Category Archives: Science of Reading

2023, Education, education reform, Educational Research, existentialism, reading, Science of Reading, Writing

A Decade of Blogging: 2023 Overview

Spring 1980.

I am sitting in my dorm room of a local junior college looking out the window from the third floor of an ornate but old rock building. On that day, I wrote my first real poem, inspired by e.e. cummings’s “[In just-]” that I had recently read in my speech course with Steve Brannon.

I began playing with letter and word placement while watching students throwing a Frisbee on the dorm lawn, weaving the word “Frisbee” to reveal “free,” “is,” and “be”:

Winter 2023.

This has been my journey across five decades to be a writer. I could have never envisioned as a college student that I would in fact become a writer and that my writer life would primarily be grounded in a WordPress blog.

I start blogging reluctantly at my own blog in 2013, a decade ago. Oddly, 2014 was a peak year until nearly being matched in 2023, which saw almost 219,000 views and about 138,000 visitors.

Over my 22 years in higher education, I have gradually decreased my traditional scholarly work after authoring, co-authoring, editing, or co-editing almost 30 books and dozens of journal articles. Traditional work feels perfomative and hollow, to be honest.

Instead, I prefer public work, activism that has an open-access audience and may better impact how the world of education works.

My social media audience is over 10,000 and my social media traffic is consistent with hundreds of views per day resulting in 10,000-20,000 views per month.

In 2023, for example, my open-access work on grade retention contributed to removing grade retention in Ohio. My primary work on the “science of reading” has maintained an audience with much less satisfying outcomes.

It means a great deal to me to have this space to be a writer, and I appreciate even more my audience of smart, kind, and dedicated folk who often share with me the need to speak up as one avenue of activism.

The top 10 posts of 2023 include the following with links below:

  1. Podcast: What You Can Do: How ‘Sold a Story’ sold us a story ft Dr. Paul Thomas
  2. Which Is Valid, SOR Story or Scholarly Criticism?: Checking for the “Science” in the “Science of Reading”
  3. Open Letter: To Curriculum Coordinators in South Carolina School Districts, Diane Stephens
  4. Does the “Science of Reading” Fulfill Social Justice, Equity Goals in Education? (pt. 1)
  5. The Myth of the Bad Teacher: 2023
  6. Reading Programs Always Fail Students and Teachers
  7. Simplistic View of Reading Fails Children, Reading, and Science
  8. Open Letter to the Biden Administration, USDOE, and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona
  9. Fact Checking SCDOE Science of Reading Infographic
  10. How Media Misinformation Became “Holy Text”: The Anatomy of the SOR Movement

While I remain primarily committed to my public work here on this blog, 2023 (and 2022) was a fruitful time for producing traditional scholarship that is open-access; let me share those again here:

Writing is a solitary venture with an urge to speak to a community beyond the Self. Often it is a lonely act, and too often, it feels pointless (we writers are also an anxious bunch prone to depression and such).

And it is now cool to relentless trash all social media.

However, the virtual community I have built over the past decade through the blog and social media is incredible and important.

My existential leanings allow me not just to survive, but thrive.

Remember, the struggle itself to the heights is enough to fill a person’s heart. In this struggle, yes, I am happy.

The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus

Education, education reform, Educational Research, No Excuses Reform, reading, Science of Reading, Social Context Reform

What I Believe: Education Reform (and SOR) Edition

Many educational philosophers have set forth relatively brief “What I Believe” statements, such as John Dewey. Also common is asking perspective teachers to express their beliefs about teaching, learning, students, assessment, etc.

Teachers are disproportionately practical and often balk at discussions of educational philosophy. But I argue that if we fail to express and examine our beliefs in the context of our practices, we are apt to behave in ways that contradict those beliefs.

As well, many of the important people in educational thought are consistently misunderstood and misrepresented (Dewey becomes the caricature of “learning by doing,” for example, the simplistic project method confronted by Lou LaBrant); therefore, the need to state in direct and somewhat accessible ways exactly what someone believes can be important, especially in the context of public discourse and debate.

As a critical educator and scholar, I find myself often an alien in almost all discussions and debates on education, not finding a home with any mainstream ideologies. Folk on many sides accuse me of being on the other side, and much of the debate is mired in false assumptions and accusations.

Many years ago when I was speaking in Arkansas about my then current book on poverty and education, some nasty “no excuses” advocates significantly misrepresented me in Education Next. Despite the author admitting the characterization wasn’t fair, the false attack remains in the article to this day.

That pattern of false assumptions has repeated itself in the “science of reading” (SOR) debate in part because SOR as reading reform is a subset of the larger 40-year accountability reform movement that I have long opposed: Fix the students by fixing the teachers, and fix the teachers by fixing the programs they are required to teach (with fidelity or as a script); all policed by standardized tests (that we know are biased by race, class, and gender).

The problem for me is that I oppose both the status quo and that standard reform paradigm, and my position garners me false attacks. The position, however, is expressed well in a work I co-edited almost a decade ago: Social context reform: A pedagogy of equity and opportunity.

The description of that work, I think, has an excellent and brief explanation:

Currently, both the status quo of public education and the “No Excuses” Reform policies are identical. The reform offers a popular and compelling narrative based on the meritocracy and rugged individualism myths that are supposed to define American idealism. This volume will refute this ideology by proposing Social Context Reform, a term coined by Paul Thomas which argues for educational change within a larger plan to reform social inequity—such as access to health care, food, higher employment, better wages and job security.

