Tag Archives: writing

Education

“Kids Today”: Perpetually Dumb and Lazy as a Box of Rocks

[Header Photo by Roger Starnes Sr on Unsplash]

I attended public schools in the rural South from 1967 to 1979, including three years in junior high school from 1973 to 1976 (punctuated by the US Bicentennial).

Junior high included grades 7 through 9; some of those ninth graders could drive so mornings a few students would roll into the parking lot and smoke would billow out of the car, students emerging like rock stars through the cloud of the cigarettes and pot they were smoking.

The bathrooms at that school were also filled constantly with a gray and yellow fog, the smell of marijuana strong throughout the school and on most of our clothes simply from going to the bathroom between classes.

I was always a good student, and frankly, school was easy for me even in the top classes. I was on the basketball team and had many friends who were not in those top classes.

And, as almost everyone has experienced, we were mostly told by the adults that we were dumb and lazy as a box of rocks—not like in their day as young people.

I entered the classroom as a teacher of high school students in 1984 right out of college so I have been directly in the formal education system across seven decades.

My doctoral work was grounded in the history of education, that work reaching back into the beginning of the twentieth century.

And here is the problem: “Kids today” at every point that I can find (not across just decades but centuries) are always considered at any point of now to be dumb and lazy as a box of rocks.

This graphic is causing a stir on social media:

We are in a high point as well of adults shouting that “kids today” cannot do math, cannot read, and of course, “kids today” don’t read.

I currently teach at a selective liberal arts college. The students are among the top high school students, having come out of elite private schools and many have been in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs.

Since the “kids today” mantra has included a current wave of bashing college students (another tired mantra)—they don’t read, and they can’t read extended texts, like complete books—I have asked my students about those charges (and of course, I assign a great deal of reading, including books, as well as all of my students write essays).

As much or maybe even more so than my students over 42 years of teaching, these students have, in fact, been assigned many books in high school, often in their college classes, and even read by choice, many eagerly sharing their favorite writers and series.

I can attest without hesitation that “kids today” over my teaching career have been mostly about the same as you’d expect teens and young adults to be, but if anything, they are smarter and have more challenging K-12 educations year after year.

I do think that the Covid era has had some unique negative consequences for current cohorts of students, and some of that is reflected in the reductive ways we determine if students are learning, mostly test scores.

And that leads back to the chart above; I don’t see anyone noting this is data from NAEP (a national random-selected population of students) and it is self-reported by the students (who are not held accountable in any way for their test scores or the data they provide).

I have never been convinced that NAEP scores are that valuable in terms of what and how student learning is measured, but I can assure you that self-reported data by those students is likely even weaker evidence of anything.

NAEP scores, in fact, like all standardized testing is a far greater reflection of the lives students are living outside of schools than of the quality of their learning in formal schooling.

Children and teens living without food or housing security as well as with little or no access to healthcare are likely finding little time or motivation to read for pleasure, and their intellectual batteries are drained by the lives resulting in not being able to fully engage with the few hours a day for about half the year when they are in classes that may be overcrowded or taught by an un- or under-certified teacher being paid poorly and attacked as a groomer and an indoctrinator by the current political climate.

Most of my college students have had much more privileged lives than the average child or teen in the US so it is worth nothing, as well, that they invariably say they want to read more but the main reason they don’t is schooling. They simply do not have time to read while they are taking courses, and they add that the assigned reading tends to also discourage them from reading (the pervasive obsession with assigning novels and focusing on the canon has never worked to motivate students).

There seems to be something futile and hollow about “adults today” perpetually criticizing “kids today,” particularly when adults today were themselves kids at some point in their lives also then accused of being dumb and lazy as a bag of rocks.

The “kids today” crisis rhetoric, I believe, is much more a reflection of adults, the cynicism of aging and the loss we all feel as we move further and further away from our childhood and teens years.

Kids today are not dumb and lazy as a bag of rocks, but they do have something we adults can never recover—youth.

But I can assure you that finding children and young people fascinating, fun, and surprising is a far better way to navigate growing older.

I am very lucky as a teacher of young people, and equally blessed by young grandchildren, who I assure you are not dumb and lazy as a bag of rocks.

I will always resist the crisis rhetoric around education and “kids today” because it defies logic that “kids today” have always been dumb and lazy as a box of rocks.

However, if anyone would like to launch into a criticism of adults today, I may be willing to join in.

Education, Grades

Misreading What’s Wrong with College: Social Media Edition

[Header Photo by Dom Fou on Unsplash]

Social media is all atwitter over two compelling stories about colleges and universities in the US.

First, is the politically charged controversy over a student receiving a zero on an essay assignment at the University of Oklahoma:

Second is concern over the significant increase in students with accommodations in higher education:

While both stories are provocative and likely raise important concerns about what is wrong with colleges and universities in the US, most people are misreading where the problems lie.

I have been a teacher and then professor for 42 years, the last 24 years in higher education.

In that context, I want to stress that I believe both situations offer an opportunity to address the systemic problems with our society and how we do education. Regretfully but predictably, in both stories, most of the commentary is focused on the individuals instead of systemic forces.

Let me start with the student receiving a zero for the essay assignment.

