that the evidence here is a message that is politically uncomfortable in the US: Education reform needs to be both social reform and school reform.
Credible reading scores (beyond grade 4) are about more than reading instruction or reading programs, but the DoDEA forces us to reconsider the “crisis”/”miracle” rhetoric and move beyond blaming teachers, reading ideologies, and reading programs.
Media and political leaders likely will let this story pass because “Logistical planning, including a predictable budget, ‘isn’t very sexy,’ but it is one key to success, said Thomas M. Brady, the director of Defense Department schools since 2014.”
So here is something we do know, but we are mostly unwilling to admit it: Poverty and inequity are not excuses, but tremendous barriers to the sort of opportunities all children deserve.
The success at DoDEA is certainly no miracle, but that success is the sort of model we should be using instead of the manufactured “miracle”/mirage of the day.
There is a story education journalists love to tell; it is so innocent and compelling that even Florida wouldn’t bother to ban it.
Here is the story:
For decades, reading teachers in the United States have been teaching children to read using balanced literacy.
Balanced literacy was created by the Three Evil Witches—Calkins, Fountas, and Pinnell.
Under the spell of balanced literacy, reading teachers use three-cueing on all the children. What is three-cueing?
Well, three-cueing is putting picture books in front of all the children and asking them to look at the pictures and guess at the words on the page!
Such fun!
Sadly, however, now only two-thirds of children can read proficiently!
Despite how many have eagerly believed this fairy tale, it is nearly entirely caricature, misinformation, and lies. But it works so well that almost every education journalist in the US has recycled the story to fit their area or state, pulling from the original holy text.
Predictably, this retelling includes the usual list of misinformation and lies:
The beginning of the article is a litany of misinformation about NRP, NAEP, and reading proficiency (see below about how this piece focuses on grade 4 but ignores grade 8).
NCTQ is cited as a credible source although the conservative think tank has never released a peer-reviewed report that meets even the minimum standards of valid research.
Orton-Gillingham is referenced as moving toward “‘a more scientific approach'” although O-G (multisensory instruction) is not supported by the most recent scientific studies.
The piece allows Moates to promote her own commercialproduct, LETRS, although, as with O-G, no scientific research exists showing that the program results in higher student reading proficiency.
As I have noted, for at least 40 years, education reform has suffered under a crisis/miracle dichotomy that has failed students, teachers, and education.
The current crisis/miracle dichotomy is the manufactured reading proficiency crisis and the Mississippi “miracle.”
However, MS is based on the Florida model, which is now two-decades old.
Ironically, both FL and MS prove to be not models for reform but models for how political manipulation of education causes great harm to children (like the dark underbelly of fairy tales).
Yes, FL has found a process by which the state’s grade 4 reading scores on NAEP sit high in the national rankings; that “achievement” sacrifices almost 20,000 retained third graders a year (Black, MLL, and poor children disproportionately among those retained).
Here is the key problem not being fully addressed by media or reformers: FL also represents one of the states with the largest drop in achievement from grades 4 to 8, because the retention-driven grade 4 scores are mirages:
· Florida kids regress dramatically as they age in the system. Since 2003, Florida’s eighth grade rank as a state has never come close to its fourth grade rank on any NAEP test in any subject.
· The size of Florida’s regression is dramatic and growing, especially in math. Florida’s overall average NAEP state rank regression between fourth and eighth grade since 2003 is 17 spots (math) and 18 spots (reading). But since 2015, the averages are 27 spots (math) and 19 spots (reading).
So what about VT? Well, despite the handwringing over VT’s grade 4 NAEP and reading proficiency, the state sits high in the national rankings of grade 8 reading on NAEP:
Florida is well behind VT in grade 8 reading:
And MS remains at the bottom of grade 8 reading:
Like the entire US, VT simply is not experiencing a reading crisis. And certainly not because of the witches brew of balanced literacy stealing children’s ability to receive effective reading instruction.
VT may be, in fact, a better model for our need to add patience and nuance to our evaluation of reading proficiency, how we teach reading, how we measure proficiency, and when students need to reach our benchmarks as developing readers.
And thus, VT should not mimic MS since that would be throwing out the baby with the cauldron water.
What happens when years of media misinformation become a powerful talking point for extreme conservative advocacy groups and extreme conservative elected officials?
Consider this:
From the misleading and inaccurate work of Emily Hanford in 2018 to the more recent nonsense written by Nicholas Kristof in 2023, the lie that won’t die (2/3 of children are not reading at grade level) has ultimately—see above—driven a wave of conservative education reform that blurs curriculum and book banning legislation with “back-to-basics” reform touting the “science of reading.”
