For the past two years, since COVID, I’ve spent a lot of time with my six year old grandson and watched his parents teaching him letters, numbers, colors, shapes and the beginnings of reading between playing race car driver, firefighter and with his trains.  He started to sound out the J-E-T-S on my t-shirt and jumped up and down shouting, JETS, JETS, JETS. Do children learn to read by sounding out letters or recognizing words?

In 1955 a book was on the Best Seller list for thirty-seven weeks, the book: Why Johnny Can’t Read. (Read here)

 [The book] advocated the teaching of phonics, a method that teaches children the common letter-sound correspondences of English words and a handful of rules they can use which, together with the sounds, allows them to read the word.

Why Johnny Can’t Read was one of the first shots fired in what later became known as the “Reading Wars,” a series of public debates over how children best learn to read. And always phonics advocates have had to contend with the educational establishment.

The Balanced Literacy folk [See Lucy Calkins, Reading and Writing Workshop Model here] is favored by most schools in New York City, curriculum decisions are left to schools.  Carmen Farina, the New York Chancellor from 2013 to 2019 was a strong supporter of Calkins Balanced Literacy model.

As the Balanced Literacy and the Phonics folks tussled Congress funded the National Reading Panel and in 2000 issued a detailed report (Read here) and the term Science of Reading was born, the report supported phonics instruction. Since the report was released about thirty states, either through statute or regulation adopted a phonics model.

WHAT IS THE ‘SCIENCE OF READING’?

The goal with all of these trainings, new materials, and new approaches is to align instruction to what’s now known as the “science of reading.”

In a science of reading framework, teachers start by teaching beginning readers the foundations of language in a structured progression—like how individual letters represent sounds, and how those sounds combine to make words. At the same time, teachers are helping students build their vocabulary and their knowledge about the world through read-alouds and conversations. Eventually, teachers help students weave these skills together like strands in a rope, allowing them to read more and more complex texts.

In most classrooms “teacher choice and professional l judgment” is the rule,

Most teachers in the United States weren’t trained in this framework. Instead, the majority say that they practice balanced literacy, a less structured approach that relies heavily on teacher choice and professional judgment. While the majority of students in balanced literacy classrooms receive some phonics instruction, it may not be taught in the explicit, systematic way that researchers have found to be most effective for developing foundational reading skills.

New York State traditionally leaves curriculum at the discretion of the school districts, although under the stewardship of John King the state adopted the Common Core Learning Standards, the required grades 3-8 exams, results moved from 2/3 proficient to 2/3 below proficient and the battle was on!

See my blog from 2013 here.

The testing opt out movement emerged, King moved on become the US Commissioner of Education and under Commissioner Elia the state began the move away from Common Core Learning Standards [Read here] to Next Generation Standards [Read here].  [I call Common Core lite!)

The teaching of reading never arose as an interest of the state.

In spite of the National Teaching Panel report and in spite of the emphasis on phonics instruction by the scholar community phonics instruction lags.

John McWhorter, a professor of linguistics at Columbia University is a proponent of phonics based instruction  (See an Atlantic article here and a NY Times article here.

McWhorter avers,

Scientific investigators of how children learn to read have proved repeatedly that phonics works better for more children.

Crucially, the method works well with poor as well as affluent children. Just a couple decades ago, the method was still kicking serious butt where it was implemented. In Richmond, Va., the mostly Black public school district was mired in only a 40 percent passage rate on the state reading test until the district started teaching the phonics way, upon which in just four years passage rates were up to 74 percent.

However, there is a persistent disconnect between the world of reading science and the world of people teaching children to read. Only 15 percent of programs training elementary-school teachers include actual instruction on how to teach children to read. There remain people who favor the whole word method, or a combination of whole word and phonics, or even no particular “method” at all.

Mayor Adams jumped on the phonics instruction train in May, 2022.