Coincidentally, when this story broke, many of my students were experiencing feedback from me on their major essay assignment, a message that informed them they had not completed the project as assigned.

Since the Oklahoma student’s essay and the assignment rubric have been made public (and should not have been, in my opinion), I am very comfortable with the instructor’s very measured and detailed response acknowledging that, in a very clear way, the student had not fulfilled the assignment. [1]

Here is the issue, however.

Because the instructor and student are bound by a traditional grading system, the zero is completely justifiable, as are other arguments for less harsh but still failing scores for the work.

In no way is the essay acceptable or passing college-level work.

I am a non-grader, and my students work under a course grade contract. Students must complete all assignments fully (and preferably on time); therefore, a zero is not a real option.

When my students fail to complete an assignment as assigned, they are prompted with feedback and conferencing to revise and resubmit the assignment.

I work under the belief that if an assignment is worth assigning, then a student choosing not to complete it or a teacher simply assigning the work a zero or failing grade deems the assignment not worth assigning in the first place.

The shift I make in an un-graded classroom is that my assignments are teaching and learning experiences, and not assessments (the assessment component is moved to the contract).

Therefore, in the traditional grading context of the Oklahoma incident, the zero is valid; but I think that traditional context is the problem—not the instructor or the student (even as I doubt the sincerity of the student and those fanning the flames of blaming the instructor).

If that student had been prompted to resubmit with guidance on why she had not fulfilled the assignment, no one would have ever heard of the incident—and she likely would have learned and grown in ways that a zero ended. (Or more likely, her ploy to trap the instructor would have fallen short.)

Next, the issue about the rise in students with accommodations in higher ed also resonates with me because when I moved to college teaching in 2002, I immediately noticed what I thought then was a high number of students with accommodation plans.

I did not think these were frivolous, but I did attribute much of that to the students being affluent and having access to mental health care that identified and supported real needs.

The current concern about high numbers of students with accommodations, I think, fits into a larger belief that “kids today” are frail or weak—or frailer and weaker than they used to be (a ridiculous belief that exists at every “now” in the US stretching back more than a century).

Similar to the popular misunderstanding about autism, the higher number of students with academic accommodations is likely the result of better definitions and diagnoses of these needs along with current college students having lived through incredibly precarious experiences, including Covid.

Higher numbers of students with accommodations is not a problem but a symptom of a very harsh American culture that is replicated in the high-stakes environments of K-12 schooling.

Most of these students are not frail; they are damaged or broken by a hostile society and a dehumanized education system.

These growing numbers of students with accommodations are our canaries in the coalmine.

When students have accommodations or not in my courses, however, I typically never notice and there is never an issue because the way the course works is itself accommodating to all students.

This again is grounded in not grading, not giving tests, and shifting the course toward teaching/learning and away from punishment/rewards.

The student receiving a zero is not a lesson about that instructor or that student, but about our culture of grading in education.

Rising numbers of students with accommodations in our colleges and universities is not a lesson on the weakening of America’s youth, but a signal about the often harsh and hostile environments of those young people’s lives and, yes, their formal schooling.

These are lessons Americans typically refuse to see, and with that negligence, we insure even greater harm and more evidence of failure and frailty that we, in fact, created.

[1] Early in my career teaching in a very conservative right-to-work state, I did not accept a student essay that argued against interracial marriage, a position common in my Southern community and that I found deeply offensive. The student used no evidence in the essay, not fulfilling the minimum requirements for accepting the submission (students were writing evidence-based and cited persuasive essays). The process was, even then, that the student simply needed to resubmit, meeting the requirements. The student quickly resubmitted, adding the sentence “It’s in the Bible.” I again did not accept the submission, explaining he had not provided evidence, and that if, in fact, that was in the Bible, he merely had to quote and cite the passage(s) supporting his position.

Several days passed before I was contacted by administration that the student and his father wanted a conference, which my principal attended. At the conference, the father explained that he and his son had gone to their pastor, who was unable to locate a passage in the Bible to support his argument (because that doesn’t exist, by the way; the often misapplied Old Testament passage they were likely seeking is about no marriage between different tribes). I very patiently stated that the assignment required students write an argument that can be supported by evidence and that the evidence had to be cited. After a pause, my principal said, “Well, looks like your son needs a different topic.”

Education, education reform, Educational Research, Lou LaBrant, Writing

Persistent Straw Man Claims about Literacy Skills: Grammar Edition

[Header Photo by Anthony on Unsplash]

Since the “science of reading” (SOR) has now expanded into a “science of learning” (SOL) movement, the same problems among SOR advocates have appeared among SOL advocates—misinformation and misunderstanding about teaching and learning combined with a bait-and-switch approach that offers anecdotes as if they prove the so-called “science,” for example:

There is so much wrong with this that it is mind boggling, but let’s focus on, first, this is merely an anecdote, which proves nothing except that it happened.

Second, that direct instruction can be effective for students demonstrating simple recall is not very shocking; in fact, many would recognize that direct instruction/recall is asking far too little of students, especially in literacy instruction.

At one point in my education, I could name all the presidents in order as well as all the state capitals. It would have been better if I had developed a more sophisticated understanding of the presidency and the political realities of the US.

