It’s odd and detrimental that the National Reading Panel is highlighted in reports as science, used to promote phonics and criticize how teachers teach reading. It has become so intense that teachers are being advised to drop certain reading methods to focus solely on “systematic, explicit phonics!”
The NRP was discredited long ago. Why it’s resurfacing as scientific proof for a phonics-driven reading curriculum raises serious concerns.
In a recent Education Week report “How Do Kids Learn to Read? What the Science Says” the National Reading Panel is positively referenced six times! Similar reports repeatedly cite the NRP.
Primary teachers should know how to teach phonics. But phonics shouldn’t be taught in a vacuum, and the idea that scientific proof backs phonics based on the NRP is flawed.
Science based reading in reference to phonics started with the discredited National Reading Panel.
Some History
In 2002, Stephen Metcalf for The Nation wrote “Reading Between the Lines,” describing the excitement publishing companies had surrounding NCLB. The Bush administration had heralded in a new day for reading based on the NRP. The focus was high-stakes testing and reading, namely phonics.
…the meaning was clear: Classrooms must follow the conclusions of the National Reading Panel, a blue-ribbon panel assembled by Congress in the late 1990s to determine the “status of research-based knowledge, including the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching children to read.” Thanks to the NRP report, the phrase “scientifically based reading instruction” appears dozens of times in the new federal reading legislation.
Conservatives and business leaders were tired of what they called liberal faddishness when it came to reading. They saw whole language as too progressive, and didn’t want to consider the problems of underfunded poor schools or child poverty as reasons for underachievement.
…not surprisingly, the Bush legislation has ardent supporters in the testing and textbook publishing industries. Only days after the 2000 election, an executive for publishing giant NCS Pearson addressed a Waldorf ballroom filled with Wall Street analysts.
…to teach phonics you need a textbook and usually a series of items–worksheets, tests, teacher’s editions–that constitute an elaborate purchase for a school district and a profitable product line for a publisher. In addition, heavily scripted phonics programs are routinely marketed as compensation for bad teachers. (What’s not mentioned is that they often repel, and even drive out, good teachers.)
The Bush administration was also known for using the term “science” to promote policy. In 2003, the publication Science described a report by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Government Reform. Two dozen instances occurred where the administration manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings.
Voices
Metcalf mentions educational researchers who raised questions concerning the National Reading Panel.
Elaine Garan an education professor and author was one.
She believes there are wide discrepancies between what was reported to the public and what the panel actually found. Most blatantly, the summary proclaimed that “systematic phonics instruction produces significant benefits for students in kindergarten through sixth grade,” while the report itself said, “There were insufficient data to draw any conclusions about the effects of phonics instruction with normally developing readers above first grade.”
Educational psychologist Gerald Coles who’d written about reading and learning disabilities was another. Coles said “Combine the NRP report and the Bush legislation, and they suddenly have quite a paddle for rowing toward huge profits. Their products have been designed to embody the phrase ‘scientifically based.’”
He would go on to pen the book Reading the naked truth: Literacy, legislation, and lies a blistering report describing the problems surrounding the National Reading Panel. Coles would note that “scientifically-based reading instruction,” is used nearly fifty times in NCLB!
Another researcher, Stephen Krashen of the University of Southern California, complains that the report misrepresents his research and is rife with errors.
The NRP Dissenter
Joanne Yatvin is credited for speaking out about the National Reading Panel. Joanne was an elementary principal at the time. She wrote a dissenting opinion.
Here are some of the criticisms she made of the NRP, noted in Phi Delta Kappan, “Babes in the Woods: The Wanderings of the National Reading Panel.”
- The panel set-up was flawed from the start. It included 15 people, all employed full time elsewhere. They had no support staff.
- They only had six months to sift through a mountain of research studies and draw from them conclusions about the best ways of teaching reading.
- There were no primary teachers on the panel. It was made up of mostly university research professors who believed in the same reading process.
- An M.D. on the panel understood brain science, had questionable ties to the NICHD [National Institute of Health and Human Development], but had no knowledge or experience with reading instruction.
- Studies were rejected or not scrutinized due to time constraints.
- The study results were buried in a more than 500-page report.
- …the phonics report became part of the full report of the NRP uncorrected, undeliberated, and unapproved.
- …NRP’s last bad decision was to publish its findings as if they were complete and definitive.
Conclusion
Many reasons exist as to why reading instruction might not be working for students. To focus only on phonics, shortchanges students and unfairly blames teachers without looking at difficult conditions under which they teach.
It ignores years of corporate attacks on public schools, like underfunding and the overall initiative to create charters, vouchers, and using reading to make a profit. The current criticism of teachers fails to include the complexities of reading instruction, and many reading solutions are shoved aside.
One wonders why journalists who focus on phonics, fail to address the insidious loss of school libraries and librarians in poor schools across the nation. There’s research to show that libraries and librarians help students learn.
We know school districts are shirking their responsibility under IDEA to serve students who have reading disabilities. These students are lost in overcrowded classes.
Parents and educators worry about the trend to push reading instruction down to kindergarten, even preschool. This is developmentally unsound but common practice in schools.
Few consider the problems in schools that started with NCLB, and that exist currently with Common Core State Standards, which includes phonics and has been driving English language arts curriculum since 2013.
We need a new National Reading Panel, one that includes primary and secondary teachers, university professors and researchers, parents, and others who work with children. It should include unbiased research, time for a thorough review, and journalists who cover all sides of the reading conversation, including up-to-date, credible research.
Some References Concerning the National Reading Panel
Stephen Metcalf. “Reading Between the Lines.” The Nation. January 10, 2012.
