Nancy Bailey is a retired teacher who battles misinformation and propaganda. In this post, she dissects a new film called “The Truth About Reading,” which is riddled with half-truths and omissions. It is yet another alarmist film that calls parents to the barricades to engage in another round of The Reading Wars.
She begins:
Americans are getting primed with a trailer for a new documentary called The Truth About Reading. It’s said there needs to be a grassroots movement of parents and educators who are angry and say enough is enough.
Wouldn’t it be better if teachers and parents met and shared their concerns about reading at their schools? Schools do various reading programs that might need review, especially if students have difficulty learning.
Open the link and read on.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I look forward to seeing this documentary. Diane, I hope you will watch it with an open mind. I admire Emily Hanford.
Early childhood teachers should get prepared for another “controversy” as a result of a new film, “The Truth about Reading.” Funded by another rich guy that never learned to read well, Corcoran wants to convince us that the teaching of phonics is the “gold standard” for teaching reading. Phonemic awareness and its application are important elements, but isolated phonics drills alone fail to cover all the aspects of reading young children need to learn in order to become fluent readers. As Bailey points out, ‘Reading First,’ phonics on steroids, was a $6 billion dollar failure that the film never mentioned. Maybe a better take away from the film is that if parents want their children to be skilled readers, they shouldn’t move around so much that their children fall through the cracks.
This film is likely to be widely promoted because it is critical of public education, and it will be used to try to push young children on to computers for copious amounts of phonics skill and drill. Big Tech and publishers will be delighted to sell their products to early childhood centers and elementary schools. They will find this latest attack very rewarding. $$$
No one in this film thinks phonemic awareness or phonics in isolation is the answer. Also, putting children on a computer for drill in kill is the last thing anyone associated with this film would suggest. As a parent in this trailer and someone who struggled all through school, the judgement of this movie and it’s motivation is laughable. It’s a lot of inaccurate assumptions which I can speak to as a fact since I have been a part of and witnessed the birth of this film and the goals and motivations that surround it. This film aims to strengthen public education, empower teachers and return the teaching decision to them and their classroom.
Diane’s assessment about missing information about the background of adults who can’t read is quite frankly insulting. It doesn’t matter, with proper knowledge and instruction, a child of any circumstance can learn to read proficiently.
I tried for 4 years to meet with my child’s school and teachers to discuss my literacy concerns about my child and teachers hands are tied, admins feel obligated to defend the programs they’ve spent millions on and they are given a million outs ( poverty levels, poor standardized tests for example) to explain away poor literacy. I will continue to speak up and stand up for our children and carry on despite casual blogs like this that sound a lot more like adults saving face instead of putting our children’s educations and futures first.
Keep fighting the good fight, Molly! My daughter was also failed by the system.
There will be great resistance, but it’s not about what adults are comfortable with or “believe” is best practice. The only thing that matters is what works for children.
EBLI has changed the trajectory of my daughter’s life, and thanks to your team’s work she won’t be another statistic failed by balanced literacy. If only all kids could be this “lucky”.
Reading is a tool to help students learn. It is not learning. Once the education establishment decided that reading was more important than learning, too many students were locked out of why they are in school. Making literacy the focus of kindergarten, we set the stage for students to struggle with comprehension later. Policy makers don’t seem to understand students learn because they buy into the wonders of their world. Once we abandoned fine motor development and play we developed learning environments that ignored how students become motivated to learn. The hole in those who promote the “science of learning” is that the reason for learning is dismissed. I have watched too many children matriculate through school totally unengaged because the standards movement values time on task over meaning. I personally was a latent reader but because of my environment I was totally immersed in the wonders of the world around me. When I was ready to read at 7, I devoured text because my curiosity was appropriately primed. Nancy Bailey does an excellent job of highlighting the misguided focus of those who think that successful reading is a matter of specific phonemic strategies. Students, especially in our individualist culture, read when they have a reason to read. Education policy makers seem to have forgotten this.
The over arching goal of reading should be feeling and/or thinking. Phonemic skills or strategies are a means to an end, and the end goal should be thinking and understanding. I defer to Frank Smith who said, “Reading is thinking.”
But “no one gives a shit what you think or feel”, according to the expert (David Coleman)
I do, and we all should care. The ability to think is an essential element of a functioning democracy. Easily bamboozled people lead to Trumpism, as we well know.