Through direct instruction over a brief amount of time, I can say one word, “inside,” and my poodle will happily trot into our apartment. I didn’t let her discover that; direct instruction produced pretty reliable recall in that sweet dog.

But she isn’t smarter; she is well trained.

Here, then, I am going to expand some on a third point: Furey clearly does not understand the issue he seems to be attacking, grammar instruction (with the implied agents being woke progressives who worship at the alter of discovery learning).

Let’s start by acknowledging Stephen Krashen’s explanation of “three different views of phonics”:

Intensive Phonics. This position claims that we learn to read by first learning the rules of phonics, and that we read by sounding out what is on the page, either out-loud or to ourselves (decoding to sound). It also asserts that all rules of phonics must be deliberately taught and consciously learned.

Basic Phonics. According to Basic Phonics, we learn to read by actually reading, by understanding what is on the page. Most of our knowledge of phonics is subconsciously acquired from reading (Smith, 2004: 152)….

Zero Phonics. This view claims that direct teaching is not necessary or even helpful. I am unaware of any professional who holds this position.

Furey seems to be posting a Gotcha! aimed at what he believes is a Zero Grammar view so let me follow Krashen’s lead and clarify: “I am unaware of any professional who holds this position.”

The Big Irony of a “science of” advocate attacking a straw man position on grammar is that there is pretty solid body of research/science on grammar instruction (note that many people use “grammar” to encompass grammar, mechanics, and usage).

To understand the research on direct (and isolated) grammar instruction, we first must clarify our instructional goal. If a course is a grammar course, and the goal is for student to acquire grammar knowledge, then some or even a significant amount of direct instruction can be justified and effective.

Even in the context of teaching students to acquire distinct grammar knowledge, however, many would caution against viewing grammar as “rules” and instead would encourage seeing grammar as a set of contextualized conventions that also carry some degree of power coding.

For example, subject/verb usages are a feature of so-called standard English, and some dialects can be identified by varying from those standards. It is important to acknowledge that one is not “right” or “better” linguistically, although the so-called standard forms tend to carry some cultural or social capital. And there may be cultural/social negative consequences for using dialects considered not standard.

As an analogy, direct (isolated) grammar instruction can be effective for teaching students grammar knowledge just as having students diagram sentences can be effective for teaching students how to diagram sentences.

The problem is when we make our instructional goal teaching students to write with purpose and with awareness of language conventions (grammar, mechanics, usage).

There is a long and deep research base reaching back into the early 1900s showing that direct (isolated) grammar instruction fails to transfer into student writing and can even have negative outcomes for the quality and amount of student writing.

For example, LaBrant (1946) noted: “We have some hundreds of studies now which demonstrate that there is little correlation (whatever that may cover) between exercises in punctuation and sentence structure and the tendency to use the principles illustrated in independent writing” (p. 127).

This does not mean “do not teach grammar,” but does mean that direct grammar instruction needs to in the context of student writing.

Students who are writing by choice and with purpose are much more likely to engage with and understand (and thus apply) language conventions (grammar, mechanics, usage) than when we directly teach those in isolation.

So let me be clear: Teaching students to write without direct instruction would be inexcusable, but teaching grammar through direct and isolated instruction is malpractice when our goal is teaching writing.

Here, then, are some ways to insure direct grammar instruction in the context of student writing is effective:

  • Establish direct instruction of grammar in context based on student writing and demonstration of need. This can be effective for both individual student writing conferences and whole-class instruction (if most student demonstrate the same needs).
  • Recognize that some language conventions are abstractions that may be difficult to grasp for students at early stages of brain development; holding students accountable for usage should be tempered by their development (see Weaver below).
  • Avoid the “error hunt” (see Weaver below) and do not frame language conventions as “right/wrong” or revising and editing as “correcting.” The goal is language convention awareness and purposeful writing by students.
  • Avoid traditional grammar textbook and exercises. Prefer instead research-based direct instruction that transfers to writing such as sentence combining and lessons on the history of the English language (see Style below).
  • Adopt either a workshop approach to writing or integrate workshop elements (choice, time, and feedback) into the course.
  • Forefront and help students understand that revising writing is their primary responsibility as writers in order to communicate as well as possible; however, editing (addressing language conventions) is a part of that process, although it may be delayed until a piece is worthy of editing and before publishing or submitting. As LaBrant (1946) cautioned: “I am not willing to teach the polishing and adornment of irresponsible, unimportant writing” (p. 123).
  • The surface features of student writing need not be perfect when writing is part of a course. Seeking perfect surface features can and often is a goal for published writing.

As this discussion shows, another failure of the “science of” movement is the urge to attack caricatures and to oversimplify.

Teaching grammar is not a simple thing to address, and, again, I will note using Krashen, there simply is no credible professional saying teachers should not teach grammar. In fact, no credible educator would reject direct instruction of grammar as long as that instruction is in the context of student writing.

LaBrant (1947) made an assertion about teaching almost 80 years ago that may sound familiar: “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” (p. 87).

I have always regarded this as accurate, and have repeated the claim myself for decades.

Straw man fallacies, caricature, and anecdotes, I fear, are not the path to making this less true.

The “science of” movement is failing here, and the consequences are to the detriment of students and teachers who deserve better.

