Paul Bonner, retired career educator, debunks the “science of reading” prattle;
Then the New York Times published this…https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/us/science-of-reading-literacy-parents.html
Ignorance about the circumstances that hinder student learning is pervasive among the national media. They report again and again on failed “one size fits all” remedies without understanding that these fail because they do not address the root cause of public school challenges: Poverty.
Advocacy for “The science of reading”, Lucy Caulkins, or whole language all miss the point. Until we are willing to change the instructional delivery system that allows for K-12 class sizes of 20-30+ students per class, a teaching professional day that does not allow meaningful classroom preparation except beyond the school day, equal high quality resources and facilities for all students, and an understanding that this hyper focus on reading fluency actually demonstrates low expectations for our students.
Perhaps the greatest inaccuracy on the NYTimes report is that somehow schools have not been engaged in this “Science of reading” rabbit hole.
The two large districts I served in were all in with massive resources given to administrative and teacher professional development for the purpose of institutionalizing the practice. Yet, scores never moved despite efforts to show improvement through numerous changes in the standardized tests being implemented.
The confirmation bias so prevalent in this ongoing reporting has been troubling since the Clinton Administration introduced the “Standards Movement.” Any challenges to such bias continue to be ignored and often attacked.
The fact that Emily Hanford, Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Margaret Spellings continue to act as “go to” interviews when their profession experience as practicing educators is woeful at best, demonstrates the little regard reporters have for the professionalism required to teach and administer instructional outcomes.
It is in fact these arbiters of “data” who use anecdotal reporting to misinform politicians and institutions such as the NAACP to continue this malpractice.
Perhaps the one method we have been reticent to use should be to support teaching, adequately resource school facilities everywhere, and get the hell out of the way for the educators who actually know their craft.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Bravo and amen! Sometimes folks think teaching is easy and that they know about teaching because they were students. Teaching is the act of remaining determined that children will learn, no matter their background, or interest in a topic. Folks who have never been on the teacher side of the desk do not appreciate the many, many nuances and challenges (including poverty) teachers face in classrooms.
Very good synopsis. I would add that only a teacher can ever understand the paradox of ignorance arising out of plenty. By this I mean that the wealthy, often content themselves with a little learning, even as the poor find themselves too busy with sustaining life to enrich it with learning.
Education policy is dictated today by people like Gates who bought his way into Obama’s DOE. The data mongers are running education in a top down dictatorial way, and they are backed by lots of money. The whole ‘science of reading’ fits nicely into their plan to put students in front of screens for a good part of the day. By calling phonics a “science” the data mongers give their plan a sense of gravitas. By labeling electronic worksheets “a science,” people will be less likely to challenge their bad ideas.
Those of us that have been in education for many years know that real change comes from the bottom up. It engages and respects stakeholders. So-called reform deliberately vilifies teachers and public schools to discredit them so they can distract from turning our schools into boring data factories.
Real change takes investment that few politicians are willing to make. If we want to improve student outcomes, we need legitimate educators in charge. We need funds to reduce class size, provide qualified teachers and safe, well resourced facilities. Since results are tied to family economics, the federal government should restore tax credits to the working poor and ensure that all children have access to health care.
RT, you always make sense.
Yes.
Reflecting on my tenure as a school administrator, it became apparent that our success with students was best realized when I focused on leading interference against bureaucratic instructional dogma while allowing teachers to collaborate and make decisions that enhanced pedagogy. The great paradox I faced was that so many in administration, from the principalship to superintendents, often turned to the default that our lack of progress was attributable to poor teachers. I once attended a conference where Harry Wong stated that our attention on poor teachers takes away from improved outcomes. He is right. Strong teaching communities with instructional autonomy overwhelm incompetence.
Year after year, the one constant is “the next best thing” in education. After 30 years in the classroom, I can barely use my education, training, and experience because there is some new initiative with commensurate data mining. In my fantasy world, we’re left alone to do our jobs with inspiration, creativity, and passion.
I am sure you have seen lots of the “next big thing” in thirty years of education. So-called reform is the plan of wealthy, special interest groups as well as some religious fanatics. The main objective is for them is to hoover up as much public money as possible by siphoning it from public education. The false narrative they spin is a means to justify their end. They transfer public money into private pockets directly through charter schools and vouchers, or they commodify public education from the inside out by imposing cyber curricula on multiple districts. All of these nefarious intentions are accomplished by buying those at the top in order to impose more disruption and data collection on teachers and students. These dirty deeds make Wall St. and Silicon Valley very rich and happy.
All the attacks and false narratives are a distraction so teachers, parents and communities are busy defending and arguing with one another, they will be less likely to notice that the funds for public education are deliberately dwindling. So-called reform is not “all about the kids.” It is all about access to public money $$$.
