Category Archives: reading

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

The Outlier Story: How Education Journalism (Almost) Always Gets It Wrong

January 2, 2025 plthomasedd

[Header Photo by Will Myers on Unsplash]

The first two decades of my career as a literacy educator were spent as a high school English teacher in rural Upstate South Carolina, the high school I had graduated from and my home town.

This began in 1984 when SC had passed sweeping education legislation that would become the standard legislative approach across the US—accountability policy grounded in state standards, high-stakes testing (grades 3 and 8 with exit exams in high school starting in grade 10), and school report cards.

SC was an early and eager adopter of the “crisis” rhetoric fueled by A Nation at Risk report released under the Reagan administration.

That high school and town were populated mostly by working-class and poor people; the town and smaller towns served by the high school were dead or dying mill towns.

Schools had far more poverty than the data showed because rural Southerners often refused to accept free and reduced meals (the primary data point for measuring poverty in schools).

However, for many years the high school ranked number 1 in the entire state for student exit exam scores in math, reading, and writing. Because of our student demographics (and notably because these students had relatively low or typical scores in grade 8 testing), we were what many people would refer to as a “high flying” or “miracle” school.

In more accurate statistical terms, we were an “outlier” data point in the state.

I have been in SC education for an ongoing five decades, and the overwhelming body of data related to student achievement in the state has matched what all data show across the US—measurable student learning is most strongly causally related to the socioeconomic status and educational levels of those students’ parents.

Further, the full story about how we achieved outlier status includes two aspects.

One is that from grade 8 to grade 10 testing, the population of students changed because of students dropping out of school (and these were among the lowest scoring students in grade 8). In fact, students were often encouraged to drop out and enroll in adult education (a two-fer win for the school because they would not be tested and enrolling in adult ed removed them from the drop-out data).

A second part of the story is that students scoring low in grade 8 were enrolled in two math and two ELA courses in grade 10. The “extra” courses were specifically designed as test-prep for state testing. We rigorously adopted a teach-to-the-test culture.

For the state writing exam, for example, we discovered that the minimum text a student could produce was an “essay” with a three-sentence introduction, a five-sentence body, and a three-sentence conclusion. Students in the “extra” ELA course wrote dozens of 3-5-3 essays in grade 10 with the teacher focusing on helping students avoid the “errors” that would flag the text as a below standard.

Many of us found the 3-5-3 approach to writing became a huge problem when students were required to write in other courses; even as students “passed” the state writing exam, they were not performing well as writers in other courses, and even refusing at times to write more than 3-5-3 essays.

For the high-stakes accountability era, we did do a great deal of good because many students across the US passed all their courses but could not receive a diploma because of exam exams. Most of our students graduated, and not because we did anything underhanded.

Yet, I must stress that how we accomplished our outlier status was likely not scalable, but more importantly, our approach should not be replicated by other schools.

Fast-forward 40 years, and education journalism has written hundreds and hundreds of stories not only in pursuit of “outlier” schools, but carelessly framing them as both proof of the on-going (permanent) education crisis and that “status quo” education refuses to implement what we know “works.”

The newest iteration of this misleading story in education is the “science of” movement grounded in the “science of reading” story first popularized by Emily Hanford, who wrote about a “miracle” school in Pennsylvania. This compelling but false story has been parlayed into an even more successful podcast as well as spawning dozens of copy-cat articles by education journalists across the country.

Media, however, never covered Gerald Coles’s careful debunking of the “miracle” school Hanford featured. Similar to my story above about the beginning of my teaching career, the full story of that school was quite different than what was covered in the media.

And as 2024 drew to a close, education journalists simply have no other lens that this: Which School Districts Do the Best Job of Teaching Math?

To be blunt, education journalists are mistakenly compelled to focus on the “exceptional” districts (outliers) while ignoring the more compelling red line that, again, shows what, in fact, is normal and what can and should be addressed in terms of educational reform—the negative impact of poverty on educational attainment.

So here is a story you likely will not read: Education journalism is failing public education, and has been doing so for decades.

Education journalists are blindly committed to the “crisis” and “outlier” stories because they know people will read and listen to them.

The “outlier” story makes for a kind of “good” journalism, I suppose, but the problem is that these stories become popular beliefs and then actual legislation and policy.

The current”science of” movement is riding a high wave because of the “science of reading” tsunami. But like all the misguided reforms since the original false education story, A Nation at Risk, this too will crash and reveal itself as a great harm to students, teachers, and our public school system.

This is boring, I know, but most outlier stories are ultimately false or they simply are not replicable or scalable, as I explained in my opening story.

If we genuinely care about student learning, teaching, and the power of public education, we need education journalists more dedicated to the full story and the not the outliers that help drive their viewing numbers.

“Science” as Bad Faith Bullying

December 7, 2024 plthomasedd

[Header Photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash]

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Especially in America.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, set in the 1920s, centers the story on a few rich characters—Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who have “old” money, as well as Jay Gatsby, representing the nouveau riche.

At the cusp of 2024 and 2025, a century later, one page from the novel seems disturbingly relevant:

In this scene, Fitzgerald uses Buchanan to portray the rise of scientific racism in the US. The scientific racism era in the early 20th century is but one of many examples of how “science” can be used by bad faith actors to promote an ideological agenda.