Also in our Introduction (which you can read here), we included a couple foundational paragraphs from my blogging in 2011:

“No Excuses” Reformers insist that the source of success and failure lies in each child and each teacher, requiring only the adequate level of effort to rise out of the circumstances not of her/his making. As well, “No Excuses” Reformers remain committed to addressing poverty solely or primarily through education, viewed as an opportunity offered each child and within which … effort will result in success.

Social Context Reformers have concluded that the source of success and failure lies primarily in the social and political forces that govern our lives. By acknowledging social privilege and inequity, Social Context Reformers are calling for education reform within a larger plan to reform social inequity—such as access to health care, food security, higher employment along with better wages and job security. (Thomas, 2011b, emphasis in the original)

Mainstream education reform is in-school only, and it makes demands on individual students and teachers, seeks the “right” instruction, the “right” program, and the “right” tests. It feeds what I consider to be racist and classist ideologies such as “grit” and growth mindset because everything depends on individual choices, standards, and behaviors (poverty, they say, is an excuse).

Simply stated, until social and school inequities are addressed, in-school only reform will always fail and continue to feed the crisis/reform cycle we have been mired in like Groundhog Day since A Nation at Risk.

When I show that SOR is a deeply misleading and doomed-to-fail reform movement, I am not endorsing the status quo; in fact, I have been fighting the literacy and school status quo since August 1984 when I entered the classroom.

I don’t really believe, I know that US society is criminally inequitable for children, amplified by social class, race, and gender.

I also know that formal schooling tends to amplify, not ameliorate, that inequity—and one of the greatest forces perpetuating inequity is the education reform movement grounded in accountability based on standardized testing.

I also know that petty adult fights about the “right” instruction or the “right” programs is always at the expense of a much more important question: How can we serve the needs of each and every student both in their lives and in their learning?

The false choice being presented between the status quo and education reform is a distraction from the work we should be doing (a distraction like the manufactured religion in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle).

Both the status quo of formal education and the education reform movement are the work of authority, not the sort of radical change children and democracy deserve.

In the immortal words of John Mellencamp: “I fight authority, authority always wins.”

Recommended

When Exceptional Publicly Funded Schools Are Not a Miracle, and Why

Education, Educational Research, Equity, race, racism, reading, Science of Reading

“Their Remedies Are Part of the Disease”: SOR Erodes Equity in Education [Updated]

But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it.
Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man under Socialism”

The current Reading War, the “science of reading” (SOR) movement, fits into the accountability era of education reform spurred by A Nation at Risk.

The reform paradigm includes rhetoric of “crisis” and “miracle,” and the reform itself tends to be legislation-based and in-school only with the focus of reform centered on students, teachers, curriculum/standards, tests, and instruction.

The SOR reform movement is essentially conservative (a subset of the accountability era best represented by education reform under George W. Bush [Texas, NCLB] and Jeb Bush [Florida]) and another “bad teacher” narrative.

Since the SOR movement has successfully prompted state-level reading legislation across the US, the consequences of highly prescriptive mandates and bans are being witnessed, notably the increase of structured literacy programs that are scripted curriculum.

The most troubling irony of the SOR movement and the resulting legislation is that despite claims among SOR advocates that the reading crisis disproportionately impacts minoritized and marginalized students (a historical fact of all aspects of education in the US for over a century), evidence is showing SOR-based mandates and programs are even worse for that very population, or as Oscar Wilde eloquently puts it, “their remedies are part of the disease.”

Consider the following posts and also recent research and analyses addressing how SOR is failing social justice and equity goals for the students who need that most:

My Posts and Scholarship

Thomas, P.L. (2023). The “Science of Reading,” Education Faddism, and the Failure to Honor the Intellectual Lives of All Children: On Deficit Lenses and Ignoring Class and Race Stereotyping. Voices in the Middle, 30(3), 17-21. https://library.ncte.org/journals/vm/issues/v30-3/32439

Orange: Teaching Reading not Simply Black-and-White

Does the “Science of Reading” Fulfill Social Justice, Equity Goals in Education? (pt. 1) 

America Dishonors MLK By Refusing to Act on Call for Direct Action (pt. 2)

Scripted Curriculum Fails Diversity, Students, and Teachers: SOR Corrupts Social Justice Goals (pt. 3) 

Research

Teaching Phonemic and Phonological Awareness to Children Who Speak African American English

Lessons in (In)Equity: An Evaluation of Cultural Responsiveness in Elementary ELA 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. 10.1080/00220272.2022.2030803

“Whatever You Want to Call It”: Science of Reading Mythologies in the Education Reform Movement, Elena Aydarova, Harvard Educational Review (2023) 93 (4): 556–581. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-93.4.556

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

“Not enough science in the ‘science of reading”’?: Missing the Warnings in Frankenstein, Again

[Header Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash]

Science as a field or method is neither a neutral good nor a neutral bad.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein powerfully unpacks the moral complications of science in what many believe is the first work of science fiction (which perceptively and critically interrogated science in its early evolution).

Victor Frankenstein embodies the frailties and very human limitations of science as a human behavior. And The Monster animates the horrifying potential dangers of science conducted by morally weak or bankrupt humans.

Consider first the responsibility inherent in The Creator for The Creature (The Monster):

A rich theme running through Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is responsibility. In a straightforward—even didactic—way, the novel chronicles the devastating consequences for an inventor and those he loves of his utter failure to anticipate the harm that can result from raw, unchecked scientific curiosity. The novel not only explores the responsibility that Victor Frankenstein has for the destruction caused by his creation but also examines the responsibility he owes to him….