We’ve all heard about ‘The Big Short.’ This is ‘The Great Public School Heist.’
In my fantasy world, we’re left alone to do our jobs with inspiration, creativity, and passion.
Amen to that
Emily Hanford just got an award from George Bush foundation….this is all about keeping the failed nclb and common core policies alive.
I wish my kids had had a balanced literacy approach. Paul is right in that all they have gotten is phonics and fluency and multiple choice practice.
Do we have an email address for New York Times?
Another great podcast to listen to
https://rss.com/podcasts/drandy/918976/
Emily Hanford, with a bachelor’s degree in English, is not qualified to present herself as a reading expert. She’s a political hack. The fact that she is feted by conservative groups confirms she is a hack whose campaign to discredit reading teachers and public schools is another distraction from the right wing. She should be ignored and reviled. I’ll pay attention if she gets an award from the IRA (International Reading Association).
I believe she’s up for a peabody award
Omigod. Just awful. It would be nice to see some evidence that her advocacy has made a difference.
With regard to the G. Bush Foundation award, we should keep in mind that Jeb Bush has made a fortune promoting cyber instruction and the ‘science of reading’ nonsense lends itself to cyber programming.
Diane,
Unfortunately her work has made an impact with so many states mandating sor. I wonder how she sleeps at night doing Gates bidding?
I hate this for our children.
This too shall pass.
Then this happened…https://www.rawstory.com/governor-kay-ivey/?utm_source=123456&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=14048…One of the good programs I experienced as an elementary school principal my eight years inn Alabama was it’s pre-k program. It was primarily focused on development even though many in the education bureaucracy griped that we weren’t teaching phonics to four year olds. Alabama is not in a good place in regard to public education. The autocratic leanings of the Republican Party is why.
The Gates Foundation spent at least a billion dollars training journalists and giving news outlets spin articles to publish as news.The Seattle Times wrote about it. The New York Times has taken a large share.
I am repeating what I have said many ties:
Confidence is the most important aspect in learning. Teachers must emphasize the positive and not dwell on the negative – wrong answers. Furthermore, the single most important component of reading comprehension is background knowledge. It does not lie in the text.
Children learn actively- they have to move, use their senses, get their hands on things, interact with other kids and teachers, create, invent- not through rigorous instruction in phonics.
Students need to be active learners – constantly bridging prior experience to the text being read.
Research has proven that reading is the interaction of the reader with visual /perceptual (text, pictures, and graphics) and non visual/conceptual which includes background knowledge along with knowledge of the language structure: semantic. syntactic, and graphophonics systems. Reading is a problem-solving process by which the reader creates meaning through interacting with fellow students, teacher, pictures, and text. It is through the interaction that new concepts are formed.Meaning is created as students brings prior knowledge and personal experiences to the page. Comprehension is not taught by asking questions about what is real; that is a testing mode, not a teaching mode.
Brilliant!
1000 times, yes!
Reading comprehension does not lie in the text but is made possible by a complex and evolving web of language experiences that build a rich, emotional, conceptual, and intellectual working vocabulary. The collective failure of public schools to provide those experiences for the students who need them the most has been nothing less than educational neglect.
Love this!
The Science if Reading, or the body of research from educators, neuro-scientists, educational psychologists etc, is much more than phonics. Phonics skills, however, are not taught well in teaching colleges, so they are a particular weakness in our schools. We need strong materials in our curriculum that also support the acquisition of knowledge in all sorts of domains, along with writing and other forms of language expression.
This is like an eternal loop of the “Song that Never Ends”. I am not rejecting the validity of phonemic awareness as a tool to assist reading out of hand. What I am saying is that it is not the tool that will get us to universal literacy. The first time I listened to Emily Hanford I almost went down her rabbit hole. However, it soon struck me that she was doing exactly what she accused those who reject her “science” of doing: Using anecdotal evidence to enhance her argument. I listened to and read her evidence about frustrated parents whose children were not making progress and the frustration their parents encountered. Hanford effectively used these examples and the subsequent success that followed through the “scientific” reading practices so diligently pursued. However, where Hanford lost me was in her insistence that somehow the universal teaching practice for reading is willy nilly and the phonemic process of reading is being ignored. This simply is not true. Before Hanford even began to take up the mantle, districts across the country began implementing these “scientific” reading practices encouraged by the standards movement. We have plenty of data that could be used to justify such action, but the result has been that reading proficiency among the greater populous has remained stagnant in those same districts during the thirty plus years we have informed such strategies( see NAEP). There hasn’t been a 1 standard deviation movement in reading improvement or decline since 1990. I, as an elementary school principal, have seen anecdotal circumstances where a focus on phonemic reading focus has worked. I, in the same schools, have also seen it fail when applied in the same way by the same reading specialist. The critical difference in success and failure is directly related to student experience. If a child has been exposed to learning through other means, such as travel and adult interaction, then there is motivation to read. If that child has limited background knowledge, as so well articulated by Mary DeFalco in this thread, then they often lack the building of synapses, perhaps the neuro-science you speak of, that connect meaning. The basic problem with our “reading wars” is that this debate acts as if reading is fundamental to knowledge. It is not. Experience is what promotes intellectual curiosity, inquiry, and learning, thus generating the motivation to read. Am I therefore saying reading is unimportant? Certainly not! However, ignoring the plethora of ways we learn only makes reading more difficult. Neuro-science also shows us that our hands are a part of our brain. That all of the neurons and synapses that are in our brain are present throughout our body. Our opposable thumbs are as much apart of our super power of consciousness as are our eyes and cranium size. Yet, we have significantly reduced the amount of time promoting activities where young children use their hands to build and explore in schools and at home. Through our over focus on reading and basic math skills we have sanitized student experience to the point that those who make the greatest leaps in learning require resources outside of school unavailable to too many. If we want children to read, we have to provide the reason to do it through early experiences that make reading possible..
