Category Archives: Science of Reading

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

NAEP, Media Fuel Manufactured Reading Crisis

Consider how people would respond to the two following statements for a survey:

  1. About 2/3 of US students read below “proficient” on national testing.
  2. About 2/3 of US students read at or above “grade level” on national testing.

We don’t need to imagine, however.

Coverage in Education Week of a new survey on parents’ perceptions of reading reveals incredibly damning findings—damning not about reading achievement or teaching but about NAEP and media:

The survey’s findings reflect that damning dynamic:

Yet, despite the misinformation about NAEP, these survey findings reflect decades of surveys showing parents generally have positive views of their children’s schools and teachers but believe public education nationally is failing:

This survey, though, exposes the source of that disconnect—media coverage of NAEP data, which seems to be designed more to manufacture a crisis than to assess student reading achievement.

The opening two hypothetical statements show where the problem lies because the first is an accurate statement about NAEP and the second is an accurate statement about reading at grade level.

As NAEP explains and others have addressed for years (see below), NAEP “proficiency” is well above grade level and “basic” represents something close to grade-level proficiency. However, the larger problem is the US has no standard criteria for “grade-level proficiency” and states set their own levels with NAEP using terminology that is at least confusing if not intentionally misleading.

Another problem, as I have argued, is that “grade level” is likely a worse metric than “age level” since many states now implement grade 3 retention based on reading tests, corrupting populations of students being assessed since data show that student scores on early reading are strongly correlated with birth month.

See the following to better understand NAEP and media misinformation about reading proficiency:

The US has a long and troubling history of media and political leaders being more invested in a manufactured education crisis than actually investing in better public education.

As a result, parents and students are trapped between their own genuine appreciation and need for effective, responsive reading instruction and a media-fueled political campaign to misinform the public because a constant state of reading crisis benefits a contracting media and generates political capital.

The reading crisis in the US is that the public is reading misinformation about reading and teachers, grounded in a national testing program designed to manufacture crisis.

NOTE

The survey also shows how misinformation about three cueing and phonics misleads parents and distorts their perception of reading instruction:

The framing of the survey misrepresents both cueing and guessing; see the following:

Educational Research, NYT, reading, Science of Reading

Guest Post: Letter to NYT, Susan Ohanian

re: Ohio Lawsuit Punches Back in Battle Over How to Teach Reading 

In highlighting the big money spent by the Reading Recovery Council  to influence state reading policy, the New York Times offers a slight variation on the same old meme of reading science vs reading catastrophe. 

As a longtime reading teacher, I await an article on the billions spent by leading publishers to promote something called the science of reading so they can continue selling their textbooks and billions of pages of   peripherals that accompany these texts. I mourn the hours children spend trudging through Big Business workbook pages traveling as “science.”

In “Ohio Lawsuit Punches Back in Battle Over How to Teach Reading,”  readers are offered the 23-year-old National Reading Report as evidence of the validity of science of reading.  The claims embedded in this report have been disputed by respected researchers since the day of publication. It’s time to scrap that old rolodex and expand the contact base. For starters, here’s a new report published in The Reading Teacher: “Stories Grounded in Decades of Research: What We Truly Know about the Teaching of Reading.” 

Table 1 offers “Highly Respected Researchers Whose Research Challenges the Science of Reading,”  Here are the names of 7 reading researchers New York Times reporters can contact the next time they decide to write about reading instruction in public schools.

Finally, I offer the evidence of a deaf child who entered public school in 3rd grade. Her residual hearing was helped by special equipment. she and I both wore. After some weeks of sobbing she couldn’t do it, this child triumphed. I attended her high school graduation, where she was on the honor roll. She contacted me 30 years later, telling me that she had graduated from college and enjoyed sharing Amelia Bedelia and knock-knock jokes with her children.

This is called teacher wait time.

Susan Ohanian

Education, education reform, Journal of Reading Recovery, literacy, NCTE, NEPC, reading, Science of Reading, The Reading Teacher, Voices from the Middle

Recent Publications on Reading [Open Access and Updated]

[Header Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash]

Thomas, P.L. (2025). Black Widow underestimated and hypersexualized: “I am what I am.” Brill.

Thomas, P.L. (TBD). Haruki Murakami’s 7 stories: “It’s quite easy to become Men Without Women.” In J. Milburn (ed.), Haruki Murakami and philosophical concepts (pp. TBD). Palgrave.