Recommended

Teaching Writing as Journey, Not Destination

Teaching High-School Students to Write (1946), Lou LaBrant

Research in Language (1947), Lou LaBrant

The Individual and His Writing (1950), Lou LaBrant

Writing Is Learned by Writing (1953), Lou LaBrant

Inducing Students to Write (1955), Lou LaBrant

Writing Is More than Structure (1957), Lou LaBrant

Blueprints or Houses? Lou LaBrant and the Writing Debate, P.L. Thomas [access HERE]

Revisiting LaBrant’s “Writing Is More than Structure” (English Journal, May 1957), P.L. Thomas

Teaching Grammar in Context, Connie Weaver

Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 12th Edition, Joseph M. Williams, Joseph Bizup

The Writer’s Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing, John Warner

This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice! (CCCC)

ai, ChatGPT, Education, plagiarism, Writing

Did You Write This?: Or Why You Can’t Spell “Plagiarism” without “AI”

[Header Photo by Lauren Mancke on Unsplash]

“Did you write this?” I once asked a sophomore in my advanced English class. The student was one of three siblings I would teach, and their mother was a colleague of mine in our English department.

With students and my own daughter, I have asked questions like that one often, and I always knew the answer. The question was an opportunity for the student to confront what I already knew.

This student, you see, had turned in a cited essay that her older sister had turned in just a few years earlier. I had the paper in my files, and since I immediately recognized it, I had the copy with her sister’s name on the cover page waiting for her reply.

English and writing teachers especially, but all teachers are constantly seeking ways to insure students do their own work.

As long as there have been students, teachers, and formal schooling, however, students have sought ways to pass off writing and reading that they, in fact, had not done.

This student cold-face lied, and I handed her the paper by her sister.

Something like that has occurred several times over my forty-plus years of teaching.

A non-traditional aged woman in a night composition class for a local junior college became enraged when I asked her “Did you write this?”

I had been reading her writing for several weeks, and this essay she submitted wasn’t her work. There was no doubt and no need to prove it.

She became loud and angry, steadfast in her claim the writing was hers. After that night, I never saw her again.

Several years ago in my first-year writing seminar, a basketball player submitted a teammate’s essay from a few semesters earlier. The essay rang a bell, and after a search on my laptop, I found the original essay on my hard drive.

Plagiarism and passing off other people’s work as their own have not been rampant throughout my career, in part because I have implemented reading and writing workshop in courses. Students have been reading and writing in front of me for decades.

Lots of cheating can been avoided by daylight and surveillance.

Part of the workshop approach, as well, stresses for students that the reading and writing processes are acts of learning; further, the emphasis on process helps lessen the importance of the product as a mechanism for acquiring a grade.

“It ought to be unnecessary to say that writing is learned by writing; unfortunately there is need,” wrote Lou LaBrant in 1953. LaBrant then continued and this may sound familiar:

Again and again teachers or schools are accused of failing to teach students to write decent English, and again and again investigations show that students have been taught about punctuation, the function of a paragraph, parts of speech, selection of “vivid” words, spelling—that students have done everything but the writing of many complete papers. Again and again college freshmen report that never in either high school or grammar school have they been asked to select a topic for writing, and write their own ideas about that subject. Some have been given topics for writing; others have been asked to summarize what someone else has said; numbers have been given work on revising sentences, filling in blanks, punctuating sentences, and analyzing what others have written….Knowing facts about language does not necessarily result in ability to use it. (p. 417)

Over the seventy-plus years since LaBrant’s article, students have written original texts far too rarely; in fact, as writers and students in general, students sit in classrooms where the teacher does much of the work the student should be doing as part of learning.

Writing prompts and rubrics have done far more harm to students as writers than any technology work around, but technology has also joined in the fun over those eight decades.

ChatGPT and other forms of AI are the current miracle/crisis forms of technology in education. Seemingly, many people in education, surprisingly, are jumping on the AI bandwagon, much like the coding wave and cellphone bans.

You see, we are trapped in a love/hate binary with technology in education that too often isn’t based in evidence.

Tech and AI products like Grammarly and Turnitin.com have ridden high waves of use despite both products, to be blunt, just being very poor quality. Grammarly gives really bad writing advice, and Turnitin.com is less effective detecting plagiarism than a simple (and free) Google search.

The broader technology problem in education, which parallels the AI problem, is that technology in education is often like a microwave; something can be completed quicker but the product is either hard to stomach or simply ruined.

A recent study, in fact, shows that students using AI to draft tend to produce very similar texts that are shallow at best. Further, students who use AI to compose struggle to recall any of their writing.

Why? Let’s invoke LaBrant again: Writing is learned by writing.

Better worded, we should think of “writing” as composing. Composing is the art of simultaneously creating meaning, developing understanding, and drafting communication in words, sentences, and paragraphs.

AI generating functional text in some real-world contexts may be a time saver, a net positive. But for students, scholars, and writers, using AI at any point of the composing process is a new form of plagiarism.

Let me be clear, this is about the composing process because AI has long been useful for surface editing; grammar and spell check is not cheating, and AI can relieve the writer some of the burden of editing (a role humans often play for other people in the world of writing an publishing).

