Category Archives: Science of Reading

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

“Science” as a Veneer for Misinformation: Media Continues to Misread Reading in Missouri

Entering the sixth year of detailing how the “science of reading” (SOR) movement uses “science” as a cover for claims that are primarily rhetorical and ideological, I once again must highlight that this misinformation campaign continues to be “holy text” in mainstream media.

Missouri kids are way behind. Making them guess at words doesn’t teach them to read, writes Emily Durig, National Director of Elementary Coaching for The Literacy Lab.

What remains stunning about the relentless misleading and factually wrong series of articles in mainstream media is the sheer absence of understanding about the topic of reading by those promoting SOR with missionary zeal.

SOR advocates lack scientific evidence for their claims and seem mostly driven by market/commercial or political/ideological agendas.

Durig’s misinformation is not only the exact same series of false claims you can find weekly since about 2018, but also a disturbingly careless recycling of Emily Hanford’s copycat misinformation articles initiated by “Hard Words” and then recycled into the melodramatic and misleading Sold a Story podcast.

Durig begins with the NAEP Big Lie: “Missouri students are headed down a dangerous road. Only 30% of the state’s fourth-graders are reading at grade level.”

If you follow that link, you find a reference to MO’s NAEP grade 4 reading scores:

Using the exact same misinformation tactic as Hanford in 2018 and Nicholas Kristof in the NYT, Durig either doesn’t understand NAEP achievement levels or is being purposefully misleading; in either case, readers would be better served by not reading further since her argument is built on a lie.

NAEP “basic” is approximately grade level reading, and thus, 60% of MO students are reading at grade level or above, not 30%. [1]

One must ask, if you have to lie to make your case, do you have a case?

The follow-up claims—”The numbers are even more alarming for Black and Hispanic students in the state. They drop to 17% and 7%, respectively”—do not seem corroborated by the NAEP link, showing 31% of Black students at grade level or above and 56% of Hispanic students at grade level or above:

In the US, achievement inequity along racial lines is a historical failure of all achievement, not just reading. But again, if this is a serious issue, misinformation isn’t needed.

But it gets worse, if that is possible, because, Durig claims, “We are in the midst of a reading revolution. The way kids are taught to read in Missouri — and across the country — needs to be overhauled. And any rebuild should be based on the science of reading, including phonics.”

What is most disturbing is the lack of “science” in what follows, notably these well-worn but false series of claims and the links to anything except “science”:

More than 90% of children could learn to read if their teachers used instructional methods grounded in the science of reading.

Unfortunately, a lot of early reading teachers in the United States still practice what’s known as balanced literacy. That approach relies heavily on teacher choice and professional judgment. Teachers are taught to have many tools in their toolbox, and to use the methods that they think are most appropriate for their students.

One common practice in balanced literacy is guided reading, in which teachers coach students in a variety of comprehension strategies as they read a book matched to their level. Teachers encourage students who struggle over individual words to use pictures and context, in addition to looking at the letters, to guess at what the word could be.

But should kids be guessing at words when learning to read? There’s a ton of research that says no.

Missouri kids are way behind. Making them guess at words doesn’t teach them to read

Note that these claims include two hyperlinks—the first to NCTQ (which links to a blog post to prove the 90% claim), and the second to Education Week, more misinformation journalism, not science.

As many have demonstrated by conducting external peer-review, NCTQ is an ideologically conservative think tank founded by The Thomas B. Fordham Institute. NCTQ releases non-scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed. In other words, no NCTQ report meets even the minimum standards of “science,” and in fact, the reports have been shown to use shoddy methods to draw predetermined conclusions about teacher education. [2]

Durig also depends on the Balanced Literacy Big Lie, reducing BL to a caricature of guessing using pictures instead of decoding. Notably as well, Durig offers no links for the “ton of research” claim (because there is none).

The accurate claim about BL is that we have no scientific research to support claims of a reading crisis, no scientific research proving BL has failed, and no data proving any universal application of BL or reading programs. The media and political attacks on BL and reading programs are entirely rhetorical and ideological.

With this careless and misleading article, we find ourselves trapped in the sixth year of the Hanford SOR lie, and it seems too few people are willing to tell the real story of reading, the one that students deserve instead of using “science” to promote the same baseless reading war we have been waging since at least the 1940s.

[1] See:

[2] Reviews of NCTQ reports:

Dudley-Marling, C., Stevens, L. P., & Gurn, A. (2007, April). A critical policy analysis and response to the report of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). NCTE. https://ncte.org/resources/reports/critical-policy-analysis-response-nctq-report/

Benner, S. M. (2012). Quality in student teaching: Flawed research leads to unsound recommendations. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. https://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-student-teaching

Fuller, E. J. (2014). Shaky methods, shaky motives: A critique of the National Council of Teacher Quality’s review of teacher preparation programs. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(1), 63-77. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022487113503872

Cochran-Smith, M., Stern, R., Sánchez, J.G., Miller, A., Keefe, E.S., Fernández, M.B., Chang, W., Carney, M.C., Burton, S., & Baker, M. (2016). Holding teacher preparation accountable: A review of claims and evidence. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/teacher-prep

Thomas, P.L., & Goering, C.Z. (2016). Review of “Learning about Learning: What Every New Teacher Needs to Know.” Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-teacher-education

Cochran-Smith, M., Keefe, E.S., Chang, W.C., & Carney, M.C. (2018). NEPC Review: “2018 Teacher Prep Review.” Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-teacher-prep-2018

Burke, K. J., & DeLeon, A. (2020). Wooden dolls and disarray: Rethinking United States’ teacher education to the side of quantification. Critical Studies in Education, 61(4), 480-495. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17508487.2018.1506351

Stillman, J., & Schultz, K. (2021). NEPC Review: “2020 Teacher Prep Review: Clinical Practice and Classroom Management.” Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/teacher-prep

Thomas, P.L. (2023, September). NEPC review: Teacher prep review: Strengthening elementary reading instruction. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/teacher-prep

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

Reading Program Mirage Redux: “Programs do not teach kids”

Let’s start with paired texts, one from X/Twitter and one from media:

With more than half of Connecticut’s third-graders failing to meet reading benchmarks, education stakeholders across the state agree that existing strategies must change in order to boost student scores.

How to go about that change is where the consensus ends.

State education officials are doubling down on their support of “Right to Read” legislation they believe will provide equal opportunity for all children learning how to read, despite local school leaders’ misgivings about the implementation of the law.

One of those critics is Westport Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice, who after state officials refused to grant the town a waiver from the new program, expressed “disappointment as a result of the endless hours our faculty and leaders have spent on this waiver process.” He was responding to a request for comment from the Westport Journal in December.

In Westport, 73.8 percent of third graders achieved reading proficiency last year — 10 percentage points lower than the year before — but still among the highest in the state.

The state Department of Education “moved the goal posts throughout the process, and we continued to flex to meet those expectations,” Scarice contended.

“Programs do not teach kids. Materials do not teach kids. Highly skilled professional educators teach kids, and that is what we have in Westport,” he said.

