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The Sciences of Reading ( and yes I mean Sciences, not Science) by Dr. Sam Bommarito

There has been a lot of push back lately about the Science of Reading folks and the claims that they are making about the best ways to teach reading. I have long taken a centrist position on the "Great Debate", maintaining that no one "side" has all the answers and that the sensible approach is for all sides to listen to one another and learn from one another. I call this approach the "Reading Evolution".

Who are these Science of Reading folks and why the current backlash to the ideas they promote? SOR in its current iteration is the product of a group of educators influenced by the ideas of Louisa Moats. Moats claims that our current problems in the teaching of reading are caused by the failure to adopt practices like the ones described in the PDF, Reading Is a Rocket Science or in this description of the Science of Reading by Holly Lane, University of Florida. As we will see, critics of Moat's approach charge that she and her supporters are a small minority of educators trying to force their views on everyone. Paul Thomas is among those critics, saying that this action of forbidding all practices except those advocated by the "Science of Reading" group is both hurtful and counterproductive More about that in a minute.

Readers are invited to consider three of the major push back pieces that have emerged in the past year.

The first is the National Education Policy Center's statement as described in Diane Ravitch's March 2020 blog. LINK The upshot is that there is no "science of reading." NEPC states that "It's time for the media and political distortions to end, and for the literacy community and policymakers to fully support the literacy needs of all children."

Another push back came from a December 2020 You Tube video created by George Hruby from the Collaborative Center of Literacy Development- University of Kentucky

Some key points made in his video:

Hruby maintains SOR advocates are wrong in saying the science is settled. Science is never settled.

He thinks it is more accurate to talk about the Sciences of Reading.

He views the Science of Reading as a branding designed to sell curriculum.

He described a number of programs in the past that used similar methods to the ones found in the SOR and maintained that in the end these programs were no more effective than what a good teacher could accomplish using methods that are far less costly than SOR methods.

He outlined the limits and limitations of other SOR claims

The most recent push back came in the form of a piece written by Valerie Strauss, a reporter for the Washington Post. In it she details the views of David Reinking, professor emeritus at Clemson University and a former president of the Literacy Research Association; Victoria J. Risko, professor emerita at Vanderbilt University and a former president of the International Literacy Association; and George G. Hruby, an associate research professor of literacy and executive director of the Collaborative Center for Literacy Development at the University of Kentucky. The link to the full article requires a subscription to the Washington Post. .

The article is entitled Is there really a 'science of reading' that tells us exactly how to teach kids to read? The short answer to the question raised by the article is no, there is not. Here are some highlights from that article:

More worrisome, a majority of states have enacted, or are considering, new laws mandating how reading must be taught and setting narrow criteria for labeling students as reading disabled.

These themes make for a compelling journalistic narrative and they can benefit for-profit interests outside mainstream education, particularly during a pandemic when many parents are seeking help teaching reading at home. But, they also obscure established evidence that teaching reading is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor (bolding is mine). Overlooked is the common ground shared by those who draw different conclusions on the finer points of available research.

Instead, reasonable differences exist along a continuum. On one end are those who see phonics as the foundation of learning to read for all students. To them, phonics - lots of it - is the essential ingredient that ensures success for all students learning to read, and it must be mastered before other dimensions of reading are taught.

On the other end are those who see phonics as only one among many dimensions of learning to read - one that gains potency when integrated with meaningfully engaged reading and writing, with vocabulary and language development, with instruction aimed at increasing comprehension and fluency, and so forth.

One example is a critical review of several meta-analyses (comprehensive statistical analyses of effects across hundreds of studies), which was published recently in a highly regarded, peer-reviewed journal. It found no clear advantage for programs with a strong emphasis on phonics compared to those foregrounding other approaches (click on this).

Taken together I think these recent developments strongly support a centrist position. The limited and limiting point of view of the so-called Science of Reading advocates are not scientific at all. I have on a number of occasions called for using all the evidence from all the forms of research. Some important figures in the research world seem to have drawn similar conclusions. In a September 2020 U Tube interview called Unpacking the Science of Reading: A Conversation with Editors of Reading Research Quarterly, Amanda P. Goodwin, Co-Editor of the Reading Research Quarterly has this to say about research (1:18 on the video) :

"In terms of the broad piece there is no one science that matters, it's not just experimental research, not just qualitative research, it's not just quantitative research we are using all and every methodology to figure out this multifaceted thing called reading...." LINK

So, I'm in favor of exploring the Sciences of Reading. I favor tweaking programs and finding common ground. . I favor finding out all we can from successful practitioners using the science of reading. LINK. I favor looking at the teaching of reading as both art and science and to fully explore the issues of of fluency and prosody. . I favor exploring all the research around brain research . I think it is time to empower teachers by providing in-service in all the ways to teach decoding . I also think it is time to provide them the in-service needed to learn the skills and strategies measured by state tests of reading instruction (as opposed to tests of decoding). These skills and strategies include those like the ones presented by Nell Duke and others at the 2019 ILA convention. . I think the time is long overdue for folks to start listening to the teachers of reading so that we can have a Reading Evolution. Maybe a Reading Evolution will finally bring that famous (infamous) swinging pendulum to a stop in the middle so we can learn from each other the teaching skills needed to become effective teachers of reading.

Dr. Sam Bommarito (aka, the guy in the middle taking flak from all sides)
Copyright 2021 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely the view of this author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization
P.S. If you found the blog through Facebook or Twitter, please consider following the blog to make sure you will not miss it. Use the "follow" entry on the sidebar of the blog.

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The Sciences of Reading (and yes I mean Sciences, not Science) by Dr. Sam Bommarito

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The Sciences of Reading (and yes I mean Sciences, not Science) by Dr. Sam Bommarito There has been a lot of push back lately about the Science of Reading folks and the claims that they are making about the best ways to teach reading. I have long taken a centrist position on the "Great Debate",...

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Reading Recovery Council of North America

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The Reading Wars have a long, long history. Over the past 100 years, adversaries have argued for and against numerous approaches: whole word, literature-based reading, look-say method, sight words, Initial Teaching Alphabet, balanced literacy, decodable texts, whole language, and phonics first. The wars have recently taken a new twist: the "Science of Reading." This notion appears to be new when, in fact, literacy acquisition has been the subject of scholarship by many researchers with varying perspectives for many, many years. Reading blogs, tweets, and articles promoting the "science of reading" argue that only one type of study (experimental on phonics and phonemic awareness) qualifies as science and this science has been ignored by educators and scholars conducting other types of research. This is simply wrong. No one approach can claim "science" as theirs and only theirs. A range of research is, in fact, scientific, and we need all of it to inform our practice. Some research questions can be answered through random assignment; others must be answered through close observation, interview, and documentation. It's up to educators to read widely and make decisions based on the evidence available.

Reading Recovery and the Reading Wars

Reading Recovery has scientific data on every student taught in the past 35 years and clear evidence that investing in training teachers in Reading Recovery not only brings 70% of the lowest first-grade students to grade level in 12-20 weeks but also positively affects literacy instruction in the building. Reading Recovery teachers have become literacy leaders given the intensity of their yearlong training and expert as observing student reading and writing behaviors. The recent federally-funded i3 research documented that success with both random assignment studies and qualitative studies (May, Sirinides, Gray, & Goldsworthy, 2016).

Despite solid, scientific research using a range of methodologies, Reading Recovery has been critiqued since its beginning in the U.S. 35 years ago with notions like "Reading Recovery is just whole language" or "Reading Recovery doesn't teach phonics." For many years, our leading organizations, the North American Trainer's Group (NATG) and the Reading Recovery Council of North America (RRCNA) have tried to inform critics and counter their claims through white papers in response to every critic. The critiques and responses can be found on RRCNA's Responding to Critics webpage. Historically, our leadership has taken the "high road" by trying to focus on the positive message we have about the success of our Reading Recovery students and teachers and have avoided direct confrontations. More recently, however, even with the strength of the i3 federal research, using an experimental design, critics are taking an even more aggressive approach to promote the "simple view of reading," the "science of reading," and systematic, intensive phonics while arguing against Reading Recovery.

In 2017, however, when a negative, uninformed article appeared as in Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal, the Reading Recovery leadership took a more aggressive stance demanding that the journal editors take down the negative article which was the only one offered for free online and print our response, The Truth About Reading Recovery, both online and in the journal. The article in Learning Disabilities was full of misrepresentations, incorrect information, and concluded that "Reading Recovery teachers are not trained to provide explicit and systematic instruction in the essential and foundational components of reading" (Cook, Rodes & Lipsitz, 2017, p. 19). Based on these inaccurate assumptions, the authors "strongly recommend[ed] that schools not adopt the Reading Recovery program" (p. 19). This conclusion is simply wrong. In fact, Reading Recovery teachers are taught how to document students' knowledge of phonemic awareness and phonics so they can explicitly teach an awareness of the sounds of English and the relationship to letters. Every lesson clearly attends to phonics instruction. I would argue that this instruction is both intensive and systematic.

Emily Hanford and the "Science of Reading"

Most recently, Emily Hanford, Senior producer and correspondent for APM Reports, has produced a series of blogs, twitters, and videos with two main messages: the education community has ignored the "science of reading" and teachers are not well-prepared to teach reading in colleges of education. Her arguments come from research done by psychologists using an experimental design to study pieces of the reading process and are void of studies of real children in real teaching settings.

In 2017, Ms. Hanford requested information about Reading Recovery and was invited to attend the 2018 National Conference as our guest. I was asked to design a schedule for her and accompanied her to many sessions over the 3-day conference and talk with teachers, teacher leaders, and trainers. I also arranged for her to see lessons behind-the-glass so that teacher leaders could help her understand our understanding of how to support children who struggle. She also interviewed and video-taped several Reading Recovery professionals during the conference. We expected her to write an unbiased report about Reading Recovery. We waited for the article to come out. It never did.

Instead, she has focused her attention on the "science of reading" with titles of web-casts such as "At a loss for words: How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers" which posed many flawed ideas about Marie Clay and the cueing systems. Ms. Hanford had contacted RRCNA on a Friday that her article about the cueing systems was in preparation and asked for our response-by Monday. We sent a well-referenced, thorough reply by the Monday deadline along with a copy of an important article done by Marilyn Adams in 1998 which disproved a number of Hanford's assumptions. Little of the information we prepared appeared in her final article.

Recognize and Respond: A Call to Action

I find it frustrating that the voices of educators who actually work with children who struggle are being silenced by a professor in a laboratory or a reporter. We need to recognize and respond to the messages described above which are prevalent in social media, podcasts, and webcasts. These critics do not understand how Reading Recovery supports children to develop a strong literacy processing system. Their "science of reading" and "simple" views are tightly held leaving them unable to grasp the complexity of what Reading Recovery teachers and students grapple with every day.

As a community of educators, we cannot leave advocacy to others, assuming that someone else is doing that job. It must be a part of every Reading Recovery professional's job to be visible in social media, work with local news organizations, and get the message out that reading is not simple and our lessons ensure that the individual needs of every child are met.

How are you advocating for what you know is best for children who struggle?

References

Adams, M. J. (1998). The Three-Cueing System. In F. Lehr and J. Osborn (Eds.), Literacy for all issues in teaching and learning, pp. 73-99. New York Guilford Press.

Cook, P., Rodes, D. R., & Lipsitz, K. L. (2017). The reading wars and Reading Recovery: What educators, families, and taxpayers should know. Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 22(2), 12-23.

May, H., Sirinides, P., Gray, A., & Goldsworthy, H. (2016). Reading Recovery: An Evaluation of the Four-Year i3 Scale-Up. Philadelphia: Consortium for Policy Research in Education.

Patricia L. Scharer, Ph.D. is a Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH.

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Responding to the Reading Wars: Everyone's Job - Reading Recovery Council of North America

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The Reading Wars have a long, long history. Over the past 100 years, adversaries have argued for and against numerous approaches: whole word, literature-based reading, look-say method, sight words, Initial Teaching Alphabet, balanced literacy, decodable texts, whole language, and phonics first. The wars have recently taken a new twist: the "Science of Reading."