Maybe AI will prove valuable in many ways for humans, but AI that does for students the very behaviors students must perform to learn is never justified—just as teachers doing the work for students has never been justified.

“As citizens we need to be able to write and to understand the importance and difficulty of being honest and clear. We will learn to do this by doing it,” LaBrant offers bluntly.

“Did you write this?” is an enduring question between teacher and student.

In 2025, using AI is just as damning as putting your name on your sister’s essay before turning it in as your own.

So that’s why you cannot spell “plagiarism” without “AI.”

Education, education reform, Educational Research, Science of Reading

The “Science of” Movements: Another Education Reform Red Herring

[Header image misocrazy from New York, NY, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons]

“Red herring” perfectly describes the bulk of education reform in the US since the Reagan administration because thosee reforms have been based on false claims to distract from needed social and educational reform in the interests of students, teachers, and public education.

The US (and many English-speaking nations around the world) have remained in a perpetual state of education and reading crises for decades.

The US has never stopped using crisis rhetoric or blaming schools, teachers, and students, but policy has been a revolving door of new standards, new tests, and new “miracle” solutions—none of which ever produce the positive outcomes promised.

The dirty little secret is that perpetual crisis/reform in education (and reading) is its own goal because constant crisis/reform is politically and economically profitable to those fanning the flames of crisis.

In 2018, the “science of reading” (SOR) became a tired and constant refrain of the media, spreading to parent advocacy and then legislation and policy.

By 2025, the “science of” has added “math” and “learning,” including many English-speaking countries where a reading crisis is the norm.

And thus, education reform in the US and other countries has now adopted at the core of education reform “science of” rhetoric, claims, blame, and policy.

Parallel to education reform since the 1980s, the “science of” education reform is not grounded in credible claims about education crisis or problems, and therefore, the blame and solutions are also not credible or effective.

The “science of” approach to education reform has been extremely effective since “science” is being weaponized, and when anyone dare to challenge the movement, those people are accused of being anti-science, often compared to the anti-vaccination movement.

Here’s the problem: Those of us challenging the “science of” movement are not rejecting scientific research in education; we are acknowledging that “science of” advocacy is misrepresenting educational challenges, educational research, and educational practice for ideological, political, and market purposes.

Journalists, educators/scholars, education “celebrities,” the education marketplace, and politicians have made their careers on false “science of” claims and unfounded attacks on anyone calling them out for not being credible.

Ironically, the evidence supports those of us who are critics of “science of” education/reading reform, and consequently, “science of” claims are red herrings, distractions from the valid education challenges and potential reforms that would serve the interests of students, teachers, and public education.

Here, then, is the core evidence that the “science of” movements are, in fact, red herring education reform.

Is there an education or reading crisis? No.

Elena Aydorova; Reinking, Hruby, and Risko; and Larsen, as just a few examples, have explained that the data/evidence simply does not support claims of crisis.

Further, “science of” advocates tend to move quickly from the false claims of “crisis” to offering false blame.

Just as there is no evidence of crisis, there is simply no scientific studies showing, for example, that the US has a reading crisis caused by a few reading programs, the implementation of balanced literacy, or the failure of teacher education to prepare teachers.

Again, there is a paradox in the “science of” movement whereby the advocates of “science of” themselves do not adhere to the narrow use of “science” to support their major claims.

For example, in the US, SOR advocates and SOR-based policy and legislation include support for a number of practices, claims, and programs that lack scientific evidence—decodable texts, LETRS, 95% rule, Orton-Gillingham, systematic phonics first for all students, nonsense word assessments (DIBLES), etc.

Broadly, also, “science of” advocates’ most damning red herring is that they are weaponizing “science” as a veneer to take a non-ideological pose although “science of” advocates are themselves mostly making ideological claims.

Direct instruction and skills-based instruction have long been at the core of conservative ideology.

Once we acknowledge that “science of” claims of crisis and who/what they blame are not evidence-based, we can also acknowledge they are mostly making ideological arguments, and then, we must unpack why.

Noted above, there is a great deal of profit in crying education/reading crisis and maintaining a constant state of reform.

As long as that reform never works.

And it never has, it never will.

The “science of” movements, then, are grounded in misinformation, oversimplification, and ideological bias.

The “science of” movements are another form of red herring education reform.

The distraction is also ideological, grounded in a rejection of the power of systemic forces and a belief in rugged individualism as well as the bootstrapping myth.

The “science of” movement is also a distraction from other ulterior motives, such as de-professionalizing teachers with scripted curriculum and imposing AI/computer program approaches for teaching students.

More irony: Education reform is designed to keep our eyes on individual people—students, teachers—and not the overwhelming evidence:

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….

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. (Maroun and Tienken, 2024)

Here is the science that critics of the “science of” movement recognize.

And fun fact, we are not trying to sell you anything or get your vote.

Don’t be distracted.

