By Connie Briggs

The Emperor of Literacy has no clothes, and no one is noticing.  The latest iteration of so-called literacy reform is the Science of Reading (SOR).  Science of Reading advocates ascribe to a simple view of reading and have somehow convinced teachers, parents, and legislators in many states that the silver bullet to literacy learning in elementary schools is isolated, explicit and direct phonics instruction.  Reminiscent of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) initiative in 2000, states are dictating to schools what programs and assessments can be used and spending millions of dollars for implementation.  While I’m reminiscing, let me remind readers that approximately 23 billion dollars of NCLB funding yielded little, if any, improvement in reading scores across the nation.  Some of the same people who were involved in NCLB are now proponents of SOR and have commercial curriculum products that many states are mandating for literacy instruction in schools. Follow the money. 

Studies of reading processes indicate far more complexity that SOR advocates would have us believe. Not only are the SOR supporters advocating their simple theory of reading, but they are hell-bent to disparage any other programs that have proven to be successful, especially with children who find learning to read and write most difficult. Recent attacks on Reading Recovery by journalist Emily Hanford suggested that the complex theory on which Reading Recovery is based is flawed, and she incorrectly stated that Reading Recovery does not include explicit phonics instruction. Both suggestions are patently incorrect. Emily Hanford is a reporter who has aligned with Dyslexia and SOR groups.  In a YouTube video, she shared that she audited one graduate class in reading. One. Yet, she speaks with authority about early literacy research and instruction and is being regarded as an expert in the field by SOR and Dyslexia proponents.   

The science of reading is not a settled science.  There is no convergence of research that points to explicit and only phonics helping all students to become readers.  What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), supported by the Institute of Educational Sciences, “is the nation’s leading source for rigorous, independent, educational research, evaluation, and statistics”.  Through this website, legislators and educators are able to look at the research and evaluation on programs in order to make good decisions about spending state dollars on effective programs.  LETRS, one of the most popular phonics programs endorsed by SOR has only one study that met the WWC quality standards for research, and that study showed that students did not increase their reading scores with LETRS instruction.  Similarly, there are no studies that met the rigorous WWC criteria for Orton-Gillingham- based programs used widely in schools to teach students who have been identified as dyslexic.  Compare these studies to the seven accepted studies for Reading Recovery that found positive effects on students’ alphabetic skills and general reading outcomes.  If only legislators, school administrators, and parents would look at research and effectiveness studies to make decisions about instructional programs instead of relying on biased media and those who would profit by selling curriculum products. 

I know literacy, especially early emergent literacy teaching and learning.  I spent 44 years teaching reading in an elementary setting and as a researcher and professor, teaching teachers how to teach literacy.  Because of my experience and education, I’m saying the Literacy Emperor is naked. 

All Reading Recovery Teachers use leveled books in their lessons, but do you know how the Reading Recovery Book List works?  An incredible amount of effort goes into the process by trainers, teacher leaders, and teachers.

There are thousands of titles on the Reading Recovery Book List. Each book is assigned a level from 1 to 30 to indicate increasingly complex texts. As reading and writing skills improve, students read more difficult books in their lessons. New books are always released, so the book list is updated yearly. This year, Reading Recovery is piloting a new timeline to streamline the process.  

Because children in Reading Recovery programs have specific needs related to a fine gradient of difficulty in texts, all texts submitted must go through a rigorous research-based process. Before a book is leveled, it is first carefully reviewed by the Book Leveling Committee to ensure it’s appropriate for Reading Recovery students. After the Book Leveling Committee moves a book onto the next phase, field testing begins.  

Book leveling is a fantastic ongoing professional development opportunity! Many teacher leaders volunteer to host field testing sites. Next, both teacher leaders and teachers receive training on how to level books and carefully follow the field-testing procedures; each book is separately leveled ten times. As a thank you, all volunteer teachers keep the texts they field tested. By the end of January, the field-tested levels are submitted for review to the Book Leveling Committee. 