However you can’t “feel or think” anything on a page if you can’t decode the words.
Paul Bonner– this is brilliant: “Policy makers don’t seem to understand students learn because they buy into the wonders of their world. Once we abandoned fine motor development and play we developed learning environments that ignored how students become motivated to learn.” And you clinch it here, a succinct explanation of what’s wrong with “skills-based” standards: “The hole in those who promote the “science of learning” is that the reason for learning is dismissed.”
Statement From The Founder Of EBLI
“Six months of researching, observing programs in schools, attending reading conferences, and obsessing about literacy led me to a former college professor who owned a reading center. In 12 hours of instruction, she was getting students out of Special Education. Seriously??
As a PhD who’d taught teachers for decades, she told me the research shows exactly what one needs to teach anyone to read to their highest potential but they don’t teach it to teachers in college. That’s why she was no longer a college professor and instead owned a reading center. She was insistent on doing the right thing, even though it was a more challenging direction to take.
After reading the book she recommended, Why Our Children Can’t Read and What We Can Do About It by Diane McGuinness, I taught my daughter to read in 3 hours. Twenty years later, she is a highly successful, highly literate professional in Chicago.
After teaching many children in my home, I ended up opening a reading center. I had not formal education or experience in either business or education. A few years later, I created a system of reading instruction, EBLI, to help everyone — young and old, non-reader to great reader — read to their highest potential in an average of 12 hours of instruction. I’ve trained thousands of educators to teach this in classrooms. We’ve created online EBLI training so anyone, of any background, anywhere in the world, can learn how to teach EBLI.”
“After reading the book she recommended, Why Our Children Can’t Read and What We Can Do About It by Diane McGuinness, I taught my daughter to read in 3 hours.”
My road to becoming a reading specialist also began with reading this book two decades ago. Since then I’ve read her other two books: Early Reading Instruction: What Science Really Tells Us About How to Teach Reading and Language Development and Learning to Read: The Scientific Study of How Language Development Affects Reading Skill.
All highly recommended if you want to know the research behind reading acquisition.
After reading the book ” Why Our Children Can’t do quantum mechanics and What We Can Do About It” by Werner Heisenberg (one of the founders of quantum theory), I taught my child to do quantum mechanics in 3 hours.
And after reading Einstein’s book, Why Our Children Can’t do General Relativity and What We Can Do About It” by Albert Einstein, I taught my 4 year old to calculate the precession of the perihelion of Mercury in 3 hours.
And, incidentally, my 4 year old failed the exam for entrance into the Gifted and Talented program, so if he can learn GR in 3 hours, anyone can.
because, as we all know, every child is the same….. 🙂
Exactly!
But only one part (though a key one). One of the great scourges of clear thinking about education is the unfortunate tendency to apply single solutions–people’s treating, because they have discovered a hammer, everything as if it were a nail. There’s a pop science book called Why Are There So Many Ants on the Sidewalk? Well, sidewalks are good places for laying down the chemical trails that ants follow. They are near the ground, where ants live. People drop yummy ant food on sidewalks. And ants are EVERYWHERE. It’s just easier to see them on sidewalks. The question is complex, and there are quite a few answers that are PART of the puzzle. And many of the PARTS of the puzzle are themselves complex. I try to address this issue of the many components of good reading instruction in the essay for which I have provided a link, below. It’s not a sound bite.
Uncles are also everywhere, but it is also just easier to see them on sidewalks , especially the sidewalks outside of bars.
I highly recommend the McGuiness books. These present great info on (and solid arguments about) one part of the reading puzzle. But only one part. See my essay on this, which I have linked to below.
I once had the goal of a pogo stick jumping record in the McGuiness Book.
But I broke my arm after ten jumps, so that was that.
lol
Hi Kathyirwin, I am the founder of EBLI and what you have shared here is actually a portion of an ‘about the founder’ blog I wrote. Here is a link to the blog so people can get the full content and context: https://eblireads.com/meet-the-ebli-founder/
Yes, I did teach my daughter to read in 3 hours. I agree that is crazy – but true! Once in a while people ask how – though that is rare. More often, they like to say it isn’t possible or that I’m lying, which is interesting.
As the blog conveys, my experience with my daughter is what led me to change my entire life path from Neonatal ICU nurse to literacy.
I’d be happy to answer questions you or anyone else has about it.
