A reader who identifies as “Retired Teacher” explains the best way to teach reading. The best way is to start by understanding that there is no single way to teach reading. The best way is to assess what’s right for the students in front of you. Some need help in phonics; some don’t. Some are already fluent readers and need challenging and engaging stuff to read.
RT writes:
Most competent reading teachers are effective when they diversify instruction based on the needs of the learner. Generally, the first step in effective reading instruction is to assess students. What often results in elementary classrooms is that teachers often end up placing students into a group with other students with similar needs. Some students arrive in kindergarten reading fluently. They have clearly mastered phonics so there is no need to spend time on phonics lessons the student does not need. Both Diane Ravitch and myself grew up in the “See, Say” era of reading instruction. We didn’t learn phonics. We deduced the sound system from reading it. This method will not work for many students, but there are some that would be successful with this approach.
All learners have strengths and weaknesses. Other students may have other issues like a difficulty with auditory discrimination, and teachers should have the freedom to adjust instruction based on the needs of students. By the way a student with auditory discrimination or memory problems will struggle and flounder in a science of reading environment. This student may have to write the word in order to basically memorize it.
I am a certified reading teacher. I have taught many struggling students, most of whom were English language learners, to read successfully and fluently in English. Part of the reason for positive results was due to the assessing and addressing what the student needed to understand and apply the skill and become a good reader. There is no magic to this process. It is called diversifying instruction, and many competent teachers adjust teaching to meet student needs. Whatever method is used, it needs to meet students’ needs, offer the student a degree of success through application, and be engaging. Professional teachers should have the freedom to adjust instruction without government interference.
I am reposting this commentary because the original post this morning did not include a link to the full post.
Denny Taylor is an accomplished scholar and author. She is Professor Emeritus of Literacy Studies at Hofstra University and has earned a long list of awards. She now has a Substack blog that is worth your time. In this post, she goes into detail about the origins of the “Science of Reading” and the poor quality of research on which it is based.
Taylor wrote this post to caution against a federal mandate based on flawed claims. Congress is currently considering HR 7890 Science of Reading Act of 2026. As she shows, it would be absurd if it passes. Congress should not tell teachers how to teach, nor should state legislatures.
The Science of Reading Act of 2026 – H. R. 7890is a catastrophic mistake for three reasons. First, it makes early 20th century phonics instruction the law of the land. Second, the NRP “5 pillars of reading instruction” are not based on science. Third, H. R. 7890does not prepare children to live and thrive in a digital society that is filled with unforeseen hazards and dangers. We must think anew and act anew – before it’s too late.
H. R. 7890 “Evidence-Based Literacy Instruction Aligned to the Science Of Reading” is Not Based On Science
The six-year qualitative as well as the quantitative forensic analyses provides evidence that the scientific foundation undergirding the teaching of reading in America’s public schools is irreparably flawed. The “evidence-based literacy instruction aligned to the Science of Reading” that is described in the new federal Science of Reading Act – 2026 (H. R. 7890) is a political construct not a scientific one.
Nevertheless, Congress is in the process of making “fidelity” to the “Science of Reading” the law in all 50 states.
H. R. 7890, the Science of Reading Act – 2026 was unanimously approved by the House Education and Work Force Committee on March 17, 2026. It will amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to prioritize funds to promote the use of H. R. 7890. The legislation also aligns with U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s priorities for literacy improvement, but the Right-wing ideologs behind H. R. 7890 are far more formidable than McMahon.
H. R. 7890 Eliminates Reading and Writing Activities which Provide Opportunities for Children to Actively Engage with Meaningful Texts
The Science of Reading Act of 2026 will also officially prohibit the use of the “three-cueing” system in literacy instruction in U.S. public schools. My own pedagogical practices always begin with close observation of children who use many cues to read and write when they are not restricted by authoritarian “Science of Reading” laws that have already been enacted in most states.
H. R. 7890 will have the effect of eliminating reading and writing activities which provide opportunities for children to think. In such circumstances their thinking can be divergent and/or convergent, linear or lateral, abstract or concrete. Often it is meta-cognitive as they discuss with their teachers how they arrived at the meaning of a word. Often the clues are phonetic, and the sentence confirms their reasoning. All these pedagogical opportunities for teachers to support the learning of children are not understood by the public or by Congress. If they were, people would rally against passing the Science of Reading Act of 2026, and Congress would not pass H. R. 7890.
The Research Evidence for H. R. 7890 was Established Based on the False Findings of the 2000 National Reading Panel Report
Through dog whistles, lies, and tropes, the Right convinced people in many sectors of U.S. society that the “five pillars” of reading instruction that the NRP presented to Congress provided solid scientific evidence on how children should be taught to read. The publishers of reading programs that now call themselves technology companies, most prominently McGraw-Hill and HMH, marketed the findings of the NRP creating a bonanza in profits so large that Platinum Equity now owns McGraw-Hill and Veritas Capital now owns HMH.
Draw back the curtain and it is possible to document in minute detail how a false narrative about the National Reading Panel came to be accepted as the unquestionable scientific evidence for the massive changes in reading instruction that has taken place in U.S. public schools.
The “five pillars of reading instruction” and the Science of Reading have become embedded in the knowledge base of people in every sector of U.S. society. I asked AI “what are the five pillars of reading instruction?” AI responded:
The 5 pillars of reading instruction—phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension—are essential, evidence-based components for developing proficient readers. Defined by the National Reading Panel, these pillars provide a structured framework for teaching decoding, accuracy, and understanding in reading instruction.