It isn’t his fault, Buchanan seems to suggest, that he is among the superior white Western civilization: “‘It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.'”

In recent years in the US, navigating science, proof, and science skepticism has reach a level of complexity that defies postmodern thought. Simultaneously, we may be living in the most advanced era of scientific knowledge along side a rising and powerful science-skepticism era.

Vaccination deniers, flat Earthers, and Covid conspiracy theorists have increasingly prominent voices and policy influence due to social media, and the Trump era certainly has eroded how most people understand and what counts as “proven” science.

“Science” as Bad Faith Bullying: Education Edition

Concurrent to the larger political and cultural problems with “science” and science-denial, the education reform movement grounded in the early 1980s accountability movement has adopted “science” as a bad faith bullying approach to reform.

The “science of reading” (SOR) movement [1], essentially driven by conservative ideology, exploded around 2018 under the first Trump administration, and now, SOR has spawned a series of “science of” companion movements—the “science of math,” “the science of learning,” etc.

We may have reached peak “science” as bad faith bullying, however, with a law suit against Heinemann and a few reading programs [2] disproportionately attacked and scapegoated by Emily Hanford and much of mainstream media: “The suit alleges ‘deceptive and fraudulent marketing and sale of products and services which are undermining a fundamental social good: literacy.'”

If this weren’t yet another personal attack on a few literacy leaders and potentially significant waste of time and money to navigate the nonsense of this legal move, it would be funny since the SOR movement itself is practicing exactly what the suit accuses Heinemann of doing, “fraudulent marketing and sale of products.”

Let’s start with the foundational argument among SOR advocates that teaching practices must be grounded only in practices supported by experimental/quasi-experimental research published in peer review publications, as argued by The Reading League:

While I think these standards are too narrow for real-world practice, this is in fact the basis upon which SOR advocates (and the substance of the law suit) rest sweeping and misleading claims about a range of discounted practices labeled as either whole language or balanced literacy (SOR advocates both interchange and mischaracterize these terms repeatedly along with misrepresenting other terminology such as “three cueing”).

Further, the SOR movement has adopted an old and inaccurate assertion about “science,” echoing Tom’s “‘it’s been proved.'”

Similar to the reading crisis rhetoric from 1961—when Walcutt announces: “We have said that no further ‘research’ into methods of reading instruction is necessary” (p. 141)—Hanford and Moates proclaimed SOR “settled science” in 2018 (and we must note Moates has a huge market interest in these claims as author of LETRS, see below):

However, the “science” in reading research is not settled, and the SOR movement, as I stated above, is committed to a “deceptive and fraudulent marketing and sale of products and services”; as I have shown repeatedly, the SOR movement is itself grounded in a plan from 2014 to brand “structure literacy” to “help us sell what we do so well.”

That plan has included exaggerated attacks on some reading programs, some literacy leaders, and some literacy practices while simultaneously endorsing different programs and some practices that are also not supported by SOR’s mandate for a narrow type of “science.”

For example, in a literature review of the current status of SOR from 2022, note that practices either ineffective or lacking scientific support include those rejected by SOR and those embraced by SOR; while this lit review identified “three cueing” as not supported by science as SOR advocates claims, it also lists decodable texts and multisensory approaches (such as Orton-Gillingham), practices and programs aggressively supported by SOR advocates and legislation:

That pattern is standard practice in the SOR movement, including the false attack on teacher education and teacher knowledge being used as “science” as bad faith bullying to sell LETRS.

LETRS falls into the “ineffective and currently unsupported” category as well since only a few studies exist, showing no improvement in student reading.

The SOR movement has also adopted slogans not supported by science (95% of students can be proficient readers) and practices that inflate test scores, target and harm marginalized groups of students, but are not supported by research (grade retention, which seems to be the sole SOR policy impacting test scores).

The “science of” era of education reform is not about improving instruction or student learning. The movement uses “science” as a Trojan horse for de-professionalizing teaching and teachers (selling scripted curriculum) while clearing market space for a new round of “fraudulent marketing and sale of products.”

The law suit is another example showing this “science of” education reform movement is more bad faith bullying than a credible avenue to better supporting teachers and better serving students as readers and learners.

Once again, don’t buy it.

[1] See We Teach English in Times of Perpetual Crisis: Selling a Story of Reading (and Literacy) [Webinar Companion Post]: “Also when I address the SOR movement, I am not contesting reading science or valid concerns about reading instruction or reading proficiency by students. I am challenging the media story being sold.”

[2] I reject adopting any reading programs and maintain that the reading-program-merry-go-round is the problem, not the solution to reading achievement.

Recommended: The “Multiverse” of the Science of Reading (NEA)

November 23, 2024 plthomasedd

The “Multiverse” of the Science of Reading

Education, education reform, Educational Research, Lou LaBrant, reading, Science of Reading, Teacher Autonomy

We Teach English in Times of Perpetual Crisis: Selling a Story of Reading (and Literacy) [Webinar Companion Post]

November 23, 2024 plthomasedd

Click here to register: https://forms.gle/mvvs7etQAg7RESxs8

See the webinar presentation HERE.

Webinar recording:

In 1947, writing in NCTE’s Elementary English (which became Language Arts), Lou LaBrant announced, “This is not the time for the teacher of any language to follow the line of least resistance, to teach without the fullest possible knowledge of the implications of his medium” (p. 94).