Recommended

Aukerman, M. (2022a). The Science of Reading and the media: Does the media draw on high-quality reading research? Literacy Research Association Critical Conversations. CC BY 4.0 license. https://literacyresearchassociation.org/stories/the-science-of-reading-and-the-media-does-the-media-draw-on-high-quality-reading-research/

Aukerman, M. (2022b). The Science of Reading and the media: How do current reporting patterns cause damage? Literacy Research Association Critical Conversations. CC BY 4.0 license. https://literacyresearchassociation.org/stories/the-science-of-reading-and-the-media-how-do-current-reporting-patterns-cause-damage/

Aukerman, M. (2022c). The Science of Reading and the media: Is reporting biased? Literacy Research Association Critical Conversations. CC BY 4.0 license. https://literacyresearchassociation.org/stories/the-science-of-reading-and-the-media-is-reporting-biased/

Aydarova, E. (2023). “Whatever you want to call it”: Science of reading mythologies in the education reform movement. Harvard Educational Review, 93(4), 556–581, https://doi.org10.17763/1943-5045-93.4.556

Aydarova, E. (2024). What you see is not what you get: Science of reading reforms as a guise for standardization, centralization, and privatization. American Journal of Education. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/730991

Reinking, D., Hruby, G.G., & Risko, V.J. (2023). Legislating phonics: Settle science of political polemic? Teachers College Record. https://doi.org/10.1177/01614681231155688

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

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

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

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

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

Tierney, R.J., & Pearson, P.D. (2024). Fact-checking the Science of Reading: Opening up the conversation. Literacy Research Commons. https://literacyresearchcommons.org

Education

Buyer’s Remorse: Reading Story Sold Manufactured Crisis, Fake Miracles

[Header Photo by Alejandra Rodríguez on Unsplash]

I began my teaching career in 1984, coinciding with the current era of high-stakes accountability driving education reform in the wake of A Nation at Risk.

One of my favorite units as a teacher of American literature to tenth and eleventh graders in the rural South was the Transcendentalism era—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and (the often ignored) Margaret Fuller.

Students did not enjoy reading these authors, I must confess, but the unit itself was often very compelling.

In the late 1980s, I added a consideration of the “Reeboks let U.B.U” campaign featuring Emerson:

I tracked down the advertising agency responsible for the ad, and my students wrote a letter calling out the campaign for being contradictory.

Shockingly, we did receive a letter from the person over the campaign. They confessed that my students’ were on target with their criticism, but added that Reebok believed they were a unique shoes company and felt their campaign highlighted that fact.

As a part of that unit also I had a recording from MTV News covering a Madonna look-alike contest.

Among the dozens of prepubescent girls, one was interviewed and she excitedly stated that the girls were there to express their individuality.

While students were no more eager to read Emerson, teens soon found themselves compelled by Emerson’s “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

Over the past 40-plus years, I think about this unit and my students often—as well as Emerson’s enduring arguments in “Self-Reliance.”

The world of education reform, I regret to acknowledge, is dominated by “little minds,” drawn to and selling the same false stories of educational crisis and miracles.

I would amend Emerson’s list a bit, adding to “statesmen” education journalists.

The current reading crisis, often identified as the “science of reading” (SOR) movement, is yet another example of selling the manufactured reading crisis and education reform miracles that are actually mirages.

Since the 1980s, no education reform has worked.

New standards after new standards have not worked.

New high-stakes tests after new high-stakes tests have not worked.

Accountability for students, teachers, and schools has not worked.

No a single fear-mongering prediction or promise has been fulfilled.

With each new hot reform, the missionary zeal doesn’t fades; it just switches teams.

I am drawn to a line from Blade Runner as I contemplate the fate of the current SOR movement: “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long – and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy” (Tyrell).

The uncritical support for the SOR story has been as fervent as any reform movement, so I must wonder if we are on the cusp of buyer’s remorse.

Are these canaries in the coalmine foreboding an end to yet another era of unfounded claims of a reading crisis?

  • A judge in Massachusetts rejected a frivolous lawsuit grounded in the story being sold that a reading crisis was caused by a few reading programs and the scapegoat of the moment, balanced literacy (and three cueing).
  • Unlike mainstream media, Snopes corrected Trump-appointed Secretary of Education’s claim about student reading proficiency based on the Big Lie about NAEP.
  • Possibly most surprising is this call from Perry Bacon Jr. to set aside the crisis rhetoric around education, including this acknowledgement about NAEP:

The overwhelming majority of American students are reaching “baseline proficiency” in math, reading and science, according to PISA. That’s almost certainly because of our public school systems, where about 87 percent of students in grades K-12 get their education. U.S. politicians for a while were pushing the aspirational idea that most students should score proficient or above on the NAEP tests. That is a very high and probably unrealistic standard. Most of America’s students are reaching the NAEP “basic” level, mirroring the PISA results.

The impending buyer’s remorse for buying the reading story being sold will come with tremendous costs.

As Bacon warns: “But the alarmist portrayals of our schools are wrong and undermine support for public education.”

The SOR movement has wasted huge amounts of public funding and time; students are also paying a high price because of the caustic nature of scripted reading programs and grade retention.

As I read mainstream journalists and political leaders parrot the same false reading story over and over, I cannot help thinking about the preteen girls dressed like Madonna and the Reebok add that even my high school students were able to shake their heads at in disappointment.