The AI response is an accurate rendition of the official narrative that the nation has been deceived into believing through an Right wing initiatives gaining traction in the 1990s that have gaslighted the public through the use of dog whistles, lies and tropes. One of the think tanks on the Right that has had an unprecedented influence of how children are taught to read in public schools is the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (then the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation) advocated for a shift toward scientifically based reading research and explicit phonics instruction in 2002. The Fordham Institute established the National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ) that I have written about in previous Substack posts. NCTQ states that it is a “nonpartisan research and advocacy group.” Nothing could be further than the truth. NCTQ’s evaluations of U.S. teacher preparation programs, are flawed, unscientific, and ideologically driven.
Enforced by State Laws, the Five Pillars have Become the Structural Framework of Reading Instruction in Public Schools Across America
Once the Science of Reading Act of 2026 is signed into federal law one of the education goals of the Heritage Foundation will have been achieved. It is relevant that Mike Pence has been accused of “abandoning its principles” and transforming the Heritage Foundation from a traditional conservative organization into an enforcer for “big-government populism” and “America First” extremism. The forensic analysis has documented the initiative undertaken by the Right to control reading instruction in U.S. public schools, especially how Lindsey Burke has led the Right’s initiative to “reshape” public education. Burke spent 17 years at the Heritage Foundation where she was a principal author of the Education Section of Project 2025. She transitioned to the Department of Education where she serves as McMahon’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Programs. Burke is attributed by leaders on the Right with “reshaping” – her word — reading instruction in public schools. Parenthetically, Burke is also associated with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and NCTQ. She is featured on the Fordham Institute website in a podcast entitled, “Trump’s education agenda, with Lindsey Burke” (January 31, 2024). NCTQ is the focus of the October 19, 2025, Substack post entitled, “NCTQ Pressures State Governments, Rejects Teacher Preparation Programs, Dictates To School Districts, Discredits Reading Researchers, Bans Their Books, And Vilifies Teachers.“
Paul Thomas is a professor at Furman University. He has taken a leading role in refuting claims for the “science of reading.”
There are many successful ways to teach reading. some children arrive at school knowing how to read, because a parent read with them every day. Phonics is important. The joy of reading is important. Comprehension is important. Legislatures should not mandate one way to teach.
If you pay attention to the non-stop moral panicking around reading fanned by mainstream media, you may have seen this click-bait headline: Did New York blow $10 million on reading instruction that doesn’t work?
The article repeats tired and misleading (often false) stories about the failures of balanced literacy, NAEP reading scores, the “success” of Mississippi and Louisiana, the promise of structured literacy, and the National Reading Panel as well as the one research study on phonics that is linked.
Let’s consider these:
*No scientific studies identify a reading crisis in the US causally linked to balanced literacy, reading programs, lack of phonics instruction, or inadequacy of teacher education. (Aydarova, 2025; Reinking, Hruby, & Risko, 2023).
*The media hyper-focuses only on grade 4 NAEP reading scores, but notice how the story changes once we consider grade 8—states behind MS in grade 4 catch and pass MS by grade 8 (primarily because MS inflates their grade 4 scores by excessive grade retention, like FL):
*Structured literacy (scripted curriculum) is whitewashing the reading curriculum and restricting teacher autonomy and professionalism. (Khan, et al., 2022; Parsons, et al., 2025; Rigell, et al., 2022).
*The linked research suggests it replicates findings of the NRP; however, the NRP did not prove systematic phonics outperformed whole language or was a silver bullet. As Diane Stephens explains about the findings on phonics: “Minimal value in kindergarten; no conclusion about phonics beyond grade 1 for ‘normally developing readers’; systematic phonics instruction in grades 2-6 with struggling readers has a weak impact on reading text and spelling; systematic phonics instruction has a positive effect in grade 1 on reading (pronouncing) real and nonsense words but not comprehension; at-risk students benefit from whole language instruction, Reading Recovery, and direct instruction.” Further, while the article quotes from the research report, it doesn’t include this much more tentative hedge: “These findings suggest that SL approaches may yield larger positive effects on student learning compared to BL approaches.” At best, structured literacy is no better or worse than whole language or balanced literacy, but to be clear, there is no “settled science” that is works.
But the bigger problem is not that mainstream media continues to repeat misinformation, but that it fails to offer the full story.
Note that the “literacy experts” quoted in the article are supporting structured literacy programs (scripted curriculum), and some of those experts are co-authors of those programs.
Further, these experts are promoting a different teacher training program than the one being attacked in the article, and many states are spending 10s of millions of dollars on that program—LETRS. (My home state of SC a few years ago allocated $11 million for one year, for example.)
What’s missing in this story?
There are two high-quality studies that were released in 2025 on the effectiveness of LETRS, but so far, there have not been click-bait scare headlines about those findings:
*A review (Rowe & Thrailkill, 2025) of reading policy in North Carolina concludes:
Despite LETRS’ claim that it helps educators “distinguish between the research base for best practices and other competing ideas not supported by scientific evidence” (Lexia Learning, 2022, p. 4), we noticed a pattern of misinterpretation, selective inclusion, and omission of literacy research. LETRS is a prime example of a common problem with the deployment of research for educational policy and instructional decision-making, in that multiple claims are not substantiated by a close reading of the original research cited (cf. Hodge et al., 2020).
*And Gearin, et al. (2025) found:
[Abstract] We investigated whether Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling: 3rd Edition (LETRS) was related to student reading ability by comparing the average third-grade reading achievement of schools that used LETRS to that of schools that used exclusively other professional development experiences in the context of Colorado’s Read Act. Guided by What Works Clearinghouse Standards, we conducted a quasi-experiment with propensity score matching and an active comparison group. We supplemented our primary intent-to-treat analysis with three sensitivity analyses designed to demonstrate the robustness of our claims. Effect estimates for completing a LETRS volume on educator knowledge ranged from 0.82 to 0.94. Students’ third-grade reading achievement did not statistically differ for schools that adopted LETRS compared with other professional development experiences in any model, suggesting that LETRS was comparable to the other programs at improving third-grade reading achievement at the school level.
