Several states have endorsed legislation requiring teachers to use “the science of reading” in their classrooms. Only the “science of reading.” The legislators, of course, know nothing about teaching reading but they have it on good authority (reports in the media) that there is only one correct way to teach reading, so they feel it is appropriate to mandate that way and ban other ways.

As someone living in New York City, I don’t know whether to laugh or groan. In 2002, Michael Bloomberg, the new mayor, took control of the New York City public schools. He selected attorney Joel Klein as the city’s all-powerful chancellor. A year later, after much deliberation, Klein and Bloomberg announced a single citywide curriculum in reading and mathematics. With the exception of a few high-performing schools, all teachers were required to teach Balanced Literacy. Phonics advocates howled but they were dismissed. Any teacher who taught reading during the three terms of Mayor Bloomberg was mandated to teach Balanced Literacy.

But now, Balanced Literacy is out, and phonics is in. Are there new longitudinal studies showing the success of one and the failure of the other? No, but there is a new zeitgeist, and Americans are always ready to rally around the latest cure-all.

Some states are not only mandating “the science of reading,” but banning Balanced Literacy and its practices. Louisiana banned the use of three-cuing in 2022. In North Carolina, the General Assembly also banned the use of “three-cuing.” Three-cuing is a feature of Balanced Literacy.

As of last October, three-cuing has been banned in Arkansas, Indiana, Florida, Texas, Ohio, and Kansas.

What is three-cuing? The definition in Louisiana is quoted at the end of this post.

In addition, three states have banned the program called Reading Recovery: Arkansas, Louisiana, and Indiana.

I have not seen evaluations or experimental evidence proving that students read better and comprehend better if teachers use only one instructional strategy and no other. The fourth grade scores in states that hold back third graders with low scores are proof of nothing, other than the certainty that scores go up when low-scoring students are not in the testing pool.

Suppose a first-grade reading teacher is fully onboard with phonics; suppose she does everything exactly by the book and is devoted to everything associated with “the science of reading”? This otherwise blameless teacher must take care not to show students how to use context cues! If she does so, she has broken the law! Will she be subject to prosecution and imprisonment for using the wrong method?

There has been a vigorous campaign to install phonics as the best way to teach reading. I repeat for the nth time that I’ve always been a proponent of phonics. I remember when Balanced Literacy became a national fad in the 1980s and 1990s; every publisher endorsed it (except Open Court). And I opposed it because I typically look skeptically on fads, movements, and panaceas.

The struggle between phonics and “whole word” methods has been ongoing since the 1830s. The pendulum swings back and forth. Now, everything from the big publishers will be decodable. Wherever Rudolf Fleisch may be, he is very happy (he wrote a book in the 1950s called Why Johnny Can’t Read, calling for a revival of phonics, which had been replaced by the Dick and Jane readers and the “look-say” method).

But it’s irresponsible to pass laws banning other ways of teaching! Wouldn’t it be wise to wait for some solid results before declaring that there is one and only one way to teach reading?

My view: Teachers should be prepared to teach phonics and other methods. No instructional method should be banned. Teachers should know a variety of teaching strategies and do what’s best for the children in front of them.

Three-cuing as defined in Louisiana law:

Act 517 of the 2022 Louisiana Legislative Session prohibits the use of the three-cueing system, or the MSV technique, in curriculum and instructional materials. This approach has been proven ineffective by empirical research in teaching students to read. This guidance document provides an explanation of what the three-cueing system is, what to look for when identifying these strategies in curricular materials, why it is not best for students learning to read, and what instructional strategies are proven effective for teaching students to read and comprehend.

What is the “Three-Cueing System?”

The three cueing system is an approach to foundational skills instruction that involves the use of three different types of instructional cues: semantic (gaining meaning from context and sentence-level cues), syntactic or grammatical features, and grapho-phonic (spelling patterns). When students encounter words that they cannot read automatically, they are prompted to question themselves using the following three questions: Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense?

At the earliest stages of learning to read, students are prompted to default to semantic or syntactic cues before attempting to use grapho-phonic cues. Students are encouraged to use illustrations to “guess” the meaning of words in predictably-written texts.

As part of the three-cueing system, teachers analyze student reading errors using the “MSV” technique and seek to determine if reading errors are related to “meaning, structure, or visual” issues. If students’ errors are meaning-related, the teacher will focus instructional efforts on supporting a student in using semantic cues to read passages. If the issues are related to structure, the teacher will focus on supporting students’ use of syntactic cues, and if the errors are visual, the teacher will prompt students to use grapho-phonic strategies.

As evidence mounts against the three-cueing system, many programs no longer refer to this instructional approach using this terminology, so identifying three-cueing in curricular resources requires careful observation of the strategies used to guide students as they learn to read.

When Might I See “Three-Cueing?”

The three-cueing approach is most-often found during foundational skills instruction in grades K-2. Some of the common prompts associated with this approach – “Does this make sense?” or “Look at the picture” – can be appropriate in other instructional contexts, such as when a student is encouraged to use illustrations to support deeper comprehension of stories, or when students are monitoring their own reading, but they are not effective strategies or prompts for teaching students to read words on a page. Instead of relying on multiple, varied cues, students should instead be consistently prompted to decode words using learned spelling and syllabication patterns.
As the three-cueing approach typically involves teachers prompting students to use different cues, this type of instruction is often found in small-group or individual settings.

It is a hallmark of “Balanced Literacy.”