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I saw you make a presentation recently, and I was surprised to hear that you did not like the conferencing that is provided in Readers Workshop. That is the method that our district requires. Isn't it research-based?
Shanahan responds:
No, it definitely is not research based.

I can't find a single study that supports its use.

I can't even find any study that supports programs that include this approach.

Of course, a lack of research support for a particular method doesn't mean it doesn't work. Perhaps the technique has never been studied, or if it was investigated maybe the study had some important flaw.

I don't think that's the problem here, though. I think it is just a bad idea.

Readers Workshop is an approach that seems to have emerged from Writers Workshop. I'm more sympathetic to the latter than to the former. Although there are important connections between reading and writing, that does not mean that they should to be taught in the same way-and in this case, the workshop method is not particularly supportive of reading.

There was a similar approach recommended for beginning readers back in the 1950s referred to as "individualized reading" (thank you, Jeannette Veatch), but this modern version doesn't seem to be closely aligned with that.

Basically, readers workshop provides extensive collections of books, emphasizes student choices of what will be read, limits students' reading to texts that can be read easily by them, requires that the students spend extensive time reading these books, provides explicit teaching through mini-lessons, and monitors and supports reading comprehension development through one-on-one teacher-student conferences.

There are various problems with this approach, but, to me, the most egregious ones are the heavy emphasis on texts that the kids can already read well, and the remarkably weak support provided for making sense of text.

Last week I defined reading "as making sense of text by negotiating the linguistic and conceptual affordances and barriers to meaning."

By that definition, high quality reading comprehension instruction would introduce students to texts that they could not already read easily or well, and would provide some kind of guidance or support to help them negotiate the text or content features that might be tripping up their sense making.

Of course, easy books are important in this Readers Workshop since the kids will be doing so much of the reading on their own, and with so little teacher support. Hard to imagine many students reading hard books on their own for 80 minutes per day (40 minutes during the workshop and another 40 at home in the evening)-though those amounts of reading are surely admirable.

The lack of teacher support strikes me as, well, bizarre.

Awhile back I got in a Twitter fight with some teachers who were claiming that they were able to get kids to do ambitious, sophisticated close readings of challenging texts through their one-on-one conferences that typically take 1-3 minutes.

Don't get me wrong, discussions of books can be very powerful stimulants of reading comprehension and learning. Research has certainly shown that to be the case (Murphy, Wilkinson, Soter, Hennessey, & Alexander, 2009).

But it highly improbable that a 1-minute discussion of a text is going to help a student develop some deep insight to meaning, to grasp some subtlety expressed idea, to gain purchase on a concept like symbolism or allusion, or to learn how to deftly connect prose and graphics.

My hunch is that teachers who think such brief exchanges are effective are those who have not been fortunate enough to engage in deep discussions of books.

Even more disturbing was that my Twitter compatriots were not only certain that these brief text conversations were potent teaching tools, but that they didn't have to know the books the kids were reading.

I thought that was kind of crazy, but then I recently read Lucy Calkins' Units of Study for third grade. It's one thing to say something dopey on Twitter (who hasn't done that?), but to write it in a book takes some real forethought.

On page 52, teachers are given advice on how they can fake it when they haven't actually read the book. Calkins and company are concerned that teachers might "feel insecure" having to confer about unknown books. They make no mention of the instructional value of reading guidance from a teacher who couldn't possibly know what the student is dealing with, but we certainly wouldn't want uncomfortable teachers.

Yes, if you'd read the book you might know that the confusing thing is that two of the characters are really similar, or that the most important idea is that the changes in the setting are reflective of the changes in the characters, or perhaps it's the comparison of two science concepts.

But since you haven't read it, you can't help with or emphasize any of that.

And, yet, according to Calkins and company you can conduct a probing interrogation like, "Can you tell me a bit about the main character?"

Little Johnny is fighting his way through Moby Dick, and the teacher's one-minute conference might go something like this:

Teacher: Johnny what are you reading?

Johnny: Moby Dick.

T: How's it going?

J: Good.

T: What can you tell me about the main character?

J: He's a whale.

T: What have you learned about him?

J: He's white.

T: Is the main character the narrator?

J: Sure. Moby tells the story.

The fact that little Johnny isn't really understanding Moby Dick could easily be lost on a teacher who herself hasn't read the text.

This illustration is silly, of course. First, no kid in Readers Workshop is likely to decide to take on Melville, even in high school. Second, no teacher is going to let a kid take on Moby Dick because its Lexile level will likely be beyond their supposed "instructional levels."

Nevertheless, the point is a fair one: Kids learn more from texts when they are engaged in discussions of those texts (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988; Murphy, et al., 2009), but the discussions that have been studied are led by teachers who have read the texts and who are going to help the students to develop a coherent understanding of them.

There are wonderful research-based guides out there that provide direction for leading such discussions based on teacher knowledge of the text (Dwyer, Kelcy, Berebitsky, & Carlisle, 2016; Kucan & Palincsar, 2018). But, then what else would you expect from the research community? They couldn't possibly understand the depths of comprehension that can be stimulated by teachers without any real knowledge of a text.

Of course, teachers who follow textbooks can fall into the same trap. They convince themselves that because the textbook editor has read the story and provided some questions that they don't have to read it, too. You know them, the "We'll learn this simultaneously" crowd.

This is like those supposedly "driverless cars." The car might do most of the driving, but there has to be a human holding the steering wheel and paying attention. No matter how good the textbook program, teacher still need to read the texts to be adequately prepared to guide kids' reading when it needs guiding.

Next week's blog entry will focus on why effective math teachers don't need to know anything about mathematics?

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Reading Workshop: How Not to Teach Reading Comprehension | Shanahan on Literacy

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I saw you make a presentation recently, and I was surprised to hear that you did not like the conferencing that is provided in Readers Workshop. That is the method that our district requires. Isn't it research-based? Shanahan responds: No, it definitely is not research based.

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No one gets to own the words Science of Reading

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In the latest salvo in Wisconsin's ongoing reading wars, a new coalition of educators, researchers, parents and advocates is calling for a fundamental change in the way the state's children are taught to read.

Calling themselves WI-Care, for the Wisconsin Call to Action for Reading Excellence, the proponents unveiled at the Capitol on Wednesday what they say is a road map for improving the reading proficiency of children in the state.

It calls on the state Department of Public Instruction, parents, teachers, school board members - even the colleges and universities that train future teachers - to embrace "the science of reading," shorthand for a back-to-basics approach that emphasizes, among other things, explicit phonics instruction and what's known as "structured literacy."

"Wisconsin has a reading problem. Too many children learn to read only at a basic level," said John Humphries, superintendent of the Thorp School District in central Wisconsin.

"We know what works. Let's start doing it," said Humphries, who raised similar concerns as part of a failed bid for state Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2017.

The renewed push comes as pressure mounts on states and school districts across the country to address what many see as a crisis in reading education. Barely a third of U.S. students were deemed proficient in reading in the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation's Report Card.

Wisconsin fared only slightly better at about 36%, and has among the widest black-white achievement gaps in the country.

The group called on DPI to take a number of steps, saying they would require no additional funding or mandates. They include:

Creating an assistant superintendent position that would work with all schools, public and private, to implement reading practices and policies supported by the current science.

Modifying the state report cards so schools would have to have 60% or higher reading proficiency to score a "Meet Expectations" and 80% or higher to "Exceed Expectations." Critics note there are schools with single-digit reading proficiency that meet expectations because of myriad factors that affect scores.

Complying with current laws regarding reading programming, including more effective evaluations of teacher preparation programs and publication of the Foundations of Reading test required for teachers to be licensed.

DPI issued a statement following the news conference saying the agency "works continuously on all aspects of student learning ... to improve instruction in our schools."

The department said it has advocated for additional special education dollars, which frees funding at the local level to be spent on reading interventions. And it pointed to a statement by Superintendent of Public Instruction Carolyn Stanford Taylor last month in which she endorsed "explicit phonics instruction" as a critical component in teaching children to read.

The extent to which schools should emphasize phonics - the deciphering of words by the sounds of the letters - has been a major point of contention in the decades-old battles over the best way to teach reading. There has been a resurgence of interest among educators in recent years, driven in part by people like Mark Seidenberg, a University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist whose 2017 book "Language at the Speed of Sight" argued that the current approaches to reading instruction were out of sync with the latest research into how children learn.

Speaking at the Capitol Wednesday, Seidenberg said DPI "has done little to address literacy issues that have existed for decades."

"We know the best ways to teach children to read," he said. "Wisconsin is simply not using them, and our children are suffering."

The group said a small number of districts, including Thorp and D.C. Everest near Wausau, have seen promising results after shifting their reading curricula. It is promoting its initiative with a new website, and Facebook Page, titled The Science of Reading - What I should have learned in College.

Under the group's proposal, the new assistant superintendent would work with a reading science task force to identify resources for educators across the state, including training and technical support, classroom coaching and guides to high-quality curriculum and instructional resources.

In addition, supporters said, all schools of education in Wisconsin would be invited to revise their reading curricula, to bring them in line with the International Dyslexia Association's Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teaching of Reading.

Advocates for more explicit phonics instruction have found powerful allies in parents of children with dyslexia, a learning disorder that makes it difficult for them to read. They have been pushing legislation across the country, including two taken up by the Assembly Education Committee on Wednesday that would require schools to develop systems for identifying and serving dyslexic students and require each of the cooperative education organizations known as CESAs to hire dyslexia specialists.

Last month, two Republican lawmakers, Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt of Fond du Lac, who chairs the Assembly Education Committee, and Rep. John Nygren of Marinette called for an audit examining how DPI spends its funding related to reading instruction.
Contact Annysa Johnson at anjohnson@jrn.com or 414-224-2061. Follow her on Twitter at @JSEdbeat. And join the Journal Sentinel conversation about education issues at www.facebook.com/groups/WisconsinEducation.

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New group seeks fundamental shift in the way Wisconsin teaches children to read

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In the latest salvo in Wisconsin's ongoing reading wars, a new coalition of educators, researchers, parents and advocates is calling for a fundamental change in the way the state's children are taught to read.

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In what appears to be a first, the state Department of Public Instruction is endorsing "explicit phonics instruction" as a critical component in teaching children to read.

And the department said Wednesday it is developing materials and supports aimed at helping school districts determine whether their reading instructional materials are aligned with state standards and what to do if they are not.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Carolyn Stanford Taylor alluded to the development in her remarks Wednesday at the opening of the 2020 Wisconsin State Education Convention in Milwaukee. Stanford said the changes would be "reflected over the coming months in the supports and best practices we provide."

"Our outcomes, especially in reading, are not where we want them to be," said Stanford Taylor, who was appointed by Gov. Tony Evers last year and is not seeking a second term.

"We have spent a significant amount of time analyzing the reading data, looking at the research on reading, and examining the instructional materials being used and the alignment with state standards. We are making changes."

Phonics instruction has been a major point of contention in the decades-long "reading wars" - shorthand in education circles for the debate over the best way to teach children to read.

In the most simplistic terms, the disagreement is over how much emphasis should be placed on context - figuring out words based on adjacent words and ideas - and how much should be placed onsounding out words based on the alphabet.

There has been some thawingin recent years. A convergence of factors - falling and stagnant test scores, pressure from parents and phonics advocates, and research into the science of reading - has tilted the scales in favor of phonics, with some now arguing for an explicit, systematic approach to phonics instruction.

"That's what's new for the department," said Sheila Briggs, assistant state superintendent over DPI's Division for Academic Excellence.

"Our state standards adopted a decade ago clearly outlined the importance of phonics. But we have never really taken a stand on how you teach that to kids," she said.

"The new research coming out is so compelling that we wanted to align ourselves with that. We still don't dictate how school districts do that; that's a local decision. But we're taking a stand and saying you need to be paying attention to this."