Thomas, P.L. (TBD). Crisis as distraction and erasure: How SOR fails diversity and urban students.  Journal of Literacy and Urban Schools.

Thomas, P.L. (2025). Navigating (another) reading crisis as an administrator: Rethinking the “science of reading” movement. Journal of School Administration, Research and Development, 10(1), 38-48. https://ojed.org/JSARD/article/view/6706

Thomas, P.L. (2024, November). We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: For all ELA teachers, “the time is always now.” English Journal, 114(2), 21-26. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024114221

Thomas, P.L. (2024, September). We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: The media continue to misread teaching reading and literacy. English Journal, 114(1), 14-19. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024114114

Thomas, P.L. (2024, May). Teaching English in the “science of reading” era: We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: Selling a story of reading. English Journal, 113(5), 16-22. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024113516 [Open Access https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej202411342]

Thomas, P.L. (2024, March). We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: The long (and tedious) history of reading crisis. English Journal, 113(4), 21-26. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024113421

Thomas, P.L. (2023, November). Everything you know is wrong: The “science of reading” era of reading legislation. Perspectives and Provocations, (11), 1-17. https://drive.google.com/file/d/12fAfLV1pCh7ZXV-UFsTftFd7y_MLSK-O/view

Compton-Lilly, C., Spence, L.K., Thomas, P.L. & Decker, S.L. (2023). Stories grounded in decades of research: What we truly know about the teaching of reading. Reading Teacher, 77(3), 392-400. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2258

Thomas, P.L. (2023). The science of reading era: Seeking the “science” in yet another anti-teacher movement. Journal of Reading Recovery, 22(5), 5-17.

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.

How to End the Reading War and Serve the Literacy Needs of All Students: A Primer for Parents, Policy Makers, and People Who Care (2nd Edition) – IAP – [first edition]

The Science of Reading Movement: The Never-Ending Debate and the Need for a Different Approach to Reading Instruction (policy brief) – NEPC

A Critical Examination of Grade Retention as Reading Policy (white paper). Prepared for the Ohio Education Association in response to Ohio’s “Third Grade Reading Guarantee”, September 15, 2022

The Never-Ending Debate and the Need for a Different Approach to Reading Instruction – NCTE Blog

“Science of Reading” Media Advocacy Continues to Mislead – RRC

A conversation with Paul Thomas. (2021). Talking Points, 32(2), 24-30.

Education, education reform, Educational Research, Poverty, reading, Science of Reading, Social Context Reform

The Ignored Truth about Reading Proficiency in the US

[Note: This has been submitted to state and local newspapers. So far no responses. Mainstream media resists any narrative other than blaming teachers and schools, regretfully.]

Like dozens of stories in mainstream media, Marion Blank declared in Scientific American, “Biennial testing through NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] consistently shows that two thirds of U.S. children are unable to read with proficiency.”

Reading proficiency crisis has been at the forefront of media coverage and state-level policy for over a decade now. However, the basic claim—2/3 of children not at grade-level proficiency—is misleading at best and false at worst.

The misunderstanding lies in NAEP achievement levels. NAEP warns, “It should be noted that the NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards.”

Tom Loveless calls this the “NAEP proficiency myth,” adding Basic represents grade-level proficiency, and thus, 2/3 of students in the US are reading at grade level or above.

Further, Blank begins the article touting achievement in Mississippi, focusing on impressive gains in NAEP reading. The media embracing of the Mississippi “miracle” further compounds the misinformation about both a reading crisis and one state’s ability to beat the odds.

To understand the US is not experiencing a reading crisis and MS is not a “miracle” template for reading reform, we must consider the recent call for Vermont to mimic MS.

On the 2022 NAEP reading test, VT has 62% of students at or above grade level proficiency (grade 4), compared to MS with 63%. Yes, this is an impressive similarity for MS with a state experiencing a significantly higher rate of poverty and minority students.

But that is not the whole story.

States such as MS and especially FL have very impressive grade 4 NAEP scores that plummet by grade 8: Compare VT (73% grade-level proficient and above) with MS (63%) and FL (69%), notably resulting in VT in the top 6 states in the US, MS in the bottom four, and FL ranking in the middle. Researchers have noted that FL students experience some the greatest drops in achievement from grade 4 to 8, in fact.