It sounds like we could get more bang for the buck by providing programs for parents to work with their children in the first few years. Reading to them, interacting, exposing kids to different things…. even 3k may not be effective if what goes on in class has no relationship with the rest of the child’s day
David, you assume educated parents.
Understood, but it may be helpful to have a program just to send picture books to families with toddlers. I’d bet there is a measurable advantage in reading readiness for children who were read to at an early age.
David Campbell, you are so right. I read to my children every night, we had the Richard Scarry picture books. They loved picking out the items. They loved words. They became fluent readers before kindergarten.
In Huntsville Alabama we actually had a robust pre-k program with one crucial element missing: Wrap around services for young parents. In the 1970s my mother would frequently advocate for parenting classes for high school students to no avail. In our society we act as if good parenting is intuitive. It is not. Parents who understand the challenges and best support their children are the result of supportive communities around them. The one thing I learned as a young parent is that my children did not come with an instruction manual. We forget that young parents need encouragement and support. The challenge is to convince Americans that such an investment in young families would dramatically reduce adult dependence on government and increase opportunity for children.
Paul, were you in Huntsville when the Broadie took charge?
Yep. He left a profound mess followed by one of his lieutenants that finished the job. He went on to become a Trumpster as assistant Secretary of the Army after being run out of Huntsville for cavorting with and enriching a woman who ran privatized discipline schools.
Broadies left a mess wherever they were
Charlotte Mecklenburg was overrun by Broadies as well…Maybe that is why I was recruited to Huntsville…I should have done more homework…
As you said, Mr. Bonner, “Experience is what promotes intellectual curiosity, inquiry, and learning, thus generating the motivation to read. “Let me add to that: happy environment, freedom to explore, confidence, feeling of success, a challenge that can be met, hands on, modeling and utilizing all senses.
Dramatization is a powerful tool. Instructing on a child’s instructional level is vital and that varies in each classroom.
Many elements play a part in learning especially learning how to read. I can’t over emphasize the importance of a positive attitude-confidence. Teachers and parents need to look for the achievements children make and praise them to the hilt.
When a student, especially an emergent reader, is praised for just a simple thing as pronouncing a word correctly, e.g.,”Wow! How did you figure that word out?!” the student will progress. However, if a student is corrected for every error, that student will regress; it reinforces a poor self-image.
Standardized testing is the most harmful tool to use with students who have a poor self-image. They are of no use. It is the classroom teacher who knows the progress being made. Lay people should not tell educators what to do unless they are ground in Constructivism.