Briggs said DPI has been working with the Council of Chief State School Officers and other states to create a system for evaluating new instructional materials that have come into the market in recent years. And it has been training educators, including those in the state's five largest urban districts, to evaluate their own material.

She said evaluating instructional materials and then putting the best into classrooms takes about three years. "We're not asking them to do anything they don't already do," she said. "We're just training them on how to do that better."

Mary Newton, a founding member of the Wisconsin Reading Coalition, which has long advocated for a more explicit approach to phonics instruction, said she was encouraged by Stanford Taylor's announcement.

But she noted that its standards are not binding, and it will be up to individual school districts to determine how much of an emphasis they will place on phonics instruction.

"Given the structure we have in Wisconsin, the best that DPI can do is provide strong guidance and leadership," she said. "There are schools and teachers out there looking for help. ... If they do a really good job providing supports and best practices, that's probably the best they can do in this state."
Contact Annysa Johnson at anjohnson@jrn.com or 414-224-2061. Follow her on Twitter at @JSEdbeat. And join the Journal Sentinel conversation about education issues at www.facebook.com/groups/WisconsinEducation.

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DPI endorses 'explicit phonics instruction' as critical component of reading instruction

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In what appears to be a first, the state Department of Public Instruction is endorsing "explicit phonics instruction" as a critical component in teaching children to read. And the department said Wednesday it is developing materials and supports aimed at helping school districts determine whether their reading instructional materials are aligned with state standards and what to do if they are not.

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This report examines a program widely used in schools: Units of Study from the Teachers College Reading & Writing Project. Seven literacy experts conducted independent reviews of the program focused on their individual areas of expertise: phonics and fluency, text complexity, building knowledge and vocabulary, and English learner supports. Each of the reviews is a detailed, research-based discussion of how the components, features, and structures of Units of Study compare to what is called for by existing research on literacy instruction.
This report is licensed under CC BY-ND, and may not be redistributed if the original content is altered.

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Comparing Reading Research to Program Design: An Examination of Teachers College Units of Study

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This report examines a program widely used in schools: Units of Study from the Teachers College Reading & Writing Project. Seven literacy experts conducted independent reviews of the program focused on their individual areas of expertise: phonics and fluency, text complexity, building knowledge and vocabulary, and English learner supports.

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TCRWP In Defense of Balanced Literacy.pdf

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Ari Cotton, a first grader, reading a book at Garrison Elementary School in Washington, D.C., one of only two jurisdictions in the country that saw rising scores on national reading tests last year. Credit... Lexey Swall for The New York Times

As test scores lag, there's a growing debate between proponents of the "science of reading," which emphasizes phonics, and traditional educators who prefer to instill a love of literature.

Ari Cotton, a first grader, reading a book at Garrison Elementary School in Washington, D.C., one of only two jurisdictions in the country that saw rising scores on national reading tests last year. Credit... Lexey Swall for The New York Times

WASHINGTON - "Bit!" Ayana Smith called out as she paced the alphabet rug in front of her kindergarten students at Garrison Elementary School.

"Buh! Ih! Tuh!" the class responded in unison, making karate chop motions as they enunciated the sound of each letter. In a 10-minute lesson, the students chopped up and correctly spelled a string of words:

Top. "Tuh! Ah! Puh!"

Wig. "Wuh! Ih! Guh!"

Ship. "Shuh! Ih! Puh!"

Ms. Smith's sounding-out exercises might seem like a common-sense way to teach reading. But for decades, many teachers have embraced a different approach, convinced that exposing students to the likes of Dr. Seuss and Maya Angelou is more important than drilling them on phonics.

Lagging student performance and newly relevant research, though, have prompted some educators to reconsider the ABCs of reading instruction. Their effort gained new urgency after national test scores last year showed that only a third of American students were proficient in reading, with widening gaps between good readers and bad ones.

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.

Eye-tracking studies and brain scans now show that the opposite is true, according to many scientists. Learning to read, they say, is the work of deliberately practicing how to quickly connect the letters on the page to the sounds we hear each day.

The evidence "is about as close to conclusive as research on complex human behavior can get," writes Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive neuroscientist and reading expert at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Phonics has gone in and out of style for decades, and the current conflict over how to teach reading is only the latest in a tug-of-war that dates to the 19th century. A major push for phonics instruction under President George W. Bush, through a federal program called Reading First, did not produce widespread achievement gains, raising questions about whether the current efforts can succeed.

Phonics boosters say they now know more about what works, and that phonics alone isn't the answer. Alongside bigger doses of sounding out, they want struggling students to grapple with more advanced books, so they won't get stuck in a cycle of low expectations and boredom. Some schools are devoting more time to social studies and science, subjects that help build vocabulary and knowledge in ways that can make students stronger readers.

States have passed laws requiring that schools use phonics-centric curriculums and screen students more aggressively for reading problems - or even hold back those who struggle most. In January, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos castigated colleges of education for teaching what she described as "junk science" about reading.

But the education establishment is pushing back, worried that too many lessons like Ms. Smith's could be stultifying - a poor substitute for a teacher reading aloud from a book of Shel Silverstein poems, or guiding children through lushly illustrated stories by Ezra Jack Keats. They blame low student performance on such factors as inexperienced teachers, school funding inequities and homes that lack books or time for parents to read to their children.

The guardians of balanced literacy acknowledge that phonics has a place. But they trust their own classroom experience over brain scans or laboratory experiments, and say they have seen many children overcome reading problems without sound-it-out drills. They value children picking books that interest them and worry that pushing students into harder texts could turn them off reading entirely.

Karen K. Wixson, an author of a recent report warning that too much phonics can harm children, called the new push "incredibly, scarily naïve."

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Madisyn Hall-Jones, 5, working on a reading lesson at Garrison Elementary School. Credit... Lexey Swall for The New York Times

In Ms. Smith's classroom in Washington, Madisyn Hall-Jones, 5, demonstrated her progress by reading aloud a short story about picking apples that she had written and illustrated herself.

"It's not rote," the school's principal, Brigham Kiplinger, said of the phonics-driven curriculum. "It's joyful."

Washington is one of only two jurisdictions, along with Mississippi, to increase average reading scores on National Assessment of Educational Progress tests between 2017 and 2019. Both did so despite high-poverty student populations, and both are requiring more phonics.

"For us, this is social justice work," Mr. Kiplinger said. The majority of students at Garrison Elementary come from low-income families. If parents express concerns about the new curriculum, he invites them to visit a classroom like Ms. Smith's and see the difference.

Parents in suburban St. Louis are looking for similar results. More than a third of kindergarten to third-grade students in the highly regarded Lindbergh school district tested as "at risk" for dyslexia last spring, after Missouri instituted mandatory screening. Angry district residents sent an open letter to the school board in November, demanding that the district embrace the science of reading.

The district said it had added a new phonics sequence in the early elementary grades and retrained some teachers. But it stands by its broader balanced literacy approach, which it said gives teachers the autonomy to tailor instruction to students at all levels.

That's not enough for parents like Diane Dragan. An attorney who has three children with dyslexia, Ms. Dragan noted that well-off parents in her area regularly pay thousands of dollars to have their children taught intensive phonics at private tutoring centers.

"The irony to me is that the public-school teacher who teaches balanced literacy during the day moonlights to do science-based tutoring for kids who fail to learn to read," Ms. Dragan said.

In Mississippi, all prospective elementary schoolteachers are now required to pass a test in the foundations of reading, including phonics. The state has also dispatched literacy coaches to struggling schools.

More controversially, it passed a law in 2013 requiring third graders to be held back if they score poorly on an end-of-year reading exam; last year, about 10 percent of them were retained, for reading difficulties or other reasons.

Some reading experts have called Mississippi's recent gains into question, arguing that by retaining so many of the lowest-scoring third graders, the state had stigmatized students and manufactured a higher-performing pool of test takers. But Shannon D. Whitehead, the principal of McNeal Elementary School in Canton, Miss., supported the state's decision to get tough.

Her school put in place a phonics sequence that continues through fifth grade, and started assigning more challenging literature, including Langston Hughes poems. It hosts early-morning, after-school and Saturday tutoring sessions for students at risk of failing state tests. Scores have improved modestly.

As painful as it can be to tell a child they have to repeat a year, Dr. Whitehead said, "in order for us to ensure that our students are able to compete globally, we have to have an accountability system."

Kate Drake and Frank Brier, who are both in first grade, reading a book together at Garrison Elementary School. Credit... Lexey Swall for The New York Times

One of the most popular reading curriculums in the country - used in about 20 percent of schools, including the Lindbergh district near St. Louis - was developed by Lucy Calkins, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is widely admired for her emphasis on helping students develop a love of reading and writing.

But her curriculum, which follows the balanced literacy model, has come under increasing fire from critics who say it devotes too little time to phonics practice and gives teachers and students too much choice over what books to read, allowing them to avoid more challenging texts. Earlier this month, the public schools in Oakland, Calif., told staff members that the district would move away from Professor Calkins's materials after the city's N.A.A.C.P. chapter and parent activists demanded the use of "research-proven" strategies.

In an interview, Professor Calkins decried what she called a feeling of "animosity and mistrust" between the camps in the reading wars. She acknowledged that many teachers needed more training on how to teach phonics effectively, and said she was working with schools in her network to provide that.

But she pushed back against a key argument of many phonics activists - that there is no downside to all of the children in a classroom getting the type of repetitive practice in letter-sound relationships that struggling readers need.

"There's not a chance we're going to want to hold an entire class to the pace of the 5 percent that have dyslexia," she said. "Other children need opportunities for comprehension, for writing instruction and for analytic thinking."

Wiley Blevins, a phonics expert who considers himself to be in the center of the reading wars, acknowledged that phonics instruction is often implemented badly. Texts created to help students practice sound-letter combinations can be boring and even nonsensical, he said.

Ideally, students in early elementary school would spend about half of their reading and writing time on phonics, he said, using quality materials. If this happened consistently, by third grade, most students would not need explicit phonics anymore.

Even some leading researchers in the science of reading, including Professor Seidenberg, acknowledge that studies do not yet point toward specific curriculum materials that will be most effective at teaching phonics.

"The science that you need to know it is good," he said. "The science on how to teach it effectively is not."

Ms. Smith, the Washington kindergarten teacher, has embraced her school's new focus on phonics, which she said had engaged both low-achieving and high-achieving students.

She reads to her class each day from beloved children's literature, like the "Elephant and Piggie" series by Mo Willems. But it is the simple phonics texts, she said, that have done the most to build the students' confidence, because over time, they are able to accurately read them aloud to their classmates.

"They will get to the end of the sentence and see a period," she said, "and their face will light up."

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An Old and Contested Solution to Boost Reading Scores: Phonics

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As test scores lag, there's a growing debate between proponents of the "science of reading," which emphasizes phonics, and traditional educators who prefer to instill a love of literature. Ari Cotton, a first grader, reading a book at Garrison Elementary School in Washington, D.C., one of only two jurisdictions in the country that saw rising scores on national reading tests last year.

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@DanaGoldstein @nytimes @ncte MSM are failing the reading debate, failing students/ teachers, and contributing to harmful reading legislation across the US (grade retention, labeling all struggling reading as "dyslexia," test-prep, etc.). This "hot" topic is useful click-bait but isn't good journalism

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Thread by @plthomasEdD: Fact checking @DanaGoldstein phonics article @nytimes - a thread Opening misrepresents word pronunciation, and effective phonics instruction...

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@DanaGoldstein @nytimes @ncte MSM are failing the reading debate, failing students/ teachers, and contributing to harmful reading legislation across the US (grade retention, labeling all struggling reading as "dyslexia," test-prep, etc.). This "hot" topic is useful click-bait but isn't good journalism

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Units of Study In Reading TCRWP has 68,930 members. This Facebook group is a digital forum for the TCRWP community of educators to share the stories of...