Education

Call for Poetry Submissions – English Journal

[Header Photo by Trust “Tru” Katsande on Unsplash]

Poetry Submissions – English Journal

Editor: Paul Thomas

Furman University

In the pages of English Journal, we look to publish well-crafted poems that connect our readers to topics central to English education: the impact of reading and writing on young people, words and language, classroom stories, and reflections on teaching and learning. Poetry reminds us, as educators, how to live in this world. Submit your work by emailing a Word doc attachment to paul.thomas@furman.edu. Use the subject line “Poetry Submission for Review.” The first page of the attached document should be a cover sheet that includes your name, address, and email, as well as a two-sentence biographical sketch. In your bio, include how long you have been a member of NCTE, if applicable, and a publishable contact email. Following the cover sheet, include one to five original poems in the same document. Finally, please fill out and attach this form granting English Journal permission to publish your poem: https://ncte.org/app/uploads/2018/10/NCTE-Consent-to-Publish-No-Assignment-EJ-poems-Collective-Work-4845-4342-1491-1.pdf

Though we welcome work of any length, shorter pieces (30 lines and under) often work best for the journal. Poems must be original and not previously published. Simultaneous submissions are welcome, though writers must immediately withdraw from consideration any poems that are to be published elsewhere by contacting the editors via email.

Poets whose work is published will receive two complimentary copies of the issue in which their work appears. Additional inquiries about poetry submissions may be directed to the editor at paul.thomas@furman.edu. We look forward to reading and celebrating your work.

Poets

Please submit poem(s) as a Word doc only.

Use this form to grant English Journal permission to publish your poem: Poet CTP

See EJ Calls for Manuscripts for information on upcoming themed issues.

See EJ Columns for information on submissions to specific columns.

For general EJ Submission Guidelines, click here.

Feel free to browse my original poetry and blogs on poetry at #poetry.

Matt Berninger, poetry, The National, Writing

Writing Purpose and Process: “there’s poetry and there’s songwriting” (Matt Berninger)

[Header image via Genuis, lyrics by Matt Berninger]

As I have noted often, over my forty-plus years teaching students to write, a few patterns remain constant, one of which is students lacking genre awareness.

On the first day of class, I often ask students what novels they read in high school English, and invariably, students include The Crucible or simply say “Shakespeare.”

They read these plays in book form, and have conflated anything in book form with “novel.”

Also, they mostly are experienced in being students who write, not writers.

So I spend a great deal of time and effort in my writing courses helping students become engaged with authentic writing practices, specifically fostering stronger writing purposes (and understanding writing forms/genres) and processes.

As a fan of The National and lead singer/lyricist Matt Berninger, I was particularly struck by this new interview [1] as Berninger begins promoting his second solo album, Get Sunk:

I think this interview is a really wonderful and brief entry point to discussing writer purpose and process (note that Berninger does use some profanity and references pot smoking).

Berninger is an endearing and quirky as his lyrics. And while he may seem flippant at first (“I’ll start fucking around with stuff”), he makes some very sophisticated and accessible observations about purposeful writing and the importance of the writing process (he has begun scribbling lyrics on baseballs instead of his standard journal, for example).

When the interviewer mentions his favorite lyric from Boxer (The National), Berninger offers a brief window into the importance of being a reader as well as the recursive nature of texts: “I stole that from Jonathan Ames.”

Berninger’s lyrics often pull from books, authors, and other song lyrics. Here is an ideal place to discuss with students the conventions of allusion and references as that creates tension with plagiarism (a great opportunity to tie in so-called canonized writers such as Marianne Moore and T.S. Eliot).

But the core comments I think students need to hear and then practice in the writing are about understanding different writing purposes/forms:

I do think songwriting is a very specific kind of thing…. It’s not—there’s poetry and there’s songwriting…. And I think they’re as different as like swimming and ice skating…. It’s like it’s still just words or just water but they’re totally different things.

This distinction and metaphor are powerful because they acknowledge the complexity of choosing and writing in different ways, for different purposes, and for different audiences.

Berninger also talks about his use of scribbling on baseballs for writing ideas. While quirky, this really captures the writing process in an authentic way (not the scripted way often taught in school).

As a teacher of writing and a writer (as well as avid reader), I want students to be fully engaged as writers—not as students performing a stilted essay for the teacher/professor.

We want for our students a sense of purpose, a demonstration of intent, an awareness of form and audience, and ultimately, a writing product of their choosing and for their purposes.

And in the era of intensified AI, I want to stress that AI has no place in these goals because students need and deserve opportunities to experience all of these aspects of brainstorming, drafting, and presenting a final product.

It may seem crude, careless, and flippant, but if we listen carefully, Berninger’s “fucking around” demonstrates the power and complexity of being a writer—and thus, being a teacher of writing.

[1] I highly recommend this blog post on Bon Iver/Justin Vernon as a companion to the Berninger interview.

See my posts on The National.

Capitalism, Education, education reform, NAEP, reading, Science of Reading

Beware Scripted Curriculum: More Trojan Horse Education Reform

[Header Photo by José León on Unsplash, cropped]

It took a few years, but there was always a long game.

And there was a few decades of preparation along the way.

George W. Bush built the foundation for Trojan Horse education reform in the 1990s, including a false “miracle” narrative and efforts to establish scripted curriculum (a colleague and I examined that here).