And more from the trenches…All I know is what kids need to learn is an environment that totally lowers the affective filter and allows for constant error without making a big deal about it in front of the other students. Over the course of my educational tenure, I have seen all the “gimicks” come into play and then go out of play. But wait, can’t we keep trying this? The kids were starting to get it. “Nope, move on. You know how much time that would take?” I was always noted for explaining the why’s and how’s of things. In fact, one day at the board I was explaining “sounds” before I knew the correct terminology (phonemic awareness) and was in awe of the spelling of “cat” and how the letter’s sounds came together to spell the word. One of those “Charvet moments” but it made total sense. But then of course there is, “The Polish man had to polish the furniture.” Geez, complicated things. But, with time, it can come together. In the early ’90s, Whole Language came into play. For me, I was new and ignorant to the “edulese” of teaching. The told us to “throw out all the phonics books.” It made no sense to me to not incorporate the two. But the veteran teachers said, “Hide the phonics books; use them as a resource.” Another veteran teacher taught me about the “Slingerland Method.” So, we did that in warm ups (students who were kinesthetic learners were identified and sent to one of our schools to learn the way they learned. This also included “Touch Point Math.” But not all kids got to go, so I used it all. In Slingerland, one instructs with sound and kinesthetically. For the short sold of “e” I would touch the edge of the desk so the kids knew the sound. And I tried to give them an example for each letter. One thing about kids is they are great mimics. Even my son when he was a year old was reading “Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?” by Eric Carle. My wife said, “You know he is not reading the book right? They read that book to the kids nearly every day so he has memorized it. I found out later when “Super Dupe Lupe” my EL student was whizzing through her reading. But, when I stopped to ask, “What does that mean?” She could not tell me, but because Lupe was “super,” I quickly resolved the issue — with time. Lupe went on to graduate high school with honors. We made reading fun. I did voices of characters, they got to imagine what Oompa Loompa’s looked like by the description and drew to the reading as a calming device after lunch. I would model then tell them the difference of the intonation when one used an exclamation, question, or statement. Because I do a lot of “dumb stuff” when explaining the exclusion mark, I banged on my desk. My coffee cup leaped into the air and then spilled all down the side. My student who was intently watching my actions was shocked. I said, “Well, I think you remember how to use an exclamation point, eh? She laughed. Once again, I read the same sentence to show them about a statement and question mark. But, that takes time. And teachers don’t have time for that. I was told it was more important to get through the text book than to have students comprehend what they were trying to achieve. Wow, what sense. If one really paid attention, you could see the life being sucked out of our emerging readers. I told them not to worry, but just like shooting free throws if you want to get better, shoot more free throws. My students did not have an English language support system at home, so who did they turn to for help? Exactly. We had to make the school room the most positive learning environment as possible. Moreover, I told them that I loved to read. But, with all that knowledge, I still made mistakes. I knew how it was to feel like crawling under a stone and crying when I didn’t know a word. Odd as it sounds, I never used the word “Byzantine” and somehow mispronounced it when giving a practice presentation about mosaics — should have practiced more, but hey, life happens. One of the comments was, “I really felt uncomfortable when Mr. Charvet mispronounced Byzantium.” Talk about feeling about an inch big. I wanted to die. I went to my room and cried. I wanted to leave, but then said, “Dude, suck it up. That is an easy fix and there was a lot of good mosaic stuff in your presentation.” On another occasion I was told, “Teachers are not to read to their students. The best method is the ‘Deck of Doom” where the teacher pulls a card and that person HAS to read out loud in class. I remember in school saying to myself, “Please don’t pick me. Don’t pick me. My mind was watching something out the window.” I have seen a student who stutters, stumbles, and simply reads words. Nope. Not going to do that to kids. I used “Author’s Chair” and it was student choice if they wanted to share. And there were plenty of volunteers. Or, if I needed to access reading skills, I would have them meet with me (not an audience) and review. Until recently, I didn’t realize how much an anomaly I was because I taught elementary, middle, high school, and continuation high school. And because “testing is what’s going judged on” trying telling an 18-year-old they are reading at a primer level. If the tone, the words, and whatnot are not soft, the student goes in the other direction. “Dude, I can read if I want.” And so I would tell them, “I am concerned that when you go to fill out a job application, you won’t know what says. So, what I do know, if you let me, I can give you a set of tools to help you when that happens. You WILL be okay.” I agree wholeheartedly with the responses here, “Get out of the way and let teacher do their jobs. But, they need time.”
Students need the freedom to learn and pick books they want to read not just what their Lexile number states. Thanks for listening. Blessings.
Adding to that….these big disrupts are using Tier III curriculum starting mid Kdg. where students are placed based upon their point-of-entry into the boxed curriculum. This intensive, small group instruction lasts at minimum of 30 minutes per group where teachers are required to do two groups per day. Extra staff have to be hired to do additional groups. Other at students do not get meaningful literacy activities while these groups happen. Students stay in their tracks….yes we are back in tracking lanes for students and no Tier I or Tier II literacy instruction is provided. For a predominately Black and brown district to put all students in a program designed to be additional support for me less than 5% of the student body ( and provided IN ADDITION to high-quality Tier I and Tier II instruction) and have demographic data showing Black and brown students consistently test in the program at the lowest levels, make curriculum only growth, and continue to demonstrate far-below basic literacy abilities on multiple measures longitudinally in their school careers, Thor district is not working to undo systemic racism. They are accelerating it.
Add to this that districts, like where I was principal, actually taking away assistants and expecting teachers to teach their students at the “small group tables”, while the other 15+ students are given busy work, usually work sheets, meant to keep them out of trouble. My PTSD is returning…
Denise recounts the insanity.
“Yet, scores never moved”
But the ed reform/accountability folks are never held accountable for this, for the fact that their brilliant ideas have utterly failed.
And they continue to get significant royalties and appearance fees for their corporate blather…
yup