A wave of recent articles about reading trick parents and educators into thinking teachers are not teaching reading and are not being trained to teach reading correctly. The opinion pieces are written by journalist Emily Hanford.
Warning! Corporate reform fingerprints are all over these articles. Could it be about transforming classrooms to technology, where students look at screens instead of getting help from teachers?
Scientific research has shown how children learn to read and how they should be taught. But many educators don’t know the science and, in some cases, actively resist it. As a result, millions of kids are being set up to fail.
These accusations, teachers “don’t know” and teachers “actively resist it” anger parents who are critical of how their students learned or are learning to read in school.
The three Hanford articles have anti-teacher titles, and a title to run down their COEs (Colleges of Education) all meant to undermine teachers and how they teach reading.
- “Why Are We Still Teaching Reading the Wrong Way?”
- “Teachers Criticize Their Colleges of Education for Not Preparing Them to Teach Reading”
- “Why Aren’t Kids Being Taught to Read?”
Each one of these articles has set off a firestorm of comments on social media. Teachers and parents happy or unhappy about Hanford’s diatribes tell how teachers should or should not teach reading.
Who are these individuals who claim teachers are teaching reading the wrong way?
In “Misreading the Reading Wars Again (and Again)” Furman education professor P.L. Thomas disputes one of Hanford’s articles. He describes the controversy surrounding two groups that Hanford repeatedly cites.
National Reading Panel (NRP)
Thomas says, The NRP was a political sham, but it also was not an endorsement of heavy phonics.
He cites Joanne Yatvin’s “I Told You So! The Misinterpretation and Misuse of The National Reading Panel Report.” Joanne was a principal and a literacy expert, one of the only qualified individuals to sit on the panel.
I could see that the report as a whole was narrow, biased, and elitist. I was troubled by the fact that it covered so few of the important issues in teaching reading today, that the ideologies of panel members had governed the choice of most of the topics, and that teachers of beginning reading had been excluded from the entire process. Moreover, I believed that because of its weaknesses, the report was dangerous in its potential for misuse. The responses of my fellow panel members to my concerns ranged from reassurances that all problems would be ironed out before the report’s publication to “So what?”
Thomas also mentions California State University education professor Elaine Garan.
Garan studied the NRP and found an abundance of inconsistencies and omissions involving reading comprehension and how phonics skills were applied to literacy writing. She wrote “Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors—A Critique of the National Reading Panel Report on Phonics.”
The National Reading Panel admits its evaluation report on phonics is seriously flawed as to organization, methodology, appropriateness of research base, generalizability of results, reliability, validity, and accuracy of data reported. However, an influential public-relations machine is promoting the study’s favorable results as unvarnished scientific “truth.”
The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)
The other group Hanford repeatedly cites is the NCTQ.
Here’s a list of the NCTQ supporters which include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Waltons, and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.
About the NCTQ Thomas notes:
NCTQ is a partisan think tank exclusively committed to discrediting teacher education. Their reports, when reviewed, are deeply flawed in methodology and typically misread or misrepresent research in order to reach the only conclusion they ever reach—teacher education is a failure! (Like reading instruction, apparently, has always been.)
He goes on to say NCTQ lacks credibility, but the organization has learned how to manipulate the current state of press-release journalism that simply publishes whatever aggressive organizations are willing to feed journalists desperate for click bait.
Corporate reformers know reading is the subject that opens doors to school success. They also know some children have a difficult time learning to read.
If they can break parental trust in their child’s teacher, parents will be more amenable to putting their child online for their reading instruction. But there’s no research to indicate online reading programs will provide students with the reading instruction they require to be good students in other subjects.
Teachers have taught children how to read for years. It is a rare classroom that ignores the teaching of phonics.
There will always be students who need extra help, who have learning disabilities. Schools should provide those students with the added support they need.
References
Joanne Yatvin. “I Told You So! The Misinterpretation and Misuse of The National Reading Panel Report.” Education Week. April 30, 2003.
Elaine M. Garan. “Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors: A Critique of the National Reading Panel Report on Phonics. Phi Delta Kappan, v82 n7 p. 500-06, Mar 2001.
Thanks for keeping this alive. Considering that the National Reading Panel was convened twenty years ago, and their report, issued in 2000, spent several years being deconstructed and rebutted (as well as admired), you’d think the statute of limitations may have run out on insisting that the NRP was the One True Faith of reading pedagogy.
