[Header Photo by stefan moertl on Unsplash]
there are moments
i remember
the you
you used to be
they fill my heart
and a piece of me
misses the you
you used to be
although i would never
want to replace
the you you are
with that you before now
because the you
you are now
is all your yous
you have been
except the you
you will be tomorrow
who i will choose over
the you you used to be
—P.L. Thomas
[Header Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash]
In 1961, scholar Jacques Barzun declared “we who run businesses, carry on professions, work for the government, or engage in teaching itself are forced to admit that illiteracy is still with us” (xii-xiii).
This was in an introduction to Tomorrow’s Illiterates: The State of Reading Instruction Today.
Well, it is tomorrow, which is today, and here we are: Many Young Adults Barely Literate, Yet Earned a High School Diploma.
I suppose, if you want to look on the bright side of life, we have progressed from “illiterate” to “barely literate.”
But seriously, the reading crisis rhetoric is a paradox because it is a thing that always was and never is.
I strongly recommend Ch. IV: The Whole-Word and Word-Guessing Fallacy, Helen R Lowe from Tomorrow’s Illiterates as a companion to The 74 article for context.
And I highly recommend: Loveless, T. (2023, June 11). Literacy and NAEP proficient (Web log). https://tomloveless.com/posts/literacy-and-naep-proficient/
In short, declaring “kids today” as illiterate or barely literate is mostly adult bloviating for adult purposes.
Yes, we fall short on literacy and we certainly can and should do better, especially for the most vulnerable students.
We shouts of “Crisis!” have never been effective for helping those students, but certainly sells.
11/21/2025 – 2:45 – 3:15, Mile High Ballroom 1A/1B
Access a PDF of presentation HERE
In 1961, Jacques Barzun in Tomorrow’s Illiterates declared “illiteracy is still with us.” Charles Child Walcutt added: “[N]o further ‘research’ into methods of reading instruction is necessary.” This session examines reading crisis/reform cycles to reconsider the stories told about reading and offer a new approach for reform that serves the needs of students and supports teacher professionalism.
[Header Photo by Jansen Yang on Unsplash]
I am currently reading two engaging and often challenging novels—Roberto Bolano’s huge 2666 and Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Bagdad.
As an avid reader, writer, and teacher of literacy for over 42 years, I am deeply moved by stories, and both of these novels are engaging because they weave stories together while also forcing the reader to critically engage with the act of story telling itself (especially in Saadawi’s monstrous recreation of the Frankenstein myth).
As a writing teacher I seek to foster in my students not only an awareness of the power of story—the importance of vivid details and the narrative mode—but also the ethical implications of the stories we choose to tell as well as the stories we choose to ignore.
In public discourse, however, we are at the mercy of how traditional and social media portray complex and important topics.
Media creators who are successful are vividly aware of the power of story, and my fields of education and literacy, regretfully, suffer the brunt of compelling but misleading stories across all types of media. For media creators, compelling stories often trump accurate and credible stories.
Ironically, at the foundation of the current reading crisis labeled the “science of reading” (SOR) is a podcast, Sold a Story, that research is gradually exposing for being the mechanism for selling a story that is not credible and is in turn causing more harm than good (except for those profiting off the story).
Here are three relatively recent open-access publications that highlight SOR failing equity, teacher autonomy, and social media discourse:
JaNiece Elzy-Palmer, Alexandra Babino, Tee Hubbard
The Science of Reading (SoR) movement is positioned as a pathway to equity in literacy development, yet little is known about how equity is defined and enacted within SoR scholarship. This systematic review examined 36 peer-reviewed studies published between 2014 and 2024 that addressed both SoR and equity. Using a framework of nine equity dimensions, we analyzed how equity was conceptualized and operationalized across this body of research. Findings reveal that only 17% of screened articles (36/211) engaged with equity dimensions in substantive ways. Analysis showed that equity was primarily conceptualized through access (n = 69) and opportunity (n = 83), with most studies giving limited attention to race, power structures, and the systems that uphold inequities. SoR research primarily focused on three student groups: emergent bilinguals, “struggling” readers without disabilities, and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, while largely employing race-evasive language such as “diverse” or “struggling students.” By contrast, actual uptakes of equity, though limited, were most often found in international contexts where inclusion and representation were embedded through culturally and linguistically responsive adaptations. These findings highlight a persistent disconnect between SoR’s equity claims and its research base, underscoring the need to integrate transformative justice approaches so that equity efforts move beyond access and opportunity toward systemic change in literacy development.