After review, the Book Leveling Committee adds new books Reading Recovery Book List in the spring. An updated book list would not be possible without the committee and volunteers that work hard throughout the year to review and level the new books. 

Thank you for all you do, Book Leveling Committee and field testers! 

Book Leveling Committee: Sandy Brumbaum, Jennifer Burns, Sue Duncan, Tracee Farmer, Adria Klein, Leslie McBane, Annie Opat, Lisa Patrick, Nancy Rogers-Zegarra, Pat Scherer, Journey Swafford 

 Want to get involved? RRCNA is currently accepting applications to host a field-testing site. We invite teacher leaders with five or more years of experience to indicate their interest through this form. 

There are many other ways to get involved with RRCNA! Members can sign up for volunteer opportunities in the Community Forum.

By Connie Briggs

The Science of Reading Initiative (SOR) has successfully convinced state legislators, educators, and parents that the latest silver bullet to improve reading outcomes for all children is a large dose of explicit, systematic or structured phonics, taught in isolation of other literacy skills.  This simple theory advocates that children learning to read should master phonics before being taught any other reading skills.  In reality, teaching only phonics as a literacy curriculum is but a raindrop in the ocean.   

Phonics instruction, while extremely important in learning to read, is only one component of a complex cognitive system of learning to read and write. It’s like practicing basketball skills in isolated drills but never playing in a  game. Emergent readers can learn phonics and vocabulary and comprehension while they are engaged in reading and writing real texts.  In fact, from a developmental and cognitive viewpoint, working with multiple sources of information (print, background knowledge, and meaning) provides opportunities for problem-solving, checking, self-correction, and integration in order to develop a strategic foundation for the complex processing they will need to do as competent readers and writers.  Even the lowest-achieving emergent readers are quite capable of learning successfully from a complex theory of literacy. 

Science of Reading advocates seem to be on a mission to disparage any other elementary literacy curriculum that is not phonics only. Through podcasts, blogs, and articles they repeatedly share misrepresentations, mistruths, and opinion-only information that has seemed to gain traction.  Truth be told, 80% of children will learn to read despite of the type of instruction they receive. It is the other 20% that need special intervention and personalized support as they emerge as readers and writers. 

Research has shown that the most important factor to a child’s success in school is a knowledgeable and highly trained teacher.  Highly trained teachers focus on children’s strengths, use assessment to plan instruction, and make daily decisions about curriculum and teaching based on the idiosyncratic needs of each child in their classrooms. Yet, the SOR advocates paint all teachers with a broad brush when they say that teachers do not know how to teach phonics.  They also promote scripted and structured phonics programs that do not value teacher decision-making or differentiation.  One size does not fit all, and children learn in different ways. Yet, from a SOR perspective every child needs the same structured sequence of phonics instruction. Unfortunately, enacting this perspective/advice guarantees that some children will be left behind. 

Teaching children to become literate is complex and difficult, not because we don’t know what works, but, in part, because of the many societal issues that come to school with the children.  When looking at the bigger picture not only do we need to provide a fully comprehensive literacy curriculum to elementary children, but we also need to address issues like poverty, race, language acquisition, and attendance. A simple theory cannot and does not address these complexities.  

by Paul Thomas

Originally published April 24, 2022. Republished with permission by Paul Thomas, author of the blog Academic Freedom Isn’t Free.
https://radicalscholarship.com/2022/04/24/science-of-reading-media-advocacy-continues-to-mislead/

Register today for LitCon 2023 to hear Paul Thomas as a featured speaker.

Here is something you will never see:

But here is an actual headline:

Both studies (not-yet peer reviewed Reading Recovery study here, and peer-reviewed UK study here), by the way, are extremely important to anyone genuinely concerned about reading instruction. As a matter of fact, Reading Recovery has issued a thoughtful response to the research in the second, real, headline.

Since Emily Hanford established herself as the “science of reading” journalist in 2018, one would imagine that she would be fully invested in the full story of research on teaching reading. And of course, one would be wrong.