Another ignored fact is that MS, like FL, likely achieves the test score bump from extreme levels of grade retention—impacting from about 9,000 – 12,000 students per year across grades K through 3. The MS “miracle” is a test data “mirage.”

But the most important ignored truth about reading in the US can be found in the publicly funded schools run by the Department of Defense (DoDEA)—DoDEA schools NAEP outcomes include in 2022 (grade 4) 80% and (grade 8) 90% at or above grade-level proficient.

Now here is the most ignored truth about reading achievement. DoDEA schools are not distinct from traditional public schools because of reading instruction or reading programs, but as Mervosh reports:

How does the military do it? In large part by operating a school system that is insulated from many of the problems plaguing American education….

For starters, families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job….

[T]eachers are also well paid, supported by a Pentagon budget that allocates $3 billion to its schools each year, far more than comparably sized school districts.

Who Runs the Best U.S. Schools? It May Be the Defense Department.

The most important and ignored truth about reading proficiency in the US is that reading is a marker for socioeconomic inequity in both our society and our schools. There is no crisis and there are no miracles. But as DoDEA schools demonstrate, if we have the political will, we can and should better serve all our children as developing readers and citizens.

Education, education reform, No Excuses Reform, reading, Science of Reading

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

Consider the following headlines from the New York Times:

The first two are confidently assertive (lots of knowing), and the third tiptoes into a question and a “may be.”

What is fascinating, and frustrating, is that the first two are almost entirely false coverage—the first badly misrepresenting reading achievement in MS and the second inexcusably misrepresenting NAEP reading data.

The key here is that the first article feeds into the misleading “miracle” narrative popular in media and political rhetoric about schools and the second asserts the “crisis” rhetoric about public education.

Media struggles with the third article topic—the exceptional achievement found in Department of Defense schools—and possibly the most telling quote in the article hits the nail on the head:

“If the Department of Defense schools were a state, we would all be traveling there to figure out what’s going on,” said Martin West, an education professor at Harvard who serves on the national exam’s governing board.

Who Runs the Best U.S. Schools? It May Be the Defense Department.

In a rare moment of almost getting things right about education and testing, the article highlights the outstanding achievement found in DoDEA schools:

Looking at reading achievement levels of NAEP is even more revealing:

While the media has dubbed MS a “miracle,” that same media struggles to understand the DoDEA success.

Why? Well, a few clues are in the article itself:

How does the military do it? In large part by operating a school system that is insulated from many of the problems plaguing American education.

Defense Department schools are well-funded, socioeconomically and racially integrated, and have a centralized structure that is not subject to the whims of school boards or mayors….

But there are key differences.

For starters, families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job.

“Having as many of those basic needs met does help set the scene for learning to occur ,” said Jessica Thorne, the principal at E.A. White Elementary, a school of about 350 students.

Her teachers are also well paid, supported by a Pentagon budget that allocates $3 billion to its schools each year, far more than comparably sized school districts. While much of the money goes toward the complicated logistics of operating schools internationally, the Defense Department estimates that it spends about $25,000 per student, on par with the highest-spending states like New York, and far more than states like Arizona, where spending per student is about $10,000 a year .

“I doubled my income,” said Heather Ryan, a White Elementary teacher . Starting her career in Florida, she said she made $31,900; after transferring to the military, she earned $65,000. With more years of experience, she now pulls in $88,000.

Competitive salaries — scaled to education and experience levels — help retain teachers at a time when many are leaving the profession. At White Elementary, teachers typically have 10 to 15 years of experience, Ms. Thorne said.

Who Runs the Best U.S. Schools? It May Be the Defense Department.

Children with access to healthcare and food security, parents with stable incomes and housing, and well-paid faculty—these are all key to educational outcomes, many of us have argued for years, but the mainstream approach in the US for decades has been entirely focusing on in-school reform only—because the education establishment, conservatives argue, have used poverty as an excuse.

The reason DoDEA success is handled with a question and “may be” is that the evidence here is a message that is politically uncomfortable in the US: Education reform needs to be both social reform and school reform.

Credible reading scores (beyond grade 4) are about more than reading instruction or reading programs, but the DoDEA forces us to reconsider the “crisis”/”miracle” rhetoric and move beyond blaming teachers, reading ideologies, and reading programs.

Media and political leaders likely will let this story pass because “Logistical planning, including a predictable budget, ‘isn’t very sexy,’ but it is one key to success, said Thomas M. Brady, the director of Defense Department schools since 2014.”