Thank you, Nora, for posting. I attended with colleagues your last two free webinars, and they helped clarify for them the simplicity of the speech-to-print approach. I was lucky to have stumbled on the science of reading decades ago through the books of Diane McGuinness, so as both a first grade teacher and a reading specialist I haven’t been distracted by complicated rules (syllable types, r-controlled, etc.) because I simply don’t teach them. Thank you for making these webinars freely available to teachers. They are an incredible resource.
I appreciate your comment Harriett and am pleased to learn that you also have benefitted from Diane McGuinness and her work on speech to print instruction. You are welcome for the webinars! I greatly enjoy doing them and the goal is for them to be of benefit to those who attend or watch the recordings. It is reaffirming to hear that you find them worthwhile:).
The Latin root of ‘education’ is ‘educare’ – which means to draw out from. Schooling has been designed for decades to ‘pour into’. The wonder of the world around each child has been scrubbed in favour of one group’s interpretation of ‘wonders of the world’. The lack of opportunity for divergent thought in this approach cancels the development of personal belief systems thus eliminating the development of critical thought/thinking. Why read the curriculum’s reading list, even if there is choice?
We are not hard-wired to read or write like we are to speak and listen. We do have the ‘equipment’ in our brains that is ready to make the necessary connections to learn to read and write. The first ‘step’ for making these connections is vocabulary and we learn vocabulary when we are talked to, listened to, read to. We learn vocabulary while we play and as noted in the previous comment, schooling has taken much of play away from young children. Children lose both the opportunity for talking and listening, thinking and arguing, resolving those conflicts using their vocabulary and they lose the health benefits of movement.
Maryann Wolf’s “Reader Come Home” is a powerful book on the value of deep reading. Stanislas Dehaene’s “Reading in the Brain” is a bit technical but worth the effort. And Barnhouse and Vinton’s “What Readers Really Do” provides insight into practices that can help young readers become powerful readers.
Forcing reading on young children is not the answer. If education really believes that we are diverse, unique and provides the ‘basics’ – speaking and listening, developing vocabulary (and do not make this process onerous – e.g. drill and then vocab tests), children will, when they are ready, want to read.
Beautiful statement snd so very true!
Kids differ, vastly, both in their propensities and in their preschool experiences. The latter make a HUGE difference. Kids are NOT on the same schedules, either. One of the huge, recurring problems in discussions about curricula and pedagogy, is the tendency toward simplifying distortion and monolithic thinking. Here’s the philosopher’s stone. Here’s the magic elixir. Here’s the one-size-fits all Procrustean bed. See my essay about this issue as it expresses itself in the Reading Wars. Link below.
Absolutely! You are right on the money. One of the things that I don”t understand is that public education has placed reading as the only door to learning when in this technological age we have so many modalities to use, whether visual or auditory, that can unlock learning for the child. There is a reason why personal computers struggled with MS Dos and written commands and then took of once Mac and Microsoft Windows were introduced. People want to learn and do, but they must be able to approach it in a way that has meaning for them.
“Wouldn’t it be better if teachers and parents
met and shared their concerns
about reading at their schools?”
Sounds good in theory.
A sense of community where participants “enjoy”
an equal voice and the willingness to listen
to different points of view, weigh their respective
merits, and synthesize the best aspects of each
view.
A caveat, no one’s contribution could be rountinely
dismissed because of an individual’s status. IOW,
are you ready to leave “they don’t know squat,
they’re not a teacher” at the door?
Institutions of top-down status power continually
preements the force of a “better” argument. The
process is transformed into a type of obedience,
and “achievement” becomes a form of deception.
Preaching equity but practicing title power
is deception as well.
“The single major variable as to whether or not a child is successful in first grade (now kindergarten???) reading instruction is whether or not the child was read to in the preschool years sitting on Mommy’s lap or Daddy’s knee.” — Dr. John Manning, Univ. of Minn, 1973. I suspect this statement is still true today. This trailer suggests the so-called reading wars are still afoot. Hah! The Phonics Fanatics won that war thirty years ago! Perhaps we need to be reminded by Dr. Donald Durrell that our language is meaning-based not sound-based. And perhaps putting all our decoding eggs in the phonics basket is actually part of the problem. As Dr. Frank Smith pointed out, phonics is easy if you already know how to read. And phonics works “best” if you read right to left! Notice you don’t know how to pronounce a word starting with “ho” until you see what follows: hot, hotel, honor, hovel…You see what he meant.