The 2020s have made this call even more important for teachers of language K-12 in the US because of the rise of censorship and curriculum gag orders along with legislative mandates including scripted curriculum as part of the “science of reading” (SOR) movement.

Here, I want to focus on the SOR movement as another cycle of the Reading War, one that threatens the professionalism and autonomy of all teachers at every level.

Those Reading War cycles have included:

1940s: What Shall We Do About Reading Today?: Looking Back to See Now More Clearly
1960s: Reading Crisis 1961: “[N]o Further ‘Research’ into Methods of Reading Is Necessary”
1990s: Back to the Future of Reading Instruction: 1990s Edition
2000s: Big Lies of Education: National Reading Panel (NRP)
2018: The SOR movement driven by media (traditional journalism and podcasts) and political mandates

Teachers must recognize that Reading War cycles tend to be about ideology, market concerns (reading programs), and political agendas, but not grounded in credible evidence or well focused on the needs of students or the professionalism of teachers.

Also when I address the SOR movement, I am not contesting reading science or valid concerns about reading instruction or reading proficiency by students. I am challenging the media story being sold:

Aukerman, M. (2022, November 23). The science of reading and the media: Is reporting biased? Literacy Research Association. https://literacyresearchassociation.org/stories/the-science-of- reading-and-the-media-is-reporting-biased/

Further, teachers at all levels must be familiar with the key issues for misleading and even inaccurate claims within the SOR movement (again distinct from reading science and a broad base of research over a century):

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
“No Excuses” Ideology/ Anecdotes
“Bad Teacher” Myth
“Miracle” Sleight of Hand
Guessing/ Three-Cueing
Balanced Literacy/ Whole Language
National Reading Panel (NRP)
Teacher Education/ LETRS
Grade Retention
Cognitive Science
Dyslexia

Despite many of the claims made in this media story being misleading or false, the story is very compelling for the public, especially parents. For example, a poll, Reading Education Messaging: Findings and Recommendations from an Online Poll of K-5 Parents in America, shows a disturbing pattern:

The media claim about reading proficiency (which is false because of the confusing categories in NAEP testing) actually changes parental opinion from positive to negative.

“Basic,” not “proficient,” in NAEP is at grade level; therefore, instead of about 2/3 of students struggling to read, the closer statistic is about 1/3 (and this has been a flat data point for 30+ years, which suggests a norm of reading proficiency and not some recent crisis):

More broadly, the phonics agenda in the Reading War is driven by the same conservative ideology as book bans.

One example is the advocacy of the Gablers in the 1980s, featured in a article in Texas Monthly:

But the Gablers also feel that even those students who learn to read through intensive phonics, memorize their ‘times tables,’ diagram sentences perfectly, and win spelling bees and math contests must still cope with an educational system that is geared to undermining their morals, their individuality, their pride in America, and their faith in God and the free enterprise system. Much of this corrosive work is accomplished through textbooks in history, social sciences, health, and homemaking.

The Gablers also targeted textbooks in their crusade similar to the book bans and misguided attacks on some reading programs:

Norma and Mel Gabler entered the field of textbook reform twenty years ago, after their son Jim came home from school disturbed at discrepancies between the 1954 American history text his eleventh-grade class was using and what his parents had taught him. The Gablers compared his text to history books printed in 1885 and 1921 and discovered differences. “Where can you go to get the truth?” Jim asked.

Since states have been moving toward reading legislation and programs labeled as SOR since around 2012, the evidence is mounting that these misleading and ideological claims of a reading crisis have not (and cannot) deliver on their promises. [1]

But possibly more troubling than the failure to improve student reading proficiency is that these legislative commitments are wasting taxpayers’ money on another baseless Reading War that serves the interests of the education marketplace: “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” (Aydarova, 2023, p. 570).

The market motives behind SOR, in fact, were openly expressed a decade ago in a post by IDA, Structured Literacy: A New Term to Unify Us and Sell What We Do:

At its July 1^st 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.

Structured literacy is more a marketing term than a proven way to address the manufactured reading crisis; further, structured literacy accomplishes two outcomes that are counter-educational—de-professionalizing teachers and whitewashing the reading curriculum. [2]

The SOR movement grounded in structured literacy driven by efforts to curb teacher autonomy is being admitted also by the Evidence Advocacy Center, as reported in New Initiative Is Creating Evidence-Based Guidelines for Educators:

In the EAC’s plan for the transformation of the profession into an evidence-based system, educators will relinquish certain freedoms — notably the leeway to employ ineffective practices — but will gain guidance that empowers them to fulfill their original purpose by profoundly impacting the future of students, families and communities. The alternative is to continue rearranging the deck chairs under the guise of education reform.

Since over 75% of public school teachers are women (Report on the Condition of Education 2024), all educators, regardless of content area or grade level, must recognize the threat of “relinquish certain freedoms,” eeriely similar to arguments posed to Handmaid’s in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale:

There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. in the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it….

We were a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice. (pp. 24, 25)

While these efforts are about power and control, the SOR movement includes a harmful pattern of journalists taking on the role of “watchdogs,” as Hanford claims for the Education Writers Association.