So here is something we do know, but we are mostly unwilling to admit it: Poverty and inequity are not excuses, but tremendous barriers to the sort of opportunities all children deserve.

The success at DoDEA is certainly no miracle, but that success is the sort of model we should be using instead of the manufactured “miracle”/mirage of the day.

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

Should Vermont Mimic Mississippi?: SOR Edition

There is a story education journalists love to tell; it is so innocent and compelling that even Florida wouldn’t bother to ban it.

Here is the story:

For decades, reading teachers in the United States have been teaching children to read using balanced literacy.

Balanced literacy was created by the Three Evil Witches—Calkins, Fountas, and Pinnell.

Under the spell of balanced literacy, reading teachers use three-cueing on all the children. What is three-cueing?

Well, three-cueing is putting picture books in front of all the children and asking them to look at the pictures and guess at the words on the page!

Such fun!

Sadly, however, now only two-thirds of children can read proficiently!

Despite how many have eagerly believed this fairy tale, it is nearly entirely caricature, misinformation, and lies. But it works so well that almost every education journalist in the US has recycled the story to fit their area or state, pulling from the original holy text.

For example, the most recent retelling comes from Vermont: Too Many Vermont Kids Struggle to Read. What Went Wrong—and Can Educators Reverse a Yearslong Slide in Literacy?

Predictably, this retelling includes the usual list of misinformation and lies:

  • The beginning of the article is a litany of misinformation about NRP, NAEP, and reading proficiency (see below about how this piece focuses on grade 4 but ignores grade 8).
  • Throughout (see above), the article relies on the caricature of balanced literacy and guessing/three-cueing.
  • NCTQ is cited as a credible source although the conservative think tank has never released a peer-reviewed report that meets even the minimum standards of valid research.
  • Orton-Gillingham is referenced as moving toward “‘a more scientific approach'” although O-G (multisensory instruction) is not supported by the most recent scientific studies.
  • The piece allows Moates to promote her own commercial product, LETRS, although, as with O-G, no scientific research exists showing that the program results in higher student reading proficiency.
  • And maybe most concerning, this piece again praises Mississippi as a model for reading reform in VT—although MS represents the problem with confusing higher test scores driven by grade retention with better reading instruction.

As I have noted, for at least 40 years, education reform has suffered under a crisis/miracle dichotomy that has failed students, teachers, and education.

The current crisis/miracle dichotomy is the manufactured reading proficiency crisis and the Mississippi “miracle.”

However, MS is based on the Florida model, which is now two-decades old.

Ironically, both FL and MS prove to be not models for reform but models for how political manipulation of education causes great harm to children (like the dark underbelly of fairy tales).

Yes, FL has found a process by which the state’s grade 4 reading scores on NAEP sit high in the national rankings; that “achievement” sacrifices almost 20,000 retained third graders a year (Black, MLL, and poor children disproportionately among those retained).

Here is the key problem not being fully addressed by media or reformers: FL also represents one of the states with the largest drop in achievement from grades 4 to 8, because the retention-driven grade 4 scores are mirages:

· Florida kids regress dramatically as they age in the system. Since 2003, Florida’s eighth grade rank as a state has never come close to its fourth grade rank on any NAEP test in any subject.

· The size of Florida’s regression is dramatic and growing, especially in math. Florida’s overall average NAEP state rank regression between fourth and eighth grade since 2003 is 17 spots (math) and 18 spots (reading). But since 2015, the averages are 27 spots (math) and 19 spots (reading).

Florida’s education system is vastly underperforming

MS has achieved its false “miracle” status by mimicking FL—retaining about 9,000-12,000 K through grade 3 students per year, again disproportionately minoritized students.

So what about VT? Well, despite the handwringing over VT’s grade 4 NAEP and reading proficiency, the state sits high in the national rankings of grade 8 reading on NAEP:

Florida is well behind VT in grade 8 reading:

And MS remains at the bottom of grade 8 reading:

Like the entire US, VT simply is not experiencing a reading crisis. And certainly not because of the witches brew of balanced literacy stealing children’s ability to receive effective reading instruction.

VT may be, in fact, a better model for our need to add patience and nuance to our evaluation of reading proficiency, how we teach reading, how we measure proficiency, and when students need to reach our benchmarks as developing readers.

And thus, VT should not mimic MS since that would be throwing out the baby with the cauldron water.