Victor experiences the two basic meanings of the word responsibility. He creates the creature (he causes it to exist), and therefore he has at least some responsibility for what the creature goes on to do. As the creature’s maker, Victor also has both a duty to others to keep them safe from his creation and, Mary seems to be saying, a duty to his creation to ensure that his existence is worthwhile. We will turn to these two ideas now—responsibility for and responsibility to.

Traumatic Responsibility, Josephine Johnston

Next, think about the role of science as simply a tool of the scientist, too easily distracted by their own missionary zeal and hubris, and thus, apt to fail to ground their work in moral and ethical boundaries:

Victor’s crime is not pursuing science but in failing to consider the well-being of others and the consequences of his actions. I contend also that Mary’s great work is a tale not about the dangers of a man’s quest for knowledge but about the ethics of his failure to attempt to anticipate and take responsibility for the results of that quest. There is a strong link between Victor’s failure of empathy for his creature and the particular kind of hubris that allows for the discarding of other people’s lives in service to an ambition. This failure of empathy is closely connected to the moral cowardice of refusing to take responsibility for one’s actions or for the outcomes derived from one’s research….

He undertakes his research in a spirit of self-aggrandizement: it’s not knowledge he seeks but power and renown, and this ambition leads him to become far more of a monster than the creature he creates….

As soon as he achieves his obsession, he rejects the accomplishment, and catastrophe results.

Frankenstein Reframed; or, The Trouble with Prometheus, Elizabeth Bear

Science has a long history of being a veneer for human flaws (sexism and racism masked by IQ as a scientific measure, for example) and being literally weaponized for military conquest (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example).

The US has a baffling and often contradictory relationship with science since in one context many will reject solid science (Covid vaccinations) and then embrace another “science” in the unchallenged rhetoric of media and political storytelling (the “science of reading” [SOR] movement).

One scientist at the center of the SOR movement, Mark Seidenberg, not only wrote a book on the cognitive science of reading but also has testified and advocated for state reading legislation grounded in SOR.

Seidenberg now seems poised to retreat from The Monster he helped create like Dr. Frankenstein himself.

Back in 2020, writing with co-authors in Reading Research Quarterly, Seidenberg offered an odd confession considering his advocacy for SOR policy: “Our concern is that although reading science is highly relevant to learning in the classroom setting, it does not yet speak to what to teach, when, how, and for whom at a level that is useful for teachers [emphasis added].” [1]

And now in late 2023 after nearly every state has adopted some form of new or revised SOR-based reading legislation, Seidenberg seems to be in full and eager retreat (even as he continues to cling to misinformation about a reading crisis and garbled blame launched at whole language and balanced literacy); he admits there is “[n]ot enough science in the ‘science of reading,'” in fact.

This talk notes that the SOR movement isn’t the same as reading science and even states that the SOR story is overly simplistic and grounded in outdated research (some may notice that many of us in literacy made these same claims in the very beginning of the SOR movement, but we have been repeatedly attacked and discredited).

Now that SOR has “won” and the accountability shoe is on their foot, SOR advocates are laying the groundwork like Seidenberg to avoid any responsibility (sound familiar?); see this from Emily Hanford for EWA, who announced the role of journalists as “watchdogs” who must police the incompetent field of reading teachers:

Hanford encouraged reporters not to write stories two years from now with a simple narrative of whether science of reading failed [2], if test scores don’t suddenly skyrocket. Changing systems is hard, she said. 

Journalists, she said, have control over the narrative. 

“Keep your eyes on this one, and don’t let this one go,” Hanford said. “Reporters did, I think, largely turn away from how kids learn to read. And I think that’s part of how we ended up in the situation we’re in now. We get to be the watchdogs. We get to be the ones who can contribute to what happens.”

SOR is essentially the law of the land and drives what schools are adopting and implementing; therefore, all this backpedaling and caution are likely because the preliminary results are not very promising.

England passed sweeping phonics-centric legislation in 2006, but early research and recent PISA outcomes suggest the promises of systematic phonics for all students are misleading stories at best.

Here in the US, a working paper examining SOR policy in California also shows that claims SOR will result in 90% of students achieving reading proficiency is a story we are being sold (that study reveals about 1/3 of students reached proficiency, the same percentage called a crisis by SOR advocates).

SOR advocates have created a monster in the form of misguided and overly prescriptive reading legislation, a monster stitched together from a series of false stories about a reading crisis, reading programs and theories failing children, and reading teachers not knowing reading science. That monster also includes unrealistic promises that will never be met, and thus, SOR will lead to another reading crisis in five or ten years (just as the NCLB/NRP years led to the SOR reading crisis).

SOR advocates are already running, but they can’t hide.

SOR has many Dr. Frankensteins and many Dr. Frankenstein wanna-be-s who have all created monsters in the form of state legislation based on false stories but with “[n]ot enough science in the ‘science of reading.'”

This is their monster—and their responsibility.

[1] 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

[2] Please note that Hanford has made a career doing exactly what she warns other journalists not to do—perpetuate a “simple narrative” about reading failure and the blame for that failure.

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

UK PISA 2022 Results Offer Cautionary Tale for US Reading Reform

From the SAT and National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in the US to Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), student test scores tend to prompt over-reactions in the media and among political leaders.

Even Finland, recently the Golden Country for educational outcomes, now finds itself with the release of PISA 2022 facing headlines like this: PISA 2022: Performance in Finland collapses, but remains above average.

However, the best lesson from PISA 2022 for the US is England (UK), especially in the context of the “science of reading” (SOR) movement driving state-level reading legislation across the country:

First, for context, England implemented phonics-centered reading policy in 2006 that rejected balanced literacy and parallels in most ways the elements of SOR-based reading legislation in the US. Research on those policies shows that students have received systematic phonics for almost two decades now, but that outcomes have not produced the promises of that reform.