Finally, then, the SOR movement is not just another Reading War, and the SOR movement is far more than an immediate concern for beginning reading teachers and teacher educators.

This movement is another threat to teaching as a profession, an organized agenda that seeks ways to de-professionalize teachers while serving market and political goals at the expense of teaching and learning.

Notes

[1] See for example:

Aydarova, E. (2023). ‘Whatever you want to call it”: Science of reading mythologies in the education reform movement. Harvard Educational Review, 93(4), 556–581, https://doi.org10.17763/1943-5045-93.4.556
Chaffin, M., Riesco, H.S., Hacket-Hill, K., Collet, V., Grizzle, M.Y., Y Warren, J. (2023). “Phonics monkeys” and “real life reading”: Heteroglossic views of a state reading initiative. Literacy Research and Instruction, 1–22. https://doi.org10.1080/19388071.2023.2271085
Reinking, D., Hruby, G.G., & Risko, V.J. (2023). Legislating phonics: Settle science of political polemic? Teachers College Record. https://doi.org/10.1177/01614681231155688
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

[2] See for example:

Chaffin, M., Riesco, H.S., Hacket-Hill, K., Collet, V., Grizzle, M.Y., Y Warren, J. (2023). “Phonics monkeys” and “real life reading”: Heteroglossic views of a state reading initiative. Literacy Research and Instruction, 1–22. https://doi.org10.1080/19388071.2023.2271085
Khan, F., Peoples, L.Q., & Foster, L. (2022) Lessons in (in)equity: An evaluation of cultural responsiveness in elementary ELA curriculum. The Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative, New York University. https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/2022-10/Lessons%20in%20%28In%29Equity%20FINAL%20ACCESSIBLE.10.31.22.pdf
Rigell, A., Banack, A., Maples, A., Laughter, J., Broemmel, A., Vines, N., & Jordan, J. (2022, November). Overwhelming whiteness: A critical analysis of race in a scripted reading curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 54(6), 852–870, https://doi.org10.1080/00220272.2022.2030803.
Hoffman, J.V., Hikida, M., & Sailors, M. (2020). Contesting science that silences: Amplifying equity, agency, and design research in literacy teacher preparation. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S255–S266. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353

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

Reading Crisis 1961: “[N]o Further ‘Research’ into Methods of Reading Is Necessary”

November 15, 2024 plthomasedd

“After half a century of [progressive reform and expanding public education],” wrote Jacques Barzun in Tomorrow’s Illiterates: The State of Reading Instruction Today, “we who run businesses, carry on professions, work for the government, or engage in teaching itself are forced to admit that illiteracy is still with us” (xii-xiii).

This was published in 1961, and the cause of illiteracy Barzun confronts may sound familiar to those of us in the 2020s: “the loss of the proper pedagogy in the lower schools…, the goal of seeing whole words instead of letters” (p. xiii).

Barzun pleads, “the citizen who is interested (and who has managed to learn to read) [may have their] hair [stand] on end at hearing what folly has been condoned as educational theory during the past thirty years” (p. xiv).

Along with Barzuns dismay about how reading was taught and what passed for “reading theory,” he mused at the end of his Introduction: “Shall we need another book like the present one, fifty years hence, about the misdeeds of the new simplifiers?” (p. xvi).

Considering Barzun lived to be 102, dying in 2012, he may have had what little hair remained stand on end to watch the reading crisis return in the 1990s (the national meltdown over whole language) and 2000s (the National Reading Panel era). And if he could have just held on a bit longer, the current “science of reading” (SOR) onslaught that takes its playbook from the very volume that includes Barzun’s hand wringing now some 60-plus years ago.

Despite the authors’ lamentations in this volume (along with others in the 1950s and 1960s that held forth again progressive education and whole word reading instruction), neither the US nor the world collapsed due to misguided reading instruction or theory.

Shouting “reading crisis!” has proven to be more hobby that credible pronouncement, and ironically, if folks would find the time to read a bit (I recommend this book, b the way), it doesn’t take long to see the arguments as mostly nonsense and wild overreactions grounded in ideologies.

Let me show you a few examples beyond Barzun’s smug and sensationalistic Introduction.

Chapter I: The Reading Problem in America, Charles Child Walcutt [click for a selection of screen shots]

Walcutt, editor of the volume and also author of Chapter VII, offers and opening chapter that takes a full swing at announcing a reading crisis as well as casting plenty of blame. Much of the chapter should sound eerie similar to those familiar with Emily Hanford’s journalism and podcast, patterns that pervade the entire volume.

Walcutt starts by showing evidence of claims of a reading crisis (somehow avoiding credible evidence of a reading crisis). This is particularly interesting because of the strong connections made about low literacy, special needs, and what children are suited for higher education and what children should move from high school into the workforce. Of note, Walcutt mentions Samuel Orton (of Orton-Gillingham), but provides no citation, when discussing disability (p. 8)

If nothing else, the certainty exhibited by Walcutt framed against how much of that certainty comes off as deeply misguided, and by today’s standards, offensive and dehumanizing should give all of us pause about our own certainty and blanket claims.