Richard Allington’sbook, ‘Big Brother and the National Reading Curriculum: How Ideology Trumped Evidence’ which included scholarly articles from all the authors you mention, above–and more–should have served as a research rebuttal, indicating that at the very least, there were multiple paths to successful literacy instruction.
So–it’s weird that this has re-emerged. Who’s funding Emily Hanford? Where did ths come from? It didn’t spontaneously arise from the classroom.
Yes to all of what you say, Nancy! My guess is those behind NCTQ know that reading is a sore spot and a good way to push digital. I noted the NCTQ backers above. Thanks for commenting.
Allington and Co have mislead teachers and parents for decades. Thanks to Emily, truth is now surfacing. Good bye Whole Language and Balanced Literacy and hello phonics!
You demonstrate my point well. Emily is not a teacher but a journalist. I respect journalists when they do objective research. I don’t find that she covers reading objectively but is bias. Phonics has not been missing from the classroom. Not exactly sure what her motives are, but she is dividing parents and teachers at a time when teachers are leaving the classroom. Not cool.
Incorrect. Parents deserve to know what actually happens in classrooms and WL and BL with a sprinkle of phonics is short changing millions of kids. The strangle hold of Fountas and Pinnell and silly Whole Language Approaches is finally going to be over. Teachers are thrilled and they get to understand the Science and put it into practice.
Of course parents should know what happens in classrooms. Parents and teachers should work together. I respect that you differ with me and dislike WL or BL, but I know many parents who also differ with you.
Having worked with students with learning disabilities, I’ve known parents who credit Reading Recovery for helping their child learn to read. I know other parents who don’t like it.
Some need more phonics and some need less. Students with auditory discrimination difficulties might have trouble decoding.
But phonics has been around. I think the difference is it used to be taught later. Thank you for commenting on this important topic even though we disagree.
If all is as you describe, why are only around 30% of US students reading proficient at any grade level assessed by the NAEP?
I am not a testing expert, but I think it is important to understand that proficiency is not at grade level. Also:
“The NAEP reading scale makes it possible to examine relationships between students’ performance and various background factors measured by NAEP. However, a relationship that exists between achievement and another variable does not reveal its underlying cause, which may be influenced by a number of other variables. Similarly, the assessments do not reflect the influence of unmeasured variables. The results are most useful when they are considered in combination with other knowledge about the student population and the educational system, such as trends in instruction, changes in the school-age population, and societal demands and expectations.”
https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/reading/interpret_results.aspx#
I am not a fan of Brookings, but I like this description about proficiency.
“NAEP proficient is not synonymous with grade level. NAEP officials urge that proficient not be interpreted as reflecting grade level work. It is a standard set much higher than that. Scholarly panels have reviewed the NAEP achievement standards and found them flawed. The highest scoring nations of the world would appear to be mediocre or poor performers if judged by the NAEP proficient standard. Even large numbers of U.S. calculus students fall short.”
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2016/06/13/the-naep-proficiency-myth/
Also, this is a quote from educational historian Diane Ravitch who best analyzes test results.
“NAEP data show beyond question that test scores in reading and math have improved for almost every group of students over the past two decades; slowly and steadily in the case of reading, dramatically in the case of mathematics. Students know more and can do more in these two basic skills subjects now than they could twenty or forty years ago… So the next time you hear someone say that the system is “broken,” that American students aren’t as well educated as they used to be, that our schools are failing, tell that person the facts.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/973334-naep-data-show-beyond-question-that-test-scores-in-reading
Bottom line. 50% of Alaska’s Scholars have to take remedial reading classes. Our NAEP matches our State Standards Based Assessment outcomes as well as our AimsWeb data. We have so few literate adults that we cannot staff our non-profits with folks that have the literacy skills to be proficient board members. All you have posted is in conflict with these realities. The NAEP has shown no improvements in Alaska. We find that pretty much the series of articles you dismiss is our true reality. Denying to people and children who are not reading proficiently is like “fake news” and “gaslighting”. I assume that you know grade level is one of the mushiest metrics ever devised. Grabbing a bunch of quotes from the internet and throwing together a response is not very thoughtful. America has a reading problem. Pretending it does not exist does not solve the problem. Having crucial conversations does solve problems.