UK PISA scores in reading, none the less, rank below the US along with Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Ireland; as well, the UK suffered a large score decrease in the wake of Covid:

While how reading is taught, what reading theory is embraced, and what reading programs are being implemented vary significantly across these countries, they all have one thing in common—perpetual reading crisis.

In fact, since A Nation at Risk, the US has endured several cycles of education crisis and reform that often hyper-focuses on reading (notably the impact of the National Reading Panel in No Child Left Behind).

Yet, none of these reforms have fulfilled promised outcomes, just as we are witnessing in the UK.

PISA 2022 and England’s reading results, then, offer some lessons we have refused to acknowledge about reading and education reform:

  • Education reform that exclusively implements in-school-only reform is guaranteed to fail. The value-added methods (VAM) era under Obama revealed that teacher impact on measurable student achievement is only 1-14%, and NAEP data show that the most successful schools in the country are Department of Defense (DoDEA) schools where the inequity of children’s lives are mitigated by access to healthcare, stable housing, food security, etc.
  • Media coverage and political rhetoric proclaiming “crisis” have repeatedly misidentified the barriers to reading proficiency and teaching reading, and thus, have resulted in policy that doesn’t address those roots causes. As the UK shows, making promises that are not fulfilled only further fuels cycles of crisis and reform. Currently in the US, SOR advocates are promising 90% of students will be at grade level proficiency; however, a recent working paper on reading reform in California show only about 1/3 of students as proficient after SOR implementation, the same percentage that media has used to claim a reading crisis and a far cry from 90%.
  • PISA is a measure of 15-years-old students (see also NAEP LTT data), which offers a way to evaluate misleading short-term score gains that are more mirage than miracle. In the US, states such as Florida and Mississippi demonstrate that while grade 4 scores in reading can be inflated, that learning isn’t real, and by middle and high school, the improvements have vanished. Thus, there are no miracles and no silver bullets in education reform.

Whether NAEP or PISA, standardized test scores are less about learning and teaching but more about the incredible inequity in the lives and schooling of children.

That inequity is no crisis; that inequity is a historical fact, especially in the US where we do not have the political will to confront both the out-of-school and in-school influences on teaching and learning.

If we are concerned about the disproportional vulnerable populations of students who routinely test well below the many different criteria for reading proficiency—and we should—reading and education reform must start with addressing inequity in the lives and education of all children.

Reading theories and reading programs are neither the problems nor the solutions to increasing student reading proficiency.

The real reading crisis in the US and internationally is the refusal by those with power to read what test scores actually show us—and the failure to act in ways that can and will make attainable gains in the best interest of children, teachers, and each nation.

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

Media Misreads Reading Science (Again)

For more than five years, mainstream media has been obsessed with two false but compelling stories: (1) there is a national reading crisis caused by balanced literacy programs that rely on three cueing, and (2) the solution is the “science of reading” (SOR).

So it is no surprise that a working paper on the outcomes from a right-to-read lawsuit in California has prompting immediate high-profile coverage in The Hechinger Report and The New York Times.

Before I examine the paper itself, let’s remind ourselves of two foundational aspects of the SOR movement that is primarily media- and politically based.

First, The Reading League has established what counts as “scientific”:

Second, advocates for SOR instruction such as NCTQ promise that SOR policy and practices will result in 90% of students reading at grade level proficiency:

Reading Foundations: Technical Report

If we maintain the essential foundations established by the SOR movement itself, we must conclude that the working paper itself should garner no media coverage because it fails to meet the standard of “scientific” and that even if we consider the findings of the paper credible, SOR policy has significantly failed in CA:

Now I want to unpack why the paper should never be covered at this level and with such a positive spin by journalists (including within the paper itself).

The most important issue is that a working paper is not peer-reviewed or published, thus not “scientific” per expectations identified above:

About EdWorking Papers

And as noted by Barshay: “The working paper, ‘The Achievement Effects of Scaling Early Literacy Reforms,’ was posted to the website of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University on Dec. 4, 2023. It has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and may still be revised.”

Next, since there is a great deal of misinformation in the paper about NAEP and literacy, we should be concerned that the authors have backgrounds in social studies and economics, not literacy:

For scholars and journalists, not knowing enough to know what you don’t know can erode the credibility of research and journalism. This paper represents misrepresentations far too common in both research and media—misunderstanding NAEP reading proficiency:

Since “Basic” and not “Proficient” approximates grade level reading proficiency, NAEP data show that about 2 out of 3 students are at or above proficiency—not 1 out of 3.

Whether or not the US has a reading crisis and how scientific research can address reading proficiency in the US is negatively impacted by this simple fact: There is no standard metric for “proficiency” in reading, and NAEP along with each state sets the cut scores for proficiency differently.

Another misrepresentation or oversimplification in the paper is the failure to define clearly what counts as SOR as well as recycling oversimplified characterizations of whole language and balanced literacy:

At the center of misrepresenting reading theory and practices, this paper again significantly skews both what three cueing is and how it has or hasn’t impacted reading proficiency. [1]

The paper acknowledges two important points often misrepresented in the media: the Mississippi “miracle” is more story than science, and the last twenty years include research showing little to no positive impact from SOR policies grounded in NCLB, Reading First, and NRP:

Yet despite the high standard SOR has set for reading proficiency and the minimal gains shown in this paper, the authors slip into advocacy for SOR:

The paper lacks a clear definition of what counts as SOR (except it appears anything not including three cueing counts) [2] or reading proficiency, and skirts over that the policy implemented in CA includes far more than SOR literacy practices (suggesting any gains could be more from extra funding and other practices):

Media’s outsized coverage of this paper also raises questions about outliers and selective coverage.