The “science of reading” movement is an ideological movement, not concerned about evidence or even reading achievement by students. There are phonics programs to sell and careers to boost.

When people complain about bias, one aspect of bias often ignored is that all media determine what to cover and what not to cover (Hanford covers anything that seems to further the “science of reading” propaganda, and ignores anything that challenges it). In the case above, the research on Reading Recovery is easy to twist into the “science of reading” agenda, but the research from the UK is a whole different matter.

To be fair, both studies raise some important questions, but probably do not prove any agenda conclusively. Why is reading achievement in the UK stagnant despite mandating systematic phonics for all students since 2006? Why do students receiving Reading Recovery intervention seem to score lower than other students over time (in similar ways to grade retention outcomes) in longitudinal studies?

These are damn good questions. And simply asking them is a step in the right direction—recognizing there are no simple answers to teaching or learning how to read.

Yet, they are questions that media and political leaders are unlikely to ask much less answer. Because too many people are invested in the “science of reading” propaganda machine, including Hanford.

Her recent co-authored piece, New research shows controversial Reading Recovery program eventually had a negative impact on children, follows a predictable pattern found in her New York Times mis-reporting on Mississippi’s 2019 NAEP scores: Make an overstated implication about the “science of reading” while including a slight hedge in the article after the Big Claim. See my unmasking here.

We can learn a few lessons from all this.

One is that if you have to lie or distort, you may not have a credible argument (see Hanford’s “science of reading” propaganda).

But a more valuable lesson is that we must have a much more nuanced and complex awareness about what it means to teach and learn reading. While I think many Reading Recovery teachers are doing important and effective work, we cannot have a simplistic faith that something with the “reading recovering” stamp is universally perfect.

As much as we would hope otherwise, there is no silver bullet.

That realization, however, should temper our understanding of the “science of reading” movement, an agenda that is paralyzed by its missionary zeal—and its persistent misinformation campaign that puts its agenda ahead of real concerns about effective teaching and learning.

Media advocates for the “science of reading,” Hanford and Natalie Wexler, for example, are doing far more harm than good because of their blind advocacy.

Journalists and politicians should not be determining how children learn to read. However, the public is often mislead by sensationalistic media coverage, such as that by Hanford—Mississippi Miracle! (well, “There’s no way to know for sure”), and Reading Recovery is a failure! (but … who knows?).

Here is a lesson: Don’t believe everything you read.

Here is a much harder lesson: Worry about what you don’t get to read.

It’s that time of year again! Members gathered at the historic Galt House in Louisville, Kentucky for a chance to learn and recharge at the 2022 Teacher Leader Institute.

The program kicked off on Tuesday with a fascinating session with Rachael Gabriel about the historical context and new trends shaping the stories being told about reading instruction. Next, attendees headed into a celebration of new Teacher Leaders and a reception. Three years after our last in-person Teacher Leader Institute, it was electric to be in-person with friends and colleagues again!

On Wednesday, the Teacher Leader Institute began with attendees learning how to tell their Reading Recovery story. Teacher Leaders and Trainers shared stories of success and transformation, and some even filmed testimonials we’ll share soon with the Reading Recovery Community! In between sessions, attendees reconnected with friends and shopped from the exhibit hall.

A favorite session on Thursday was Increasing the Power for Coaching Using the Tools of Reading Recovery with Mary Fried and Janet Buffalino. After each General Session, attendees broke into in-depth discussions with their homeroom, a small group designed to make deeper connections with other Teacher Leaders. After the day of learning was over, many attendees headed to Churchill Downs for a night at the races!

Photo Credit: Lesley Reading Recovery & Literacy Collaborative

Friday, attendees heard updates from the Hub and IDEC. The Institute ended with a panel discussion (with Gay Su Pinnell, Connie Briggs and Anne Simpson) on finding agency as attendees take the next steps in Reading Recovery. With hugs and fist bumps, attendees headed home to take a nap and apply what they learned to their sites and lessons.

It’s not a “goodbye;” it’s a “see you later.” We’ll see everyone at LitCon in January!