The “science of reading” movement is a political, ideological, and market-based attack on teachers and public education, and the only people profiting off yet another moral panic are the media, political leaders, education reformers, entrepreneurs, and of course, the education market place.
The full story is never covered, because the real story about reading simply isn’t that profitable.
Given the fact that about half the states have now mandated that teachers teach “the science of reading,” it seems to be a good time to repost what I wrote on November 1, 2023.
Some things never change.
I wrote:
One of my grandsons sent me an article about the national rush to mandate “the science of reading,” and it caused me to explain briefly (without boring him) the background of the latest panacea.
I didn’t tell him the history of the “reading wars,” which I researched and wrote about in Left Back (2000). I didn’t tell him that reading instruction has swung back and forth between the phonetic method and the “whole word” method since the introduction of public schooling in the first quarter of the 19th century. Horace Mann opposed phonics. But the popular McGuffey readers of that century were phonetic and included examples of good literature.
In 1930, the Dick-and-Jane readers were introduced, and they swept the country. Unlike the McGuffey readers, they featured pictures of children (white and suburban), they used simple words that could be easily recognized, and they were bright and colorful. By the 1950s, Dick and Jane style readers were used in about 80% of American schools. They relied on the whole word method, also known as look-say.
In 1955, this national consensus was disrupted by the publication of Rudolf Flesch’s wildly popular book, Why Johnny Can’t Read, which castigated the look-say method and urged a revival of phonics. The fervor for phonics then is similar to the fervor now.
But the debate about which method was best quickly became politicized. “Bring back phonics” was the battle cry of very conservative groups, who lambasted the whole-word method as the conspiratorial work of liberal elites. Phonics thus was unfairly tarnished as a rightwing cause.
The definitive book about the teaching of reading was written in 1967 by Harvard literacy expert Jeanne Chall: Learning to Read: The Great Debate. Chall wrote about the importance of phonics as part of beginning reading instruction, followed up by wonderful children’s literature. She warned against going to extremes, a warning that has been ignored with every pendulum swing.
The 1980s began the dominance of whole language, which brought back whole-word sight reading and de-emphasized phonics. Textbook companies boasted that their programs were whole language. Literacy conferences were focused on whole language. Phonics was out. Many reading teachers held on their phonics books, even though phonics was out of style.
There is always a crisis in reading, so in the late 1990s, the pendulum began to move again. As it happened, a very influential supporter of phonics held a key position at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Reid Lyon was director of the NIH’s National Institute of Child Health and Development. His field of expertise was learning disabilities.
From Wikipedia:
From 1992 to 2005, Lyon served as a research neuropsychologist and the chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch of the NICHD at the National Institutes of Health; in this role he developed and oversaw research programs in cognitive neuroscience, learning and reading development and disorders, behavioral pediatrics, cognitive and affective development, School Readiness, and the Spanish to English Reading Research program. He designed, developed and directed the 44-site NICHD Reading Research Network.
Lyon selected the members of the National Reading Panel. Like him, most were experimental researchers in higher education. Only one—Joanne Yatvin— was experienced as an elementary school teacher and principal. She wrote a “minority view” dissenting from the report, and she worried that the report would be misused.
President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law on January 8, 2002. This law was the single largest intrusion of the federal government into education in American history. Before NCLB, education was a state responsibility. Since passage of NCLB, the federal government established mandates that schools had to obey.
One of the components of this law was the Reading First program. RF was based on the report of the National Reading Panel, which emphasized the importance of phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, and fluency.
The Reading First program allocated $6 billion over six years to encourage districts to adopt the “science of reading,” as established by the National Reading panel.
There were two reasons that the program ended.
First, there were financial scandals. Google “Reading First Program Scandals”). The New York Times reported here about conflicts of interest and steering of contracts to favored textbook publishers. “In a searing report that concludes the first in a series of investigations into complaints of political favoritism in the reading initiative, known as Reading First, the report said officials improperly selected the members of review panels that awarded large grants to states, often failing to detect conflicts of interest. The money was used to buy reading textbooks and curriculum for public schools nationwide.”
Second, the final evaluation of the program found that it taught what it aimed to teach but there was no improvement in students’ comprehension.
Here is the summary of the final evaluation:
The findings presented in this report are generally consistent with findings presented in the study’s Interim Report, which found statistically significant impacts on instructional time spent on the five essential components of reading instruction promoted by the program (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension) in grades one and two, and which found no statistically significant impact on reading comprehension as measured by the SAT 10. In addition to data on the instructional and student achievement outcomes reported in the Interim Report, the final report also presents findings based upon information obtained during the study’s third year of data collection: data from a measure of first grade students’ decoding skill, and data from self-reported surveys of educational personnel in study schools.
Analyses of the impact of Reading First on aspects of program implementation, as reported by teachers and reading coaches, revealed that the program had statistically significant impacts on several domains. The information obtained from the Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency indicates that Reading First had a positive and statistically significant impact on first grade students’ decoding skill.
The final report also explored a number of hypotheses to explain the pattern of observed impacts. Analyses that explored the association between the length of implementation of Reading First in the study schools and reading comprehension scores, as well as between the number of years students had been exposed to Reading First instruction and reading comprehension scores were inconclusive. No statistically significant variation across sites in the pattern of impacts was found. Correlational analyses suggest that there is a positive association between time spent on the five essential components of reading instruction promoted by the program and reading comprehension measured by the SAT 10, but these findings appear to be sensitive to model specification and the sample used to estimate the relationship.