Allison Ward Parsons, Kristin Conradi Smith, Margaret Vaughn, Holly Klee, Leslie La Croix, Jane Core Yatzeck
Reading in elementary school is central to supporting student reading development. However, a gap exists in current research regarding the types of texts that teachers select for reading instruction and the instructional contexts in which that reading occurs. Teachers’ autonomy to select texts and activities for reading instruction is complex and not well understood. In this exploratory study, we surveyed a stratified sample of elementary teachers (n = 1250) in the United States to understand their perceptions of autonomy surrounding text use. Chi-squared analysis results raise questions of autonomy, access, and equity, particularly regarding digital text usage in younger grades and schools with fewer economic resources. Discussion highlights the differences in teacher autonomy regarding text use across school demographics and instructional contexts. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.
Lindsey W. Rowe, Sarah Jerasa, Heather Dunham, C. C. Bates, Tobi Pirolla, Meghan J. Malloy
The Science of Reading (SOR) has become a public discourse with educational stakeholders, impacting legislative policy, reading content, curricula, and pedagogy across schools. Public engagement in this movement has transpired on social media, including TikTok, where viral content often promotes narrow or binary viewpoints through an authoritative discourse. Using a digital ethnography and walkthrough method, we collected and examined 156 TikTok videos on #ScienceofReading to address the following research questions: (1) What categories of SOR content are present on TikTok? (2) What are the common narrative trends and bodies of knowledge used to promote the SOR conversation on TikTok? Analyses found that SOR-related TikToks fell into four categories: (1) professional content knowledge, (2) direct demonstration, (3) resources and materials, and (4) identity formation. Furthermore, close analysis of all videos related to professional content knowledge gave insight into the narrative trends used by content creators to convey claims (plain speak, stop/start, brain research, rhetorical question, I used to… now I…), as well as the bodies of knowledge content creators drew on to make these claims (research, SOR, theory or scholar, deep personal experience, no source). Finally, implications are discussed for how this public discourse can shape policies that will ultimately impact schools, classrooms, and literacy instruction.
Thomas, P.L. (2025, Spring). Crisis as distraction and erasure: How SOR fails diversity and urban students. Journal of Literacy and Urban Schools (1), 6-23. https://theliteracyandurbanschoolsjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/issue-1-journal-of-literacy-and-urban-schools.pdf
Thomas, P.L. (2025). Breaking free of the “war,” “crisis,” and “miracle” cycles of reading policy and practice. In T.A. Price & M. McNulty (eds.), Public spaces, politics, and policy: historical entanglements with irrational momentism (pp. 93-112). Bloomsbury.
Thomas, P.L. (2025, July 28). There is no literacy crisis in the U.S. Here’s what’s really happening. The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/474j758
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
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
And I will break my own heart
I will break my own heart from now on
“Taxes,” Geese
you have never
broken my heart
i trust you
will never break my heart
i did not sign up for this
cracked a fissure in my heart
•
like the summer
you went away with someone else
when i asked you
if i had been there
would it have hurt my feelings
and you said yes
•
you have never
broken my heart
i trust you
will never break my heart
i did not sign up for this
cracked a fissure in my heart
•
when i see my hand
i see my father’s hand
unsure if it is the veins
or the shape of the hand
it is the hand holding your foot
in relief again your skin
•
you have never
broken my heart
i trust you
will never break my heart
i did not sign up for this
cracked a fissure in my heart
•
(this hasn’t happened yet
but i know that it will)
i am listening to music you don’t like
on my noise canceling headphones
you are making your dinner
that i won’t eat
and then suddenly it seems
everything was exactly as it should have been
•
you have never
broken my heart
i trust you
will never break my heart
i did not sign up for this
cracked a fissure in my heart
—P.L. Thomas
[Header Photo by Lisa Keffer on Unsplash]
Public discourse on education in the US has a long and tedious history of shouting either “crisis” or “miracle” while often basing both of those on misunderstanding or willing misrepresenting students, teacher, and public schools.