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There is a critical story behind "the science of reading," one whose players and plotlines have been misconstrued by political agendas. As a former classroom teacher and reading specialist and current literacy professor, I'd like to interrogate four themes threading this narrative.

#1. Hijacking Terminology

Words have power. The term science connotes credibility, but it also represents evolution and diversity. The "science of reading" has stripped away the dynamic interplay of experiences that grow a child into a reader and a writer and centered the literacy process solely atop phonics. This narrow plotline disregards the impact of writing, comprehension, culture, play, mentor texts, family, and the power of a teacher-researcher to individualize instruction.

Though some prefer a narrow survey from their designated lane, there are in fact many sciences. There is a science of Whole Language, a science of Balanced Literacy, and a science of writing. Each of these sciences is supported by countless refereed, qualitative, and quantitative studies easily accessible through academic databases if one takes the time to look. This work stands on the shoulders of giants in the field like Ken Goodman and Marie Clay, change-agents whose work has been mischaracterized and villainized by those who simply have not done their reading homework. Even psychologists like Mark Seidenberg are getting in on the action, saying "Not much science there" in reference to the National Council of Teachers of English. It's reckless to discount the peer-reviewed research, complex historical understandings, and work of practitioners in the field represented by our nation's oldest literacy organization for educators of early childhood through graduate school.

# 2. Reframing the National Reading Panel

The National Reading Panel is often referenced to justify programmatic, "science-based" decisions without interrogating the critical stories behind that work. From its inception, the largely philosophically in-sync panel adopted a three-part, distinct, and sequential model of reading to the exclusion of other frameworks. Situated within this narrow perspective, working under significant time constraints, and operating with little support staff, it limited its review to six subgroups to the exclusion of other essential areas, including early intervention, writing, and access to literature. The panel has been touted as having reviewed over 100,000 studies; in reality, only 428 were analyzed, with the phonics subcommittee reviewing only 38, excluding all research that did not match their self-imposed, quasi-experimental and experimental studies criteria despite the robust practice of using qualitative methods in educational research. It follows that Joanne Yatvin, the only panel member to have a spent a career in elementary schools, authored the minority view which proffered a warning, request, and tragic foreshadowing of where we are now-"I ask Congress not to take actions that will promote one philosophical view of reading or constrain future research in the field on the basis of the Panel's limited and narrow set of findings."

#3. Attacks on Higher Education and the Problems with NCTQ

Emily Hanford, in her op-ed " Why Are We Still Teaching Reading the Wrong Way?," asserts, "The National Council on Teacher Quality reviewed the syllabuses of teacher preparation programs nationwide and found that fewer than four in 10 taught the components of effective reading instruction. . . . "

Let's break that proclamation down. NCTQ was created in 2000 by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute as an advocacy group, not a research institution, with its primary purpose being to lobby for and legitimize alternative teacher certification. Floundering financially at its inception, it got its sea legs the next year thanks to a five-million-dollar grant from the Department of Education. Much of that money was funneled into what is now the American Board, where you can " become a certified teacher in a year or less " with no classroom experience required prior to securing your first teaching job. In order to make the sale, NCTQ attempted to discredit universities' teacher education programs by creating a "study," in which they reviewed syllabi using a checklist that suspiciously excluded criteria for instructional quality and student learning.

Wary of the methodology, many universities declined to participate, leaving NCTQ filing open-records requests and combing the internet for syllabi samples. The results were entertaining, as cited by Darling-Hammond: "Columbia was rated highly for the selectivity of an undergraduate program that does not even exist. . . ." As part of that study, NCTQ reviewed early literacy course textbooks, deeming the majority unacceptable, including 60 written by Reading Hall of Fame members, yet approving seven of the books written by Louisa Moats, a literacy advisor to NCTQ. The plot thickens. As reported by Rachel Gabriel, the three textbook reviewers served as trainers for Moats's lucrative LETRS program, which the Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse found failed to improve student reading comprehension-leaving many to once again question NCTQ's "science."

#4. "The Sky Is Falling" atop Declining NAEP Scores

"The sky is falling," scrolls across politicians' teleprompters and atop the keyboards of journalists, yet fourth-grade NAEP scores have remained fairly consistent over the last decade. This year's general decline is insignificant to the statisticians. A fact often misrepresented is "NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency. . . " but instead sets a higher standard related to " performance and competency over challenging subject matter." NAEP's reading assessments require students to answer comprehension questions based on level passages. Though comprehension and phonics coalesce, it is impossible to prove that the current NAEP scores are reflective of schools' lack of systematic phonics programs, and NAEP explicitly discourages us from making such leaps.

Suffering amnesia over past misdeeds (think Reading First), "experts" once again call for a one-size-fits-all, phonics-centric classroom, mischaracterizing Whole Language and Balanced Literacy as "willy-nilly," when in reality both place a high value on teaching the complexities of language. These essential literacy experiences are not left to chance, as often mischaracterized, but are facilitated by a teacher-researcher with a deep understanding of the development, nuances, and power of language. This expert-guided approach requires no computer programs, scripted lessons, nor books of scaffolded mini-lessons, and it prevents big-box publishers from cashing in at the expense of a quality education.
Dorothy Suskind is an assistant professor in the Department of Education and Counseling at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia. She regularly publishes in academic journals and is a regular contributor to Psychology Today. Twitter: It is the policy of NCTE in all publications, including the Literacy & NCTE blog, to provide a forum for the open discussion of ideas concerning the content and the teaching of English and the language arts. Publicity accorded to any particular point of view does not imply endorsement by the Executive Committee, the Board of Directors, the staff, or the membership at large, except in announcements of policy, where such endorsement is clearly specified. @dorothysuskind

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The Critical Story of the "Science of Reading" and Why Its Narrow Plotline Is Putting Our Children and Schools at Risk - NCTE

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There is a critical story behind "the science of reading," one whose players and plotlines have been misconstrued by political agendas. As a former classroom teacher and reading specialist and current literacy professor, I'd like to interrogate four themes threading this narrative. #1. Hijacking Terminology Words have power.

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"So, before we take the usual “ready, fire, aim” approach and swing back toward phonics-focused instruction, let’s not assume any one approach has the monopoly on authoritative research. Let’s not just sound the alarm when we notice students struggling, but actually build in some improvements when whatever path we’re on leaves some students behind."

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The Sciences of Reading Part Two: Looking Further into the Conundrum of How to Best Provide Reading Instruction to Our Students

by Dr. Sam Bommarito

"In terms of the broad piece there is no one science that matters, it's not just experimental research, not just qualitative research, it's not just quantitative research we are using all and every methodology to figure out this multifaceted thing called reading...." LINK

Amanda P. Goodwin, Co-Editor of the Reading Research Quarterly

Quote taken from 2020 U Tube interview called Unpacking the Science of Reading: A Conversation with Editors of Reading Research Quarterly, 1:18 on the video

I am using this quote from my post last week about the Sciences of Reading (that post has had 4000 views so far- THANKS) LINK. It provides a nice segue into the key points in this post. Reading is a multifaceted phenomenon. To get a complete view of reading requires examining it using all the tools of research- experimental, qualitative, and quantitative. As indicated in last week's post the so called "Science of Reading" advocates have taken a limited and limiting view of the research process. They often using testing instruments that test decoding rather than reading. They routinely ignore research that runs counter to their views. For instance:

Research by Nell Duke, P.D. Pearson and Michael Pressley demonstrating that teaching comprehension strategies has a positive impact on reading scores. Duke's studies focused on teaching those strategies using a gradual release model.

Research around early childhood indicating that the current push to move direct reading instruction into Kg and preschool is developmentally inappropriate. Early childhood experts see play as more important than direct instruction in these early settings.

Research around the long-term negative impact of retention. In spite of such research, SoR advocates made retention a key part of their Florida model. In a bizarre twist they also provide data that the "reading" gains of the Florida model are not a result of the retentions. If that is the case- why do they continue to retain students as part of their model?

This same group also criticizes Whole Language and Balanced Literacy. They sometimes use the two terms interchangeably and often misrepresent what advocates of these positions say. Most importantly, they claim balanced literacy has failed. On many occasions, I've pointed out that this claim is based on what is currently going on in all the different districts in the United States. However, some of those districts are doing balanced literacy with fidelity, some are doing it poorly, some are not doing it at all, and some are using Science of Reading. Could that mean Science of Reading is part of the current problem? The quick retort to that is that to judge how well Science of Reading is doing, you need to look at a sample of districts doing SoR with fidelity. I agree! That also means you must afford balanced literacy the same consideration. In a post I entitled Show Me the Beef, I asked SOR critics to produce a study based on a scientific sample of districts using balanced literacy with fidelity that shows such districts are doing poorly. LINK They have never been able to produce such a study. BTW I have visited many sites throughout the country where districts are using the balanced literacy model quite successfully.

Another problem with the SoR criticisms of Balanced Literacy is that they often treat Balanced Literacy as a strawman. Have a look at this Washington Post story about the current situation. The author is Rachael Gabriel. It appeared in Valerie Strauss's column. She is the same reporter who did last week's article from the post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/09/25/straw-man-new-round-reading-wars/
Here is a key excerpt from the article:

"No matter whose voices are loudest in any given decade, scientific research has consistently shown that:

All children's minds meet the task of learning to read a little bit differently. For example, some scientists estimate up to four different subtypes of dyslexia, rather than one as once assumed. Conclusion: One philosophical orientation toward reading instruction is never going to work in all U.S. public schools no matter whose idea it was. Students learn differently and the sources of potential difficulty are varied. BOLDING IS MINE.

There are differences in experiences and outcomes related to reading and writing based on gender, race, language history, disability status and socioeconomic factors. These often appear before formal instruction has begun, and widen after. Conclusion: The question of how literacy is taught has everything to do with race, class, culture and identity, and any reporting or reform that ignores this is missing or misrepresenting reality.

Ultimately, our failure to teach all students to read is a failure of our ability to improve instruction that starts with well-researched ideas, and is molded by professional educators into individualized pathways to a common outcome: powerful literacies. Conclusion: We should be more focused on improving instruction than disproving philosophy.

Contrasting approaches are rarely explored with genuine curiosity as starting points for rigorous improvement based on practice-generated evidence of effectiveness (e.g., in classrooms rather than in lab settings). They are religions unto themselves, complete with leaders, deities, catchphrases, measures of fidelity, branded tote bags and pledges of allegiance that blind people to the pitfalls and possibilities each one carries. The leaders of one routinely dismiss the ideas of the other, and their followers follow suit, often without a full understanding of that which they dismiss. This won't go away with the next pendulum swing.

So, before we take the usual "ready, fire, aim" approach and swing back toward phonics-focused instruction, let's not assume any one approach has the monopoly on authoritative research. Let's not just sound the alarm when we notice students struggling, but actually build in some improvements when whatever path we're on leaves some students behind.

The question we should be asking in investigative reports, board meetings and individual classrooms is not, "Have we gone the wrong way?" The questions should be: "What is working here, when and for whom, and what can we improve?" Or at the very least: "As we go this way, who becomes vulnerable, and how do we support them?" BOLDING IS MINE.

Shaming and blaming public schools for how they have attempted to manage the complex and sacred task of teaching reading will make the swing back toward phonics so rigid, narrow and self-righteous that it will certainly fail and come bounding back toward more holistic approaches with all their pitfalls and possibilities in a decade.

Instead of raising an alarm about current practices and running in the opposite direction, we should follow educators and neuroscientists who are genuinely curious about the complexity of literacy and of individuals:

Leaders who are thoughtfully experimenting with the possibilities of matching individual readers with individualized supports, regardless of who came up with them

Leaders who understand the structures, pressures and realities of classrooms in different settings

Leaders who are more invested in starting with sound scientific ideas, and improving rapidly and nimbly than being right and proving everyone else wrong

Leaders who learn from the failures and excesses of the past and work to change the very thinking and tools that failed in the first place.

It is time to change the thinking from rigid "either-or choices" in literacy instruction to responsive "yes-ands" that engage children's unique pathways to literacy."