State to Scarice: Criticism of new reading program a ‘myth’

In the midst of the reading program shuffle that the second text above is addressing, we must answer Katie’s question with a not-so-fun fact: “Science of Reading” (SOR) foundational claims that balanced literacy programs have cause a reading crisis in the US are not supported by science.

In fact, research for decades (including NRP reports) have shown that whole language, balanced literacy, and systematic phonics are about equally effective for student reading proficiency (comprehension); for example:

The really frustrating fact about the SOR movement is that “science” is the rhetoric of the advocacy and legislation, but anecdote is the primary evidence used to perpetuate essentially ideological claims:

Hoffman, J.V., Hikida, M., & Sailors, M. (2020). Contesting science that silences: Amplifying equity, agency, and design research in literacy teacher
preparation. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S255–S266. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.353

Like CT, most states and notably NYC have passed legislation mandating districts and schools drop existing programs falsely labeled as “failing” and choose among a few reading programs falsely labeled SOR.

As one vivid example of this charade is the fate of the program Open Court, which has had a recent turn as program-of-the-day in the wake of the NRP/NCLB mandate that all programs had to be scientifically-based.

Although written in 2017, this overview of Open Court by McQuillan could have been written today, or sadly, several years from now:

Translation: Open Court does no better, and often worse, than the alternatives. 

This most recent study is by no means the only evidence against phonics instruction or programs such as Open Court. The list of studies that show the failure of phonics is too long to repeat here, but you can whet your appetite by looking at what happened with the U.S. Department of Education’s spectacularly expensive and utterly ineffective Reading First program (here, here, and here, for starters).

Journalists and politicians get to move on to the next Great Cause, but the teachers and kids stuck in Open Court classrooms often have no such option.

Closing the Books on Open Court Reading

And thus, the really not-so-fun fact is that despite ample evidence to the contrary, some states have included Open Court in the new mandates!

Here is the real issue that is at the core of our obsession with manufacturing a reading crisis and then demanding the exact same reform strategies, again—mostly declaring some programs failures and mandating new programs instead: Reading programs have not caused a reading crisis, and different reading programs are not the reform solution regardless of our reading goals.

Since I have been making this argument literally for decades, I end here with a reader to emphasize that I endorse no reading programs—never have, never will:

And it bears repeating: “’Programs do not teach kids. Materials do not teach kids. Highly skilled professional educators teach kids, and that is what we have in Westport,’ [Westport Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice] said.”

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

The New Illinois Literacy Plan: How Will It Impact K-12 Teachers Across Illinois?

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22nd 5:30 – 7:00p.m.

VIRTUAL (livestreamed via YouTube)

The Illinois State Board of Education has released a new statewide plan for literacy curricula and instruction.

Buyer Beware!: Avoiding the Unintended (But Predictable) Consequences of SOR Legislation [Click for PDF]

P.L. Thomas

All PK-12 teachers in our public schools—especially those who teach reading and language arts; those who work with English Language Learners; and those whose practice includes teaching content-area reading—as well as their administrators, plus those who prepare teachers, are part of this plan Illinois State Board of Education notes is designed to “guide and unify literacy efforts across the state.”

Our panel will help attendees understand the national context within which this plan was developed, along with how ISBE defines the problems in current Illinois literacy teaching. The core components of the plan, and how they will affect the curricular and instructional choices made by classroom teachers and teacher education program faculty, will be described and discussed.

One focus of the panel will be on examining critiques of the plan, what was left out, what the next steps will be for school districts, and the extent to which its provisions promote the complexity and nuances of literacy acquisition and teaching. The crucial question—What do teachers really need to support their literacy instruction? —will be considered from multiple viewpoints by the panel and attendees. 

PANELISTS INCLUDE:

 Dr. Marie Donovan, Associate Professor & Program Director, Early Childhood, College of Education, DePaul University

Cathy Mannen,Professional Issues Director, Illinois Federation of Teachers; Early Childhood and Literacy Teacher & Mentor

Cristina Sanchez-Lopez, Co-President Paridad Education; Bilingual, Bicultural Instructor, College of Education, DePaul University 

https://www.paridad.us/cristina-lopez

Dr. Paul Thomas, Professor, Education, Furman University 

https://www.infoagepub.com/products/How-to-End-the-Reading-War-and-Serve-the-Literacy-Needs-of-All-Students-2nd-ed

This forum will build upon the Spring 2023 forum on the ‘reading wars,’ where expert panelists discussed the ‘science of reading’ as well as what we now know from research are hallmarks of effective literacy instruction. Here is the link to that forum’s recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/wlM4kOgXikU?si=4m8AzgttSKDzj-Rp

All attendees must register individually. If you register and can’t attend you will receive a recording of the forum the following week. Please share this notice and flyer with colleagues and friends.

REGISTER AT: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/coe-winter-forum-the-new-illinois-literacy-plan-tickets-803161476597

We hope to see you there!

Dr. Diane Horwitz, Coordinator Education Issues Forums

dhorwit1@depaul.edu

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

Missing the Forest for the Trees in Literacy Instruction: Resisting the Nonsense in Crisis-based Reading Reform (Again)

[Header Photo by Irina Iriser on Unsplash]

One brief analogy I use when asking students to consider both literacy and teaching literacy (as well as teaching and learning in general) is to recall a time when they had to assemble something like a bookshelf or a large toy for children.

The point is to consider the ways in which we navigate the directions and assembling the item. I nudge them by asking how well they feel the written directions help them and then what they do when they find themselves confused while assembling.

A typical moment of community in this thought experiment is that many of us rely on the picture on the box to help guide us.

Yes, we turn to look at the picture to help us make meaning of the process.

I recently assembled two large filing cabinets and cannot express the relief of having the detailed directions, the image of the completed filing cabinet in several angles on amazon, and a video of someone assembling the cabinets.

My point is that the most compelling part of assembling an item for many people is the whole, finished product. We really want and even need is to see the whole authentic thing.

But that does not mean that the step-by-step instructions do not matter; they certainly help, and following the instructions carefully often makes assembly successful.

In my case, I also found that the second cabinet was a breeze because I had the experience of building the first one.

All of this is to say that literacy, like the assembling analogy, is a holistic and authentic human behavior that is both natural (speaking and listening) and requires a learning process (reading and writing).

And like my experience with building two cabinets, literacy development is best learned when grounded in its holistic state but greatly aided by attending in some ways with identifiable parts (so-called skills). Ultimately, as well, literacy development requires a great deal of authentic experiences as part of that growth.

I have again been thinking about all this after presenting at LitCon 2024 and having several people approach me about my stance on nonsense words as a way to asses students’ phonics knowledge.

The reason issues about how to teach phonics in reading instruction (parallel to how to teach grammar, mechanics, and usage in writing instruction) remains a point of debate, I think, is that most literacy debate is driven those who are missing the forest for the trees, committed to implementing inauthentic and decontextualized practices.

My standard position is that using nonsense words to assess phonics knowledge in students is misrepresenting the purpose of reading skills (all of which are ways in which readers seek to make meaning) and misrepresenting reading achievement (testing phonics knowledge is not testing reading, which must include comprehension).

For a century, alas, we have remained mired in a literacy debate that itself is mostly nonsense.

I know of no one who advocates for no phonics (or no grammar) instruction.