“The single major variable as to whether or not a child is successful in first grade (now kindergarten???) reading instruction is whether or not the child was read to in the preschool years sitting on Mommy’s lap or Daddy’s knee.” — Dr. John Manning, Univ. of Minn, 1973.
Can you please cite research supporting this statement? Thank you.
Pushing children to read before they are developmentally ready has resulted in an over identification of first and second graders being classified as “learning disabled.” This is bad, expensive practice.
I have taught many poor ELLs to read. Many poor students have not had parents that read to them. As a result, they have a smaller vocabulary, and they cannot rhyme. When students get to the point that they can play with sounds of the language, it is often a breakthrough moment for most students. They know how to apply phonics in order to decode. When parents teach young children nursery rhymes and songs, they are helping preschoolers understand the sound system of English quite naturally.
Love yr 1st para which provoked more thoughts– replied under general comments at end, to ge more margin space.
(awaiting moderation)
There are many parents that read to their children but still these children struggle with learning to read fluently. There are so many factors that lead to reading difficulty. When schools take this seriously as to why some don’t read well by evaluating them by 2nd grade perhaps our schools will be more successful. Reading difficulty is a big issue and whether teachers and administrators like it things need to change
Thanks, Nancy, for sounding the warning about this film. It sounds indeed as though it will be utter bs.
The trailer has an intertitle (a still with text) that says that “In America 1 in 3 students drop [sic] out of high school.” The high-school dropout rate in the U.S. is 5.1 percent, not 33.33 percent. So, the figure given is six times higher than the actual figure. It’s a lie. And the subject is the singular 1, so the verb should be drops. Perhaps the folks who put this film together have a literacy problem.
Maybe most of the 33.3…% who drop out drop back in.
Did you ever think of that?
The actual number is, in comparison, a drop in the bucket. Though, ofc, every kid matters, a lot.
My contribution on the topic of the reading wars: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2017/09/02/on-the-pseudoscience-of-strategies-based-reading-comprehension-instruction-or-what-current-comprehension-instruction-has-in-common-with-astrology/
NB: this piece is not a sound bite. Much that is true about teaching and learning can’t be said in a slogan. Sorry, ed “reformers,” that’s simply the fact. I have this to say to those who wish to “reform” reading with magic elixirs: “Physician, heal thyself.”
This is an excellent piece! Thank you so much for sharing. You do a great job laying out all the components of reading comprehension. If you can’t read the words, you can’t go on to access the meaning of the text. Today, I’ve started my reading groups with 48 struggling first and second graders. I am helping them crack the code so that they can gain meaning from whatever they choose to read.
The following is especially pertinent to the present discussion:
“Decoding of written symbols (graphemes like f or ph) and associating them with meaningful speech sounds (phonemes like /f/) is most easily learned, by most kids, from explicit instruction. Some children are good enough at pattern recognition and get enough exposure to grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) to be able to learn to decode in the absence of explicit instruction in interpretation of those correspondences. Such decoding appropriates general pattern recognition abilities of the brain and puts them to this particular use. But even some of those kids–ones who learned to decode without explicit instruction–sometimes don’t develop the automaticity needed for truly fluent reading. There is now no question about this: There is voluminous research showing that many, perhaps most, students have to be taught phonics (sound-symbol correspondences) explicitly if they are to learn to decode fluently. For excellent reviews of this research, see Diane McGuiness’s Early Reading Instruction: What Science Really Tells Us about How to Teach Reading. Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT P., 2004, and Why Our Children Can’t Read and What We Can Do about It: A Scientific Revolution in Reading. New York: Touchstone/Simon and Schuster, 1999.”
Thanks again!
Thanks, Ms. Jacobs!
Parents and/or guardians are the key factor for a child learning to read and enjoying it.
I have no respect for anyone that blames teachers for children that grow up and do not know how to read.
I wonder if any of these voucher/charter advocated understand or care what OVERWHELMING means.
“The evidence about the benefits of parents being involved in their children’s education in
general, and their children’s literacy activities in particular, is overwhelming.