However, note that immediately follow Walcutt’s arguments about low literacy, he immediately shares a single example of a school that excels at teaching reading! Yes, even in the 1960s, there were claims of miracle schools: “In a school of 700 pupils, there are only 20 with reading problems….We cannot stress too positively that fact that in this school every child learns to read independently in the first grade, unless he is mentally retarded [sic] or disabled”—a percentage oddly close to SOR claims that 90, 95, or 96% of students can be proficient readers (pp. 10-11). [Nowhere is terminology such as “independently” defined or linked to how these claims are verified beyond the claims of the school. We also have no demographics on students or how those students compare to a generalized populations of students.]

We should note that these extraordinary claims have no proof, no scientific research—just claims and anecdotes.

Walcutt does launch into a few pages of “facts,” including data mostly grounded in IQ testing. One example is a reference to the 1940s reading crisis based on the draft for WWII; note that this reading crisis was strongly discredited by literacy scholars as a false attack on progressive education.

Walcutt’s facts also criticize popular commercial reading programs (Macmillan) and associate low literacy with delinquency and low IQ.

Then comes the direct blame, which, again, will sound familiar: “One way to describe the reading problem is to say that it is a teacher problem and —even more—that it is a problem of the teaching of teachers” (p. 18).

And of course: “The assertion that the reading experts do not understand the theory of their system can be demonstrated if we point out the false assumptions, the faulty extrapolations from scientific research, and the absolute contradictions that appear in its central propositions and procedures” (pp. 19-20).

Walcutt then discredits the look-and-say method that he claims dominates reading instruction—although we are left simply to trust that the characterization is both fair and as universally applied as he claims.

Walcutt also traces look-and-say back to Horace Mann, although, again, we must trust this analysis is credible.

Embedded here is a big picture characterization-as-criticism:

This says that reading for meaning has supplanted reading for pronunciation, or even word-recognition, and that some teachers teach only reading for meaning (presumably by whole sentences), ignoring phonics completely on the theory that the child who can read for meaning will pick up his phonics incidentally and without special instruction or effort, but he will read for meaning before he can sound out a word” (p. 31).

In the 1990s, this is the same argument leveled against whole language; today, this is the same argument leveled at balanced literacy.

After Walcutt spends a great deal of time metaphorically discrediting the look-and-say method (an extended bird analogy), he ends melodramatically (but not scientifically): “With this rickety equipment the look-and-say bird has flown for more than thirty years, casting a huge shadow over the lives of our children” (p. 43).

Chapter II: The Nature of Reading Skill, John C. Daniels and Hunter Diack [click for a selection of screen shots]

Daniels and Diack start with exploring different definitions for reading, using another analogy (driving a car). Much of the discussion focuses on concerns about reading through whole word methods, leading to the authors noting their own research on reading errors.

Again, they criticisms seem mostly grounded in disagreements with Dewey and Gestalt psychology. This leads to a discussion of new reading primers, which they criticize as lacking and boring because of efforts to identify and use a necessarily limited number of sight words.

As an artifact of the recurring patterns of the Reading War, this chapter highlights the problems with reading programs and primers grounded in narrow theories and philosophies of reading, but it also demonstrates the complexity of the debates in their final paragraph: “But having said this, we must add that, though the unit of accomplished reading is the word, the phrase, or even the sentence, the unit of learning to read is the letter. These are not two contradictory, conflicting aspects of reading; the one agrees with the other. However, present anxieties about the teaching of reading stem from failures to distinguish between, and indeed actually confusing, these two aspects of the reading process” (p. 67).

Ch. III: Reading Readiness in Theory and Practice, Glenn McCracken [click for a selection of screen shots]

McCracken explains that the New Castle Reading Experiment was published in the book, The Right to Learn, and thus, “Its most important contribution to reading is its proof that the ‘reading readiness’ program is both meaningless and harmful” (p. 71).

This chapter includes a claim that seems common across decades: “Today reading specialists have a long list of reasons why about one third of the public school children can’t read” (p. 80). [Note that despite claims by SOR advocates, NAEP reading scores have been fairly flat with about 30% of students below basic, which is below grade level approximately.]

McCracken represents as well the “poverty is an excuse” faction in the Reading War, arguing: “It is folly to blame poor reading on distracting home influences….Children will learn to read if they are taught to read….If they don’t learn to read it is the fault of the teaching, not the taught” (p. 82).

If fact, McCracken continues, “The reading readiness fad as we have described it here was invented to excuse poor reading instruction by shifting the entire blame to the child….Almost every five-year-old child is ready to learn to read the day he enters school if the reading program is ready for him” (pp. 82, 83).

But, alas, “Reading instructional method in this country is abysmally poor, and blaming the matter on the child is never going to provide any improvement” (p. 84).

Ch. IV: The Whole-Word and Word-Guessing Fallacy, Helen R Lowe [click for a selection of screen shots]

Lowe shares an anecdote about a 28-year-old who holds a high school diploma designated with “Honors”; yet, Arthur cannot read.

Of course, such stories have been highlighted throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries; they are tragic but are none the less anecdotes, proving nothing that can be generalized about how children are taught to read.

Lowe, like the other authors in this volume, has an agenda so as is common in all the eras of the Reading War, their are bait-and-switch tactics, never grounded in valid evidence or claims.