Again, the debate is mostly between those hyper-focusing on the trees (such as the “science of reading” [SOR] mandates for phonics-first and systematic phonics for all students) and those arguing that regardless of how we teach, we must keep the forest in sight (the holistic and authentic acts of literacy, reading and writing).

A key question is not whether students have acquired phonics knowledge but if students can read for meaning and are eager to do so.

The SOR movement and the concurrent rise in SOR legislation, policy, instructional practices, and programs are mostly a recycling of many eras of reading crises followed by reading reform.

We have in recent history a reading crisis/reform movement grounded in scientifically-based mandates, NCLB, that has led to, yes, the exact same reading crisis and nearly the exact same reform agendas.

And once reading research and science have been diluted by ill-informed media and even more ill-informed politicians, we are faced with mandates that are banning some practices as not “scientific” (often without any citation to that science) and mandating practices and programs that are themselves not supported by scientific evidence—LETRS training, Orton-Gillingham, so-called SOR programs (see blow), decodable texts, phonics checks using nonsense words, etc.

In short, reading wars often fail reading, students, and teachers because ideological biases are wrapped in veneers such as “science” and research. The agents of that failure are often non-literacy experts and non-educators—notably journalists, politicians, and corporate entities eager to rebrand and market new educational materials and programs.

As I documented in my SOR policy brief, the problems with SOR are mostly not that we should avoid reading reform (specifically the need to do a much better job of serving the needs of marginalized and minoritized students since literacy, like all of formal education, remains inexcusably inequitable), but that reform must be (1) grounded in accurate identification of the problems, (2) informed by educators and educational researchers without market stakes in that reform, and (3) designed to serve the individual needs of all students (and not one-size-fits all mandates).

The current wave of SOR stories and legislation fails all of those guidelines and is proving to be another attempt at doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

Let’s now consider a couple examples of why SOR is misguided.

First, assessments using nonsense words and systematic phonics for all students are not supported by reading science; further, these practices can in fact cause harm:

Advocates of the phonics screening tests claim that they are fun. In fact, for fluent readers, it can destroy their recognition as competent readers. In one school example, a boy who came to school reading, and who continued to flourish as a fluent reader, scored 2/40! Since the test includes nonsense words in the quest to focus on decoding (he read “elt” as “let,” “sarps” as “rasp,” and “chab” as “cab,” to foreground a few!) What he seemed to be doing was re-arranging the letters or sounds and reconstructing them into recognizable words that he knew made sense. Meanwhile, another child whom the teacher regarded as not being a fluent reader was able to sound out the nonsense words as well as regular words and achieve a score of 16/40, all without knowing their meaning. Thus, the raw scores from the test of each child give us no information about them as readers and how they can make meaning from text; they simply show how they decode words out of context.

Phoney Phonics: How Decoding Came to Rule and Reading Lost
Meaning

When any instruction starts with the content or skill without regard for what the student knows or needs to know, that practice is wasting precious time better spent on what that student needs and in some cases mis-teaching students (nonsense words make the phonics knowledge the goal and misleads students to see making meaning as unneeded).

Next, as noted above, the SOR reform movement is once again making the fatal mistake of misreading the importance of reading programs while simultaneously falsely blaming some programs as failures while endorsing programs that have (ironically) been discredited through research.

Once at the center of the Reading First scandal during NCLB, Open Court is now being mandated in states such as Virginia (as one of a few districts can choose).

Endorsing Open Court is evidence that the SOR movement remains mostly ideology and not “scientific”; in fact, the resurfacing of Open Court is deja vu all over again:

Back in the 1990s, the Los Angeles Times was a big fan of the scripted reading curriculum, Open Court, designed to teach reading in the elementary grades through a heavy dose of explicit, systematic phonics. The Times reporters wrote lots of favorable articles about phonics instruction in general, especially then-education reporter, Richard Lee Colvin. Others got in on the act, too, including Jill Stewart of the LA Weekly, whose “The Blackboard Bungle” article should be a case study in the lack of “fact checking” in reporting.*

Open Court ended up being adopted by Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), among many other districts around the country – never mind that the evidence for the effectiveness of phonics was (and is) severely lacking. (LAUSD eventually abandoned the program in 2011.)

Closing the Books on Open Court Reading

And after Open Court was adopted in a major US city (think about the outsized anger leveled at Units of Study in NYC), what does the scientific evidence show?:

Translation: Open Court does no better, and often worse, than the alternatives. 

This most recent study is by no means the only evidence against phonics instruction or programs such as Open Court. The list of studies that show the failure of phonics is too long to repeat here, but you can whet your appetite by looking at what happened with the U.S. Department of Education’s spectacularly expensive and utterly ineffective Reading First program (here, here, and here, for starters).

Journalists and politicians get to move on to the next Great Cause, but the teachers and kids stuck in Open Court classrooms often have no such option.

Closing the Books on Open Court Reading

As McQuillan warned, we are now in the throes of the “next Great Cause,” and students and teachers are trapped, again, by mandates driven by ideology, politics, and market interests.

If you take the time to look, the greater the missionary zeal about a reading crisis and reading reform, the more likely the person is blinded by beliefs, motivated by political gain, or cashing in.

Regretfully, centering the use of nonsense words in the SOR movement does capture what all the reading crisis histrionics ultimately are—nonsense.

As is typical of education reform, SOR advocates are missing the forest for the trees.

Recommended

 Literacy Crises: False Claims and Real Solutions by Jeff McQuillan

The Science of Reading and the Media: Is Reporting Biased?, Maren Aukerman

The Science of Reading and the Media: Does the Media Draw on High-Quality Reading Research?, Maren Aukerman

The Science of Reading and the Media: How Do Current Reporting Patterns Cause Damage?, Maren Aukerman

Legislating Phonics: Settled Science or Political Polemics? David Reinking, George G. Hruby, and Victoria J. Risko

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

NEW: Everything you know is wrong: The “science of reading” era of reading legislation

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

Recommended

 Legislating Phonics: Settled Science or Political Polemics? David Reinking, George G. Hruby, and Victoria J. Risko

 Edling, S. (2015). Between curriculum complexity and stereotypes: Exploring stereotypes of teachers and education in media as a question of structural violence. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47(3), 399-415. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2014.956796

 Megan Chaffin, Holly Sheppard Riesco, Kathryn Hackett-Hill, Vicki Collet, Megan Yates Grizzle & Jacob Warren (25 Oct 2023): “Phonics Monkeys” and “Real Life Reading”: Heteroglossic Views of a State Reading Initiative, Literacy Research and Instruction, DOI: 10.1080/19388071.2023.2271085

 “It’s Just Something That You Have to Do as a Teacher”: Investigating the Intersection of Educational Infrastructure Redesign, Teacher Discretion, and Educational Equity in the Elementary ELA Classroom, Naomi L. Blaushild, The Elementary School Journal 2023 124:2, 219-244

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

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

From Stereotypes to Policy: Understanding the Relationship between Media and Education

This is a brief overview of the following article:

Edling, S. (2015). Between curriculum complexity and stereotypes: Exploring stereotypes of teachers and education in media as a question of structural violence. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47(3), 399-415. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2014.956796

For many years I have been raising concerns about the use of “crisis” rhetoric around education [1], specifically challenging the default use of “crisis” and “miracle” in mainstream media.