Do we really have to tell parents as soon as their child is born to start a reading instruction funds because the child only has a 3 in 10 chance of being taught to read well at school?
I sent quotes, but I also sent you links, including a link to an explanation of the NAEP results.
You can’t staff your nonprofits?
You also place tremendous importance on this test alone.
Yes, Alaska’s scores have apparently dropped. But it is unclear of the reasons.
To imply that that the reasons students don’t do well is all because of reading and the lack of phonics is pretty simplistic. My guess is that teachers in Alaska probably do some phonics.
I was a reading resource teacher for students with LD for years and I taught phonics and believe it is important for some students. My M.Ed. is in LD and I studied dyslexia and reading disabilities.
This post is about the groups mentioned in Hanford’s articles. Both are questionable and disputed by important scholars. It isn’t about the teaching of reading per se.
My point is that parents and teachers need to work together. Find out what’s hampering teachers in Alaska from teaching the way you’d like. You seem to generalize based on NAEP scores and my guess is there are a lot of other variables, including poverty.
This article mentions that schools have been using Success for All. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/in-remote-alaskan-villages-teachers-struggle-to-make-school-meaningful/273596/
Perhaps that program hasn’t worked well in your schools. Do you know how many schools use this program? http://www.successforall.org/who-we-are/
We already know through study all of the links and quotes you sent. They are not helpful. Teachers tell us they graduate with bachelors AND masters degree and were not taught how to teach reading. These articles are not phonics only but look at the whole neurobiological underpinnings of reading and reading instruction. This is not being taught in most universities. Other rare groups or institutes back up what the NCTQ are reporting about teacher preparation. Until teachers pass upon graduation competency exams such as the MTEL90 we cannot be assured that they are equipped to teach reading. Just as nurses must past a true competency exam, teachers esp. K-3 must also. That is the jist of all of these articles and the research they reference. You should be a supporter here. As parents, we are not satisfied. Teachers deserve to have quality reading instruction.
Teachers tell you they aren’t qualified? What universities do they go to? I would worry about nonprofit or for-profit online teacher programs.
Neuroscience talk is not translated well into practice. Check out some of Prof. Daniel Willingham’s writings about it.
NCTQ is a group meant to disparage COEs, public schools, and teachers. I’m sure there are other corporate reform groups who think they’re great.
They used to have Wendy Kopp on their board from Teach for America. TFA gets 5-6 weeks of teacher prep. And they’re cheap! Do you really think they’re going to teach reading well?
You will get no argument out of me that universities are making changes to how they teach teachers. They used to have an LD category and now that’s reduced to a gen. ed. class.
Teachers USED TO get plenty of reading prep. What happened?
But also please look at what is going on now in Alaska’s schools.
RTI? Placing students in Tiers. My guess is they’re doing phonics there.
They’ve been doing it since 2009. How’s that working out? Maybe not so good.
https://education.alaska.gov/esea/rti
How many teachers are also being pushed to do Success for All–a phonics program? A lot of bragging going on about it up to 2013. What happened to it?
http://www.successforall.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/410189004_AK_ES_W_3.pdf
My post is merely saying that teachers and parents need to work together. Hanford cites two corporate reform groups that are anti-teacher.
Are you going to be happy with canned digital programs and no teachers? Because that’s where this is going.
I appreciate your comment. It forced me to learn more about Alaska, and my heart is always with the students with learning difficulties and their parents who want the best for them.
I know nothing about education in Alaska, but I do wonder whether the tested population has grown over the years and what the socioeconomic and disability breakdown is. Overall scores can appear stagnant even when all groups are improving if a larger number of disadvantaged students are being tested. That being said, I have experienced the impact of policy developed by people who have little understanding of teaching and learning. These people have increasingly dominated the discussion the past few decades and not to the good. I am beginning to think that any time a “war ” is declared that we should stick its proponents in an arena and let them fight it out among themselves and let the rest of us protect from them that which they would surely destroy if they were let loose.
Your point about stagnant scores and disadvantaged students is a good one. Thank you.