Notable, Lowe recognizes that standardized testing of reading can and was gamed to meet the ways students were taught to read; she accuses reading tests focusing on predicting means that “the best predicters are rated the best readers” (p. 103)

The agenda is to attack, you may be surprised, teaching children to guess at words by using pictures: “How can he learn to read words when he is taught to look and think about pictures?” she ponders (p. 104).

Lowe also mentions Orton (in this volume paired with Gallagher, not Gillingham), again without citation.

Ch. V: Reading: A Therapeutic Tool, Hildred Rawson [click for a selection of screen shots]

Rawson’s chapter demonstrates a few key patterns found in today’s Reading War. First is the tension between teaching reading and how to identify students with special needs such as dyslexia.

Rawson argues that “children with reading disorders are not usually referred to us for examination and treatment until they reach the third grade” because of the look-and-say curriculum.

However, “Children…who have been taught for the first grade…to sound out words—that is, by the phonetic method—approach reading differently. They do not need picture clues” (p. 132).

She calls for phonics-first instruction, and no guessing using pictures, to prevent dyslexia, in fact.

[Ch. VI deals with the claimed link between reading “retardation [sic]” and delinquency.]

Ch. VII: Phonics Systems—Proved and Available, Charles Child Walcutt [click for a selection of screen shots]

Walcutt returns and offers the anchor chapter with the stunning opening line: “We have said that no further ‘research’ into methods of reading instruction is necessary” (p. 141).

The chapter is dedicated to an overview of phonics-based reading programs that, he claims, show that reading research is settled—in 1961.

So here you have essentially the exact same arguments made in 1961 that are being used in the SOR movement.

This is basically a silly book, filled with anecdotes and overstatements. But the SOR movement is no less silly, no less bombastic, and no less futile.

We persist with the same arguments getting us nowhere.

Maybe the problem is the arguments, the silly adult bickering.

Actually, there is no “maybe.”

Tomorrow’s Illiterates: The State of Reading Instruction Today, by Walcutt, Charles Child [click title for access through Internet Archive]

You can access screenshots HERE.

NCTE 2025 Individual Presentation: Recovering Our Reading Dream from a Long Crisis Nightmare

11/21/2025 – 2:45 – 3:15, Mile High Ballroom 1A/1B

Access a PDF of presentation HERE

In 1961, Jacques Barzun in Tomorrow’s Illiterates declared “illiteracy is still with us.” Charles Child Walcutt added: “[N]o further ‘research’ into methods of reading instruction is necessary.” This session examines reading crisis/reform cycles to reconsider the stories told about reading and offer a new approach for reform that serves the needs of students and supports teacher professionalism.

literacy, NCTE, reading, Science of Reading, Teacher Autonomy

2024 NCTE Annual Convention

November 15, 2024 plthomasedd

2024 NCTE Annual Convention

Please join the sessions below.

Also please support Proposed: NCTE Resolution Statement on Teacher Autonomy.

Voting: All NCTE members are invited to attend the Annual Business Meeting, scheduled this year for November 22, 2024, from 5:30–7:00 p.m. ET, and to take part in discussions and vote on resolutions about issues of concern to the profession! Membership must be verified before the start of the meeting.

Sense-of-the-House Motions: These statements reflect the opinion of the majority of members attending the Annual Business Meeting. They may be offered for discussion and action at the Annual Business Meeting. To be considered for deliberation, sense-of-the-house motions must be prepared in writing, must not exceed fifty words, and must be submitted to NCTECommittees@ncte.org, to the attention of the NCTE President or Parliamentarian, by noon ET on the day of the meeting. Such motions, if passed, are advisory to the Executive Committee or other appropriate Council bodies. They do not constitute official Council policy.

Also I am on Bluesky and will be posting there throughout the conference: https://bsky.app/profile/plthomasedd.bsky.social

The “science of reading” movement has promoted a misleading story about reading through the media—reading proficiency is in crisis because teachers do not know how to teach reading and were not properly prepared by teacher education. This opening talk with argue that attacks on BL are grounded in efforts to deprofessionalize teachers.

Roundtable:

Paul Thomas

Reclaiming BL’s Commitment to Serving Individual Student Needs and Teacher Autonomy [click title to access PP]

Thomas will examine an authentic definition of BL as a reading philosophy that centers serving the individual needs of all students. He will examine also the caricatures of guessing and three cueing (MSV), providing attendees scholarly evidence for accurate characterizations of BL as well as deeper understanding of reading proficiency.

Education, reading, Science of Reading

Beware Reading Crisis!: Tomorrow’s Illiterates (1961)

November 5, 2024 plthomasedd

“Considerably more than half, probably 75 per cent, of our young people do not read as they could. At least 35 per cent of them are very seriously [behind].”

Why?

“A national failure in reading instruction which we the authors see as the single major cause of the deterioration of our education system.”

When?

1961

Tomorrow’s Illiterates: The State of Reading Instruction Today, by Walcutt, Charles Child

Note: H/T Ralph Pantozzi

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

Why Has Education Reform Always Failed?: “Straightforward Solutions to Complicated Questions”

August 16, 2024 plthomasedd

[Header Photo by Evan Dennis on Unsplash]

Writing about the fundamental flaw in Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, Andrew Solomon opens with a claim that helps explain why five-decades of intensive education reform has always failed: “There is nothing more alluring in polarized times than straightforward solutions to complicated questions.”