The central role of “crisis” rhetoric in the accountability era of education reform has been characterized as a “manufactured” [2] crisis.

The current subset of education reform, the “science of reading” (SOR) movement, fits into the same patterns of the broader accountability era of education reform, I have argued.

Here, I am using Edling excellent work on the relationship between mainstream media and education to reinforce the claims that SOR as a reform movement is both mainstream accountability reform and essentially conservative.

I want this overview to be accessible, but I also highly recommend reading the piece in it entirety (click title above for access).

Edling’s first sentence establishes: “What is of particular interest in this paper is how professional teachers repeatedly, although not always, seem to be pictured in a de-contextualized and non-relational manner by actors outside education, and especially how the media often fails to take educational complexity and practice into account.”

Media representations of education, then, are often overly simplistic. Note that a key aspect of the SOR movement [3] is the claim that reading science is simple (the simple view of reading) and settled, effectively erasing the complexity of reading science and of reading instruction.

Edling’s explanation about the relationship between media and education also describes well the story of reading found in the SOR movement:

Newspapers do not just write about education, they also represent to their readers what education is ‘about’ (p. 392, see also McLure, 2003; Thomas, 2004). Similarly, Fairclough (1995) stresses that the media has the power: ‘to shape governments and parties … influence knowledge, beliefs, values, social relations, social identities’ (p. 2). From this way of reasoning, the media can be seen as an important power source for the construction of certain ideologies that can either exclude or include (Fairclough, 1995, p. 14), depending on how they are positioned and what sets the agenda for what is to be framed as true or false in society (cf. Johnson-Cartee, 2005).

There is no doubt that critical analyses of education in general are necessary in order to improve quality. Education is here understood as a broad concept that includes institutions such as (pre)schools, teacher education and the ideas behind them (cf. Sa ̈fstro ̈m & Ekerwald, 2012). However, what is highlighted here is not criticism of the media itself, but how the media’s recurring simplifications and often negative images of education and teachers are understood and how they might affect people who are seen or define themselves as teachers. Moreover, teachers in teacher education and teachers at (pre)schools are dialectically interconnected, in that teacher education aims to educate teachers, who are capable of acting as professionals in various educational positions—not the least in (pre) schools. For that reason, the term teacher includes teachers at (pre) schools and teacher education (cf. Hallse ́n, 2013).

In the paper, four interrelated propensities are problematized concerning the media’s portrayals of teachers and education:

  •  Viewing education as being in more or less permanent crisis
  •  Taking the role as a spokesperson for teachers and on behalf of the field of education
  •  Excluding the knowledge and experiences of teacher(s), educators and/or educational researchers in the public press
  •  Simplifying the notion of being a good teacher through stereotypes and dualistic frameworks that overlook task and relational complexity.
Between curriculum complexity and stereotypes

The SOR movement is yet another reading crisis in a long line of similar reading crises reaching back to the 1940s. Also the SOR movement is being driven by journalists who are identified as literacy experts, and those journalists have repeatedly characterized teachers as ill-equipped to teach reading because the entire field of teacher education has failed those teachers.

As the fourth bullet point above notes, as well, the SOR movement depends on simplistic characterizations of balanced literacy and reading programs as well as cartoonish caricatures of “three cueing” and “guessing” as pervasive failures of reading instruction across the entire US.

Edling details next “educational crisis discourse”:

Although crisis in the media is generally pictured as having specific causes that can be limited to a certain time in history (Wiklund, 2006), research indicates that the notion of educational crisis has been used as a more or less constant image ever since the 1950s and 1960s, and can be associated with the progressive school vs. conservative school problematic…. [C]risis is something that originates in the clash between different world views. As it is reasonable to assume that different world views will exist as long as there are humans, it is equally reasonable to assume that crises—including educational crises—will too.

The repetition of the word crisis is closely related to ideas that teachers and teacher education are incapable of dealing with education in a proper way. Crisis is used as a blanket to cover the field of education and, as in a situation of social crisis, groups outside education feel the need to step in and take control. The phenomenon can be described as an outside-in vs. an inside-out professionalism (cf. Stanley & Stonach, 2013). It is argued that the way in which people from the outside have assumed the right to define what is good and bad education has created a systematic disbelief in teachers in ways that have reduced their professional autonomy (Ball, 2011; Beach & Bagley, 2012; Krantz, 2009; Lauder, Brown, & Halsey, 2009).

Other researchers point to how the media refers to teacher education and teachers as lacking the necessary qualities and blames them for the crisis in school without taking the purposes and contexts of education into account (cf. Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2008; MacLure, 2003; Thomas, 2004; Warburton & Saunders, 1996).

Between curriculum complexity and stereotypes

The SOR movement has manufactured a reading crisis (mostly from misrepresenting NAEP data) and then placing soft or indirect blame on reading teachers and direct blame on teacher educators.

Edling notes that blame for educational crises do vary across countries (Sweden, for example, portrays teachers as victims of the crisis as well as the authorities who can overcome that crisis, contrary to the SOR story of teacher blaming). However, Edling adds that in most crisis discourse about education “teacher educator(s) and educational researchers were degraded and silenced,” similar to the current SOR movement.

Broadly, Edling emphasizes “a tendency to repeatedly fixate the debate on education in a dualistic and simplified image that omits the task and relational complexity,” resulting in “[s]tructural violence”:

Structural violence is generated through social practice and law, and hence becomes closely entwined in a specific culture and the norms that govern it, which implies that people in general, including members of group who suffers from their consequences, risks upholding the norms in their every-day actions since the norms are taken for granted as true. From this sense, people or groups of people, such as teachers, are not neutral or simply passive victims but partakers in the weaving of social structures. Violence is produced as a recurring beat through endorsed ideals, speech, gestures, choice of focus and solutions to world problems. The violence that becomes materialized as a consequence of these structures does not necessarily have to do with ill-will, as in deliberately wanting to do harm. On the contrary, what characterizes these acts is that they appear to be normal, harmless and sometimes have the ambition to do good, whereas in reality, they make life difficult for certain groups of people (cf. Cudd, 2006, p. 127, Epp & Watkinsson, 1997, p. 6).

Between curriculum complexity and stereotypes

Here is a key point: Journalists and teachers do not need to be bad actors for the media stories and resulting consequences to be bad actions. Hanford and other journalists as well as elected officials likely see their work as good work even as their messaging and policy endorsements are oversimplified, misguided, and harmful (to teachers and students).

This helps explain why Hanford and other journalists have teacher support:

She argues that our identity is not just shaped by how we see ourselves, but also through the way others see us, and that seeing is often coloured by stereotypes and norms (Young, 1990, p. 46–47). In accordance with the associative model, teachers can choose to see themselves as part of the professional group of teachers, which research describes as complex and multidimensional. At the same time, the group affinity model helps to illuminate how teachers’ identity as a group is shaped from the outside based on stereotyped and simplified images of teachers and educational researchers. Hence, people can identify themselves as members of the group known as ‘teacher professionals’ that is associated with certain practices. At the same time, they may have to face contrasting images of a teacher created by the media.