Politicians and the media, it seems, are fatally committed to crisis/miracle discourse—especially when the topic is student reading proficiency.
In the current Reading Crisis cycle that has it roots in 2018/2019 media narratives about failed reading instruction and repeated misunderstanding about NAEP reading data, the miracle-of-the-moment is Mississippi, often held up as a template for other states to follow.
As I have detailed, Mississippi reading reform is more mirage than miracle, and states should be skeptical about rushing to (again) adopt copy-cat legislation.
While the Mississippi “miracle” story continues to be sold, a new and insidious version of that story has emerged with an ugly undercurrent of the Trump/MAGA playbook—pitting Red v. Blue states at the expense of students.
The new combatants in the Reading War are Mississippi versus California (see HERE and HERE).
Several problems exist with comparing and then pitting MS against CA in terms of student achievement and teaching/schooling; however, let’s start with the big picture context of poverty and measurable student achievement.
As the US spirals toward disrupting SNAP and punishing people living in poverty, it is worth noting that the largest group in poverty is children, who lack economic or political power:
Related, then, in 2024, Maroun and Tienken replicated a research conclusion that has existed for decades, finding the following:
Almost 63% of the variance in test performance was explained by social capital family income variables that influence the development of background knowledge. Background knowledge is a known predictor of standardized test results. Family income variables are immutable by schools. Only public policies, outside the control of school personnel, can influence family income.
Further, they recommend:
Although some education policy makers in the United States claim that standardized test results are an important component of a comprehensive system of educational quality control, the results from decades of research on the topic suggest otherwise. The influence of family social capital variables manifests itself in standardized test results. Policy makers and education leaders should rethink the current reliance on standardized test results as the deciding factor to make decisions about student achievement, teacher quality, school effectiveness, and school leader quality. In effect, policies that use standardized test results to evaluate, reward, and sanction students and school personnel are doing nothing more than rewarding schools that serve advantaged students and punishing schools that serve disadvantaged students.
Thus, the fundamental problem with comparing MS and CA is the use of NAEP and other testing data to make broad claims and draw conclusions about educational success or failures.
Next, comparing MS and CA falls into the culture of poverty trap by treating poverty as monolithic.
While both MS and CA have significant populations of students in poverty, MS faces racialized and significantly rural poverty challenges while CA confronts a multilingual and racialized poverty challenge that is both urban and rural.
These are not the same, and frankly, since CA has nearly half of the student population as multilingual learners, reading proficiency is incredibly complicated to address in the context of racial inequity as well as poverty.
Even acknowledging those differences, most of the MS/CA comparisons are carelessly simplistic; consider the reading trends for both states based on NAEP grade 4, the most common basis for media discourse about reading:
Since 1998, both states saw growth with CA achieving a more steady improvement. However, there is no data-based evidence of a reading crisis for either state or across the US. [Note that MS has had two spikes in growth, one being well before the so-called MS model, again suggesting that ascribing “miracle” to the current model is misguided.]
MS and CA do demonstrate that educational success and failure are linked to many factors, notably the Covid-dip. That many factors impact student achievement—and that almost 2/3rds of those factors are beyond the walls of schools—discounts claims recently that the MS model, which includes a change in instruction and teacher training, is some sort of silver-bullet for success.
Research shows that only grade retention is causally linked to higher test scores, however.
Education reform, including reading reform, is highly political and even politicized in the US. Neither political leaders nor media are immune to knee-jerk declarations of crisis or miracles.
The reading achievement in neither MS nor CA makes a case for red/blue political theater—unless you have your agenda set regardless of the evidence.