Haidt is an academic and scholar who is having success with public work. His status as scholar should elicit trust in his work—notably more so than public work by journalists (such as Malcolm Gladwell) or pundits (such as a tiresome list of Op-Ed writers at the New York Times).

Yet, as Solomon explains, Haidt’s popular book is, in fact,

a compendium of important and profound insights about contemporary childhood embedded in such wishful lucidity. His twinned basic propositions – that children should have less supervision and more free play, and that they should have less access to social media and some other parts of the internet – have a strong basis. It is likely that his sweeping simplifications will help to move forward much-needed social change; it is unfortunate that the impetus for that change is often grandiose and misleading statements, an endless succession of graphs and footnotes notwithstanding. The word sometimes seems not to be in his vocabulary; the key associated with the question mark seems not to work on his computer. He never lapses into the rhetoric of uncertainty that would serve truth. Nowhere does he refer to the incomprehensibility of social decay. Never does he express uncertainty that it is possible to know the causes of something as complex as the fluctuations in youth mental health, so his remarks allow for almost no contemplation of the exceptions to his propositions.

Since I entered higher education, I have been dedicating most of my work to public scholarship and public commentary (such as this blog); when I publish traditional scholarship, I advocate for those pieces to be open-access.

I have always felt that too much of academic scholarship and research is siloed behind paywalls and almost exclusively discussed at exclusionary professional organization’s conferences.

What good is knowledge when it sits behind a wall between academics/scholars/scientists and the general public?

My introduction to public scholars included reading Joseph Campbell and Howard Zinn when I was quite young and only beginning as an educator, writer, and scholar.

I was drawn to their work well before I discovered that academia mostly frowns on public scholars. Even in 2024, much of my work is casually waved off as “just a blog,” and there really is no mechanism in my university for receiving the sort of proportional credit my public work deserves.

Most of my traditional scholarship is read (maybe) by 10s of people. In 2023, my blog had 139, 000 visitors and 220,000 views. Some of my public work has directly impacted grade retention reform.

However, as Solomon details about Haidt’s thesis, too often what is popular is mostly “straightforward solutions to complicated questions.”

And that leads to what most of my public work necessarily confronts: A century of media, public, and political misrepresentations and misunderstandings about teaching and learning resulting in a fruitless series of education reform cycles.

As Solomon admits, Haidt’s book is grounded in a valid concern about contemporary childhood. But from there, Haidt over-relies on extreme claims not grounded in the evidence (the same sort of mistake found among journalists).

The essential problem here is one that Howard Gardner has examined. Leaders, such as politicians, are most effective when they use black-and-white rhetoric.

In other words, the paradox of public messaging is that what works to compel the public is counter to what works for addressing complex problems.

For several years now, the US has experienced that exact same dynamic in terms of media and political claims about reading instruction that has resulted in reading legislation destined to do more harm than good (except sow the seeds for yet another reading crisis in a few years, which is occurring in England after major reading reform in 2006).

Although grounded in the journalism and podcast of Emily Hanford, the mainstream media remains trapped in “sweeping simplifications” and “grandiose and misleading statements” about reading instruction, reading achievement, and national tests data (NAEP) as represented by Julian Roberts-Grmela’s “Many kids can’t read, even in high school. Is the solution teaching reading in every class?”:

Poor reading skills are a nationwide issue. On the 2022 National Assessment of Education Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card, nearly 70 percent of eighth graders scored below “proficient” and, of those, 30 percent scored “below basic.”

“In a typical classroom that’s about 25 kids, that means about 17 are still struggling to comprehend text at the most foundational level,” said [Natalie] Wexler.

This article again misrepresents NAEP data and allows another journalist make a false overstatement not grounded in fact.

Even if we accept NAEP data as 100% valid, “proficient” is well above grade level, and “basic” represents what Wexler calls “foundational,” grade level reading.

That means in a class of 25, we might have 7-8 students, not 17, struggling to read at grade level.

In other words, the paradox of public messaging is that what works to compel the public is counter to what works for addressing complex problems.

The truth here, however, doesn’t fulfill the crisis rhetoric journalists have committed to despite the evidence otherwise. The truth doesn’t help fuel the reform cycles that feed the education marketplace (such as the US tossing out millions of dollars of reading programs to buy new and different reading programs without any valid evidence that the reading problem is grounded in those reading programs).

So if we return to Solomon’s excellent and nuanced look at Haidt’s work we can better understand that most of education reform is also prompted by valid concerns about student learning (especially reading and math as so-called foundational learning); however, we must also then acknowledge that the claims about the problems and the solutions being offered are yet more “sweeping simplifications” and “grandiose and misleading statements.”

In our free market, regretfully, there is often little money or popularity in nuance, either in detailing problems or providing solutions.

Roberts-Grmela and Wexler are certainly perpetuating extreme over-simplifications about reading that—as Sold a Story has proven—are very compelling for the public.

Like Haidt’s book, however, most of the claims and most of the solutions are fundamentally grounded in misinformation and misunderstanding.

Journalists today, ironically, seem incapable of reading with comprehension themselves, or are simply blinded by the popularity of their misinformation.

In any case, like all of education reform across the past five decades, the current reading reform movement will fail, again, because it is another round of “straightforward solutions to complicated questions.”