Between curriculum complexity and stereotypes

Parallel to the role of NAEP in the media-manufactured reading crisis, the role of standardized tests is acknowledged by Edling: “In a sense, one could argue that reports such as TIMMS and PISA have presented evidence of the failure of education in many countries, which might suggest that the negative criticism of teachers and education is justified. The results in the reports have been used to motivate several reforms focusing on measurability, accountability and control.”

Ultimately the stories perpetuated by media are stereotypes: “Once people have become accustomed to stereotypical thinking, they may not be able to see individuals or situations for what they are. Accordingly, a problem with stereotypes is that they are used to judge and pigeonhole people, without really taking into account context and unique individuals.”

The crisis story of reading in SOR is a simplistic story of caricature about teachers, teacher educators, balanced literacy, and reading programs. the complexity of the real world of teaching and learning reading are erased. As Edling notes:

Parallel with the recurring waves of crisis that wash over the field of education and the recurring stereotyped images of teachers, the curriculum complexity of the purposes and practices of education generally goes unnoticed in the media debate on education. What is forgotten is that teachers are not free to do as they want, even though their profession often allows them some kind of freedom to judge. Indeed, as the teaching profession is politically defined, it is obliged to pay attention to a multitude of different policies (Ball et al., 2012) and curriculum purposes (Hopmann, 2007). In a sense, it is possible to assert that teaching in many countries have come to be restricted to a standard and accountability movement; and hence, rendered more mechanical and simplified than before—very much following the logic presented in media (cf. Apple, 2011; Berliner, 2013).

Between curriculum complexity and stereotypes

Consequently, Edling explains: “Rather than beginning the discussion with the various demands that are embedded in teachers’ professional assignments, there are tendencies within the media to portray the good teacher as someone who is capable of efficiently transferring knowledge to pupils, where the epistemology of knowledge stems from science rendering it equal with truth and fact about a world (Wiklund, 2006, p. 177).”

The weaponizing of “science” in the SOR movement, in fact, has begun to creep broader into the science of learning, the science of writing, and the science of math.

The great paradox of crisis rhetoric in media coverage of education is it insures failure:

The implication is that whatever they do, they will end up as failures in the sense of being unable to embrace the multitude of requirements at the same time. Hence, drawing on the task and relational complexity of teachers’ work, one might ask whether it is possible to be an impeccable teacher in the relational midst of education if a multitude of educational purposes and relational inconsistencies have to be taken into account. If it is not, perhaps there is a point in adhering to more nuanced judgements of teachers’ quality in accordance with curriculum content, purposes and the ways in which relations are played out in educational spaces.

Between curriculum complexity and stereotypes

Edling warns: “[T]he power of the media and the damaging consequences of repeatedly judging groups of people through a grid of stereo- types need nevertheless to be taken seriously,” concluding:

Consequently, when the media systematically define teachers as working in a field of crisis and need exterior help to sort things out, it automatically excludes the professional knowledge and experiences of teachers and educational researchers and their task and relational complexity, which are already present in their day-to-day work, from the debate.

In the light of these tendencies, research on structural violence helps to remind us that: (a) teachers are unwillingly forced into a paradoxical (in)visibility (even in Sweden, where it is pointed out that their voices need to be heard), (b) they are squeezed in-between two pressuring external demands, namely the complexities in their professional assignment that are politically steered and stereotypes of the good and bad teacher produced by, in this case, the media, (c) they risk wasting time and energy on addressing prejudices that have nothing to do with the specific work they are expected to do, and d) the logic of binary stereotypes is a power issue that brands teachers into a position of permanent failure.

Between curriculum complexity and stereotypes

While Edling is writing about media coverage of education in general, her examination matches exactly how the SOR movement works as well as how that movement is grounded in misinformation to the detriment of teachers, students, and democracy.

[1] Thomas, P.L. (2015). Ignored under Obama: Word magic, crisis discourse, and utopian expectations. In P. R. Carr & B. J. Porfilio (Eds.), The phenomenon of Obama and the agenda for education: Can hope (still) audaciously trump neoliberalism? (pp. 45-68). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

[2] Berliner, D. C., & Biddle, B. J. (1997). The manufactured crisis: Myths, fraud, and the attack on America’s public schools. Longman.

[3] See an overview of the story about reading now commonplace in media, grounded in Emily Hanford’s journalism, specifically her article “Hard Words.”

Education, Educational Research, Media, NYT, Poverty, Science of Reading

Public Education Deserves Better Journalism in 2024: Reading Edition

There is an incredibly powerful and frustrating dynamic about mainstream media in the US: While common knowledge claims mainstream media is liberal media, actual mainstream journalism in the US perpetuates as fact conservative ideology.

And the topic that suffers the most from that contradiction is education.

We are but 8 days into 2024, and the self-proclaimed Queen of US journalism, the New York Times, has offered up what may prove to be one of the classic examples of that liberal/conservative contradiction (see, for example, the NYT covering poverty at the level of The Onion).

Currently, media has renewed interest in college admissions, specifically using standardized tests such as the SAT or ACT for admissions. Progressive/liberal advocates call for not using SAT/ACT for admissions ; conservatives support maintaining standardized tests in admissions.

And right on cue, the NYT: The Misguided War on the SAT.

The article is a lazy argument, but also careless in its cherry picking of evidence:

The Leonhardt article uses the California faculty senate article as a proof point (the one that mentions College Board over 50 times) but fails to cite the rebuttal by the person who has researched the topic more than anyone, and who found serious problems with the research study.

Aw Jeez, not this shit again

This college admissions/SAT example parallels the NYT piece on grocery shopping by people in poverty; the claims of the articles are driven by normative conservative ideology (poor people buy junk food and standardized tests measure merit) not empirical evidence.

Mainstream media misrepresenting education and educational research, then, is normal in the US. In fact, far more coverage of education is misleading or outright false than is credible.

One of the best examples of this problem is coverage of reading proficiency and the current reading crisis, specifically the “science of reading” movement.

Along with many others, I have documented that media coverage of reading is both “holy text” and significantly misleading.

Key elements of that misguided coverage include the following:

  • Misrepresenting “reading proficiency” based on misunderstanding NAEP achievement levels. Media makes the claim 1/3 of students are not proficient readers when, in fact, NAEP shows 2/3 of students read at grade level or above.
  • Misrepresenting balanced literacy, three cueing, guessing, and popular reading programs. Essentially, no evidence exists showing balanced literacy has created a reading crisis or that any sort of uniform approach to reading exists across the US since many programs and interpretations of reading co-exist now and throughout the history of the US.
  • Misrepresenting teacher knowledge and practice related to reading as well as broadly discrediting teacher education, primarily based on a think-tank (NCTQ) agenda and not empirical evidence.
  • Misrepresenting reading science by distorting conclusions from NRP and ignoring or cherry-picking from the two decades of research since NRP.
  • Claiming reading science is settled and asserting that brain research is also settled. Both reading and brain science are evolving, each ripe with debate and room for greater understanding.
  • Simultaneously narrowing the reading science to only experimental/quasi-experimental research while using as evidence anecdotes and endorsing practices (grade retention, systematic phonics instruction for all students) and programs (LETRS, Orton-Gillingham) lacking scientific support.
  • Aligning SOR with social justice agendas although a growing body of research shows SOR contradicts equity goals.