The paper again notes a history of SOR practices not resulting in promised gains:

However, neither the paper nor mainstream media choose to focus on substantial evidence from England about failed SOR policies over almost two decades, and one must wonder why there isn’t the same media coverage for research on high-volume reading that has been peer-reviewed and published: The Effects of Bookworms Literacy Curriculum on Student Achievement in Grades 2-5.

The paper’s caveats also deserve far more emphasis than the findings:

Again, decades of research and contemporary examples from MS and FL have shown repeatedly that raising reading scores in the short term and early grades almost never continues into middle school, and thus are mirages, not miracles.

Finally, the paper represents two significant problems with so-called high-quality research in education: (1) using metrics such as “X [time] of learning” and (2) judging policy and practice in terms of “cost effective” (one researcher, again, has an economics background):

Finally, then, if we circle back to the standards and promises within the SOR movement, this working paper should not be covered at all by media (a working paper is more press release than science), but if anything, the results signal a significant failure of SOR practices to meet the 9 of 10 students reaching reading proficiency.

The media coverage of this working paper could be considered much ado about nothing except it will serve to continue the manufactured crisis campaign about reading that is ultimately, and again, mis-serving children, teachers, and the promises of public education.

[1] See the following:

[2] Since no standard exists for what counts as SOR practices, many states and schools seem to cherry pick what to ban and what to implement. For example, three cueing is often banned, but state and schools implement practices and programs also not supported by science such as LETRS training for teachers, grade retention, decodable texts, and multi-sensory (O-G) programs; see Teacher Prep Review: Strengthening Elementary Reading Instruction (NCTQ) and The Science of Reading: A Literature Review:

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

Lost in Translation: Science of Reading Edition

When Anders Ericsson, an internationally renowned cognitive psychologist, died in 2020, a New York Times article included as a subhead: “His research helped inspire ‘Outliers,’ Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book on the keys to excelling.”

In short, the general public was more aware of Gladwell’s popularized version of Ericsson’s work than Ericsson, and likely, nearly no one in the general public had read Ericsson’s scholarship.

As a result, Ericsson penned a clarification that includes a key point:

Although I accept that the process of writing an engaging popular article requires considerable simplification, I think it is essential that the article does not contain incorrect statements and misinformation. My primary goal with this review is to describe several claims in Jaffe’s article that were simply false or clearly misleading and then discuss how APS might successfully develop successful methods for providing research summaries for non-specialists that are informative and accurately presents the major views of APS members and Fellows. At the very least they should not contain factually incorrect statements and avoid reinforcing existing misconceptions in the popular media.

The Danger of Delegating Education to Journalists: Why the APS Observer Needs Peer Review When Summarizing New Scientific Developments

Ericsson is confronting an essential problem when journalists and mainstream media seek ways to translate scholarship, research, and science into accessible and engaging media for the public. Journalists prioritize narratives, stories, as the primary mode to accomplish that translation.

Several months ago, I thought again about Ericsson’s valid concerns about Gladwell’s very popular but reductive Outliers:

[An article by Jaffe] goes on to state that “Ericsson and his colleagues found in a 1993 study that professional musicians had accumulated about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice over the course of a decade. The results became the basis of Ericsson’s deliberate practice theory of elite performance, also called the 10,000 hour rule” (Jaffe, 2012, p. 13). With these two sentences Jaffe reinforces misconceptions in some popularized books and internet blogs that incorrectly infer a close connection between deliberate practice and the “10,000 hour rule”.  In fact, the 10,000 hour rule was invented by Malcolm Gladwell (2008, p. 40) who stated that “researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” Gladwell cited our research on expert musicians as a stimulus for his provocative generalization to a magical number. 

The Danger of Delegating Education to Journalists: Why the APS Observer Needs Peer Review When Summarizing New Scientific Developments

Ericsson came to mind as I was having an extended phone conversation with a producer at 60 Minutes about the current “science of reading” (SOR) movement and the significant amount of misinformation being presented in mainstream media and then driving state-level reading legislation (now in about 47 states).

While the producer was thoughtful and receptive to my concerns about media misrepresenting NAEP data, student reading proficiency, and the so-called failure of popular reading programs and balanced literacy, he ultimately concluded after we talked almost two hours, that there is no story in the truth, thus he would not be able to produce a story about that truth.

As Ericsson’s career demonstrates, the public finds misinformation in the form of simplistic stories more compelling than nuanced and messy research; further, most people, including politicians, have read or viewed the journalism, but not the actual research (notably because too much research is behind a pay wall and/or nearly impossible for the average person to comprehend).

The Ericsson/Gladwell/”grit” dynamic is now being replicated with even greater consequence in the SOR movement that has been codified in legislation banning and mandating programs and practices primarily or even exclusively grounded in media misinformation, and not the full reading science.

For example, the recent controversy about a co-authored article in The Reading Teacher perfectly highlights the essential problem.

Let’s do a thought experiment for a moment: Which do you think the general public and political leaders are more familiar with (or familiar with at all), Emily Hanford’s Sold a Story or Nell Duke’s (with colleagues) work on the active view of reading?

And, importantly, which of those two do you think is a better representation of the current state of reading science (or full body of research on reading and teaching reading)?

Now let’s explore some artifacts to answer those questions.