The study finds, on average, that after several years of funding the Reading First program, it has a consistent positive effect on reading instruction yet no statistically significant impact on student reading comprehension. Findings based on exploratory analyses do not provide consistent or systematic insight into the pattern of observed impacts.
After the disgrace of the Reading First program, support for phonics dissipated. But in the past few years, journalists (led by Emily Hanford) have trumpeted the idea that the report of the National Reading Panel established the “science of reading.” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about the “Mississippi Miracle,“ claiming that the “science of reading” had lifted fourth grade reading scores, and no new spending was needed in a very poorly resourced state. Kristof did not explain why the SOR did not cause a rise in eighth grade scores in Mississippi, nor did he understand that retaining low-scoring third graders raises the percentage of fourth graders who get high test scores. State after state is now mandating the “science of reading.”
As I have said repeatedly, I do not believe that any legislature should mandate teaching methods. They get swept along by fads, they are not experts, they have no business telling teachers how to teach.
Legislating “how to teach” makes as little sense as legislating how to perform open heart surgery.
Yet, some are hoping that Congress makes it a national law to teach the “science of reading.”
For decades, Congress has largely waited for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act before making sweeping changes to federal education policy. That restraint now appears to be fading.
Quietly, but consequentially, Congress is stepping into one of the most contentious debates in American education: how we teach children to read.
Since 1965, Congress has provided funding without controlling curriculum. But over time, that line has begun to blur. With the Every Student Succeeds Actmarking a notable shift, federal dollars are increasingly positioned to influence not just what schools prioritize but also how they teach — and now, how they teach children to read.
Until now, the Science of Reading has been advanced primarily by states and local school leaders willing to navigate the long-running “reading wars” on their own, with support from national organizations such as ExcelinEd and The Reading League. But that is beginning to change. In recent weeks, Congress has taken steps to assert federal influence over reading instruction, an unexpected move at a time when the Trump administration is simultaneously calling for a return of education authority to the states. The contradiction is hard to ignore: decentralize education, except when it comes to how children learn to read.
States, for their part, have not been standing still. Across the country, state education agencies have leveraged their authority to push districts toward Science of Reading aligned practices. Mississippi stands as the clearest example. Once near the bottom of national rankings, the state has drawn national attention for the “Mississippi Miracle” making dramatic gains in reading through literacy policy on the National Assessment of Educational Progress by anchoring its literacy strategy in the Science of Reading.
States like Mississippi may no longer be acting alone. Rep. Erin Houchin (R-Ind.) is proposing that the federal government step in, not just as a funder, but as a signal-setter.
But this raises a fundamental question: Is this the beginning of the end of the reading wars?
The Science of Reading is not a new idea; it is the product of decades of research on how children actually learn to read. At its core, it emphasizes explicit, systematic phonics instruction over approaches that ask students to guess at words based on context or visual cues. Yet for years, this seemingly straightforward question of how to teach children to read has been anything but settled.
The so-called “reading wars” have played out in academic journals and conference rooms, with scholars such as Mark Siedenberg, Lucy Calkins and David Kilpatrick shaping the debate, while local school leaders have been left to translate dense research into real classroom practice.
Now, Congress is stepping in to settle the debate once and for all.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce recently unanimously passed the Science of Reading Act. The bill filed by Houchin, would, for the first time, establish a federal definition of evidence-based literacy instruction grounded in the Science of Reading. Just as notably, it would draw a clear line in the sand by prohibiting the use of the three-cueing model in federally supported literacy programs.
And while the bill stops short of a federal mandate, its intent is unmistakable. By prioritizing funding for states and districts that align with research-based practices, Congress is using the power it knows best, money, to drive change. The message is clear: local control remains intact, but the expectation is alignment. In other words, districts can choose their path, but the federal government is making it increasingly clear which path it believes works.
Congress, for its part, is attempting to put its foot on base as it relates to how kids should learn to read. In February, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies convened a hearing on “The Science of Reading,” placing the issue squarely on the federal agenda for appropriators, the ones who direct federal spending.
For educators and leaders working on the front lines of literacy, this moment represents a notable and encouraging shift. The growing federal embrace of the Science of Reading signals long-awaited national alignment around what works in reading instruction. More importantly, it underscores the urgency of ensuring that every child, regardless of zip code, has access to high-quality, evidence-based literacy experiences.
Still, as with many proposals in Washington, unanimous passage in committee does not guarantee a full vote on the floor, and certainly does not guarantee full passage by both chambers. In fact, there has been no companion bill filed in the Senate. So, the bill must navigate both chambers of Congress. Yet early signals suggest something increasingly rare in Washington, D.C. these days: bipartisan support.
Should that support hold, the implications would be far-reaching. For the first time, federal literacy funding would be explicitly aligned with the Science of Reading, reshaping not only policy but also classroom practice across the nation.
Phelton C. Moss is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at Virginia Commonwealth University and leads federal advocacy for the National School Boards Association. He is also a former teacher, school principal and congressional staffer.
Nancy Bailey taught for many years. She writes a blog that is a source of wisdom, gleaned from experience and love of children.
She wrote recently that the debate about retention should be a dead issue. We know that it hurts the kids who are flunked. We know there are better alternatives.
She wrote:
The permanency of retention and the message it sends students may have long-term effects on self-esteem and school attachment that may override even short-term academic benefits (1995).
~Melissa Roderick, the Hermon Dunlap Smith Professor at the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, the University of Chicago
Sometimes failing at a task or endeavor might be instructive. Most of us will experience failure, maybe often, and learning to be resilient in the face of it can create stamina and character. But being retained in school is a failure that many students may never overcome. It’s time to end retention and focus on solutions that work, that lift children!