The key problem with the reading proficiency lie is that student reading proficiency is possibly the exact opposite of the lie because NAEP achievement levels are incredibly (purposefully?) confusing:
NAEP student achievement levels are performance standards that describe what students should know and be able to do. Results are reported as percentages of students performing at or above three NAEP achievement levels (NAEP Basic, NAEP Proficient, and NAEP Advanced). Students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level on NAEP assessments demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter. 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). See short descriptions of NAEP achievement levels for each assessment subject.Scale Scores and NAEP Achievement Levels
While still a complicated statistic and claim, the reality is that if we use NAEP data as evidence, about 2/3 of students in the US read at or above grade level.
A better pair of claims, however, is that we do not have a universal definition of reading proficiency and that “grade level” is a far less valuable metric than “age level” for assessing reading proficiency.
This reading proficiency lie that won’t die is helping feed one of the worst waves of conservative assaults on schools even considering the 40-plus years of conservative education reform also based on the Nation at Risk lie.
Here is a reader for both reading proficiency and conservative education reform:
Grounded in the federal mandate for “scientifically based” instruction in No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001), anchored by the misrepresented National Reading Panel (NRP) report, the more recent “science of reading” (SOR) movement has successfully erased segments of the reading program market (Units of Study) and mandated as well as banned instructional practices in nearly every state of the US.
At the core of this SOR era of education reform is an orchestrated agenda to impose scripted curriculum onto reading instruction, often called “structured literacy”:
At its July 1st meeting, the IDA Board of Directors made a landmark decision designed to help market our approach to reading instruction. The board chose a name that would encompass all approaches to reading instruction that conform to IDA’s Knowledge and Practice Standards. That name is “Structured Literacy.”…
If we want school districts to adopt our approach, we need a name that brings together our successes. We need one name that refers to the many programs that teach reading in the same way. A name is the first and essential step to building a brand….
The term “Structured Literacy” is not designed to replace Orton Gillingham, Multi-Sensory, or other terms in common use. It is an umbrella term designed to describe all of the programs that teach reading in essentially the same way. In our marketing, this term will help us simplify our message and connect our successes. “Structured Literacy” will help us sell what we do so well.
Literacy scholars, however, have issued strong and research-based warnings about how structured literacy often devolves into scripted curriculum:
We recognize that some teachers using structured literacy approaches will find ways to respond to the interests, experiences, and literacy abilities of individual students; however, we are concerned about the indiscriminate and unwarranted implementation of the following practices:
Directive and/or scripted lessons that tell teachers what to say and do and the implementation of lesson sequences, often at a predetermined pace (Hanford, 2018)
Privileging of phonemic awareness and phonics as primary decoding skills (Hanford, 2018, 2019; IDA, 2019; Paige, 2020; Pierson, n.d.; Spear-Swerling, 2019)
Use of decodable texts that do not engage multiple dimensions of reading (Hanford, 2018; IDA, 2019; Paige, 2020; Spear-Swerling, 2019)
Specialized forms of reading instruction designed for particular groups of students as core literacy instruction for all students and teacher educators (Hanford, 2018; Hurford et al., 2016; IDA, 2019; Pierson, n.d.)
Mandating structured literacy programs despite the lack of clear empirical evidence to support these programs
Privileging the interest of publishers and private education providers over students.
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
Compton-Lilly, et al.’s warnings are now being confirmed, notably in terms of bullet points 1 and 4 above as well as in terms of different reading programs now being mandated:
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
Scripted curriculum not only de-professionalizes teachers, but also whitewashes the curriculum, confirming the significant overlap of conservative education reform agendas addressing bans and censorship along with the SOR movement.
As I have noted here and here, the SOR movement is a significant part of dismantling the social justice movement.
While the outsized attacks on some reading programs—those by Calkins along with those by Fountas and Pinnell—have been uncritically embraced by the media and politicians despite no evidence of a reading crisis or failure linked to those programs, there is little logic in claims that structured literacy programs are the solution to a manufactured crisis.
In fact, the move to structured literacy as scripted curriculum is demonstrably a shift in the wrong direction if we care at all about reading proficiency, our increasingly diverse population of K-12 students in the US, or our beleaguered teaching profession.
One of the foundational claims throughout the history of calling for education to be “scientific” is identifying instructional practices as either scientific (or evidence-based) or not.
A key concern with such claims is that they tend to overstate in a black-and-white way that practices are scientific or not, but also, a narrow view of “evidence” is certainly a problem (see Wormeli for example).