In short, reading proficiency and reading instruction deserve better than mainstream media is providing.

Education journalists need in 2024 to step back from the “holy text” template, re-engage with the full story and body of evidence, and then provide the sort of critical coverage students, teachers, and our democracy deserve.

To that end, consider the following:

Critiques of Media Story about SOR

Recent Research Challenging SOR Policy/Legislation

See Also

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

Research Roundup Winter 2024 [Updated]

In the wake of the “science of reading” tsunami, most states have passed new or revised reading legislation over the past decade. Research on the outcomes of those flawed decisions are now being published and exposing a common theme—”unintended consequences.”

While I think for some these consequences are intended, the research is showing that once again, following a similar pattern of accountability reform since the 1980s, the SOR legislative reform movement is simply not fulfilling promised outcomes and is often causing more or different harm.

Here are some current examples of that research:

I.

The Unintended Consequences of Test-Based Remediation, David N. Figlio and Umut Özek

NBER Working Paper No. 30831

January 2023

Abstract

School systems around the world use achievement tests to assign students to schools, classes, and instructional resources, including remediation. Using a regression discontinuity design, we study a Florida policy that places middle school students who score below a proficiency cutoff into remedial classes. Students scoring below the cutoff receive more educational resources, but they are also placed in classes that are more segregated by race, socio-economic status, and prior achievement. Increased tracking occurs not only in the remedial subject, but also in other core subjects. These tracking effects are significantly larger and more likely to persist beyond the year of remediation for Black students.

II.

Elena Aydarova; “Whatever You Want to Call It”: Science of Reading Mythologies in the Education Reform Movement. Harvard Educational Review 1 December 2023; 93 (4): 556–581. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-93.4.556

Abstract

In recent years, a wave of science of reading (SOR) reforms have swept across the nation. Although advocates argue that these are based on science-based research, SOR remains a contested and ambiguous notion. In this essay, Elena Aydarova uses an anthropology of policy approach to analyze advocacy efforts that promoted SOR reforms and legislative deliberations in Tennessee. Drawing on Barthes’s theory of mythology, this analysis sheds light on the semiotic chains that link SOR with tradition, knowledge-build ingcurricula, and the scaling down of social safety nets. This deciphering of SOR mythologies under scores how the focus on “science” distorts the intentions of these myths to naturalize socioeconomic inequality and depoliticize social conditions of precarity. This study problematizes the claims made by SOR advocates and sheds light on the ways these reforms are likely to reproduce, rather than disrupt, inequities and injustices.

III. (Math research relevant to reading)

Clements, Douglas H., Renee Lizcano, and Julie Sarama. 2023. “Research and Pedagogies for Early Math” Education Sciences 13, no. 8: 839. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13080839

Abstract

The increasing interest in early childhood mathematics education for decades has increased the need for empirically supported pedagogical strategies. However, there is little agreement on how early math might best be taught. We draw from the empirical literature to paint a picture of research-based and research-validated pedagogical approaches and strategies for teaching early math. Most approaches share core characteristics, including concern for children’s interests and engagement and for working on content matched to children’s level of thinking. Learning trajectories are an especially useful organizing structure because they combine and integrate educational goals, development of children’s thinking, and empirically supported pedagogical strategies. Therefore, they help teachers interpret what the child is doing, thinking, and constructing, and offer instructional activities that extend children’s mathematical thinking. Simultaneously, teachers can see instructional strategies from the child’s perspective, offering meaningful and joyful opportunities to engage in learning.

IV.

Legislating Phonics: Settled Science or Political Polemics? David Reinking, George G. Hruby, and Victoria J. Risko

Abstract

In this commentary, we identify a phonics-first ideology and its polemical distortions of research and science to promote legislation that constrains and diminishes the teaching of reading. We affirm our own, and a majority of reading professionals’, commitment to teaching phonics. However, we argue that phonics instruction is more effective when embedded in a more comprehensive program of literacy instruction that accommodates students’ individual needs and multiple approaches to teaching phonics—a view supported by substantial research. After summarizing the politicization of phonics in the United States, we critique a legislated training course for teachers in Tennessee as representative of how a phonics-first ideology is expressed polemically for political purposes. We contrast it with a more collaboratively developed, balanced, nonlegislative approach in the previous governor’s administration. Specifically, the training course (a) makes an unfounded claim that there is a national reading crisis that can be traced to insufficient or inappropriate phonics instruction; (b) distorts, misrepresents, or omits relevant research findings and recommendations, most prominently from the report of the National Reading Panel; (c) inaccurately suggests that “balanced literacy instruction” is “whole language” instruction in disguise; and (d) wrongly claims that its views of phonics are based on a settled science of reading.

V.

Compton-Lilly, C., Spence, L.K., Thomas, P.L. and Decker, S.L. (2023), Stories Grounded in Decades of Research: What We Truly Know about the Teaching of Reading. Read Teach, 77: 392-400. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2258

Abstract

The recent dissemination of selective research findings related to reading privileges a narrow body of reading scholarship and a singular, unproven solution—teaching phonics. We offer a research-based correction by presenting two compelling bodies of research to argue that reading instruction must be responsive to individual children. While this confluence of complexity does not deny the importance of phonics, it highlights the significant findings related to: (1) the brain and reading, and (2) the systematic observation of young readers. We argue that reductive and singular models of reading fail to honor the cultures, experiences, and diversity of children. This confluence of research findings reveals an unequivocal need for caution as states, universities, schools, and teachers adopt assumedly universal and narrow approaches to teaching reading.

VI. (Relevant from 2002)

What I’ve Learned about Effective Reading Instruction: From a Decade of Studying Exemplary Elementary Classroom Teachers, Richard L. Allington, Volume 83, Issue 10. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170208301007

VII. (TBP 2024)

The Balancing Act: An Evidence-Based Approach to Teaching Phonics, Reading and Writing, Dominic Wyse, Charlotte Hacking

VIII.

Megan Chaffin, Holly Sheppard Riesco, Kathryn Hackett-Hill, Vicki Collet, Megan Yates Grizzle & Jacob Warren (25 Oct 2023): “Phonics Monkeys” and “Real Life Reading”: Heteroglossic Views of a State Reading Initiative, Literacy Research and Instruction, DOI: 10.1080/19388071.2023.2271085

Abstract

Framed by Bakhtinian theories of authoritative discourse and heteroglossia, this study examines perceptions of a Science-of-Reading- based state reading initiative five years into implementation. Using interview transcripts, researchers engaged in polyphonic analysis to bring the voices of teachers, reading interventionists, parents, administrators, and state department of education officials into created dialogue. Findings from this qualitative study suggest there were contrasting perspectives about reading and the SRI, that many participants felt the initiative narrowed reading instruction and constrained teachers’ agency, and that, overall, there have been limited opportunities for dialogue about the initiative. Findings demonstrate that a narrow view of reading research may silence and delegitimize some stakeholder voices. This state’s goal of sharpening the focus of reading instruction led to instruction that was perceived by some stakeholders as narrow, boring, and meaningless, unlikely to create the statewide culture of reading that was targeted. Implications for this and future state reading initiatives point to the value of dialogue among varied stakeholders, which might allow for the idiosyncrasies of the teaching and learning of reading and writing to be addressed.