There has been much debate about this over the years, yet it seems increasingly unnecessary, as there are enough child-friendly alternatives that render retention outdated and ill-informed. Retention simply isn’t necessary!
Many alternatives exist to support students without failing them. Summer school, smaller class sizes, small group instruction, looping two classes with the same teacher, a mixed-grade class, tutoring, and assistance with resource classes can help children catch up.
That hasn’t stopped some educators and non-educators from promoting third-grade retention as a major reform since 2003. It has persisted despite extensive research showing it doesn’t work.
Sadly, as of 2025, 17 states and the District of Columbia require third graders to repeat a year if they fail tests. English language learners and students who use alternative assessments may be exempt.
Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds have always been retained at higher rates.
Middle School Hell
Melissa Roderick, a well-regarded expert on this issue, whose bio is linked above, has numerous studies and a book on retention, its effects on retained students, and the dropout effect.
Roderick points out that retention becomes a major issue in middle school because retained students are overage. This leads children to become disengaged, and that stigma they’ve carried since being retained may push them to drop out (1994).
Imagine middle school students who tower over their peers and who have already developed into students who look like they should be in high school.
If you still aren’t convinced, Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat reports on a new and unique study, Early Grade Retention Harms Adult Earnings, by economist Jiee Zhong of Miami University, which demonstrates that children who are retained might show initial progress but will eventually face significant employability problems, including lower earnings as adults.
The study should be taken seriously and aligns with many studies, like Roderick’s, that have been considered for decades, showing that children are more likely to drop out of school after being retained. Research has consistently and strongly shown this connection over the years.
The author of the new study found that third-grade retention deepened existing inequality.
She states:
Third graders who had to repeat a grade in Texas were far less likely to graduate from high school or earn a good living as young adults, nearly two decades later. The harmful effects were quite large and came despite initial improvements in test scores.
Mississippi Deception
Mississippi has been given accolades for student improvement, with students making early test gains, partly credited to retention, although there’s controversy over this and concern about comprehension and the later decline in 8th-grade scores.
Carey Wright, the state superintendent behind the changes to Mississippi’s schools, which included retention, claims in Barnum’s Chalkbeat report that students there received small-group instruction and they never focused on retention
But they did retain students. The New York Times presented a flattering report about the Mississippi gains, How Mississippi Transformed Its Schools From Worst to Best, reporting that they hold back 6 to 9 percent of third graders each year (2026). Students take the test the following year after intense reading instruction. This has been controversial as well.
Also, Mississippi’s children may have been held back earlier. Oklahoma Watch found in 2024-25, Mississippi held back 8.2% of kindergarteners, 7.8% of first-graders, fewer than 5% of second graders and 6% of third graders, according to the latest report on the state’s Literacy Based Promotion Act. It’s unclear how many children, if any, have been retained twice.
Retention always raises questions about whether children may need more time between kindergarten and third grade to learn, perhaps being pushed to read too soon. What if they hadn’t been retained and had received intensive reading instruction throughout? Fourth grade is not an insignificant year for learning to read better.
While reading success is noteworthy by third grade, it doesn’t have to be the pressured year for students to prove their reading skills; that’s another issue.
Focus on Support
Wright is right that small groups might help children who are behind, but why do children need to be retained to make that happen?
Retention believers often argue that it’s wrong to simply promote students. They’re also right. The learning difficulties students bring to school should never be ignored. Students are entitled to critical assistance when they aren’t making progress in school.
But Shane Jimersonfrom the University of California, Santa Barbara showed in a Meta-analysis of Grade Retention Research: Implications for Practice in the 21st Century that children who are promoted, without extra help, still do better than those who are retained. Jimerson called for an end to the debate and stressed that neither retention nor social promotion of a student with difficulties was good. Children need help with their school difficulties.
As I pointed out earlier, there are various solutions to retention. Children don’t have to leave school with such a stigma. My favorite is looping. I’ve seen it work wonderfully!
Looping two years with one teacher is one great solution. Teachers get to know students for two years, understand their progress in reading and math, and bring them up to speed. Unlike retention, which funds another school year for a child, there’s no extra cost to this. The child would be in the next grade anyway and is never made to feel like a failure! A well-qualified teacher, in tune with this process, is critical for this class.
Scores of research studies show that retention harms students in the long term, and no child deserves to be demeaned because they have learning difficulties.
The retention debate is old and stodgy, perpetuated over the years by those doing studies to try to prove it works, who refuse to think outside of the box for better alternatives.
We should know better now! There’s no need to retain children and undermine their self-belief. It’s time to focus on solutions that lift students, like looping, rather than leaving children feeling like they’ve failed.
References
Roderick, M. (1994). Grade Retention and School Dropout: Investigating the Association. American Educational Research Journal, 31(4), 729–759. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312031004729
Jimerson, S. R. (2001). Meta-analysis of Grade Retention Research: Implications for Practice in the 21st Century. School Psychology Review, 30(3), 420–437. https://doi.org/10.1080/02796015.2001.12086124
Addendum
I have written about this topic many times. It’s disappointing to see there have been few, if any, changes concerning this serious issue. Here are a few other posts.
One of the key features of the “Mississippi Miracle” is the retention of third-graders who do not score well enough to enter fourth grade. Third-graders with low reading scores are held back for an extra year.
Critics of the “Miracle” say that holding back the lowest scoring third-graders inflates the fourth grade scores.
But what about the effects of retention in the students who are held back?
Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat reports on a new study that found negative, long-term effects of third-grade retention.
It’s an age-old debate with an emerging conventional wisdom: Third graders should not move on to the next grade if they are still struggling to read.