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

New Product: Fun-X®

June 26, 2024 plthomasedd

MT Education Products^® is excited to announce Fun-X^®!

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The program is based on the Science of Phonics^®, and what makes the program FUN?

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Images Credit

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Photo by Foto Sushi on Unsplash

Photo by Andrey Zvyagintsev on Unsplash

Photo by Rachel McDermott on Unsplash

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash

Photo by Xavier Mouton Photographie on Unsplash

Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash

Education, education reform, Educational Research, Florida Miracle, grade retention, Grit, growth mindset, reading, Science of Reading

Crisis Rhetoric Fails “Science of” Era of Reading Reform

June 16, 2024 plthomasedd

[Header Photo by Joël de Vriend on Unsplash]

The fall of 2024 will mark year 41 for me as a literacy educator, scholar, and advocate.

About half of that career was spent in K-12 public education in rural Upstate South Carolina, where I was born and live. I have witnessed daily race, social class, and gender inequity at some of the most extreme levels in the US.

At the core of my work as an educator, as well, I have named, challenged, and advocated to correct all forms of inequity. That work has often been in very hostile environments in the South where the power structures deny these inequities exist and persist at calling for traditional values as code for maintaining the status quo.

Also throughout my career as an educator and scholar, I have developed a solid grounding in the history of education and the field of literacy. Having written an educational biography of Lou LaBrant and serving as Council Historian for the National Council of Teachers of English were foundational experiences for that commitment to the history of education.

Further, having begun as an educator in 1984, I have lived and worked my entire career in the high-stakes accountability era of education reform. At every point along the way, I have raised a hand in opposition to this reform paradigm because it is driven by media, the market, and politicians who are more committed to education reform as industry than to serving the needs of our students or honoring the professionalism of America’s teachers, who are more than 70% women.

The “science of reading” movement and the offspring “science of” reform agendas are nothing new, except they are incredibly harmful—notably for the very students some of the advocates use as shields against criticism.

Once again, “science,” “crisis,” and “miracle” are being weaponized to not only label and punish students but also de-professionalize teachers.

One of the most effective and dishonest tactics is the “crisis” claim about reading in the US.

First, this claim lacks a basic understanding of educational testing, and further, the claim is ahistorical.

At least since the 1940s in the US, two facts can be proven: (1) at no point has student reading achievement (“proficiency”) been declared adequate; there has been a perpetual cry of reading “crisis” in every decade by media and political leaders, and (2) throughout the history of US public education, there has been a pervasive so-called “achievement gap” (better referred to as an “opportunity gap”) with marginalized populations of students performing well below average or white and affluent students.

That means that current reading achievement however measured and current “achievement gaps” are not a crisis but a historical and current reality maintained by political negligence.

Since current “science of” advocates have a fetish for misrepresenting and citing NAEP, let’s look at how NAEP in fact proves my point.

Consider Mississippi, the darling of reading reform and media crowning as a “miracle:

At grades 4 and 8 in reading, Black students in MS were BELOW basic (approximately below grade level) at a rate of 51%, about the national rate for Black students.

Note that despite well over a decade of SOR reading reform, the achievement gap for Black students remains about the same as in 1998.

Education and reading reform is not addressing the inequity Black students suffer in MS or anywhere in the US. However, the SOR movement has been doubling down on labeling and punishing Black students through grade retention, which serves to inflate grade 4 scores but not better prepare students.

MS has consistently retained about 9000-12000 students (mostly Black students) since 2014; if SOR policy and instruction were actually working, these retention number should drop or even disappear (since SOR advocates claim to be able to have 95% students reach proficiency).

Weaponizing “science,” “crisis,” and “miracle” are veneers for denying what the actual science and evidence have shown for decades: far more than 60% of measurable student achievement is causally related to out-of-school factors.

And thus, my advocacy for my entire career has been for both social and education reform that focuses on equity and refuses to blame teachers and students for that inequity.

For the past forty-plus years, however, education reform has solely targeted blame on schools, teachers, and students.

Those racially minoritized students and students living in poverty have routinely been characterized by deficit ideology, and reform has sought to “fix” those students by inculcating grit or growth mindset—or simply imposing a systematic phonics regime on those students, treating them all as if they have reading “disorders.”

And if those students don’t perform, retain them (punish them) and label them. Yet, there is never any consequences for the reformers when none of their reform promises are fulfilled (see the charter fiasco in New Orleans).

Hyper-focusing on MS (and Florida) is not just a lie, but a distraction.

Again, let’s look at NAEP:

DODEA (Department of Defense) students are the most successful in reading in the US, but you see almost no media or political coverage of this fact.

Students in military families are often from impoverished backgrounds, yet Black students BELOW basic are at rates of 25% (grade 4) and 18% (grade 8), dramatically less than the national average and MS.

And here is what the media, the market, and politicians refuse to acknowledge: DODEA students have medical care, food security, housing security, and parents with work stability.

Also, DODEA teachers are paid above most public school teachers.

Unlike the false claims about MS, DODEA achievement shows that both in- and out-of-school reform must be addressed for the in-school achievement to rise in authentic ways.

I am tempted to say the real crisis is how media and political leaders mislead the public about education and education reform—as well as demonize students and teachers.

But that is also nothing new.

There is great profit in perpetual crisis so don’t hold your breath that anything will change any time soon.