IX.

“It’s Just Something That You Have to Do as a Teacher”: Investigating the Intersection of Educational Infrastructure Redesign, Teacher Discretion, and Educational Equity in the Elementary ELA Classroom, Naomi L. Blaushild, The Elementary School Journal 2023 124:2, 219-244

Abstract

School systems have taken on greater roles in guiding and supporting classroom instruction by redesigning their educational infrastructure—the coordinated resources, structures, and norms that support teachers’ work and drive instructional improvement. However, teachers often adapt or resist common instructional approaches, citing students’ unique needs. Drawing on data from a qualitative, comparative study, I examine how different types of public school systems (charter, suburban, and urban) redesigned their educational infrastructures and how teachers used system-provided educational infrastructure when constructing their practice. I found that teachers experienced their educational infrastructure as providing both affordances and constraints around their instructional decisions, particularly how they responded to their perceptions of students’ needs. Despite differences in each system’s educational infrastructure arrangements, teachers faced a common challenge related to differentiating instruction in diverse classrooms. Findings suggest the need for educational infrastructure redesign efforts to include professional learning around asset-based differentiation strategies and culturally responsive pedagogy.

X.

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

Abstract

Teachers in the US are increasingly required to use scripted curricula. Such instructional materials often reflect the overwhelming whiteness of the publishing industry through a lack of representation of authors and protagonists outside of white, middle-class normative characters. Implementation of such curricula stands in direct contrast to studies finding that culturally relevant pedagogy and curricula benefit students across racial and ethnic groups. This paper describes a qualitative analysis of the scripted Wit and Wisdom English Language Arts curriculum for grades K-8 guided by the research question: How might the curriculum reproduce a white supremacist master script? Following a quantitative analysis of racial representation across all core and supplementary texts in the curriculum, the research team used guiding questions grounded in a critical discourse and anti-racist teaching framework to qualitatively analyse teacher-facing materials at each grade level. The findings of this study indicate that whiteness is centred at every level of the curriculum in text selection and thematic grouping of texts, as well as through discursive moves in teacher-facing materials (e.g. essential questions for learning modules). Based on the findings, the research team suggests mechanisms for individual and collective efforts to resist whiteness-centred curricula at the system, school, and classroom level.

XI.

Maroun, Jamil, and Christopher H. Tienken. 2024. “The Pernicious Predictability of State-Mandated Tests of Academic Achievement in the United States” Education Sciences 14, no. 2: 129. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14020129

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the predictiveness of community and family demographic variables related to the development of student academic background knowledge on the percentage of students who pass a state-mandated, commercially prepared, standardized Algebra 1 test in the state of New Jersey, USA. This explanatory, cross-sectional study utilized quantitative methods through hierarchical regression analysis. The results suggest that family demographic variables found in the United States Census data related to the development of student academic background knowledge predicted 75 percent of schools in which students achieved a passing score on a state standardized high school assessment of Algebra 1. We can conclude that construct-irrelevant variance, influenced in part by student background knowledge, can be used to predict standardized test results. The results call into question the use of standardized tests as tools for policy makers and educational leaders to accurately judge student learning or school quality.

XII.

Social in/justice and the deficit foundations of oracy, Ian Cushing

XIII.

Rios, A., Matthews, S. D., Zentell, S. & Kogut, A. (2024). More being, different doing: Illuminating examples of culturally relevant literacy teaching. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 67, 283–293. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.1329

XIV.

Reading research – beyond the media hype by  Noella Mackenzie and Martina Tassone 

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

SC Should Avoid “Science of Reading” Fad to Address Historical Negligence in Reading

Update [1]

SC must not get caught in the revolving door of reading reforms | Opinion (The State, Columbia, SC)

SC must not get caught in the revolving door of reading reforms | Opinion (The Sun News, Myrtle Beach, SC)

SC must not get caught in the revolving door of reading reforms | Opinion (The Island Packet, Hilton Head, SC)

Legislators are again poised to address reading in South Carolina with “Read to Succeed” scheduled for a subcommittee hearing January 10.

I have been a literacy educator in SC for 40 years, 18 years as a high school English teacher and now in my 22nd year in higher education. My doctoral work at the University of South Carolina afforded me the opportunity to explore the long history of debate about reading in the US reaching back into the 1940s when literacy teacher and scholar Lou LaBrant raised a familiar concern: “A brief consideration will indicate reasons for the considerable gap between the research currently available and the utilization of that research in school programs and methods.”

LaBrant wrote just after a reading crisis was declared in the 1940s due to low literacy rates in WWII recruits, noting: “[W]e hear many persons saying that the present group of near-illiterates are results of ‘new methods,’ ‘progressive schools,’ or any deviation from the old mechanical procedures. They say we must return to drill and formal reciting from a text book.”

Eighty years later, journalists, pundits, and political leaders are announcing another reading crisis, the “science of reading” movement, and pointing at the exact same causes while offering the same solutions grounded almost entirely in phonics and going back to basics.

SC has been targeting reading for a decade through Read to Succeed, and yet, we find ourselves still mired in a reading crisis.

Let’s instead look at the evidence around us to close the gap LaBrant acknowledged.

In Connecticut, legislation has targeted reading mandating the “science of reading,” but now the unintended consequences are coming home to roost: “[T]he new mandate will cost districts collectively more than $100 million in the school year 2024-25.”

Even more concerning is this legislation bans adopted materials while mandating new materials, even for schools with strong reading proficiency: “CSDE ordered the remaining 68 applicants to either augment their existing programs or replace them entirely. These districts include New Canaan Public Schools, where 83.2 percent of their students read proficiently. Darien, Westport Eastford, Wilton, Colebrook, Cheshire, Ridgefield, Bethany were also denied in part or all together, even though their third graders scored near or above the 80 percent level.”

A recent analysis in the Harvard Educational Review reveals a similar pattern in reading legislation in Tennessee: “Since the early 2010s, Tennessee has had ‘a revolving door of reading reforms’—from the Ready to Read initiative in 2016 to the revisions of English language arts standards that in 2017 introduced ‘foundational literacy’ skills.”

Like CT, TN is facing a $100 million price tag, yet most of that funds purchasing commercial reading products not supported by science: “[A]lthough the new legislation overtly addressed changes in literacy instruction, it ultimately served to secure a market share for certain private providers of curriculum, assessment, and teacher professional development.­­”

This “science of reading” fad repeats the Common Core era of new standards and new teaching and learning materials—a cycle of reform that never achieves what is promised.

Often in SC, we pride ourselves on not simply following the fad, but in education, we have failed to do something different since the 1980s. Yes, we should serve better the individual needs of students as readers, but jumping on the “science of reading” bandwagon is taking the same path we have been traveling and expecting a different destination.