First, Hanford in her journalism has repeated that SOR is “settled science” called the simple view of reading (SVR):

Covering How Students Learn to Read: Tips to Get Started
There Is a Right Way to Teach Reading, and Mississippi Knows It

The “simple and settled” mantra has been a central part of Hanford’s print journalism and her more popular podcast.

But that same mantra is central to the claims made by The Reading League, likely the leading organization promoting SOR:

Science of Reading: Defining Guide

Now let’s note how these misleading and oversimplified claims about reading science have manifested themselves in political rhetoric and then state legislation:

WATCH:  Youngkin says education will drive midterm elections amid poor student performance
‘The evidence is clear’: DeWine pushes for ‘Science of Reading’ as only approach in Ohio classrooms

While this is only one example [1] of the caution Ericsson raised, the misrepresentation of reading science as “simple and settled” has become holy text and then spurred misguided reading legislation and policy.

The more nuanced and on-going body of reading science is much better represented by the research from literacy scholars:

Duke, N.K., & Cartwright, K.B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the simple view of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25–S44. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.411

From Arkansas to New York City, political leaders have misrepresented dyslexia, reading proficiency, reading instruction, and reading programs in ways that parallel the stories found in mainstream media.

Like Gladwell, Hanford and dozens of mainstream journalists are reaping the rewards of compelling stories that misinform while also feeding commercial and political interests that are mis-serving students, teachers, and public education.

Once again, we find ourselves not only in the tired and false rhetoric of reading crisis but also lost in translation because a sensationalistic podcast tells a melodramatic story that runs roughshod over anything resembling a fair representation of student reading proficiency, teacher expertise, or our obsession with finding the next reading program.

Note

[1] For a more detailed examination of the misinformation in media, see the following:

Recommended

The Danger of Delegating Education to Journalists: Why the APS Observer Needs Peer Review When Summarizing New Scientific Developments, K. Anders Ericsson 

Reading Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered, Gerald Bracey

Setting the Record Straight: Responses to Misconceptions About Public Education in the U.S., Gerald Bracey

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

Reading Programs Always Fail Students and Teachers

[Header Photo by Nappy on Unsplash]

Despite growing up in a working-class family with two parents who never finished college, I entered formal schooling with a turboboost provided primarily by my mom.

I was a reader, and by traditional school norms, I was a reader way above grade level.

Both my mother and my teachers taught me to read through whole-word methods that were popular in the 1960s. I am of the Dick and Jane reader generation.

I always tested in the 99th-percentile and made As and Bs, but I found school only mildly tolerable, at best; I did, however, love my teachers.

It was a jumbled journey that led to me being a high school English teacher. I recognize now that the foundation of that path included my high level of literacy that eventually drew me to literature, a love of reading, and being a writer.

When I entered the classroom in the fall of 1984, I soon realized that I was not prepared to teach. Almost all of the literature I had studied in college was not or could not be taught in public high school; I also was almost completely ill-equipped to teach adolescents to write.

My first years included what I now perceive as the fatal flaw of teaching—seeking The Way to teach students to read and write.

My saving grace came in the late 1980s and early 1990s, significantly because I entered the regional National Writing Project summer workshop (Spartanburg Writing Project) and was introduced to the workshop model.

Two books and two people were foundational for my journey into workshop teaching—Nancie Atwell’s reading workshop and Lucy Calkins’s writing workshop.

Atwell and Calkins offered a great deal of practices and structures in their seminal works, but, honestly, I paid little attention to the details—fortunately.

I did take away a philosophical structure that included a frame for teaching—time, ownership, and response—and a nearly compulsive commitment to be a student-centered teacher.

Over my 40 years as a teacher, I have witnessed wonderful concepts, theories, and philosophies in education gradually be reduced to programs, structures, and scripts that necessarily fail students and teachers.

Throughout my career, I have resisted and challenged all programs and templates for teaching and learning.

By the 1990s, I had more opportunities to publish and present as a practitioner-scholar, and then after I completed my doctorate in 1998, that credential further reinforced my ability to advocate against programs and, worst of all, educational faddism.

For many years, I had to caution teachers and administrators about the missionary zeal around Four Blocks® and 6+1 Traits of Writing.

In traditional schooling, we lack the political will to provide students and teachers with the learning/teaching conditions that could support best practice and thriving students. Instead, we remain committed to in-school only reductive practices such as adopting new standards, implementing new standardized tests, and shuffling through an ever-revolving series of reading programs.

Here’s the problem: All reading programs fail students and teachers because when we center reading programs, we de-center the individual needs of students and the professional autonomy of teachers.

Let me be very clear: All reading programs fail students and teachers.

During my teaching career across five decades, I have watched as advocates scapegoat X and promise the success of Y—whether the scapegoat is whole language or balanced literacy (the two favorites over those years).

The “science of reading” movement fits into the manufactured reading crisis cycles that have occurred in the US for a century; almost nothing new is being claimed or promised, but the outsized attack on specific reading programs (Fountas and Pinnell, Calkins’s Units of Study) does represent a disturbing lack of logic (across the US dozens of different reading programs have been implemented over decades with reading proficiency remaining stable) and another fatal mistake of centering reading programs.

To be blunt, reading programs labeled as whole language, balanced reading, or structured literacy carry no guarantee that those programs or the implementation of the program does in fact reflect the theory/philosophy of the label.

One marketed, theory/philosophy is corrupted or erased.

But more importantly, all centering of reading programs is a distraction because teachers are held accountable for teaching with fidelity to the program and students are reduced to mere metrics of that fidelity.