Education reform, however, was never about improving learning or teaching, but about ideological agendas, conservative agendas.

The crisis/miracle cycles started with that Texas “miracle,” but included the Chicago “miracle” (to bolster Arne Duncan), the DC “miracle” (to promote Michelle Rhee’s grift), and the Harlem “miracle” (that solidly merged education reform as bi-partisan under Obama with the help of grifter Duncan).

What may prove to be the most successful (and harmful) “miracle,” however, is the media manufactured Mississippi “miracle,” grounded in 2019 NAEP scores.

Six years later, the real end game of these manufactured and false “miracles” are merging with an initial effort by W. Bush—de-professionalizing teachers with scripted curriculum. Note the connection in a recent misleading but recurring endorsement by Patrinos (from the Department of Education Reform, funded by Walton money in Arkansas) of that Mississippi “miracle”:

Teaching at the right level and a scripted lessons plan are among the most effective strategies to address the global learning crisis. After the World Bank reviewed over 150 education programs in 2020, nearly half showed no learning benefit.

And then, this disturbing piece by Korbey: Why US schools have fallen in love with scripted lessons.

After taking a swipe at NCTE, Korbey makes the same but false connection as Patrinos above:

Nearly all the states that have seen reading scores improve recently – including Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama – have changed state law to encourage districts to choose from approved lists of HQIM.

Conveniently omitted in public advocacy and endorsements of scripted curriculum, is that this is a correlation; however, research has shown that curriculum, instruction, and teacher training are not the keys to increased test scores. Grade retention is:

[S]tates whose policies mandate third-grade retention see significant and persistent increases in high-stakes reading scores in all cohorts…. [T]here is no consistent evidence that high-stakes reading scores increase in states without a retention component.

And another omission is that research has shown scripted reading programs de-professionalize teachers, fail to serve the individual needs of students, and have “whitewashed” the curriculum, alienating the most under-served students in our schools [see Recommended below].

And thus, the end game:

Education reform is dedicated to perpetual education crisis for market and political goal.

Scripted curriculum, then, is not designed to improve reading proficiency, but to create one more step toward AI replacing teachers the same way self-checkout replaced cashiers in our grocery stores.

Recommended

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

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

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

Education

Misreading the Outlier Distraction: Illiteracy Edition Redux

[Header Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash]

Arthur Young graduated from high school with honors. However, as an adult, he was illiterate.

Literacy expert Helen Lowe featured Young and concluded:

Arthur could not read, even at a primer level. He could not drive a car, because he could not pass the test for a driver’s license; he could not read the street signs or traffic directions. He was unable to order from the menu in a restaurant. He could not read letters from his family and he could not write to them. He could not read the mixing directions on a can of paint or the label on a shipment of sheet rock. He had been cheated.

This story may be shocking but also sounds disturbingly familiar to a recent story on CNN:

This young woman, of course, has also been “cheated.”

But here is something important to acknowledge: The dramatic story of Young is from 1961 as part of a book on the illiteracy crisis in the US, Tomorrow’s Illiterates: The State of Reading Instruction Today.

Both problematic stories seven decades apart are outlier narratives that are both inexcusable failures but are not evidence of any generalizations about education, teaching, or literacy.

Stated bluntly, outliers can never lead to any sort of generalizations.

One of the great failures of public discourse and policy around reading and literacy in the US has been perpetual crisis rhetoric used to drive ideological agendas about what counts as literacy and how best to teach children and young adults to read and write.

If you had a time machine, you could visit any year over the past century in the US and discover that “kids today” can’t and don’t read because the education system is failing them.

These histrionic stories are compelling because they often include real children and adults whose lives have been reduced because of their illiteracy or inadequate literacy.

Ideally, of course, no person in the richest and most powerful country in the world should ever be cheated like that.

But here is the paradox: These outlier stories are distractions from doing the reform and work needed to approach all children and adults being literate.

Once again, reading test data for decades has shown exactly the same reality as all other forms of tests of student learning (math, science, civics, etc.): Over 60% of test scores are causally linked to factors beyond the walls of schools—access to healthcare, food security, housing security, access to books in the homes and communities, and thousands of factors impacting the lives and learning of children.

At best, teacher impact on measurable student literacy is only about 1-14%.

Yet, year after year, decade after decade, the US focuses on teacher quality, curriculum and standards, reading programs, and reading test scores without acknowledging or addressing the overwhelming impact of out-of-school factors on people acquiring the literacy they need and deserve to live their full humanity.

The two stories seven decades apart from above are likely far more complicated than any coverage could detail; the are both compelling and upsetting human stories that deserve our attention, in order to address their individual tragedies as well as taking greater care that others do not suffer the same fate.

However, misreading outlier distractions is not the way to honor that these people have been cheated.

Two things can be true at once: Outlier stories are heartbreaking and inexcusable; however, they prove nothing beyond the experiences they detail.

CNN uses outlier stories for traffic and profit.

Literacy ideologues use outlier stories to drive their agendas as well as to feed the education market.

We are all cheated, once again, when we play the outlier distraction game and refuse to acknowledge and address the crushing realities of inequity in the lives and learning of children.

Each child matters, and all children matter.

Yet, only the adults have the political and economic power to make that a reality.