“Research shows that parental involvement in their children’s learning positively
affects the child’s performance at school (Fan & Chen, 2001) in both primary and
secondary schools (Feinstein & Symons, 1999), leading to higher academic
achievement, greater cognitive competence, greater problem-solving skills, greater
school enjoyment, better school attendance and fewer behavioural problems at
school. …
Click to access ED496346.pdf
As a principal, I always stressed that parents read to students and take to have experiences outside of the home. Many parents simply did not do this as gif they didn’t understand the value.
Teachers are taught what to teach based on curriculum provided by their schools. If the curriculum doesn’t work well for some students
What is to be done?
As usual. Way to go, Nancy.
Nancy caught every one of my issues with the trailer except this one: once again, NAEP “proficiency” level is misinterpreted. At this point of course the error is universal with media. Might as well beat your head against a stone wall.
In case you missed the comments at the Bailey blog: “Rick says” excoriates deducing reading ability from ELA scores on ESSA tests—merely compare to NAEP 4th & 8th gr science tests. The latter are double the former. How does that work?
Not the NEAP science tests, the federally mandated, NYS Intermediate Level Science (ILS) exam administered in grade 8.
The amount of reading required on the one hour lab test and the two hour written test is astonishing. Scores prove that kids really can read when they have the background knowledge, vocabulary, and experiences.
Link to all 19 years of tests:
https://www.nysedregents.org/grade8/science/home.html
I’d love to see ELA reading tests in which topics are announced in advance (whales, US geography, branches of govt, etc.) This would also involve teachers beyond the BIG TWO (2!) subjects tested.
I don’t know what happened to my response to you, Rage. No doubt it will show up as a duplicate eventually. I was too brief in my summary of “Rick”‘s comment. Not comparing gr 4 to gr 8 science results. He was pointing out that the same kids who have supposedly poor reading skills based on ESSA annual ELA tests somehow manage to score 2x as high on the NAEP science tests, which presumably require good reading skills (as you confirm). Which goes to show what hogwash the annual state-stdzd ELA tests are, & how you can deduce zilch about reading ability from their scores.
He is me.
NYSED no longer includes the grade 4 or grade 8 (ILS) science scores in their school report cards despite the federal requirement.
My guess is they fear that heads will be imploding statewide due to the cognitive dissonance produced when ELA reading and science reading scores are compared.
“It’s said (by billionaires) that there needs to be a grassroots movement of parents and educators (paid for by billionaires) who are angry and say enough is enough.”
Fixed.
LMAO!
Hi Kathyirwin, I am the founder of EBLI and what you have shared here is actually a portion of a blog I wrote. Here is a link to the blog so people can get the context: https://eblireads.com/meet-the-ebli-founder/
Yes, I did teach my daughter to read in 3 hours. I agree that is crazy – but true! Once in a while people ask how – though that is rare. More often, they like to say it isn’t possible or that I’m lying, which is interesting.
As the blog conveys, my experience with my daughter is what led me to change my entire life path from Neonatal ICU nurse to literacy.
I’d be happy to answer questions you or anyone else has about it.
Hi Nora,
I was interested in reading your blog so I clicked on the link. Thank you for providing the link. After reading your background information I think it’s misleading to claim that you “taught your daughter to read in 3 hours” when the blog states that: 1. she had just moved from Guam to Michigan. 2. She was in 2nd grade when this occurred. 3. Her computerized standardized placed her a year below grade level 4. She had words misspelled on her writing.
If she came into the school system a year behind – we can assume she was reading at a first grade reading level. It takes a lot of work and practice and exposure to print to get to a first grade reading level (much more than 3 hours).
The standardized test score may have been inaccurate. And it’s normal for 1st and 2nd graders to have words misspelled.
While I applaud your efforts – let’s not discount the work that was done in Guam to get your child reading in the first place.
No doubt once that happened – the intensive work you did with your daughter supported continued growth.
Thank you for sharing.
Point well taken. She certainly had had instruction before 2nd grade and also we’d traveled extensively around the world by that point so she had tremendous background knowledge. Her reading, for me, was about how she was (or wasn’t l) reading. She could beautifully and fluently read books she’s memorized (stories from school that were read to the kids on tape, the teacher read to them, and they spent all week reading). Her favorite parlor trick was to look at the ceiling while ‘reading’-a speech she’d memorized really! What helped me really realize she could not actually read is that she couldn’t read the same words from that story in a different context or even read a sentence of paragraph from the memorized story when pulled out from the book. She could not at all read any books or stories that hasn’t been read to her before. She also got 100% on all spelling tests but her spelling in writing was atrocious and no one, including her, could read it.