There’s both logic and evidence behind this policy. Studies have found that students have higher test scores after they’re held back. This practice may also have played a role in helping Mississippi make remarkable improvements in recent years.A chorus of policymakers and journalists have insisted with growing confidence that others should replicate the state’s model.
But a new study offers a warning about the downside risks of retention. Third graders who had to repeat a grade in Texas were far less likely to graduate from high school or earn a good living as young adults, nearly two decades later. The harmful effects were quite large and came despite initial improvements in test scores.
“Retaining low-achieving students in third grade further deepens educational and income inequalities,” writes Jiee Zhong, an economics professor at Miami University.
The findings are hardly the last word on this topic. But they complicate the evidence base for retention at a time when more states — like Arkansas, Indiana, and West Virginia — are adopting this policy.
The paper, set to be published in an economics journal, examines an early 2000s Texas policy to hold back struggling readers. Students had three chances to pass the state exam.
Zhong, the researcher, looked at those who just barely missed the passing score versus those who just reached it. These students were essentially identical — the only difference was a few questions right or wrong on the test. Yet those handful of questions changed the trajectory of many students’ lives by determining whether they would be held back. This also created a natural experiment that allowed Zhong to compare the two groups of students, thus isolating the effect of retention.
Failing the exam wasn’t a guarantee that students would repeat the grade — parents could seek exemptions — but it dramatically increased their chances. Relative to the overall student population, the retained students were more likely to be low-income, Black or Hispanic, and still learning English.
In the short term, the results were promising. By the time retained students finished fourth grade, their test scores were much higher. But there were warning signs. Students missed more school after they were held back. As the years went on, the test score gains, relative to non-retained students, started to fade. In middle school, the students who had been held back were more likely to exhibit violent behavior (although this remained rare).
By the end of high school, retained students were 9 percentage points less likely to graduate, compared to similar students who weren’t forced to repeat third grade. This is a very large effect. Even those students who graduated typically did so a year later, reflecting the extra year from being held back.
At the age of 26, the previously retained students, now young adults, earned less money than if they hadn’t been held back. Again, the effect was substantial: nearly $3,500, a decline of 19%.
To finish reading the article, please open the link.
The “Mississippi Miracle” seems to be too good to be true. The scores of Mississippi fourth-graders have risen sharply on NAEP (the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Supporters of the Miracle attribute the dramatic increase to the state’s adoption of the “science of reading” curriculum, teacher training in the “science of reading,” and holding back third-grade students who aren’t reading well enough.
This formula is especially appealing to Republicans because nothing need be done to reduce the children’s poverty or improve their living conditions. Conservative states have hailed the “Mississippi Miracle” because it relieves them of any responsibility to create jobs or change the conditions in which the poor live. It’s a low-cost cure: Just raise reading scores and prosperity will follow.
The story of the Mississippi Miracle also appeals to blue states because they are convinced there is a quick and easy way to end the perennial “reading crisis.” So they too have passed legislation to require all reading teachers to adopt the “science of reading.”
Critics of the “Miracle” say that the practice of holding back low-performing third-graders artificially inflates the fourth grade scores. They also point to eighth grade scores to say that there was no miracle. Eighth grade scores are more important that fourth grade scores because they show longer-term effects of reading instruction.
He begins a recent post with a quote from scholar Bruce Baker:
On NAEP Grade 8 Scores: “a better indicator of the cumulative effects of a system on student learning than 4th grade assessments.” Bruce Baker, February 11, 2026
He writes:
The media, political leaders, and education reformers are making a mistake about reading reform well explained in the parable of the blind men and the elephant.
In this case, many are rushing to make over-stated claims about reading reform in Mississippi by hyper-focusing on limited and distorted data—grade 4 NAEP scores on reading.
First, research details that states implementing reading reform have achieved some short-term test score increases in grade 4; however, those gains disappear by grade 8. And more damning, the determining factor in successful reform is exclusively grade retention policies (not teacher training, reading programs, direct instruction, etc.).
Next, grade retention in Mississippi has been analyzed revealing that retention distorts those scores, resulting in a statistical manipulation of the data and not higher student achievement. In short:
Yet, a new story has emerged claiming that Black students in MS are outperforming Black students in other states, notably California:
Suggesting that Black students are being better served in MS than CA is at least misleading. In fact, Black students in CA, GA, LA, MA, and notably the Department of Defense (DoDEA) schools outperform Black students in MS at grade 8.
But an even better story is that student achievement among Black and Hispanic students is very complicated, especially when you consider that states have dramatically different percentages of these populations of students.
Further, if we return to the parable from the opening, even better data at grade 8 is not the full picture.
In MS and throughout the US, Black students are still suffering the consequences of the persistent race gap in achievement (most states have the same gap as 1998, including MS).
And Black Americans remain trapped in the burden of racial inequity both in schools and in their communities.
The misleading stories about MS using grade 4 NAEP data are designed to promote a “beating the odds” story—one that isn’t true—but all students in the US would be better served if we chose not to seek those who beat the odds, but to change the odds so that no one—especially children—would have to overcome those inequities in the first place.
The study found that students who had been consistently taught by teachers using “the science of reading” were gaining basic literacy skills, but were limited in their comprehension of what they read. They could read the words, but they couldn’t step back and explain what they had read.
Let’s back up for a few minutes and see this new study in historical perspective. The “science of reading” was based on the recommendations of the National Reading Panel. That panel was established by Congress in 1997 to determine the best, most effective ways to teach reading. Most of its 14 members were academics. In 2000, the panel released its report, callled Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment. It recommended that effective reading instruction should include:
Phonics: Explicit, systematic instruction in letter-sound correspondences.
Fluency: Guided oral reading to encourage automaticity.