I have remained outside the ideology and program game for 40 years (that’s what critical pedagogy is), but all those trapped inside that game cannot hear my persistent message: Don’t depend on reading programs and reading theories to teach children to read.

I do not support or adhere to whole language, balanced literacy, or structured literacy; I do not endorse (and certainly would never create) any reading program.

As a critical scholar and educator, i recognize that the moment we reduce philosophical structures to scripts or programs, both the ideologies and the humans impacted (students and teachers) are erased.

Most literacy instruction I do these days is with college students and adults, who are still learning to read and learning to write.

I remain guided by time, ownership, and response as my philosophical structures, but I always start with and center who each student is and where is student is.

I have a teaching tool kit that is incredibly full and diverse from my many years as a practitioner, yet I continue to seek new and different ways to teach because each student is a new challenge and a new possibility.

The current media, market, and political story that Reading Program X has failed children but Reading Program Y will save those children is a lazy argument that lacks logic or evidence.

If anyone can step off the reading program merry-go round, they could see that if there was a problem with Units of Study it was that teachers were held accountable for fidelity to that program and not provided the teaching conditions to serve the needs of individual students.

If anyone can step off the reading program merry-go round, they could see that banning some scapegoated reading programs and mandating new structured literacy programs that are scripted (thus erasing teacher autonomy and individual needs of students) is jumping out of the reading program frying pan into the fire.

The rhetoric of missionary zeal exposes the failure of centering when we argue about “teaching phonics” or “teaching comprehension” or “teaching fluency,” for example, because our goal should never be a so-called reading skill, but teaching children how to be eager and critical readers.

In formal schooling we have for decades and currently are failing disproportionately marginalized and minoritized students who are over-represented in those students identified as below proficiency in reading.

As long as we center reading ideologies and reading programs, we are de-centering those students’ individual needs and de-centering the autonomy of their teachers to serve those neglected children.

Reading programs are the folly of petty adult allegiances that are manipulated for political and market purposes.

Reading and writing like teaching reading and writing are complex and unpredictable journeys that are ultimately human behaviors that should be the center of all we do—not beliefs, practices, or, especially, yet another false promise packaged as a silver-bullet reading program.

Education, ILA, reading, Science of Reading

Open Clarification on Recent Publication for The Reading Teacher (ILA)

This is an open clarification to set the record straight about a recent co-authored article in The Reading Teacher (ILA): Stories Grounded in Decades of Research: What We Truly Know about the Teaching of Reading.

This clarification is being made in my name only and reflects only my perspective.

After the piece was posted online for early access, Nell Duke requested that her name be removed from a table in the article:

Since the term “science of reading” has a variety of contexts and meanings as I have documented in my own work, I appreciate any concern raised about misunderstandings or misrepresentations.

First, then, let me clarify that the intent of the “challenges” is grounded in the SOR movement making claims through journalists, such as Emily Hanford, and high-profile organizations, such as The Reading League, that the simple view of reading is “settled science”; see for example, the following:

To understand what the science says, a good place to start is with something called the “simple view of reading.” It’s a model that was first proposed by researchers in 1986 to clarify the role of decoding in reading comprehension. Everyone agrees the goal of reading is to comprehend text, but back in the 1980s there was a big fight going on over whether children should be taught how to decode words — in other words, phonics.

The simple view says that reading comprehension is the product of two things. One is your ability to decode words: Can you identify the word a string of letters represents? For example, you see the letter string “l-a-s-s” and you are able to sound it out and say the word….

The simple view is an equation that looks like this:

decoding ability x language comprehension = reading comprehension…

The simple view model was proposed more than 30 years ago and has been confirmed over and over again by research.

There Is a Right Way to Teach Reading, and Mississippi Knows It
Science of Reading: Defining Guide

To be brief, current research, including work by Duke on the active view of reading, challenges the claim that SVR is settled science:

The simple view of reading is commonly presented to educators in professional development about the science of reading. The simple view is a useful tool for conveying the undeniable importance—in fact, the necessity—of both decoding and linguistic comprehension for reading. Research in the 35 years since the theory was proposed has revealed additional understandings about reading. In this article, we synthesize research documenting three of these advances: (1) Reading difficulties have a number of causes, not all of which fall under decoding and/or listening comprehension as posited in the simple view; (2) rather than influencing reading solely independently, as conceived in the simple view, decoding and listening comprehension (or in terms more commonly used in reference to the simple view today, word recognition and language comprehension) overlap in important ways; and (3) there are many contributors to reading not named in the simple view, such as active, self-regulatory processes, that play a substantial role in reading. We point to research showing that instruction aligned with these advances can improve students’ reading. We present a theory, which we call the active view of reading, that is an expansion of the simple view and can be used to convey these important advances to current and future educators. We discuss the need to lift up updated theories and models to guide practitioners’ work in supporting students’ reading development in classrooms and interventions.

Duke, N.K., & Cartwright, K.B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the simple view of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25–S44. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.411

Other scholars have also challenged SVR as settled or adequate:

Theoretical models, such as the simple view of reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986), the direct and inferential mediation (DIME) model (Cromley et al., 2010; Cromley & Azevedo, 2007), and the cognitive model (McKenna & Stahl, 2009) inform the constructs and skills that contribute to reading comprehension. The simple view of reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986) describes reading comprehension as the product of decoding and language comprehension. The simple view of reading is often used to underscore the critical importance of decoding on reading comprehension; however, evidence suggests that the relative importance of decoding and language comprehension changes based on students’ level of reading development and text complexity (Lonigan et al., 2018). Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies demonstrate that decoding has the largest influence on reading comprehension for novice readers, whereas language comprehension becomes increasingly important as students’ decoding skills develop and text becomes more complex (e.g., Catts et al., 2005; Gough et al., 1996; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Proctor et al., 2005; Tilstra et al., 2009). However, the simple view of reading does not comprehensively explain all skills that influence reading comprehension, nor does it inform what comprehension instruction requires. 