So, what did happen in 3 hours of instruction was that she want from not being able to read unfamiliar text to being able to read familiar text.
In the 25 years since, many children who present similarly have had the same experience in a very short amount of instructional time. All had had some kind of instruction previously, of course, but were inaccurate readers who couldn’t comprehend. Pretty much universally, whether 7 years old like Colleen or 82 (the oldest person I’ve taught), they had habits of guessing and misreading words and low comprehension. Undoing those habits has to happen along with teaching them to become accurate readers so they can comprehend.
Hi Nora, That’s pretty amazing. Could you post a youtube video of the 3 hours of instruction of a student? 3 hours is would be easy to watch. And what a gift you would be giving the world to spread the modeling for such a quick, incredible transformation.
Hi Beachteach,
Not many struggling readers are eager to show their reading struggles to the world via video. Most (even the very young ones) work very, very hard to hide it from everyone. Even when they do consent to being taped, I highly doubt they would be willing to have it shared publicly.
I do have one gentleman who agreed to be taped and have it shared. He had 11 hours of instruction. I have a clip of him reading out loud in the first hour and last hour of his instruction as well as about 30 seconds in the middle where he stops in the middle of the book he is reading and exclaims that he is comprehending for the first time ever. This clip will be used for a presentation to educators about his experience. I will direct him to this blog and the comments and see if he would be comfortable with me sharing the video after the presentation is done.
You would even have to show the student…..or their face could be blurred.
I have videos of my so-called dyslexic students that I have filmed reading before and after my tuition. I posted one I received from his proud grandfather yesterday. You may like to read the post and view the video clip at https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2021/12/rayyan-6-year-old-reading-from-my-book.html
Your comment will be appreciated.
P/s I am the one you wrote to and said that what I have written to you is similar to many. Show me just one other person in the world who had said that kids disengage from learning to read due to confusion as a result of being taught consonants with extraneous sounds.
The trailer says the sky is falling because students are not showing “proficiency”. Anyone notice that “proficiency” is not the same thing as “literacy”? Anyone remember that “proficiency” is an arbitrary test score cut line that is well above grade level, a cut line based on misinterpretation of NAEP categories? This joke is not funny. Wasn’t funny in Nation at Risk 1983 and it’s still not funny in 2021.
Nancy’s response to the trailer is thoughtful and true – “This trailer involves half-truths and falsehoods, condemning teachers and public schools for children and adults who fail to read.” Of course illiteracy is sad, but the reasons are complex. The film appears to lack a deep analysis of who is illiterate and why. It contains broad, outdated, generalizations – most likely to sell a program.
There are truths in the video, phonemic awareness (identifying and manipulating sounds as you are speaking) is important. That does not negate reading beginning books and using picture clues – as part of a teacher’s repertoire to engage children in books. Children should integrate all the information in a book as they are reading. This supports building sight words (that can’t be decoded) and eventually being able to decode words as they build their knowledge of how books work. As children read easy books that support engagement and a love of reading they are also being taught phonics and word study…. and writing – which all support the reading process.
This film was made to serve a purpose… undermine teachers and schools…. or sell a product…. or both. It is not to provide people with knowledge of the reading process and how schools can provide rich environments and strong instructional practices to support literacy.
There are several references to Frank Smith, who, along with Ken Goodman, was a proponent of whole language. I love the way Bob contextualizes the problem with this approach to reading in the piece he wrote about comprehension. He says:
“The Look-Say advocates got their ideas from simplistic Behaviorist models of learning, but where did the Whole Language people get theirs? Well, from listening at the keyholes of linguists. As sometimes happens in education, professional educators half heard and half understood something being said by scientists and applied it in a crazy fashion. What they half heard was that linguists were saying that language is learned automatically. The part that they missed is that the linguists were talking about spoken language, not written.”
Right?! I read Bob’s opus on this a while back & savor that gem. Bob: write the book!
School libraries have been decimated by NCLB and student based budgeting. The library, especially for children who do not have books in their homes, can be a magical place that inspires children to read.
Retired teacher— “Pushing children to read before they are developmentally ready has resulted in an over identification of first and second graders being classified as “learning disabled.” This is bad, expensive practice.”