Vocabulary: Direct and indirect instruction of word meanings.
Comprehension: Teaching specific strategies for understanding text.
When George W. Bush became President in 2001, his education agenda featured the findings of the National Reading Panel. Dr. Reid Lyon, the organizer of the panel, became President Bush’s advisor. Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation included $6 billion for reading instruction, based on the recommendations of the National Reading Panel, as well as an independent evaluation of its results.
Independent evaluators reviewed the progress of students in the districts that implemented the panel’s recommendations.
In 2008, they published their conclusions:
Reading First had a statistically significant positive impact on multiple practices promoted by the program, including the amount of instructional time spent on the five essential components of reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension) and professional development in scientifically based reading instruction.
Reading First did not produce a statistically significant impact on student reading comprehension test scores in grades one, two, or three.
Reading First had a statistically significant positive impact on first graders’ decoding skills in Spring 2007.
After the $30 million study, involving four major research organizations, reported that “the science of reading” improved decoding skills but not comprehension, enthusiasm for the NRP report waned.
But the NRP report found a second life less than a decade after it seemed to have faded.
Emily Hanford, a journalist who worked for American Public Media, began researching early literacy in 2016. Her 2022 podcast Sold a Story maintained that the source of poor literacy skills could be traced to the work of Marie Clay and Lucy Calkins, both of whom were advocates of balanced literacy, which did not incorporate the findings of the NRP.
Hanford became an advocate for “the science of reading” and the revival of phonics.
Many states enacted legislation mandating “the science of reading” and banning “three-cuing” and other elements of Calkins’ program.
“The science of reading” is unquestionably the dominant mode of teaching reading today.
Harkay wrote:
Four school districts in major urban areas using the science of reading found while students are grasping basic literacy skills, limitations toward deeper comprehension still exist, according to a new study.
The “Robust Reading Comprehension” report, conducted by nonprofit research organization SRI, examined literacy instruction in districts in Texas, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia that have been using materials rooted in the popular phonics-based literacy approach for at least five years.
Through numerous classroom observations, teacher surveys and interviews with district officials in Aldine Independent School District, Baltimore City Public Schools, Guilford County Schools and Richmond Public Schools, researchers found a majority of reading lessons lacked “depth” – meaning foundational skills were mainly limited to working on single words rather than reading them in sentences.
Comprehension lessons in later elementary grades also mainly focused on completing a task, such as identifying a main character, rather than using a text for discussion and understanding its purpose.
“You’re not able to really think about the unpacking of a complicated sentence. You’re not thinking about really intentional vocabulary instruction or the building of kids’ word knowledge over time,” said Dan Reynolds, one of the lead authors of the report. “Ultimately, how should we be framing kids to read? Are we teaching our K-4 kids that reading is just tasks? Are we teaching them that they just need to label stuff and fill out graphic organizers?”
In recent years, nearly every state has passed science of reading laws, including many that have limited the type of programming and instructional materials a school can use – a move that has drawn some criticism that it’s too restrictive and that the instruction faces its own limitations.
The report defined surface literacy skills as a student’s ability to complete tasks and understand texts based on their literal meeting while robust instruction would further push a child to understand, evaluate and synthesize what they had read for its significance.
The study said its “comprehension observations alone are more rigorous than nearly all studies conducted in the last 50 years.” It’s not expected to be representative of reading instruction across the country, Reynolds said, but “we have four big districts in four different states, and we saw this pattern happening in all four of them with three different curricula.”
The study also found that teachers struggled with implementing comprehension-focused learning materials and said many times the curriculum was too dense, required substantial planning or may not have been developmentally appropriate. Professional development opportunities for these educators were also limited.
Researchers reported less than a quarter of observed comprehension lessons were engaging in robust learning. More than two-thirds of the lessons focused on “surface-level” comprehension.
“It seems that these curriculums are designed to build knowledge and they don’t develop meaning, and so then why read about the Civil War or about insects?” said Katrina Woodworth, director at SRI’s Center for Education Research & Improvement. “The point is to both teach reading and to build students’ knowledge base so that they have more scaffolding for future learning of both content and meaning.”
The SRI researchers also found that many review tools that measure comprehension don’t make a distinction between surface-level and robust instruction and skills. So, while educators are tasked with meeting a baseline standard, like having a child compare and contrast a text, it may be “unintentionally encouraging teachers to focus on surface-level goals,” the report said.
Without distinction, it weakens instruction for students and can later manifest as a skills disadvantage, Reynolds said.
“Districts had done so much to get the kids all the way there [with literacy], but it was losing voltage in the end,” Reynolds said. “If we can actually shift the way that districts are thinking about improving their comprehension instruction, they can take that all the way home and deliver really high quality comprehension instruction because so many pieces are already in place.”
Reynolds and one of his fellow co-authors, Sara Rutherford-Quach, said they saw glimpses of “magic” in the classroom when students understood a passage in wide-ranging contexts, which is the type of instruction they’re hoping to see districts incorporate more of in early grades.
“The kids were way more engaged,” Rutherford-Quach said. “Surface-level is important and necessary in some cases, … but it really is fundamentally different when you start talking about meaning and making it matter to the kids, and you see that they’re invested in it.”
Reynolds added that it’s unlikely robust comprehension could make up 100% of lessons in the classroom, but “we are thinking that if we can shift that needle from 24% robust lessons up to 50 or 60, then that would be a real catalyst for comprehension growth.”
The report recommended district leaders create “a shared vision for robust comprehension and define what it means for students, teachers, schools and the district,” and align how to best measure the extent of learning. It also called for better professional learning structures that could help model and rehearse robust comprehension work.