Note here that the lists are different with some overlap, raising concerns about what science matters and what agenda any organization has (NCTQ releases reports that fail basic scientific validity to push a narrow agenda, for example).
The first list from NCTQ is overly dogmatic and an example of cherry-picking masquerading as scientific.
The second list has some promise since it allows for that some practices are not supported yet, a better characterization of science—although the lit review itself suffers from limited use of evidence.
One important element in the SOR movement and the legislation as well as practices that is driven by that movement is holding SOR claims to valid expectations of “scientific” that do not suffer from oversimplification.
The “science of reading” (SOR) movement has now impacted reading practices and reading legislation in essentially every state in the US. While the SOR movement claims lack credibility, the essential template of the media narrative remains compelling for the public and politicians.
Some of the key claims in the SOR movement can now be interrogated, however, since several states have implemented SOR legislation since 2012; those key claims include the following:
Mississippi has produced “miracle” results with SOR policy and should serve as a model for all states’ reading legislation.
SOR practices, structured literacy, can produce 95% of students reading at grade level.
SOR policy does not accept poverty as an “excuse.”
The following data from Mississippi on reading proficiency and grade retention exposes that these claims are misleading or possibly false:
Large numbers of students over four years of schooling (K-3) continue to be retained, calling into question how well SOR/SL actually works.
States such as MS and FL that have seen NAEP scores and rankings increase at grade 4 have not seen a similar increase at grade 8, suggesting the score increases are a mirage, not a miracle. Grade 8 NAEP data suggests that, in fact, poverty and other out-of-school factors remain significant in terms of student achievement (poverty is not an excuse, but something that also should be addressed).
Retention disproportionately impacts Black students and students in poverty:
SOR/SL are unlikely to have produced a miracle in MS or any other state (see Florida) , but grade retention is increasingly a political tool that harms children in order to corrupt test data to serve the needs of the education market place and politicians.
[NOTE: A PDF of this post as a presentation can be accessed HERE. See also a slightly revised presentation HERE. Please do not edit and please acknowledge this is my work if you use for instructional or public purposes.]
The answer is the anatomy of how media misinformation in 2018 wrapped in sensationalistic anecdotes has been replicated uncritically by dozens and dozens of journalists, resulting in that misinformation becoming “holy text,” or in other words, sacrosanct Truth.
Here, I offer the template that “Hard Words” created, and unlike journalists, I include links to research showing why the claims throughout the piece (and in its cousin, “Sold a Story”) are both false and shoddy journalism.
I.
The article begins with the Big Lie, one of the three biggest lies (along with citing the NRP report and NCTQ reports) in the “science of reading” (SOR) movement:
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of NAEP data. NAEP “proficient” is well above grade level, but “basic” is approximately what most states consider “grade level,” and thus, if anything, about 60-65% of students for several decades have been at or above grade level. That isn’t sensational enough for reporters, however.
The Evidence:
From NAEP:
NAEP student achievement levels are performance standards that describe what students should know and be able to do. Results are reported as percentages of students performing at or above three NAEP achievement levels (NAEP Basic, NAEP Proficient, and NAEP Advanced). Students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level on NAEP assessments demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter. 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). See short descriptions of NAEP achievement levels for each assessment subject.
As I have pointed out about NCTQ (see more below on NCTQ and LETRS/Moats), much of the SOR advocacy has a market interest behind it and the SOR movement is grounded in the myth of the bad teacher, attacking classroom teachers and teacher educators:
Here and throughout mainstream media, including “Sold a Story,” the SOR movement relies on anecdotes, regardless of how well those stories reflect accurate claims:
The Evidence:
Claims of miracles in Pennsylvania (similar to those made about Mississippi) fall apart once the full picture is examined. Inflated gains at early grades routinely disappear in later grades; this score increases are mirages, not miracle, and ironically, the NRP report showed that reality despite SOR advocates ignoring that fact; see again: Cryonics Phonics: Inequality’s Little Helper, Gerald Coles.
V.
A persistent set of lies in the SOR media campaign concerns misrepresenting “guessing” and three 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 [access HERE]
The SOR misinformation campaign relies on making false claims and definitions about balanced literacy (and whole language, see below):
The Evidence:
Spiegel, D. (1998). Silver bullets, babies, and bath water: Literature response groups in a balanced literacy program. The Reading Teacher,52(2), 114-124. www.jstor.org/stable/20202025
VII.