Regretfully, we persist in the historical negligence LaBrant confronted in 1942: “An easy way to evade the question of improved living and better schools for our underprivileged is to say the whole trouble is lack of drill. Lack of drill! Let’s be honest. Lack of good food; lack of well-lighted homes with books and papers; lack of attractive, well equipped schools, where reading is interesting and meaningful; lack of economic security permitting the use of free schools—lack of a good chance, the kind of chance these unlettered boys are now fighting to give to others.”

Legislators should resist the “science of reading” fad and make a different commitment to students and reading.

See Also

Cautionary Tales of State Reading Legislation: Tennessee

[1] Printed and edited version:

Legislators are again poised to address reading in South Carolina with “Read to Succeed” scheduled for a subcommittee hearing on Jan. 10.

I have been a literacy educator in South Carolina for 40 years, including 18 years as a high school English teacher. As an Education professor at Furman University, I’m now in my 22nd year in higher education.

My doctoral work at the University of South Carolina afforded me the opportunity to explore the long history of debate about reading in the U.S. reaching back into the 1940s when literacy teacher and scholar Lou LaBrant raised a familiar concern about “the considerable gap between the research currently available and the utilization of that research in school programs and methods.”

Just after a reading crisis was declared in the 1940s due to low literacy rates among WWII recruits, LaBrant wrote: “(W)e hear many persons saying that the present group of near-illiterates are results of ‘new methods,’ ‘progressive schools,’ or any deviation from the old mechanical procedures. They say we must return to drill and formal reciting from a text book.”

Eighty years later, journalists, pundits and political leaders are announcing another reading crisis — the “science of reading” movement — and pointing at the exact same causes while offering the same solutions grounded almost entirely in phonics and a return to basics.

South Carolina has been targeting reading for a decade through Read to Succeed, and yet, we find ourselves still mired in a reading crisis. Let’s instead look at the evidence around us to close the gap LaBrant acknowledged.

In Connecticut, legislation has targeted reading mandating the “science of reading,” but now the unintended consequences are coming home to roost: “(T)he new mandate will cost districts collectively more than $100 million in the school year 2024-25.”

Even more concerning is this legislation bans adopted materials while mandating new materials, even for schools with strong reading proficiency: “CSDE ordered the remaining 68 applicants to either augment their existing programs or replace them entirely. These districts include New Canaan Public Schools, where 83.2% of their students read proficiently. Darien, Westport Eastford, Wilton, Colebrook, Cheshire, Ridgefield, Bethany were also denied in part or all together, even though their third graders scored near or above the 80% level.”

A recent analysis in the Harvard Educational Review reveals a similar pattern in reading legislation in Tennessee: “Since the early 2010s, Tennessee has had ‘a revolving door of reading reforms’ — from the Ready to Read initiative in 2016 to the revisions of English language arts standards that in 2017 introduced ‘foundational literacy’ skills.” Like CT, TN is facing a $100 million price tag, yet most of that funds purchasing commercial reading products not supported by science.

This “science of reading” fad is a repeat of the Common Core era of new standards and new teaching and learning materials — a cycle of reform that never achieves what is promised.

Often in South Carolina, we pride ourselves on not simply following the fad, but in education, we have failed to do something different since the 1980s. Yes, we should better serve the individual needs of students as readers, but jumping on the “science of reading” bandwagon is taking the same path we have been traveling and expecting a different destination.

Regretfully, we persist in the historical negligence LaBrant confronted in 1942: “An easy way to evade the question of improved living and better schools for our underprivileged is to say the whole trouble is lack of drill. Lack of drill! Let’s be honest. Lack of good food; lack of well-lighted homes with books and papers; lack of attractive, well equipped schools, where reading is interesting and meaningful; lack of economic security permitting the use of free schools — lack of a good chance, the kind of chance these unlettered boys are now fighting to give to others.”

Legislators should resist the “science of reading” fad and make a different commitment to students and reading.

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

Cautionary Tales of State Reading Legislation: Tennessee

[Header Photo by Goh Rhy Yan on Unsplash]

Legislation in Connecticut[1] targeting reading that mandates the “science of reading” comes with unintended and expensive consequences: “[T]he new mandate will cost districts collectively more than $100 million in the school year 2024-25.”

Published in the Harvard Educational Review[2], research by professor Elena Aydarova (University of Wisconsin-Madison) offers an analysis of more than a decade of reading legislation in Tennessee[3], which serves as a cautionary tale[4] for reading legislation in all states, including the following key takeaways:

  • Approximately 3 out of 5 states have passed new or revised reading legislation since 2018, prompted by misleading media coverage of reading. For example, based on NAEP reading scores about 2/3 of students read at grade level or above; however, media misrepresents that figure as 1/3 (due to misunderstanding NAEP achievement levels[5]).
  • Claiming US has a reading crisis and blaming a lack of phonics instruction have a long and unsuccessful history in US and England[6]. Back-to-basics movements such as the “science of reading” have never worked.
  • “Since the early 2010s, Tennessee has had ‘a revolving door of reading reforms’—from the Ready to Read initiative in 2016 to the revisions of English language arts standards that in 2017 introduced ‘foundational literacy’ skills.”
  • Media and political discussions of the “science of reading” have no consistent definition for the term, often misrepresenting the current research, or “science,” about teaching reading. Advocates for the “science of reading” rarely offer sources for claims.
  • Like CT, TN legislation primarily funds replacing existing materials and programs with new (but untested) materials and programs: “In the first year of implementation, $100 million was allocated for the reform, with $60 million coming from CO VID-19 relief funds. Most of these resources, however, went toward covering the products and services provided by nonprofit and private-sector organizations.”
  • Key conclusion: “Although misappropriations of ‘science’ for political and private sector gains are not new in reading policies (Pearson, 2004, Schoenfeld & Pearson, 2012), this analysis of ‘science of reading’ mythologies sheds light on why the actual science becomes irrelevant in policy contexts.”
  • “Together, these symbolic substitutions revealed the parasitic nature of ‘science of reading’ mythologies: although the new legislation overtly addressed changes in literacy instruction, it ultimately served to secure a market share for certain private providers of curriculum, assessment, and teacher professional development.”

[1] Cost of Reading Mandate Could Top $100 Million in 2024-5 https://ctexaminer.com/2023/12/18/cost-of-reading-mandate-could-top-100-million-in-2024-5/

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

[3] See also: Legislating Phonics: Settled Science or Political Polemics? David Reinking, George G. Hruby, and Victoria J. Risko

[4] See also: The Science of Reading and the Perils of State Literacy Policies: Virginia’s Cautionary Tale https://ncte.org/blog/2022/12/science-reading-state-policies/

[5] See: Loveless, T. (2016, June 13). The NAEP proficiency myth. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2016/06/13/the-naep-proficiency-myth/ and Loveless, T. (2023, June 11). Literacy and NAEP proficient (Web log). https://tomloveless.com/posts/literacy-and-naep-proficient/

[6] Wyse, D., & Bradbury, A. (2022). Reading wars or reading reconciliation? A critical examination of robust research evidence, curriculum policy and teachers’ practices for teaching phonics and reading. Review of Education, 10(1), e3314. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3314

See Also

Bigger classes, program cuts: Making sense of the Minneapolis Schools budget deficit