First I will acknowledge that this article calls all sides to task about the current dialogue (or lack of it). Second I would like to suggest a path that we might follow. Instead of mandating statewide or nationwide content, content based on one side or the other, we should leave it up to the local districts to make the final decisions. Local districts know their children the best. Local districts can look at all the positions and adopt and develop curriculum/teaching methods that best fit those kids. Local districts can demand that programs/curricula considered for adoption be based on reading tests, implemented on a district-wide basis and done successfully over several years. Overall, I think Gabriel's article dovetails nicely with my ideas that it is time for ALL sides to talk to one another rather than bicker LINK (see part two of the post). Overall I think it makes a great case for improving reading instruction using the SCIENCES of Reading.

Dr. Sam Bommarito (aka, the guy in the middle taking flak from all sides)
Copyright 2021 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely the view of this author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization
P.S. If you found the blog through Facebook or Twitter, please consider following the blog to make sure you will not miss it. Use the "follow" entry on the sidebar of the blog.

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The Sciences of Reading Part Two: Looking Further into the Conundrum of How to Best Provide Reading Instruction to Our Students by Dr. Sam Bommarito

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The Sciences of Reading Part Two: Looking Further into the Conundrum of How to Best Provide Reading Instruction to Our Students by Dr. Sam Bommarito "In terms of the broad piece there is no one science that matters, it's not just experimental research, not just qualitative research, it's not just quantitative research we are using...

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Unsettling the Science of Reading Narrative

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Unsettling the Science of Reading Narrative

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This is a summary of the article linked below.

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Call me crazy, but when I learned I had cancer a few years ago, I did not immediately consult a journalist. Instead I chose to see an oncologist. When COVID broke out, I threw in my lot with Dr. Fauci and other infectious disease scientists, instead of a former reality TV star who suggested I inject bleach. And so, when I want advice on reading instruction, I avoid the journalists, the parent lobbying groups, the reading program sales reps, and the agenda driven pseudo-education organizations, and I look to the experts.

Two such experts, Peter Johnston and Deborah Scanlon of the University at Albany, have recently laid waste to the so called Science of Reading (SOR) in a thoughtful report written for the Literacy Research Association, An Examination of Dyslexia Research and Instruction, with Policy Implications. I strongly recommend reading the entire report, but I would like to share a few takeaways that I think illuminate the current SOR debate. As the title of the report suggests, SOR cannot really be discussed outside of the context of the research related to dyslexia and the current push by well-organized parent and educator groups that argue that dyslexia is a frequent cause of reading difficulties. Currently 42 states and the United States government have invoked laws enshrining dyslexia. These laws are for the most part aligned with the SOR instructional perspective. The media has famously picked up on this and has helped fuel the narrative that dyslexia is the chief cause of reading difficulty and that SOR is the best instruction not just for those identified as dyslexic, but for all students.

Here are the key takeaways from the report:

There is no practical nor definitive way to decide who is and who is not dyslexic. They cite literacy researcher, Keith Stanovich who said in 2014, "The retiring of the word [dyslexia] is long overdue."

From an instructional standpoint there is no practical distinction between those classified as dyslexic and others at the low end of word reading ability. There is no evidence that our instructional response should be different for those identified as dyslexic.

There is strong evidence that most children identified in initial assessments as being at risk of having difficulty developing reading skills respond well to good first instruction and early intervention.

A small percentage of children, 2-6%, make slow progress despite our best efforts. We have little research on how to address these students persistent difficulties. This may be due to the belief that dyslexia is a permanent condition and to the assumption that we already know how to approach instruction for these children.

Reading is a complex process and comprehension is the central goal.

The idea that there is a "settled science" that has determined that systematic phonics approaches are the only way to approach reading instruction is simply wrong. Orton-Gillingham and derivative approaches like Wilson and Structured Literacy, the favored approach of groups like the International Dyslexia Association and the National Council on Teacher Quality, has been found to be no more effective in improving reading comprehension than other types of intervention.

There is agreement among researchers that children identified as potentially having difficulty learning to read benefit from explicit instruction designed to develop phonological sensitivity (the ability to analyze sounds in words).

Students should be encouraged to use context to direct and check decoding attempts. SOR advocates who say that use of context and pictures is a "disproven" theory are wrong.

There is no one right way to teach reading. Student's difficulties are unique to the individual students. Better to assume that the instruction we are providing is not meeting the student's needs and adjust accordingly, than to focus on one instructional approach.

Phonics instruction should be flexible and integrated with other reading instruction to create a balanced program.

"Research suggests that teachers are the most important in-school factor in a child's learning. It is what teachers know and do, particularly in meeting the needs of individual students, rather than any programs or approaches they use, that are most influential in literacy outcomes."

1. Dyslexia is not a useful label.

2. The Science of Reading is not settled, nor is it science.

3. Evidence does not support the use of a heavy focus on phonics.

4. Reading instruction should be balanced.

5. Teachers are in the best position to make instructional decisions for individual students.

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Unsettling the Science of Reading Narrative

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Call me crazy, but when I learned I had cancer a few years ago, I did not immediately consult a journalist. Instead I chose to see an oncologist. When COVID broke out, I threw in my lot with Dr. Fauci and other infectious disease scientists, instead of a former reality TV star who suggested I inject bleach.

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Research- Peter Johnston and Pat Scanlon

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Research- Peter Johnston and Pat Scanlon

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Defeating the Science of Reading Narrative, Part 2: Talking to a Parent

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Defeating the Science of Reading Narrative, Part 2: Talking to a Parent

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In my first post in this series on how teachers and literacy specialists can push back at the Science of Reading (SOR) narrative currently dominating reading instruction conversation and legislation, I leaned on the work of Peter Johnston and Deborah Scanlon in their report An Examination of Dyslexia Research and Instruction to argue that dyslexia is not a useful term, and that the SOR narrative, with its focus on word level instruction, casts literacy learning in too narrow a light. In the second post, I posited that a focus on getting to know the individual child as a learner immediately makes clear that each reader is unique, and that each reader's needs must be viewed from a broader lens than is suggested by SOR. In this post I would like to suggest a way of communicating with a concerned parent, who has read and bought into the SOR narrative, about the literacy instruction needs of their child.

Much of my framework for this conversation comes from new work by Nell K. Duke and Kelly B. Cartwright in their recent article published in Reading Research Journal, "The Science of Reading Progresses: Communicating Advances the Simple View of Reading." The International Literacy Association has made this an open access article and I encourage you all to read it in full. Essentially, the authors argue that we have learned a great deal about what works in reading instruction in the years since Gough and Tummer suggested the Simple View of Reading (1986), which is the basis of the SOR instructional narrative. The authors suggest a new model of reading, the Active View of Reading, which encompasses word recognition instruction, plus motivation and engagement, fluency, vocabulary, flexibility, and language comprehension.

Armed with the insight that comes from the Active View of Reading, let's see how a conversation with a concerned parent might go. Our teacher is a classroom teacher, Mrs. Hannah Jones, working with first grader Johnny Smith. It is the end of October. Johnny had entered first grade with some concerns reported by the kindergarten teacher that he seemed to have difficulty with hearing and recording sounds in words. While he had developed about 25 sight words and could write about 20 words on his own, his progress in decoding unfamiliar words was not as expected. In most tasks in school, Johnny was bright and eager, but he was not generally engaged by literacy activities and his attention to these tasks seemed to waiver. Some reversals ( b, d ,e, r) were evident in his written work. Johnny's mother, Amanda Smith, has requested an update on his progress.

Hannah Jones: Thank you for contacting me to talk about Johnny's progress in reading. Now that I have been working with Johnny for about a month, I have had a chance to get to know him as a person and as a learner, so this seems a good time to meet.

Amanda Smith: Yes, thank you. I am very concerned about Johnny. The kindergarten teacher gave me a heads up that Johnny seemed to have trouble learning new words and hearing letter sounds, so I want to make sure he is getting the instruction he needs.

HJ: That's what we all want here as well. Can you tell me a little bit about Johnny at home. What does he like to do?

AS: Well, Johnny is obsessed with baseball. Most of the time at home he is either playing catch or bugging his dad to pitch to him or just throwing a ball against the garage wall. He likes to watch baseball on tv, too. I swear he would sleep with his baseball bat, if I would let him. He's very active, likes running around. It can be hard to just get him to sit down long enough to eat dinner.

HJ: How about his interaction around books or writing?

AS: Well, I try to read to him at night before bed, but he is usually pretty impatient about that. I gave him a journal, but he doesn't choose to write in it that I know of. Sometimes he draws pictures and writes on them. I have noticed his spelling is pretty bad and that he reverses some letters. Do you think he should be tested for dyslexia? My husband said he had trouble learning to read when he was in first and second grade.

HJ: Well, Mrs. Jones, I have noticed his difficulty with hearing sounds in words and reversals, and it is true that some perceptual difficulties can be inherited, but I believe these are issues we can work on through instruction. That instruction would not be different if Johnny were identified as dyslexic. What I think is important here is that Johnny get the instruction he needs and that is what I would like to focus on.

AS: Well, I am very concerned about that. I have talked to some neighbors and they say that unless he is classified as dyslexic he won't get the instruction he needs.

HJ: I hope you will find that that is not true in this school district or this classroom, Mrs. Jones. In fact, I would like to to talk to you about that instruction now.

AS: Well, good. I've been reading about that, too. I know that schools have not done a very good job with instruction for kids like Johnny. That article in the New York Times a couple of years ago laid it all out. This Science of Reading. It seems to me that that is the kind of reading instruction Johnny needs, a focus on phonics. Everybody is saying that schools don't teach phonics and I know that Johnny certainly needs that, so I hope that is what you are talking about.

HJ: Mrs. Jones, Johnny certainly needs good instruction in how words work and in the phonics knowledge that will help him discover how they work, I assure you that Johnny will receive that instruction, but I want to also assure you that Johnny will receive much more than that. Since the Science of Reading work was done in the 1980s, we have learned that many things influence a child's learning to read. Decoding, guided by phonics knowledge, is one important one. Instruction in this area will include phonological awareness, that is, hearing the sounds in words, like the word cat has three sounds (k-a-t). Instruction will also focus on how to blend those sounds into words. In learning about words we need to also look at how words are spelled, what we call orthography. So, we will also spend time on learning spelling patterns, like how the word ship is made up of two parts sh- and ip. As part of our instruction in decoding we will do considerable writing using invented spelling. As Johnny writes words on the page, he will learn to stretch out the sounds of the words and try to write down what he hears. This type of writing has been shown to help readers develop their ability to hear sounds in words.

Also very important is comprehension - understanding what we read. Comprehension is the central goal of reading and we also know that comprehension, the attempt to make sense, helps readers decode words. We can work on comprehension through our daily read alouds in class as well in stories that we use for reading instruction. Talking about what might happen in the story not only helps with comprehension, it also helps with word identification. We will also work on reading fluency, which is the ability to read aloud so that it sounds like talking. Fluency is what we would call a "bridging" activity that helps readers connect decoding ability with comprehension. We often practice fluency with short pieces of text that children read over and over until they can read it with ease.

Finally, we also need to focus on Johnny's motivation to read. We know that good instruction in decoding and comprehension needs to be reinforced by having Johnny do lots of reading on his own. Because Johnny is struggling right now, he may not be as willing to engage in this type of reading. Here is where Johnny's obsession with baseball can help us. I have already begun to gather as many books about baseball that I think Johnny can read as I can. Since Johnny knows a lot about baseball, he will already know many of the words he encounters there. If we can help Johnny have success in some reading in a topic he already knows well and is interested in, we may be able to extend his interest to other topics moving forward. Johnny's baseball love should also help us with engaging him in writing, about games he has played or baseball rules or games he has watched. Finally, his interest in baseball may help us expand his decoding ability by using words like bat, ball, base, throw, pitch and run as anchor words for learning other words that fit those patterns.

So as you see, we have a good deal of work to do, but I think an approach that considers all the variables of an active reader will support Johnny the best.