The misrepresentation of whole language also has a marketing element; Moats markets SOR-branded materials and thus has a financial interest in discrediting BL and WL:
Semingson, P. & Kerns, W. (2021). Where is the evidence? Looking back to Jeanne Chall and enduring debates about the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S157-S169. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.405.
VIII.
Misrepresenting WL/BL is solidly linked to a complete misreading of the NRP reports (another Big Lie):
Shanahan, T. (2005). The National Reading Panel report: Practical advice for teachers. Learning Point Associates. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED489535.pdf
Shanahan, T. (2003, April). Research-based reading instruction: Myths about the National Reading Panel report. The Reading Teacher, 56(7), 646-655.
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. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10648-019-09515-y
Collet, V.S., Penaflorida, J., French, S., Allred, J., Greiner, A., & Chen, J. (2021). Red flags, red herrings, and common ground: An expert study in response to state reading policy. Educational Considerations, 47(1). Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.4148/0146-9282.2241
Garan, E.M. (2001, March). Beyond smoke and mirrors: A critique of the National Reading Panel report on phonics. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(7), 500-506. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170108200705
Seidenberg, M.S., Cooper Borkenhagen, M., & Kearns, D.M. (2020). Lost in translation? Challenges in connecting reading science and educational practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S119–S130. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.341
Yatvin, J. (2002). Babes in the woods: The wanderings of the National Reading Panel. The Phi Delta Kappan,83(5), 364-369
As many scholars have noted, the SOR movement including “Sold a Story” is driven by sensationalistic anecdotes, stories:
The Evidence:
Hoffman, J.V., Hikida, M., & Sailors, M. (2020). Contesting science that silences: Amplifying equity, agency, and design research in literacy teacher preparation. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S255–S266. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353
X.
SOR advocacy regularly demands only a narrow use of “scientific” in reading instruction while also endorsing practices and programs not supported by that same rigor, such as LETRS:
The Evidence:
Hoffman, J.V., Hikida, M., & Sailors, M. (2020). Contesting science that silences: Amplifying equity, agency, and design research in literacy teacher preparation. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S255–S266. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353
A third Big Lie is using unscientific and discredited reports from the conservative think tank NCTQ to claim that teacher educators are incompetent and/or willfully misleading teacher candidates.
Fuller, E. J. (2014). Shaky methods, shaky motives: A critique of the National Council of Teacher Quality’s review of teacher preparation programs. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(1), 63-77. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022487113503872
Cochran-Smith, M., Stern, R., Sánchez, J.G., Miller, A., Keefe, E.S., Fernández, M.B., Chang, W., Carney, M.C., Burton, S., & Baker, M. (2016). Holding teacher preparation accountable: A review of claims and evidence. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/teacher-prep
One of the most damning aspects of the SOR movement has been the embracing of and rise in grade retention policies; grade retention is not supported by research and both creates false test score gains while harming children:
The SOR movement grossly overstates brain science as well as the essential nature of science:
The Evidence:
Seidenberg, M.S., Cooper Borkenhagen, M., & Kearns, D.M. (2020). Lost in translation? Challenges in connecting reading science and educational practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S119-S130. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.341
Yaden, D.B., Reinking, D., & Smagorinsky, P. (2021). The trouble with binaries: A perspective on the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S119-S129. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.402
XV.
The SOR movement has hyper-focused on dyslexia, but again, mostly offering misinformation:
The Evidence:
Johnston, P., & Scanlon, D. (2021). An examination of dyslexia research and instruction with policy implications. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 70(1), 107-128. https://doi.org/10.1177/23813377211024625
Stevens, E. A., Austin, C., Moore, C., Scammacca, N., Boucher, A. N., & Vaughn, S. (2021). Current state of the evidence: Examining the effects of Orton-Gillingham reading interventions for students with or at risk for word-level reading disabilities. Exceptional Children, 87(4), 397–417. https://doi.org/10.1177/0014402921993406
Hall, C., et al. (2022, September 13). Forty years of reading intervention research for elementary students with or at risk for dyslexia: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.477
Odegard, T. N., Farris, E. A., Middleton, A. E., Oslund, E., & Rimrodt-Frierson, S. (2020). Characteristics of Students Identified With Dyslexia Within the Context of State Legislation. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 53(5), 366–379. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219420914551
“Sold a Story” became a “holy text” because dozens of journalists and politicians repeated the misinformation and lies begun in “Hard Words,” identified above.
This is not good journalism, but it does prove that sensationalistic stories will ultimately trump evidence, even the “science” SOR advocates are so apt to reference.
dr. p.l. (paul) thomas 