In theory you are right on. In practice, this depends entirely on the community SES, and what SpEd has to offer in the district. My hi-priced NJ bubble includes a preponderance of kids of professionals, and also an excellent, well-funded SpEd dept. My youngest lagged the norm from birth in size and speed of devpt, so no surprise he wasn’t ready for K amongst giant, early-reader peers—socially & academically. I didn’t want to hear it so didn’t ‘red-shirt’ him. He ended up repeating K, & getting an IEP right away. This paid off in spades. SpEd offered the small classes & extra help that he needed right thro 12th; he got admitted to a small college [with an acad scholarship!] where he did well. His strengths are musical, intuitive, philosophical; a square peg in a round hole in this district. [Obviously doing fine IRL].
Best advice I ever got was when eldest was in K. He was also targeted for SpEd; we were confused [he was hi-IQ but ‘different’] & worried about ‘stigma.’ An old friend who’d known him since birth & happened to be a teacher in our school system said: you’re paying a fortune in RE taxes & have a dynamite SpEd pgm here: he will struggle in mainstream; you should take the district for every extra you can get.’ (!)
No question there’s something warped about all this. I see the problem as you do— increasingly rigid ideas about what should be accomplished by when, as well as unwarranted acceleration of the ‘when’ over the last 50 yrs. The early-SpEd ID is inevitable in the present system, which is like a high-speed assembly line requiring frequent pull-outs – kind of like repair pit-stops in an auto race. Another approach that would probably cost same & be better for all: uniformly small mixed classes that would allow individuals to advance closer to their own speed, getting needed 1-on-1, benefiting from the mix. In that scenario, SpEd would be needed only for autistic, devptlly delayed, & certain severe physical handicaps.
Reblogged this on dean ramser.
I have taught more than 70 so-called dyslexic kids on a one-on-one basis since 2004. I have learned that all of them were instructional casualties and were able to read in a short period of time.
I too was able to teach a kid in Australia to read within a few days. The important part is that the kid was not able to read because he had disengaged from learning to read due to confusion. The mother had sent him for a year of structured synthetic phonics via a scripted program and yet he could not read.
I asked the mother for a recording of her son reading the letter sounds. On listening to the recording sent by the mother I told her that we can get the kid to read within a few weeks. I urged her to teach exactly as shown on my videos (free of charge) and this is what this mother/teacher wrote on Twitter after 2 lessons:
“My son had a year of structured synthetic phonics via a scripted program and he struggles to blend. He said puh instead of p, buh instead of b tuh instead of t. A week of correcting this and he is beginning to read fluently. Are there any studies on this?”
What I had done was to unblock the hindrance. As for studies, there are none other than my own research.
You may read for details of the Twitter discussion between and me at:
https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2021/09/tips-to-australian-teacher.html
AND my explanation of the above at:
https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2021/09/a-postmortem-of-my-twitter-discussion.html
I live in Sabah and she is in Australia. My only means of communication with her was via Twitter. I lost touch with her in January 2021 after one month and met her on Twitter again only in October.
The above is not an isolated case. I have taught many other parents similarly.
Are you saying dyslexia isn’t real?
I have said for more than a decade and maintain that a majority of kids classified as dyslexic are instructional casualties. This word was coined by Dr. Reid Lyon more than 20 years ago. The same thing was said by the president of dyslexia Nancy Hennesy. Read more at
https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2017/08/how-to-teach-phonics.html#more
The following is another post that you may be interested in reading and you are more than welcome to comment on my blog post and I will respond:
https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2021/10/dyslexia-or-instructional-casualties.html#more
That would be nice wouldn’t it. If that had worked then none of us would be angry and there would not be a problem. Seems to me you are a typical nay sayer most of us parents have run into for YEARS while our children fall further behind. You should do the research or better yet walk a mile in our shoes before you call this film misinformation or an alarm not worth setting off.
Hello Katie, I don’t know about Nancy but since 2004 have researched why many smart kids are able to read in many languages but not in English. I have written a book which I urge you to buy and get back to me if you find anything disagreeable in that book. You may read a few book reviews at https://www.amazon.com/Shut-Down-Kids-Prevent-Shutting/dp/1643240420
The book lists all the reasons why kids disengage/ shut down from learning to read.
Hello again, Katie MCCustion, Look at the response from Nora Chahbliz to my email requesting an interview from the publishers at https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2022/01/nora-chahbliz-and-truth-about-reading.html.