Yes, Nancy. Teachers do tell us they aren’t qualified to teach reading. While this isn’t from Alaska, the teacher stories resonate with what we have been told by teachers all over Alaska. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9TD9u7xGdRUaGjHkOthxw/videos
We hire around 2/3rds of teachers from states outside of Alaska. Only two of those states have NIH Reading Research Centers and we cannot guarantee that teachers hired attended those institutions. We do not have a pattern for non-profit/for profit/online. They are just from outside of Alaska, .
In our experience talking with teachers, it is because the teachers do not know the Neuroscience that causes the poor translation. As parents we are quite disappointed in Prof. Daniel Willingham’s writings about it.
Of course people love to kill the messenger. The NCTQ has outed COE. That’s all. They didn’t even ask the hard questions of COE. They asked the easy ones. Parents now know why their teachers don’t know how to teach reading. They now know to tell their teens who want to go into education to stay away from COE that cannot guarantee they will pass a reading instruction competency exam like the MTEL90 at graduation. NCTQ are not the only ones talking about this. https://www.winginstitute.org/search
We do not have TFA teachers to our knowledge.
3 or six credits on reading in college, and one of them being simply on philosophy of reading which absolutely doesn’t transfer into reading outcomes for kids, is completely inadequate for teachers. We have no idea why reading was shortchanged by COE but looking into 1970’s educator culture is what we think informs the fact that teacher educators turned away from science and decided kids learn to read by osmosis. So sad.
Unfortunately Nancy your just guessing at what is or is not going on here. Throwing out again whatever you find on the internet to support your misguided claims so you can justify you bashing of the articles you mentioned. RTI is bad, phonics is bad. Success for All is bad.
We’re Alaskans. Like we haven’t looked at our own state when we are the Alaska Reading Coalition?
http://www.successforall.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/410189004_AK_ES_W_3.pdf
Nancy, you realize Success for All was in a school district that has only 179 students in K-12 with a teacher turnover rate of 74%? It was not state wide.
Nancy, what you truly do not understand is that parents totally are in back of Hanford. You are wrong about any corporate connection. The title of your article is inflammatory as parents are looking at the injustice served teachers via their COEs that are frozen in New Zealand and the silly silly Whole Language/Balanced Literacy junk. This is what our kids do not need. To be taught: “Guess at those words kiddos, just guess. Oh? Maybe that word is or The poor kid doesn’t know to go the law library or maternity ward.”
Parents are asking for teachers who graduate passing reading competency exams described above. (MTEL90 style, 100 questions on reading instruction, the English language, and the SCIENCE of reading)
Your heart cannot be with LD students and their parents if you do not embrace what they and their parents are telling you. (Oh did you know you can say dyslexia now and not fall over dead?)
Otherwise it seems you just needed a blog post and this was a handy and easy topic.
How about you get out there and interview 100 parents and students living life everyday with reading struggles such as dyslexia.
It will likely take you a few years to talk with actual parents and children with reading struggles and we sure hope you learn more than a little bit from Google.
Then we can check in and see if you still want to blow all of this off. Parents with struggling reading now know the real deal because of these articles.
Over and out.
• “Why Are We Still Teaching Reading the Wrong Way?”
• “Teachers Criticize Their Colleges of Education for Not Preparing Them to Teach Reading”
• “Why Aren’t Kids Being Taught to Read?”
I cite in my post reading and education scholars who are well-respected in the field. Stephen Krashen is another. Krashen has a lot of videos on the Internet that you might enjoy. He is an engaging speaker. Here’s one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSW7gmvDLag
I think it’s important not to generalize. My point with this post was that parents and teachers need to work together.
My college experience did not oppose phonics. I was also introduced to direct instruction and a variety of phonics programs through my school district. These programs were popular at the time starting in the late 70s. (The Herman Method, SRA, Morphographic Spelling, etc.)
You seem to condemn all COEs. Perhaps it would be better to work with the COE closest to your schools. Dialoguing with the professors there might be enlightening for both groups.
I taught much phonics. And I am not opposed to phonics especially for students who have reading difficulties.
The Wing Institute seems to be a group of teachers who started their own private schools. I think they have a pony in the show. It helps them to make it look like they are experts and public school teachers fail. I don’t think it is as simple as that.
I have a lot of parents from “decoding dyslexia” groups from around the country who I consider friends who have contacted me about their child’s experience in school. If you would like to further discuss your situation with me personally contact me.
You cover a lot of information here. I promise I will look at it and take it seriously. I wish you and your child the best.