AS: Well, ok, as long as you can assure me he will get that phonics instruction he needs.

HJ: He will.

AS: What can I do at home?

HJ: Continue with your read alouds and talking about what you read. You might consider an arrangement where you choose the reading one night and Johnny the next. Also, you might consider reading to him about baseball from articles in the newspaper or magazines, even the backs of baseball cards can provide some interesting reading. Continue to take advantage of opportunities to write -even making shopping lists. Encourage Johnny to stretch out the words and replicate the sounds he hears. Also, I will be sending home books that we have read in school. Have Johnny read them to you at home for practice. Encourage him to read as smoothly and fluently as he can. He can repeat these readings as many times as you can get him to do it.

AS: Ok. I guess we'll see how it goes.

HJ: Yes. Let's check back in two months and see what progress we notice.

We need to push back at the Science of Reading/Dyslexia narrative by acknowledging parent concern, demonstrating knowledge of the individual child, clearly explaining our instructional goals, and most of all, delivering on our responsibility to meet every child where they are and providing the instruction they need.

For the next post in this series, I would like to look at fighting back at the SOR Narrative through teacher professional development.

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Defeating the Science of Reading Narrative, Part 2: Talking to a Parent

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In my first post in this series on how teachers and literacy specialists can push back at the Science of Reading (SOR) narrative currently dominating reading instruction conversation and legislation, I leaned on the work of Peter Johnston and Deborah Scanlon in their report An Examination of Dyslexia Research and Instruction to argue that dyslexia is not a useful term, and that the SOR narrative, with its focus on word level instruction, casts literacy learning in too narrow a light.

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It’s Not Settled Science or Rocket Science, and It’s Not Your Science, It’s Our Science

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It’s Not Settled Science or Rocket Science, and It’s Not Your Science, It’s Our Science

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Many well-credentialed researchers have indicated "we are not there yet" in developing the one true, everyone-agrees-on-it science of reading.

For instance, the researchers writing in the recent special editions of the Reading Research Quarterly have said it's not settled science https://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/resource-documents/rrq-sor-executive-summary.pdf?sfvrsn=2561bc8e_6&sfvrsn=2561bc8e_6

Researchers of the National Education Policy Center have said it's not settled science https://nepc.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/publications/FYI%20Ed%20Deans%20reading.pdf

David Reinking, Victoria J. Risko and George G. Hruby have said it's not settled science. See their interview in the Washington Post, where they give considerable research to back up that point of view. All three of them are researchers with excellent credentials and long histories in the field of research.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/01/26/readingwars-scienceofreading-teaching/?fbclid=IwAR2W1f15WjXiZ7ymdGldr9KLwl0MVpHLoB7kDkVpBA-a2dtb5ESHV5l8M-
Dr. George Hruby from the Collaborative Center for Literacy Development also created a brief U Tube Video indicating that it is not settled science. (The video is a headline service- also see Dr. Hruby's considerable work on this issue for the details) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lan72cVDRg

There are simply too many well-credentialed researchers questioning the conclusions of the so-called Science of Reading group for that group to claim that the issues around the teaching of reading are settled. This excerpt from the Washington Post article cited earlier sums that position up the best:
"Phonics is the prime example. Few legitimate experts on teaching reading oppose teaching children phonics. Despite a timeworn narrative, there is no sharply drawn battle line dividing experts who completely support or completely oppose phonics.
Instead, reasonable differences exist along a continuum. (Emphasis is mine) On one end are those who see phonics as the foundation of learning to read for all students. To them, phonics - lots of it - is the essential ingredient that ensures success for all students learning to read, and it must be mastered before other dimensions of reading are taught.
On the other end are those who see phonics as only one among many dimensions of learning to read - one that gains potency when integrated with meaningfully engaged reading and writing, with vocabulary and language development, with instruction aimed at increasing comprehension and fluency, and so forth. (For an extended discussion, Underlying that continuum is the question of whether a deficiency in phonics is at the root of virtually all reading difficulties, or whether, like many medical conditions (e.g., heart disease), those difficulties have multiple etiologies, including external factors, such as impoverished school resources to support students. There are also reasonable professional differences about what phonics instruction should look like, how much of it is necessary, for whom, under what circumstances, and how it connects with other aspects of reading. But there is no justification for characterizing these differences as a "reading war" between those who believe in phonics and those who don't." It's not just your Science (rocket science) click on this.) Widely Used Programs Are Uninformative or Misleading Inadequately prepared novice teachers often find themselves dependent on the information given in the teachers' manuals that accompany virtually all commercially available reading programs to learn about spoken and written language concepts and to generate strategies for teaching students to read. Many of the most widely used classroom teaching manuals and materials in language arts omit systematic teaching about speech sounds, the spelling system, or how to read words by sounding them out. The most popular programs being used today are relatively strong on literature, illustrations, cross-disciplinary thematic units, and motivational strategies for children, but very weak or simply wrong when it comes to the structure of the English language and how children actually learn to read the words on the page.26 Ideally, students should be asked to apply code-based skills during reading, spelling, and writing, and there should be sufficient time prescribed for instruction in all essential components.
Most prominent in the attempt to lay exclusive claim to the term "Science of Reading" are the followers of Dr. Louise Moats. She restated her position on the teaching of reading in a report entitled Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science, 2020 . This document is an update of a title by the same name published over 20 years ago. Here is a link to a pdf of that report LINK.

This is a key takeaway from that report:

Her followers have attacked balanced literacy practices, including but not limited to attacks on Reading Recovery, Reading and Writing Workshop, and Guided Reading. Lately, the attacks have become more and more vitriolic. Practitioners using balanced literacy practices are vilified if they try to defend those practices on social media. The practices are referred to as "failed practices." Anyone defending them is viewed as a liar or worse. Defenders are subjected to ridicule, sarcasm, and name-calling. This myth of failed practices has been repeated so often on social media and other places that it has become widely believed. BTW this is a variation on the public relations tactic known as the big lie. Instead of the big lie- it is the big half-truth. More on that in a minute. Let's sum up the situation this way:
It's Our Science, the Sciences of Reading- btw the "s" is there on purpose
So, a shiny new rocket will replace all the current dismal practices, and all will be well. The circle representing current practices is grey, denoting the array of practices being used in districts today and the fact that they are all failing by and large. Sounds plausible. There are several huge problems about this view that we will now discuss. First, like all its predecessors before, the shiny new rocket works for SOME, not for ALL students. The statistics "proving" the SOR works have been subject to many challenges, including those made by my new friend and future co-presenter, Dr. P.L. Thomas LINK.

Given that, students for whom the shiny new rocket doesn't work will eventually begin viewing it as the dismal grey rocket. That will eventually lead to a new pretender coming to do battle with the proponents of the shiny new rocket. And the pendulum of instruction will swing yet again. My very first blog about the reading wars is on exactly that point LINK. Here's an alternate way of looking at this conundrum.

The term Science of Reading belongs to ALL of us following science, and there are many different credible views of what constitutes science. What follows is my centrist's perspective on the Reading Wars.

The shiny new rocket won't work for all. It has no room on board for the Word Callers. It is only powered by half of the available engines. It has synthetic phonics but effectively rejects analytic phonics. Yet research indicates that when done systematically, both forms of phonics work LINK. It uses quantitative research and effectively rejects all qualitative research viewing that as a weaker form of research. In point of fact, qualitative research is actually a different form of research, a form of research that seems perfectly suited to the incredibly complex phenomena we study in education and the even more complex environment in which these phenomena play out. As a centrist, I look at ALL the research, both quantitative and qualitative. Looking at just quantitative research gives a limited and limiting view of the phenomena being studied. We need the information provided by both kinds of research in order to try to make some sense of what goes on as we go about the complex business of educating children.

And by the way, there is plenty of evidence that the so-called "failed practices," in fact, can and do work for many many children. Consider the example of Reading Recovery. I've written about that many times LINK, LINK, LINK. Be warned that the charge that its learning doesn't stick fails to account for what happens when the students return to the main program of a district LINK. Also, look at the recent results from Calkin's workshop projects. LINK. That just doesn't look like failed practices to me. And there's lots more where that came from. Perhaps teachers from districts where things are going well (and there are many such districts) might want to share some of what is happening in their district. That invitation is to teachers in districts using practices inspired by SOR and teachers in districts using practices inspired by BL. Most especially, it is made to teachers in districts using combinations of the two.

In my 50 plus years in education, I've had a lot of direct experience with programs using practices suggested by balanced literacy. Overall that experience has shown that BL practices can and do work when carried out with fidelity and adjusted for local circumstances. In the mid-1980s, three different Title 1 reading programs I worked in were found to be exceptionally effective by the Secretary of Education. They were given the Secretary's Award- placing them in the top 1/10 of 1 percent of the programs of the time. At the turn of the current century, circa the year 2000, one of those programs was replaced with a basal known for its structured approach to phonics. Over the next few years, reading scores for the district plummeted. Moving into more recent times, when awards went out to top districts for exceptional programs in education in my state of Missouri- several of the districts named were known for their use of Balanced Literacy programs. I've done in-service work for districts using F&P, and the reading scores were more than satisfactory.
Finding common ground and practices: Is it a lost cause, or is there hope?
BTW some advocates of the so-called SOR tried to explain the phenomena of districts with successful BL practices by saying that some students learn regardless of the methods used (TRUE). They then say that the success of BL practices can be explained by it being created by students who would have learned anyway (FALSE). Why do I say false? How plausible is it that ALL of the gains/success in the districts I've just talked about were from students that would have learned anyway? Hmmm, top 1/10 of 1 percent of all districts nationally and three different times, I was lucky enough to be working in districts that were comprised of kids who would have learned anyway in our district during those years. Really?

I talked to some people in a Twitter thread I've been involved in in the past couple of weeks about their attempt to spread this half-truth about the success of BL being built solely on scores from kids who would have done well anyway. I asked them for an actual study to prove that contention. I got many excuses about why such a study isn't possible, but no links to a properly implemented study. In addition, they were also unable to provide studies based on a sample of districts using BL practices with fidelity showing that BL doesn't work. BTW- without such a study, they have no right to call BL a failure. I'll be talking more about what such a study might look like in the next section. So, let me now suggest a slightly different way of analyzing today's situation. I'm using the same grey circle of current practices but adding something missing from the first model. I'll be using my model to explain why I think there is hope for finding some common ground and common practices.
"This back and forth, however, was never helpful for children or meaningful in terms of classroom instruction. As David Pearson wrote in 2004: 'Interestingly, the debate, accompanied by its warlike metaphors, appears to have more life in the public and professional press than it does in our schools. Reporters and scholars revel in keeping the debate alive and well, portraying clearly divided sides and detailing a host of differences of a philosophical, political, and pedagogical nature. Teachers, by contrast, often talk about, and more important enact, more balanced approaches. For example, several scholars, in documenting the practices of highly effective, highly regarded teachers, found that these exemplary teachers employed a wide array of practices, some of which appear decidedly whole language in character (e.g., process writing, literature groups, and contextualized skills practice) and some of which appear remarkably skills-oriented (explicit phonics lessons, sight word practice, and comprehension strategy instruction). Exemplary teachers appear to find an easier path to balance than either scholars or policy pundits.' "
When I interviewed my newfound friend and colleague P.L. Thomas, LINK, as part of my preparation for the upcoming LitCon Conference, he indicated that he was less hopeful than I seemed to be about finding common ground. On the one hand, if finding common ground relies on a dialogue between the two sides at the far ends of the continuum mention by David Reinking et al., there is almost no hope. Both sides are so entrenched in their beliefs, and both are so convinced the other side is totally and utterly wrong that there is no room for any real dialogue. Let's look over my current situation model and see if some hope can be found by looking at things from the middle.