Previous reporting from The 74 found the percentage of recent high school graduates who lack “robust” comprehension skills is the highest it’s ever been, according to 2023 data. The sooner districts can engrain literacy skills that go beyond just explicit tasks, the easier it will be as they continue through the K-12 system, Reynolds said.
“I see the distinction between surface level and robust comprehension as critical to comprehension in fifth grade, but I also see it in the kids when they’re in 12th grade. Surface level comprehension and robust comprehension is the difference between a two on the AP exam and a three,” he said.
One evaluation in 2008. Another evaluation in 2026. Same conclusions. What have we learned?
The ultimate expert, Jeanne Chall, had it right. A former kindergarten teacher who became a renowned Harvard professor, she was commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation to review the research on reading. In her 1967 book, Learning to Read: The Great Debate, she concluded that the best approach was: both. Start early with phonics, she said, then transition to excellent children’s literature. If we continued to swing from extreme to extreme–from phonics to whole word, from whole word to phonics–she predicted, we would forever be trapped in that pendulum.
Paul Thomas was a classroom teacher for many years in South Carolina. He decided to become a professor of education, and eventually joined the faculty at Furman University, first class liberal arts institution in South Carolina.
He writes here about the improbability of miracles. I disagree with Paul Thomas on one point: Miracles are not only unlikely or improbable. There are NO miracles in education. My friend Mike Klonsky of Chicago said to me years ago. “If you are looking for a miracle, go to church, not to school.”
In all my years, I have found no reason to doubt this wisdom.
My entire career in education, begun in the fall of 1984, has been during the accountability era of education that is primarily characterized by one reality—perpetual reform.
The template has been mind-numbingly predictable, a non-stop cycle of crisis>reform>crisis>reform, etc.
Another constant of that cycle is that the crisis-of-the-moment has almost always been overblown or nonexistent, leading to reforms that fall short of the promised outcomes. Reforms, ironically, just lead to another crisis.
But one of the most powerful and damning elements in the crisis/reform cycle has been the education miracle. [1]
Two problems exist with basing education reform on education miracles. First, and overwhelmingly, education miracles are almost always debunked as misinformation, misunderstanding of data, or outright fraud. Research has shown that statistically education miracles are so incredibly rare that they essentially do not exist.
Second, even when an education miracle is valid, it is by definition an outlier, and thus, the policies and practices of how the miracle occurred are likely not scalable and certainly should not be used as a template for universal reform.
Those core problems with education miracles have prompted the attention of Howard Wainer, Irina Grabovsky and Daniel H. Robinson, who have analyzed the reading reform miracle claims linked to Mississippi:
In 1748, famed Scot David Hume defined nature. He elaborated such a law as “a regularity of past experience projected by the mind to future cases”. He argued that the evidence for a miracle is rarely sufficient to suspend rational belief because a closer look has always revealed that what was reported as a miracle was more likely false, resulting from misperception, mistransmission, or deception….
A careful examination confirms that enthusiasm to emulate Mississippi should be tempered with scepticism….
In short, the authors followed a key point of logic: If something seems too good to be true, then it is likely not true.
In their analysis, On education miracles in general (and those in Mississippi in particular), they focused on two of the key problems with the story about Mississippi’s outlier grade 4 reading scores (in the top quartile of state scores) on NAEP: What is the cause of the score increases? And, why are Mississippi’s grade 8 reading scores remaining in the bottom quartile of state scores?
They found, notably, that Mississippi’s instructional reform, teacher retraining, additional funding, and reading program changes were not the cause of the score increases, concluding:
But it was the second component of the Mississippi Miracle, a new retention policy, perhaps inspired by New Orleans’ Katrina disaster a decade earlier, that is likely to be the key to their success….
Prior to 2013, a higher percentage of third-graders moved on to the fourth grade and took the NAEP fourth-grade reading test. After 2013, only those students who did well enough in reading moved on to the fourth grade and took the test.
It is a fact of arithmetic that the mean score of any data set always increases if you delete some of the lowest scores (what is technically called “left truncation of the score distribution”)….
In short, Mississippi has inflated grade 4 NAEP scores, but that is unlikely evidence that student reading proficiency has improved. This is not a story about reading reform, but about “gaming the system”:
It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the lion’s share of the effects of the “Mississippi miracle” are yet another case of gaming the system. There is no miracle to behold. There is nothing special in Mississippi’s literacy reform model that should be replicated globally. It just emphasises the obvious advice that, if you want your students to get high scores, don’t allow those students who are likely to get low scores to take the test. This message is not a secret….
Wainer, Grabovsky and Robinson’s analysis also needs to be put in context of two other studies.
First, their analysis puts a finer point on the findings by Westall and Cummings, whose comprehensive review of contemporary reading reform found the following: Third grade retention (required by 22 states) is the determining factor for increased test scores (states such as Florida and Mississippi, who both have scores plummet in grade 8), but those score increases are short-term.
Next is a recent study on grade retention. Jiee Zhong concluded:
[T]hird-grade retention significantly reduces annual earnings at age 26 by $3,477 (19%). While temporarily improving test scores, retention increases absenteeism, violent behavior, and juvenile crime, and reduces the likelihood of high school graduation. Moreover, retained students exhibit higher community college enrollment but lower public university attendance, though neither estimate is statistically significant.
Grade retention masquerading as reading reform, then, is fool’s gold for inflating test scores, but it is also harming the very students the reform purports to be helping.
The evidence now suggests that reading reform should not be guided by miracle claims; that no states should be looking to a miracle state for reading reform templates; that the so-called “science of reading” movement is mostly smoke and mirrors, and should be recognized as the “science of retention”; and that grade retention policies are distorting test scores at the expense of our most vulnerable students in life changing ways.
Diane Ravitch's blog 