Recommended

OPINION: Historically underserved school districts in Mississippi were hit hard in the pandemic and need immediate help  

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

When Media Misinformation Becomes Conservative Education Legislation Over-Reach: Reading Proficiency Edition

What happens when years of media misinformation become a powerful talking point for extreme conservative advocacy groups and extreme conservative elected officials?

Consider this:

From the misleading and inaccurate work of Emily Hanford in 2018 to the more recent nonsense written by Nicholas Kristof in 2023, the lie that won’t die (2/3 of children are not reading at grade level) has ultimately—see above—driven a wave of conservative education reform that blurs curriculum and book banning legislation with “back-to-basics” reform touting the “science of reading.”

The key problem with the reading proficiency lie is that student reading proficiency is possibly the exact opposite of the lie because NAEP achievement levels are incredibly (purposefully?) confusing:

NAEP student achievement levels are performance standards that describe what students should know and be able to do. Results are reported as percentages of students performing at or above three NAEP achievement levels (NAEP Basic, NAEP Proficient, and NAEP Advanced). Students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level on NAEP assessments demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter. It should be noted that the NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards (e.g., state or district assessments). See short descriptions of NAEP achievement levels for each assessment subject.Scale Scores and NAEP Achievement Levels

While still a complicated statistic and claim, the reality is that if we use NAEP data as evidence, about 2/3 of students in the US read at or above grade level.

A better pair of claims, however, is that we do not have a universal definition of reading proficiency and that “grade level” is a far less valuable metric than “age level” for assessing reading proficiency.

This reading proficiency lie that won’t die is helping feed one of the worst waves of conservative assaults on schools even considering the 40-plus years of conservative education reform also based on the Nation at Risk lie.

Here is a reader for both reading proficiency and conservative education reform:

Reading Proficiency

ILEC RESPONSE: MAINSTREAM MEDIA COVERAGE OF READING PROFICIENCY, TEACHERS OF READING, NAEP SCORES, AND TEACHER PREPARATION

WHAT DO WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT READING PROFICIENCY IN THE US?

UNDERSTANDING AND REFORMING THE READING PROFICIENCY TRAP

THE PROFICIENCY TRAP AND THE NEVER-ENDING CRISIS CYCLES IN EDUCATION: A READER

EVEN MORE PROBLEMS WITH GRADE-LEVEL PROFICIENCY

THE POLITICS OF READING PROFICIENCY (AND CHARTER SCHOOLS)

BEWARE GRADE-LEVEL READING AND THE CULT OF PROFICIENCY

Conservative Education Reform

EDUCATION REFORM HAS BEEN BIPARTISAN AND CONSERVATIVE FOR MORE THAN 40 YEARS: WHAT WOULD PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION REFORM LOOK LIKE?

THE INDOCTRINATION PARADOX: THE CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVE CRUSADE FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS

SOR MOVEMENT MAINTAINS CONSERVATIVE ASSAULT ON TEACHERS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS [UPDATED]

TEACHING IN A TIME OF CONSERVATIVE TYRANNY

CONSERVATIVES ARE WRONG ABOUT PARENTAL RIGHTS

DEAR PARENTS, YOUR CHILDREN’S K-12 EDUCATION IS ALREADY VERY CONSERVATIVE

Critical Race Theory, Education, education reform, Educational Research, race, racism, reading, Science of Reading

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

[Header Photo by Marcella Marcella on Unsplash]

Grounded in the federal mandate for “scientifically based” instruction in No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001), anchored by the misrepresented National Reading Panel (NRP) report, the more recent “science of reading” (SOR) movement has successfully erased segments of the reading program market (Units of Study) and mandated as well as banned instructional practices in nearly every state of the US.

At the core of this SOR era of education reform is an orchestrated agenda to impose scripted curriculum onto reading instruction, often called “structured literacy”:

At its July 1st meeting, the IDA Board of Directors made a landmark decision designed to help market our approach to reading instruction.  The board chose a name that would encompass all approaches to reading instruction that conform to IDA’s Knowledge and Practice Standards. That name is “Structured Literacy.”…

If we want school districts to adopt our approach, we need a name that brings together our successes. We need one name that refers to the many programs that teach reading in the same way. A name is the first and essential step to building a brand….

The term “Structured Literacy” is not designed to replace Orton Gillingham, Multi-Sensory, or other terms in common use. It is an umbrella term designed to describe all of the programs that teach reading in essentially the same way. In our marketing, this term will help us simplify our message and connect our successes. “Structured Literacy” will help us sell what we do so well.