Being a teacher, I added gold stars, gold circles and gold rockets to the grey circles of districts carrying out practices that aren't working. Teachers always seem to like gold stars! There's a bit more to it than that. Within that sea of districts doing things poorly or doing things not at all, there are districts doing things well and doing them with fidelity. Some of them use practice inspired by BL (gold stars) and others by SOR (gold rockets). Maybe some of them do things inspired by other views about the learning process (gold circles). Let's also remember that some of them are being inspired to carry out practices based on more than one point of view, e.g., the rocket & star inside the same black circle. P.D. Pearson had something important to say about that final group. This quote is from the National Education Policy Center document referenced earlier in this blog entry LINK:

Research demonstrates that exemplary teachers use both. What a concept!
In Conclusion:
I use diagram two to explain my call for research demonstrating the efficacy (or lack of it) when evaluating BL. To do a proper study of BL, one must draw a sample of districts using BL practices with fidelity. The practices must be ones that current proponents of BL advocate (not strawmen practices circa the 1960s). The measurements used must include a direct measure of reading comprehension. If you want to make it a comparative study, you must also draw a like sample of districts using practices advocated by whatever branch of the SOR you wish to study. So, after three-plus years of asking for such a study, I've gotten everything but. Mainly what I've gotten are studies I classify as "wind tunnel test studies." You see, when airplanes are certified for flight, one of the preliminary kinds of test done is a wind tunnel test. The final part of airplane certification involves actual flying tests, using the actual plane, in real circumstances, e.g., flying between two cities. Some folks from the so-called SOR movement seem to want to make huge policy changes based on what are clearly preliminary/tentative results. They want to skip important middle steps in the normal process of applying research to educational practices. IMO, before suggesting major changes, they need to provide studies fitting the final gold standard of applying research to educational practices. That gold standard would be studies done evaluating the implementation of selected practices in actual district settings over several years, using reading tests that measure both decoding and comprehension. The comprehension measurement needs to be direct and resemble the testing used in many state-wide tests of reading. Duke has described such standards. You'll find that in the chart in my blog entry referencing her ideas about reading being much more than just decoding words LINK.
This entry is the final one in my series of op-eds about the reading wars. While I may pick up this topic again sometime in the future, in the coming weeks, I'm trying to line up some literacy leaders who will be sharing their ideas on how we might better serve our students.
Speaking of Nell Duke, for me, her newest proposed model for studying reading holds the most hope for finding common ground and common practices. Remember Duke is first and foremost a researcher. She doesn't take sides or fit on a side. What she does do is what researchers are supposed to do. Researchers are supposed to find the cutting edge of our current knowledge and then push our knowledge into areas where it has never been before. Like all good researchers, she is not out to prove anything. She is out to discover something- new knowledge and new understanding. Her new model of reading takes "The Rope" and augments it with her considerable knowledge of the literacy process. You can read all about it in the special edition of The Missouri Reader. The Missouri Reader is a state journal of reading. In the way of full disclosure, I am the Co-Editor of that journal. I think that her model is one example of the kind of research that could discover common ground upon which we all could agree. Here is the link to the issue containing her article LINK.
Copyright 2021 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely the view of this author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.
In sum, I think there is hope for finding common ground and common practices. I think the search for common ground is most likely to be carried out by centrists, open-minded folks willing to learn from all sides. Those that know my work know that I am willing to do just that. I've blogged before about how, based on advice from Shanahan, an empiricist with whom I do not always agree, I now use both predictable and decodable books with my beginning readers. I've done so and I've been pleased with the results LINK. So have my teachers, parents and administrators. Let's do begin the journey of locating the common ground. Let's call a truce on the talk about what divides us. Let's talk for a time about the things on which all sides might agree. I'm sure that one of those areas of agreement could be to do a better job teaching phonics (all forms of phonics). So, this is Dr. Sam signing off. I'm still that guy in the middle happily taking flak from all sides. I do so because my kids are worth it.

Dr. Sam

PS If you found the blog through Facebook or Twitter, please consider following the blog to make sure you won't miss it. Use the "follow" entry on the sidebar of the blog.
As indicated earlier, both J.L. Thomas and I are doing individual sessions. We are also doing a joint session with emphasis on allowing time for people to ask questions about the literacy issues we raise.
In addition to doing our separate sessions at LitCon P.L. Thomas and I have now scheduled a joint session where we will review our key ideas and also open the floor to questions about what we've said.

Here is a link to the LitCon conference, which will be held this January in Columbus, Ohio LINK

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It's Not Settled Science or Rocket Science, and It's Not Your Science, It's Our Science: A Centrist's Perspective on the Reading Wars. By Dr. Sam Bommarito

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It's Not Settled Science Many well-credentialed researchers have indicated "we are not there yet" in developing the one true, everyone-agrees-on-it science of reading. For instance, the researchers writing in the recent special editions of the Reading Research Quarterly have said it's not settled science https://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/resource-documents/rrq-sor-executive-summary.pdf?sfvrsn=2561bc8e_6&sfvrsn=2561bc8e_6 Researchers of the National Education Policy Center have said it's...

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Duke, N.K., & Cartwright, K.B. (2021). The Science of Reading progresses:Communicating beyond the Simple View of Reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1),S25-S44.

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Duke, N.K., & Cartwright, K.B. (2021). The Science of Reading progresses:Communicating beyond the Simple View of Reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1),S25-S44.

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The Sciences of Reading Part 3- The Reading Research Quarterly Executive Summary/Thoughts About Comments Concerning Last Week's Post

This week I'm wrapping up the topic of the Sciences of Reading and dealing with a couple of issues raised by critics of my first two posts. By the way, collectively, those posts have gotten almost 10,000 views, and their response has been overwhelmingly positive.

First, Let's see what The Reading Research Quarterly Executive Summary has to say about the Science of Reading. Here is the link.

These are taken directly from the summary:

"As coeditors of RRQ, a leading global journal that provides the latest research and scholarship on literacy, we saw an opportunity to put together a special issue of the journal focused on what's at the heart of this debate: science. Our goal for this project was never to decide which is the "right" side of the debate but to help us be better consumers and creators of information. The compilation of articles in this special issue, as well as those that will appear in the second special issue in spring 2021, examine SOR through a broader, more inclusive lens. Together, these pieces bring a supportive and critical perspective to the conversations, and identify next steps for the field."

It goes on to say:

"We started to solicit opinions on SOR and what the term meant to people both in and outside of the field. It quickly became clear that, not only was there no single definition, there was also no consensus as to what has been cited to inform theory, research, policy, and practice in the name of SOR" BOLDING MINE

It also indicates:

"What is important here is that the authors almost universally emphasized that narrow interpretations of SOR (often taken up by the media to make its way into practice, policies, and schools) are problematic. BOLDING MINE Taken together, the articles in this special issue suggest that SOR is both a body of knowledge (defined broadly by researchers and scholars) and an interpretation of that body of knowledge (often defined narrowly by audiences outside the academy). The authors in this special issue push back on the idea that SOR be characterized by support for or opposition to phonics instruction."

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The appendix of this document contains 26 key points to consider. Overall, my takeaway from these points supports the notion that the narrow interpretations of SOR that have found their way into the media are incomplete, sometimes inaccurate and counterproductive. Some things that caught my attention in the RRQ paper include:

" results from six experimental studies to suggest the 'value of teaching students to use both alphabetic and contextual information in word solving in interactive and confirmatory ways.' Unlike the position advocated by SOR groups who criticize use of the three-cueing system, Scanlon and Anderson emphasize that "the thrust of our argument is that the use of context can be a valuable assist for word solving both when a student's knowledge of the code is still developing and when inconsistencies in English orthography result in only an approximate pronunciation of a word." From section one.

"that the lack of clarity in terminology weakens our understanding of dyslexia. Elliot writes, "Despite the vast proliferation of scientific research, our understanding of dyslexia is marked by serious weaknesses of conceptualization, definition, and operationalization that are not only unscientific, but also result in impoverished practice in schools, social inequity in both understanding and provision for many struggling readers, and ultimately, reduced life chances for millions of students worldwide." From Section 4.

"Overall, the authors push on the narrow conceptualization of SOR and also suggest that multicomponent language interventions may be helpful, as they "have tended to be more effective in improving reading and listening comprehension than single-component interventions have (e.g., Connor et al., 2018)." From Section 12.

"emphasizes that reading is complex and multifaceted. The authors explore "a confluence of complexity across: (a) theoretical models of reading based on empirical research, (b) emerging information related to the brain and reading, and (c) research findings based on close observations of young learners." This embracing of the complexity of reading "challenges instructional approaches (e.g., structured literacy) that deny or ignore the multidimensional and networked nature of young learners' reading processes and/or unique literacy learning trajectories." From Section 14

"If our goal is to determine how best to teach reading, then we must rely on data that evaluate the effectiveness of teaching, rather than depending solely or even mainly on studies of reading processes or of other non-instructional phenomena, which are then applied to teaching through analogy or logical deduction or from premature conclusions drawn from empirical investigations that do no more than describe or correlate. The role of basic research in shaping instruction quite appropriately lies either in identifying pedagogical innovations that can be evaluated through studies of instruction or in providing evidence that further buttresses or explains the results of such experimental pedagogical study." From Section 17

"in contrast to the SOR's instruction of skills in isolation, adaptive teaching emphasizes an approach to pedagogy that focuses on teaching within authentic opportunities for learning, valuing the individuality of students, and connecting their cultural and linguistic strengths (Duffy, 2005; Fairbanks et al., 2010; Gambrell, Hughes, Calvert, Malloy, & Igo, 2011; Purcell-Gates, Duke, & Martineau, 2007; Purcell-Gates, Duke, & Stouffer, 2016). Adaptive teachers are flexible and skilled at teaching reading, using knowledge of reading acquisition and embedding instruction within students' instructional needs and their rich literacies, cultures, and backgrounds." Bolding is mine Section 22

My Conclusions:

All these takeaways from this document lead me to the conclusion that I stated earlier. The pronouncements of SOME, not all, of the SOR folks who indicate they have found the one true path that we all must follow are at best premature and are, at worst. completely misleading and counterproductive. On the one hand it is entirely true that we need to do a much better job of providing all teachers the basic knowledge they need about teaching decoding and especially develop in them a more complete understanding of orthography. On the other hand, however, we can't discount the decades of work around the reading process/meaning-making part. We must teach students how to use both alphabetic and contextual information in the process of word solving. We must also teach our teachers how to scaffold children into using comprehension strategies- using instructional models based on gradual release. There is no one size fits all solution. LINK

Most of all, we need to learn to listen to one another and learn from each other's craft. I had one comment about last week's blog postings & tweets indicating that balanced literacy advocates encourage readers to memorize whole words. She maintained that Kindergarteners taking part in a model video of choral reading were not reading at all. They were simply regurgitating the text entirely from memory. A careful study of the program being used would reveal that the children from that video take part in word work on a daily basis and are using a systematic phonics program. They are not just reading from memory. By the way, they are also encouraged to talk about what they have learned about what they've read.

Taking such narrow, inaccurate views about what "the other side" is doing is not limited to SOR folks. I've heard some balanced literacy folks intimate that using a systematic phonics approach precludes children from ever doing meaning-making. I visited an EBLI site, which has a strong SOR focus. It uses a form of systematic phonics. I promise you there is more on their minds than simply decoding. Their children do talk about their stories, and EBLI uses a full reading test for their program evaluation. I've said before, let's argue less and talk more. It's time for ALL sides to do that.

At the end of the day, I believe that the solution to the problem of how to best teach reading doesn't lie in adopting this program or that one. I believe it lies in creating the kind of teachers that can make effective use of many programs. These teachers should be allowed to adapt what they do to best fit the child. Districts should have a variety of programs to choose from. The final decision of what program to use should be made by the district. They are the ones that know their children best. Mandating one size fits all programs at a state or national level guarantees that some districts will find that there is no program available that fits their children.