Both MS and CA face tremendous hurdles when teaching literacy in the context of poverty, racism, and multilingual learners. Those hurdles are made more complicated by silly political games, especially when those games are designed to ignore the most important data about the impact of out-of-school factors on student achievement.
One valid comparison between MS and CA is that when the Washington Post falsely claimed CA had adopted the MS model, Martha Hernandez responded by highlighting the unique nature of CA’s needs:
Let’s be clear, AB 1454 is not about narrowing literacy instruction to one approach. Rather, it’s about realizing California’s long-standing, comprehensive vision for literacy that meets the needs of all students — including our state’s 1.1 million English learners.
The bill has been described in the media as California’s new “science of reading” bill, but this shorthand fails to accurately reflect the legislation’s comprehensive scope and intention.
MS, on the other hand, seems determined to lean into the politics of their model, a conservative politics that uses the red/blue tensions to further ideological agendas.
Our students deserve not only better social and educational reform but also not being used as a political football by adults who should know better.
[Header Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash]
Growing up in the South, I was often warned not to beat a dead horse.
A lifelong love of science fiction and fantasy, however, has made me aware of zombie narratives and that sometimes the dead are the living dead.
In my career of literacy, the phonics gambit is just that—a zombie advocacy that just will not die.
The newest media iteration of the phonics gambit has been christened the “Southern surge” in reading, celebrated again in Chalkbeat: The ‘Southern surge’ offers lessons for student learning — but we don’t fully understand it yet.
This “Southern surge” narrative tends to center Mississippi but also includes Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana (the most recent “miracle” state based on an incomplete or misleading use of NAEP scores).
Like many media manufactured narratives, the “Southern surge” in reading falls apart when the data are carefully examined.
While I give the Chalkbeat article some credit for admitting that the so-called “surge” is not fully understood, Barnum—as Hanford did when christening Mississippi a “miracle” in 2019 (“What’s up in Mississippi? There’s no way to know for sure what causes increases in test scores”)—gives the “surge” narrative nearly complete credibility even with the headline hedge and a couple points made then glossed over (“Eighth grade results have been less impressive for these Southern exemplars, though”).
Here are the (likely fatal) flaws in the “surge” narrative:
There are statistical realities also being ignored in the “surge” narrative.
Test scores for the lowest performing students are easier to improve that top-scoring students, for example.
But likely more significant is that early literacy test scores are strongly correlated with student biological age (England has almost twenty years of data on phonics checks that show this); therefore, when grade retention removes the lowest scoring students from the testing population (grade 3 retention laws impact grade 4 NAEP testing) and reintroduces them when they are biologically older, the possibility is that scores are being artificially inflated.
Reading “crisis/miracle” narratives and the phonics gambit should be dead horses; these unfounded claims have existed in the US well back into the 1940s, recurring decade after decade.
At best, “we don’t fully understand it yet,” and at worst, too many people profit off this zombie narrative, and children, teachers, and schools will continue to be sacrificed instead of putting these stories in the ground where they belong.
The “Science of Reading” Ushers in NAEP Reading Decline: Time for a New Story
Fact Checking “The reading wars are ending. Phonics won.” (Washington Post Editorial Board)
Misunderstanding Mississippi’s Reading Reform: The Need to Resist Copycat Education Reform
The Phonics Gambit: The Zombie Reading Policy that Fails but Won’t Die
[Header Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash]
once upon a time
there was a storyteller
who lost their way
something was wrong
with the crosshairs
every time they looked
down the scope
they saw only
a blurred gray void
—P.L. Thomas
[Header Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash]
“They can all/Just kiss off into the air”
“Hard to Find,” The National
Testament †
I bring you warm coffee in bed as ritual
Hoping you weren’t disturbed by my morning noises
I rub my beard over your bare shoulder
Before kissing you and you smile
I slip into memory: Your Tiger’s blood breath
Testament ††
The next thing I do
Will still be you
The only thing I will ever do
Will always be you
Some people just keep falling in love
Testament †††
A harmless swarm of honeybees
Carried on a cool October breeze
Sending my hand like a prayer to your knees
Underneath our warm pink sheets
Some people dream about their lover beside them
Testament ††††
We will never burn it down
We will never leave it all behind
We will never comb through our lost and found
We will never be careless and unkind
Our sacraments in these terabytes of love
Testament ††††
Are you proud of my new music crush?