Structured Literacy: A New Term to Unify Us and Sell What We Do

Literacy scholars, however, have issued strong and research-based warnings about how structured literacy often devolves into scripted curriculum:

We recognize that some teachers using structured literacy approaches will find ways to respond to the interests, experiences, and literacy abilities of individual students; however, we are concerned about the indiscriminate and unwarranted implementation of the following practices:

  • Directive and/or scripted lessons that tell teachers what to say and do and the implementation of lesson sequences, often at a predetermined pace (Hanford, 2018)
  • Privileging of phonemic awareness and phonics as primary decoding skills (Hanford, 2018, 2019; IDA, 2019; Paige, 2020; Pierson, n.d.; Spear-Swerling, 2019)
  • Use of decodable texts that do not engage multiple dimensions of reading (Hanford, 2018; IDA, 2019; Paige, 2020; Spear-Swerling, 2019)
  • Specialized forms of reading instruction designed for particular groups of students as core literacy instruction for all students and teacher educators (Hanford, 2018; Hurford et al., 2016; IDA, 2019; Pierson, n.d.)
  • Mandating structured literacy programs despite the lack of clear empirical evidence to support these programs
  • Privileging the interest of publishers and private education providers over students.
Compton-Lilly, C.F., Mitra, A., Guay, M., & Spence, L.K. (2020). A confluence of complexity: Intersections among reading theory, neuroscience, and observations of young readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S185-S195. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.348

Compton-Lilly, et al.’s warnings are now being confirmed, notably in terms of bullet points 1 and 4 above as well as in terms of different reading programs now being mandated:

Overwhelming whiteness: a critical analysis of race in a scripted reading curriculum
Amanda Rigell, Arianna Banack, Amy Maples, Judson Laughter, Amy Broemmel, Nora Vines & Jennifer Jordan (2022) Overwhelming whiteness: a critical analysis of race in a scripted reading curriculum, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 54:6, 852-870, DOI: 10.1080/00220272.2022.2030803

Scripted curriculum not only de-professionalizes teachers, but also whitewashes the curriculum, confirming the significant overlap of conservative education reform agendas addressing bans and censorship along with the SOR movement.

As I have noted here and here, the SOR movement is a significant part of dismantling the social justice movement.

While the outsized attacks on some reading programs—those by Calkins along with those by Fountas and Pinnell—have been uncritically embraced by the media and politicians despite no evidence of a reading crisis or failure linked to those programs, there is little logic in claims that structured literacy programs are the solution to a manufactured crisis.

In fact, the move to structured literacy as scripted curriculum is demonstrably a shift in the wrong direction if we care at all about reading proficiency, our increasingly diverse population of K-12 students in the US, or our beleaguered teaching profession.

Recommended

What I learned from debating the Science of Reading more than 20 years ago is still true

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)

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

Cherry Picking Isn’t Science

One of the foundational claims throughout the history of calling for education to be “scientific” is identifying instructional practices as either scientific (or evidence-based) or not.

A key concern with such claims is that they tend to overstate in a black-and-white way that practices are scientific or not, but also, a narrow view of “evidence” is certainly a problem (see Wormeli for example).

The “science of reading” (SOR) movement, for example, has tended to use “scientific” like a baseball bat, demanding that simplistic view of “science” and heralding some practices as evidence-based and others as “contrary practices” or “Ineffective and Currently Unsupported Instructional Strategies.”

Another flaw in the SOR movement’s demand for “scientific” instruction is cherry-picking research to promote and demonize selected practices.

Look at these two examples from pro-SOR documents:

Teacher Prep Review: Strengthening Elementary Reading Instruction
The Science of Reading: A Literature Review

Note here that the lists are different with some overlap, raising concerns about what science matters and what agenda any organization has (NCTQ releases reports that fail basic scientific validity to push a narrow agenda, for example).

The first list from NCTQ is overly dogmatic and an example of cherry-picking masquerading as scientific.

The second list has some promise since it allows for that some practices are not supported yet, a better characterization of science—although the lit review itself suffers from limited use of evidence.

One important element in the SOR movement and the legislation as well as practices that is driven by that movement is holding SOR claims to valid expectations of “scientific” that do not suffer from oversimplification.

In short, cherry picking is not science.