How does the response reconcile with my email?
Do you really think anyone is interested in reducing illiteracy?
Have you read Dr. Sally Shaywitzs’ book about Dyslexia (Overcoming Dyslexia) I suggest you start there to understand why children disengage and shutdown. I have a profoundly dyslexic and dysgraphic son. I have dyscalculia. Twenty percent roughly 1in5 have some form of dyslexia in ranges from mild to profound. I am highly educated on this topic because I have had to fight every single day of every single year for my sons educational rights. He is now a freshman in high school in all advanced classes, he would not be there had I just depended and trusted and listened to schools that are not trained properly in the science of reading. There is so much money, politics and willful arrogance to not implement the correct teaching and admit what is being used is wrong. I have gone beyond my district home and fought my home state of Mississippi to have laws changed and won small victories after years of fight. I learned how to read educational state laws and how they correlate with federal laws. Conference after conference, travel, research, after working my day job in a corporate office as an HR manager I would come home take care of my family and stay up all night researching and many nights in tears. What I am saying and apologies if this comes off sharp ie rude. I do not need to read another book to understand this topic, I have walked, lived it, written legislation about it, been in all facets of educational red tape from IEP meetings, mediation meetings, etc. etc.
Maybe I should write a book.
Well said Katie. Do write a book
My daughter is going through this with both her children. That the educational community is in denial that their reading systems are failing so many young children is truly sad. I support public education and teachers but there needs to be change. The reason public schools are defensive is because they know they can’t meet each child’s needs when it comes to literacy. The D(dyslexia, dysgraphia,dyscalculia) words are ignored whenever possible. Why? Because of funding. Private schools are no better. They refer their students to public schools for testing. I live in California. We can’t get a bill passed to mandate early screening for dyslexia. CA Teachers Association and CA School Board Association are against that bill.
If billionaires really want to help with literacy they should fund universal testing, training of educators, and resolutions.
“There is so much money, politics and willful arrogance to not implement the correct teaching and admit what is being used is wrong.”
The correct teaching is to first teach the correct pronunciation of sounds represented by letters. If this is done correctly there will be fewer students who shut down/disengage from learning to read.
I believe it is time for us to open our minds and think instead of swallowing whatever is said by researchers.
Read my post on how Mark Seidenberg pronounces some of the phonemes at https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2021/12/mark-seidenberg-on-becoming-phonemic.html
and then comment on my post and I WILL respond.
The two states I worked in only thought about dyslexia and dysgraphia in terms of liability. They try to word-smith their way out of taking responsibility for the children who struggle with reading. I have encountered programs that actually address the student’s needs, but school systems don’t want to make the investment.
I am sorry for your child’s struggles throughout his schooling. It may help to know that school districts throughout the country do require universal screening for dyslexia by grade 2. And do train their teachers to be highly qualified to teach reading and recognize the signs of dyslexia, beginning with language screenings.
As you know, because the causes of reading difficulty vary, from dyslexia to hearing loss to oral language deficiencies etc. – there is no one answer for all reading difficulties – but having the right supports in place to respond to specific needs is important.
I am sorry the private schools and California systems you interacted with were not responsive. If you have researched this for years, you are aware of Orton Gillingham (Wilson or similar) centers? Many schools have staff on site trained in these methods and well as having adaptive technology available to support student’s success. I am surprised California schools do not.
As an advocate I can tell you it’s true. So say you can’t see what is happening.
We need a documentary on the movement to privatize public education.
There have been a few documentaries on the movement to privatize public education.
“Backpack Full of Cash,” producers Sarah Mondale and Vera Aronow (2016). Although the same team had produced a four part series called SCHOOL that aired on PBS, no channel aired it and the producers showed it in communities and schools. Check it out on Google. There was Education Inc, an expose of the Gulen charter chain. Several more but all shunned by cable and networks. The West Lafayette, Indiana, school district made a terrific documentary, too. PBS did show a documentary about the “success” of privatization and for-profit schools, all paid for by right wing foundations. NPE made a stink about it, which led to a 10 minute segment for me on the NYC PBS station, complaining about the bought time for privatization.
Thank you! I will track down all of these.
What we need is a Democratic Party that will admit its mistakes and reject privatization of all kinds. They should then vocally support the public schools and teachers.
Paul, agreed.