Filderman, M. J., Austin, C. R., Boucher, A. N., O’Donnell, K., & Swanson, E. A. (2022). A meta-analysis of the effects of reading comprehension interventions on the reading comprehension outcomes of struggling readers in third through 12th grades. Exceptional Children, 88(2), 163–184. https://doi.org/10.1177/00144029211050860

In that context, I think including those scholars neither misrepresents their work nor misrepresents reading science.

As such, ILA’s statement seems to be a dangerous precedent for policing scholars and for eroding scholarship in the context of media, political, and market forces.

I remain convinced the work scholars are doing on the active view of reading is not only important for understanding reading science but for understanding that science is often a conversation and an on-going evolution, not something settled and not something to be wielded like a hammer.

Ironically, I have been advocating for the voices and work of those scholars in the removed table be given greater weight and time than journalists, politicians, and commercial interests. So I regret that they are no longer being highlighted.

Finally, I recognize that it takes more nuance and care than is often afforded on social media to acknowledge that the robust and on-going body of reading science, in fact, contradicts the stories being told under the label SOR in the media and by political and market interests.

But if you genuinely engage with the science, that is all the article is seeking to address.

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

Revisiting the SOR Multiverse

Although I have made the distinction many times, the “science of reading” (SOR) as a term denotes three distinct meanings simultaneously:

  1. SOR as a movement, grounded in a pervasive yet misleading media narrative primarily associated with the journalism of Emily Hanford and then the manifestation of the narrative in political rhetoric and legislation/policy.
  2. SOR as marketing and branding, a concurrent flood of reading programs and materials (very similar to the branding of materials during the Common Core era).
  3. SOR as a blanket term for the broad and deep research base on reading than spans at least a century.

I have been contesting the most problematic aspects of SOR—the movement and the marketing/branding—because the misinformation has gained a status as “holy text”; more troubling is that nearly every state has now passed legislation and implemented SOR policy and practice.

In no uncertain terms, there is no longer a debate about the credibility of SOR because that credibility is its own odd multiverse—the movement claims are simultaneously false or misleading while existing in the real world as fact and narrow mandates (for example, structured literacy as the newest reading theory is often packaged as scripted curriculum).

The SOR movement has been driven primarily by people with no expertise or historical context for the narrative established in “Hard Words” and then amplified by “Sold a Story.”

Journalists, politicians, parents, and think tanks/advocacy groups have created a nearly unstoppable force because of a series of beliefs that have been perpetuated in the US for decades: public schools are failing, teachers are failing, and students are failing.

The SOR movement is little different than any other education movement in the US since the template is well established in crisis/miracle rhetoric that appeals to cultural and public beliefs.

Also the SOR movement has weaponized a reductive use of the term “science,” which shields the movement from criticism.

Anyone who dares to criticize—even with evidence—the SOR narrative is discounted as being against “science,” particularly effective in the wake of Covid era fraught with public and political debates about masking and vaccinations.

The missionary zeal of the SOR movement combined with market interests has erased all nuance and complexity from discussions of or implementing the broad and deep body of research on reading that is still evolving and better characterized by debate than being “simple and settled” (the earliest mantra driving the SOR movement in the media).

Over the past decades, SOR advocacy has made any criticism or debate come with great costs to the critics because of the zeal and even anger among SOR advocates on social media, a network of stake holders associated with dyslexia, phonics, and mainstream education reform (such as Jeb Bush’s ExcelinEd).

As I just recently posted, a survey of parents demonstrates the effectiveness of the SOR movement to turn false narratives into holy text.

The survey shows both that parents held relatively positive views of their children’s reading achievement and their teachers. But once those parents were exposed to the false narrative of SOR, their opinions were more negative. The misrepresentation of NAEP data and cueing/guessing was presented to parents as facts, and the change in opinions confirmed that the SOR false information is incredibly effective and mostly embraced uncritically:

Reading Education Messaging: Findings and Recommendations from an Online Poll of K-5 Parents in America

The most shocking aspect of the developing SOR multiverse is that journalists, the public, and political leaders believe that 2/3 of students are not proficient readers and that same NAEP data show that 2/3 of students are reading at grade level or above—inverse “facts” simultaneously “true.”

Nearly as stunning is the Urban Legend around cueing and guessing that, again, simultaneously is believed by almost everyone while not existing in reality:

Narratives that speak into cultural beliefs are incredibly powerful, and bandwagons are difficult to slow down or reroute.

As a consequence truth and nuance are lost.

In a recent co-authored scholarly piece, colleagues and I confront the imbalance between the SOR movement/marketing and the full body of research on reading.

The responses to that article on social media and even among literacy scholars reflect the same problematic dynamic exposed in the survey of parents; nuance struggles to keep its head above water during a tidal wave.

I am currently at the annual NCTE convention and will present on a panel tomorrow about SOR; however, even at a professional conference, being critical of SOR is an outlier stance.

The SOR misinformation has won—at least for now.

In 5 or 10 years, the next reading crisis will somehow overwrite this one—simultaneously all of the century’s worth of reading crises existing and never having happened.

Just like now.

Now seems impossible, in fact, since “kids today” (no matter when “today” is) have never been proficient readers.

Yet, here we are, inexplicably harder to believe than Bigfoot.