I am a firm believer in fitting the program to the child, not the other way around. One of my critics last week indicated that I was guilty of pie in the sky thinking. She intimated that there are too many young, inexperienced teachers and that they would not be able to learn such things. I must respectfully disagree. Districts can and do use mentor teachers to help beginning teachers in that kind of situation. It is time to create the kind of teachers described in section 22. These teachers are " Adaptive teachers (who) are flexible and skilled at teaching reading, using knowledge of reading acquisition and embedding instruction within students' instructional needs and their rich literacies, cultures, and backgrounds." It's time to task those teachers with the job of implementing the programs. It's time for teachers, not programs, to be the key to improving reading instruction. I think everyone would do well to read and reread The First Grade Studies (Guy Bond & Robert Dykstra, 1967/1997). LINK I've talked about them before. It's been over 50 years since this pioneering comprehensive study first concluded that teachers make more difference than programs. Isn't it well past time for us to act on that finding?

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The Sciences of Reading Part 3- The Reading Research Quarterly Executive Summary/Thoughts About Comments Concerning Last Week's Post by Dr. Sam Bommarito

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The Sciences of Reading Part 3- The Reading Research Quarterly Executive Summary/Thoughts About Comments Concerning Last Week's Post This week I'm wrapping up the topic of the Sciences of Reading and dealing with a couple of issues raised by critics of my first two posts. By the way, collectively, those posts have gotten almost 10,000...

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The instructional materials for Kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2 do not meet the expectations of alignment. The texts included in the materials are not appropriately complex for the grade level and do not build in complexity over the course of the year.

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A Response to EdReports’ Assessment of Units of Study for Teaching Reading, Writing and Phonics | Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

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Two of the nation's most popular early literacy programs that have been at the center of a debate over how to best teach reading both faced more new critiques in the past few weeks, receiving bottom marks on an outside evaluation of their materials.

EdReports-a nonprofit organization that reviews K-12 instructional materials in English/language arts, math, and science- published its evaluation of Fountas and Pinnell Classroom Tuesday, finding that the program didn't meet expectations for text quality or alignment to standards. The release comes on the heels of the group's negative evaluation last month of the Units of Study from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, another popular early reading program.

Together, the two reports received the lowest ratings EdReports has given for K-2 curricula in English/language arts, and they're among the three lowest for ELA in grades 3-8.

"The materials don't reflect the shifts-text quality and complexity-especially in K-2," said Stephanie Stephens, EdReports' ELA content specialist for early literacy, referencing key components of the Common Core State Standards-a big part of the organization's review criteria.

These two literacy brands, both published by Heinemann, command large shares of the early reading market.

How these programs attend to foundational skills-teaching students to recognize and manipulate the sounds in words, and then matching those sounds to written letters-is one of the main focuses of the critique. It's also something that EdReports turned a renewed attention toward.

In its two responses to the reviews on the EdReports website, Heinemann wrote that the EdReports' rubrics aren't a good fit for programs like Fountas and Pinnell Classroom and Units of Study.

"FPC greatly values the importance of responsive teaching and the teacher agency required to adjust, extend, and enrich learning based on individual student needs," reads one response. "The EdReports rubric provides no way to measure these deeply valuable components of an effective literacy system."

This ethos of teacher agency is one of the reasons that Fountas and Pinnell and the Units of Study are so popular with educators. Both give teachers, and oftentimes students, choice over materials and activities. Still, the EdReports reviews could affect whether schools continue to use them, said Morgan Polikoff, an associate professor of education at USC Rossier who studies K-12 curriculum and standards.

Kareem Weaver, a member of the Oakland NAACP Education Committee and the co-founder of FULCRUM, an Oakland group that advocates for evidence-based literacy instruction, said that the reviews could provide the impetus for school districts to reconsider the use of programs that he says don't work for all kids.

"I'm really hoping it will make people do a double take," he said.

Reviews critique text complexity, foundational skills

Since its launch in 2015, EdReports has recruited educators-teachers and other instructional leaders-to conduct its reviews, and to develop the rubrics used to judge materials. These rubrics measure alignment to the Common Core State Standards, usability in a classroom setting, and other indicators of quality, such as text complexity.

The company is one of the few organizations that provides external evaluations of curricula, and its reviews have a wide reach: As of 2020, EdReports said that at least 1,084 districts use its reviews, including 89 of the 200 largest districts in the country. (There are about 13,400 school districts in the United States.)

Fountas and Pinnell Classroom failed to pass the first gateway. In K-2, reviewers said that core texts didn't meet standards for quality or complexity, and that speaking and writing assignments didn't require students to use evidence from the texts they read. EdReports also critiqued Fountas and Pinnell's text leveling system, which it said was "not accompanied by an accurate text complexity analysis and a rationale for educational purpose and placement in the grade level." The group gave a similar evaluation for the program in grades 3-8.

While the K-2 program's word study lessons teach phonics, "the program does not present a research-based or evidence-based explanation for the sequence" of instruction, reviewers found. The report also claims that the program doesn't consistently devote enough time to systematic instruction in phonological awareness, phonics, and fluency.

Units of Study also didn't pass EdReports' first gateway, which measures alignment to the common core. For grades K-2, reviewers said that texts featured in the materials "are not appropriately complex for the grade level and do not build in complexity over the course of the year." They also noted that the program focused mostly on reading skills instruction, rather than "questions and tasks aligned to grade-level standards," like asking students to use information from the text to support opinions.

Instruction in foundational reading skills like phonological awareness and phonics, they said, "lacks a cohesive and intentional scope and sequence." The review also notes that the materials rely on cueing strategies for word identification: prompting students to draw on pictures, context, and sentence structure-along with letters-to figure out what words say. But research has shown that pulling students'attention away from the letters can lower the chances that they'll use their knowledge of letter-sound correspondences to read through a word, making it less likely that they'll be able to map the spelling to the spoken word in their memory.

Reviewers found text complexity lacking in grades 3-8, as well, and they said that the program lacks "a variety of regular, standards-aligned, text-based listening and speaking opportunities," as well as opportunities for on-demand writing and systematic vocabulary development.

Not every program reviewed against EdReports' new rubric received low marks. Open Court, the third program reviewed with the new tools, fared better. It partially met expectations at the first gateway, and also at the second gateway, which measures knowledge building. In grades K-2, reviewers reported a research-based approach to foundational skills instruction, but noted that there wasn't enough practice with encoding-hearing sounds and converting them into written language.

Reviewers said that only some texts were "appropriately complex for the grade level," and also said that the program missed opportunities for standards-aligned activities. They had the same critique for the grades 3-5 materials.

Publishers claim that EdReports tool is mismatched to their approach

As part of the review process, EdReports solicits publisher responses to its evaluations, posted publicly on its website. McGraw Hill, which publishes Open Court, and Heinemann both critiqued the review process in their responses.

The McGraw Hill response claimed that EdReports had overlooked end-of-unit opportunities for students to demonstrate knowledge, citing the curriculum's unit-long "Inquiry" process.

Heinemann criticized the EdReports review process for omitting texts that students read outside of whole-group instruction.

In Units of Study, students only spend limited time in a whole-group "minilesson," before moving on to the reading workshop, during which they apply the skills taught in the minilesson to independent reading, reading with a partner, or working with the teacher one-on-one or in small groups. FPC is structured similarly, with whole-class minilessons but also guided reading, independent reading, and student book clubs.

Heinemann's responses argue that EdReports' review design prioritizes textbook-style reading curricula, and fails to capture the quality of texts that students might read on their own or in small groups. The publisher did not respond to EdReports' critiques of foundational skills instruction.

Stephens, of EdReports, said the group is not discriminating based on design and approach, but rather evaluating whether students have guaranteed access to grade-level text. "If they're using independent reading at their level, there's not a guarantee that's at grade level," she said.

Separately, Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, the program's namesakes and founding authors, have begun to publish a 10-part blog series rebutting claims that their program is not aligned to reading science.

In the series, the authors defend their program's use of cueing and other strategies that are central to their materials but which studies have shows are ineffective, like leveled reading groups.

"This is always the challenge of applying a rubric to things that differ in a lot of ways. It's an imperfect science," said Polikoff, of USC Rossier. "The question is, is it better than not having it? And to me, the answer is yes."

EdReports is working with one set of criteria, and can give teachers information about how programs line up according to that criteria-information that is often hard to come by, Polikoff said. There aren't many avenues for teachers to find third-party evaluations of materials, he added.

Matthew Alexander, the director of elementary literacy and numeracy for Hall County Schools in Gainesville, Ga., said his district relies both on outside evaluation and internal data in making decisions about what programs to use.

Hall County uses one piece of Fountas and Pinnell Classroom-the Phonics, Spelling, and Word Study component-across its 20 elementary schools. The district also use its Benchmark Assessment System.

Alexander plans to discuss the review with other leaders in the school system, as it relates to their phonics instruction. But he's hesitant to make any quick changes, because Hall County only started using Phonics, Spelling, and Word Study in the 2019-20 school year, right before the pandemic hit.

"If we were seeing that in our schools, that our kids were not making gains as readers, we would certainly look to see if we would shift our resources in a different direction. But with just three years of non-typical data, it's hard to make that statement," Alexander said.

Review tool changes address foundational skills, program 'bloat'

The low ratings on some indicators in these reviews stem from changes to EdReports' review tools.

In 2020, EdReports announced its first revision to its criteria and its evidence guides-a sort of handbook for reviewers that helps them identify evidence that programs meet, or don't meet, the criteria. Part of this update are two key changes to how reviewers evaluate English/language arts materials.

One has to do with how reviewers approach foundational skills instruction in K-5. Criteria and evidence guides are more specific about when and how these skills should be taught.

For example, criteria that require systematic and explicit teaching in the alphabetic principle, phonemic awareness, phonics, and other skills has now been split into four subcategories, each with its own grade-by-grade breakdown of what students should be able to do in the evidence guide.

The revision brings the comprehensive ELA reviews more in line with the stricter criteria in stand-alone reviews of foundational skills, which EdReports launched in 2019, said Stephens. This way, she said, comprehensive reading programs will be judged as rigorously on their foundational skills components.

Still, Stephens thinks that the programs reviewed under the revised tools would have fared similarly under the originals. The revision provided "clarity," she said, rather than an entire new scoring system.

The other change to the review process concerns what EdReports calls program "bloat."

If a program says, for example, take 15 minutes a day for reading and 20 minutes for foundational skills, is that actually doable with the materials provided? Or is there too much content to feasibly get through? The program should offer a "clear and concise" pathway through the standards, Stephens said.

EdReports has also made some changes to its math review process, and has updated its criteria for gateway 3, which measures usability, across all subjects.

"These standards are much better for identifying practices in programs that are wildly off base. They're a pretty good firewall in recognizing the programs that are wildly misaligned with reading science and with practices that have been shown to be ineffective with most kids. ... That's really good," she said.

Still, she said, even if a program passes the review, its success or failure is going to come down to how the skills are taught in the classroom.

Weaver, in Oakland, said that the field needs more information about the effectiveness of popular reading materials. "What [EdReports] doesn't do is it doesn't talk about student achievement results. It doesn't talk about how kids do with the program. And that's fine, because they don't claim to do that. But a lot of districts think they do," he said.

"Alignment with the standards is the bare minimum that we should be able to expect from the curriculum," Weaver said.

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New Curriculum Review Gives Failing Marks to Two Popular Reading Programs

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Two of the nation's most-used literacy programs are facing new criticism.

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Dispelling the myths that MSV is not research supported and that balanced literacy has failed by Dr. Sam Bommarito

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Dispelling the myths that MSV is not research supported and that balanced literacy has failed Dr. Sam Bommarito Over the past few years, there has been a steady criticism of MSV (using the three sy…

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A Teacher Friendly Guide to Reading Research by Jan Burkins and Kari Yates www.thesixshifts.com

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A Teacher Friendly Guide to Reading Research by Jan Burkins and Kari Yates www.thesixshifts.com

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A Teacher Friendly Guide to Reading Research.pdf

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The Role of Phonics in Reading Instruction - ILA Position Statement

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The Role of Phonics in Reading Instruction - ILA Position Statement