New York City will require all elementary schools to adopt a phonics-based reading program in the coming school year — a potentially seismic shift in how tens of thousands of public school students are taught to read.

The announcement came as part of a wider $7.4 million plan by Mayor Eric Adams to identify and support students with dyslexia or other reading challenges, including screening students from kindergarten through high school and creating targeted programs at 160 of the city’s 1,600 schools.

“We’re going to start using a proven, phonics-based literacy curriculum that’s proven to help children read,” Adams said at a press conference “This is our opportunity to really move the needle on something that has been impactful for our children for a long time.”

Now members of this vocal minority, proponents of what they call the “science of reading,” congregate on social media and swap lesson plans intended to avoid creating “curriculum casualties” — students who have not been effectively taught to read and who will continue to struggle into adulthood, unable to comprehend medical forms, news stories or job listings.

The bible for these educators is a body of research produced by linguists, psychologists and cognitive scientists. Their findings have pushed some states and school districts to make big changes in how teachers are trained and students are taught.

The “science of reading” stands in contrast to the “balanced literacy” theory that many teachers are exposed to in schools of education. That theory holds that students can learn to read through exposure to a wide range of books that appeal to them, without too much emphasis on technically complex texts or sounding out words.

Education Week, the weekly publication devotes the entire current issue to the move to phonics and the multitude of questions,

SCIENCE OF READING: WHERE RHETORIC MEETS REALITY

A national movement seeks to change how reading is taught. Will it work?

More than half the states have passed laws or policies mandating a “science of reading” approach to early literacy.

In a sense, these mandates mark the end of one story—that of the activists and educators who have pushed forcefully for an evidence-backed approach to reading. But they’re only the beginning of another story—the monumental challenge of shifting teaching practices on the ground, classroom by classroom.

Are states providing enough coaching for teachers to feel comfortable with an approach still unfamiliar to many of them? Have they provided curriculum and teaching models in time? Are they selecting trainings and materials backed by science? Where is teaching truly changing and where are old habits still holding on?

Education Week has a series of stories about the Science of Reading movement here.

“When the Science of Reading Goes Too Far”   (7/29/22) 

“5 Insights in Getting the Science of Reading into Classrooms” (8/22/22)

While systematic, explicit instruction in these foundational word-reading skills is a key component of an evidence-based approach to reading instruction, the “science of reading” involves more than just phonics.

Experts say that students also need to have rich conversations to develop oral language, vocabulary, and critical thinking—even before they can read text. They need opportunities to build knowledge about different subjects and learn how to use comprehension strategies. They need to write about what they’re reading.

Daniel Willingham, a cognitive scientist, finds the science of reading team too didactic. In the Reading Mind (2017) Willingham explains the complexity of the learning to read process and how it is different from child to child.

Read Willingham’s comments on the science of reading here and a review of the Reading Mind here.

Eric Nadelstern, a deputy NYC chancellor during the Klein years and the founding principal of the first International High School, a school for new immigrants wrote in a letter to the editor in Hechinger Reports, See full letter here

While teaching reading is complex, learning to read doesn’t have to be. In schools where the primary learning methodology provides children the opportunity to work in small groups on interdisciplinary activities and projects designed to strengthen literacy skills, further knowledge, and deepen inquiry skills, all youngsters can progress to their full potential. In such classrooms, teachers guide and support rather than transmit and lecture. They understand that literacy skills and content study are inextricably linked, and that in the final analysis, learning is talking and teaching is listening.

The Reading Wars are a long way from a resolution. Reading is a complex neurological function, we don’t know why one children acquires the skill faster than others, nature or nurture, we do know the skill of the teacher matters and we also know ineffective teaching strategies are difficult to extinguish in a teacher.

Telling a teacher what you have been doing for years is wrong and we going to teach you a new approach are commonly seen as punishment.

My “go to” reading expert tells me the skill of the teacher is the key element in the process,

Only the Lone Ranger can depend on silver bullets.