Although it is another Brooklyn band
And I annoy you singing along
“Baby, let me wash your feet forever”
These land sharks of just you and me
Holding hands like this is the first time
Testament †††††
Who am I
To testify
Who am I
To crucify
Who am I
To sanctify
Who am I
To die
—P.L. Thomas
[Header Photo by Degaharu on Unsplash]
i did not come here
to take anything from you
i did not come here
to give you anything
but if there is something to share
i am here to stay
and even when you are gone
i will be patiently waiting
sitting alone on our staircase
because you took our only keys
—P.L. Thomas
[Header Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash]
The Editorial Board at The Washington Post published a bold claim: The reading wars are ending. Phonics won:
The “reading wars” that raged in American schools for decades finally seem to be ending. The victor is clear: Phonics is the best way to teach kids how to read.
California is the latest state to re-embrace the tried-and-true teaching method, in which kids learn the sounds that each letter makes and then use them as building blocks for words and sentences. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Thursday signed reforms into law that will encourage schools to turn away from other unsupported teaching methods, despite resistance from teacher unions….
Momentum for re-embracing phonics started in Mississippi, which long had a reputation for sitting at the bottom of national education rankings. In 2013, state officials decided to enforce adoption of the old-school instruction method that is often referred to as the “science of reading.” The state explicitly discouraged methods such as cueing and started aggressively holding back third-graders who didn’t meet reading standards, angering many parents.
There are a few problems, however.
First, and most damning, California did not just pass Science of Reading legislation modeled on Mississippi, as detailed by Martha Hernandez:
The bill has been described in the media as California’s new “science of reading” bill, but this shorthand fails to accurately reflect the legislation’s comprehensive scope and intention.
Let’s be clear, AB 1454 is not about narrowing literacy instruction to one approach. Rather, it’s about realizing California’s long-standing, comprehensive vision for literacy that meets the needs of all students — including our state’s 1.1 million English learners.
Phonics and foundational skills are essential for teaching students to read, and they always have been. But effective literacy instruction is not just about sounding out words. Children also need strong oral language, vocabulary, background knowledge, writing and comprehension skills to thrive as readers.
AB 1454 accounts for this reality. At its core, it aligns with California’s English Language Arts/English Language Development (ELA/ELD) Framework, adopted in 2014. This framework is nationally recognized for weaving together multiple strands of research — including phonics and decoding — alongside research on how children learn a second language, how their home language knowledge supports English learning, and how their cultures and life experiences shape how they use and understand language.
For a comprehensive overview of how California’s new reading legislation does not conform to the Mississippi model, please see this excellent overview by Jill Kerper Mora, Edgar Lampkin, Barbara Flores, and Anita Flemington: Pushing back against Science of Reading mandates: The California story.
Next, the Editorial Board perpetuates the whole language Urban Legend about failure in California, a state that saw literacy test scores drop after a decrease in funding and an influx of multilingual learners in the late 1980s into the 1990s (in fact, Linda Darling Hammond found a positive correlation between whole language and higher NAEP scores in the 1990s).
For a debunking of the Urban Legend, see Whole Language and the Great Plummet of 1987-92: An Urban Legend from California by Stephen Krashen.
And finally, but not surprisingly, the Editorial Board falls for the Mississippi “miracle” narrative.
There currently is no research showing SOR instruction has succeeded in MS; in fact, research shows only grade retention is associated with some short-term test score increases. MS grade 8 scores remain in the bottom 25% of score in the US, the state continues to retain about 9000 K-3 students each year, and the race/poverty gap is the same as 1998.
For an overview of why Mississippi reading reform is not a “miracle,” please see Misunderstanding Mississippi’s Reading Reform: The Need to Resist Copycat Education Reform.
In short, the Editorial Board gets everything wrong, and once again, mainstream media falls for the phonics gambit.
dr. p.l. (paul) thomas 