David Malakoff. “Bush Bashed for Use of Science. Science. August 8, 2003.
Elaine M. Garan. Resisting Reading Mandates: How to Triumph With The Truth. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Jim Horn. “The Naked Truth about the National Reading Panel Report” Schools Matter. May 9, 2012.
Gerald Coles. Reading the Naked Truth: Literacy, Legislation, and Lies. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Bess Altwerger (ed.) 2005. Reading for Profit: How the Bottom Line Leaves Kids Behind. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Joanne Yatvin. “Babes in the Woods: The Wanderings of the National Reading Panel.” The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 83, Issue 5, 364-369.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). (2000a). Report of the National Reading Panel: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction: Reports of the subgroups. (NIH publication NO. 00-4754). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
After all the distortion, deception, dysfunction, distress, and destruction that has been foisted on American public school children, teachers, families, and communities since this faux report was first heralded and NCLB ruled the roost, to be followed by the even more damaging Common Core State Standards/assessment scam, I am even more cynical than I used to be. Has it been the plan of the corporate elites/educrats all along to create generations focused narrowly on splinter skills so that they would be compliant consumers and pawns of the global workforce, without the internal resources, perspectives, and ingenuity necessary to confront the phalanx arrayed against them and to construct a truly civil, diverse society?
One is tempted to answer simply. How can it be otherwise?
Thank you for highlighting the importance of school libraries and librarians in support of students’ growth! As an elementary school librarian stretched across two campuses, I can attest to the fact that if we were given more time, we could work some real magic with learning, instead of just scraping by. I must also disagree with the notion that we do not need a major overhaul of our current reading curriculum, though. As a mother of a dyslexic child and career educator (13 years of reading intervention and first grade prior to ending up in the library), we DO need to refocus on developmentally appropriate and systematic phonics instruction. Our kindergarteners are being pushed on tablets before they can hold a pencil and must know how to type their log ins before learning how to identify letters of the alphabet. They learn genres and writing styles before how to put sounds together to make a word. It is backwards, and it is leaving children behind. My fifth grader is nearly illiterate because of the negligence of the school district in identifying his dyslexia and providing appropriate instruction for him. He is thriving and nearly caught up to grade level in reading (writing still has a long way to go) with Wilson Reading Program tutoring. We are highly literate at home. I am fluently bilingual and have my masters degree. We have books and read all the time, from when he was in utero. He did not get the reading instruction he needed from the start, and millions of children are not– many of whom are not as fortunate to be surrounded by books and readers. We MUST do better for our students, but even as a school librarian myself, I cannot agree that access to libraries and librarians will be enough. The curriculum MUST be made developmentally appropriate (no more Lucy Calkins as the end-all, be-all!) and it MUST include systematic instruction in phonological awareness and phonics, including handwriting.!
No one said libraries and qualified librarians were enough. But the idea that systematic explicit phonics is enough for all children is not proven by the NRP either. Children need a variety of reading methods including phonics and individualized attention to where they are at when they come to school.
I certainly disagree with kindergartners using tablets and the pushing of kindergartners to read and write so early. What you write sounds awful and developmentally inappropriate. Thank you for sharing.
I’m glad your child is doing well now in reading.
The NRP never said that children need ONLY phonics to succeed. It is interesting to me that you never mention the Simple View of Reading or Scarborough’s Rope, both of which highlight the need for teaching to build knowledge and oral vocabulary. One without the other leaves learners behind.
You’re right, but phonics was the takeaway. There’s much less discussion about vocabulary and comprehension, and there’s a heavy belief that children must formally study systematic phonics. I know many children who learn to read by word identification and by hearing and simply looking at picture books.
The NRP didn’t review anything about balanced literacy.
I especially find it ridiculous that there were no early childhood teachers on the panel, the teachers who teach reading.
You might want to read the writings of Joanne Yatvin, one of the only educators on the panel who tells of the problems found with the panel.
It’s amazing how those problems continue to be ignored.
I’ve called for a new NRP that would include teachers and parents.
I find that all of this is about selling programs and everyone has their favorite.
Amy,
This push for intensive phonics is getting old. My child would have been labeled dyslexic had I allowed her to be. She’s in 5th grade and doing very well. She didn’t have explicit phonics. I would not allow her to be forced into an intensive phonics program because with my 20 years in the classroom, I knew it wouldn’t work for her.
The approach you are pushing has been around for 100 years with no evidence it works.
Stop pushing bad policy on all of our children.
It’s interesting how some parents want their children to be diagnosed as dyslexic and others don’t. Some parents love Reading Recovery, others don’t. Some demand heavy phonics and others want balanced literacy.
I stand firm that teachers and support staff need to assess and work with individual students and parents to better understand the reading difficulties children bring to the table, and how to correct them and help children find joy in reading.
And we need unbiased authentic research that includes teachers.
I agree. Some children, especially those whose first language is not English, need phonics to be able to read well. Others approach it as whole words, but I believe they are in the minority. There is definitely a place for phonics.
Each child should be assessed for their needs and no particular method for teaching reading should be ruled out just because you don’t like it.
I think the huge problem is we assess way too much. It limits what reading comprehension is.
And we’re forcing kids to read way too early. Kids will be able to read through exploration experimentation and discovery. Once this happens and they see the need to read, formal instruction is much easier.
Also, best way for kids to connect letter/sounds together is through inventive writing.
Parents have the right to make sure their children are being taught to read. But they don’t have the right to tell the experts how it must be done for ALL children.
“They only had six months to sift through a mountain of research studies and draw from them conclusions about the best ways of teaching reading.”
This rings a loud bell. I had a friend who was asked some years ago to be a part of a panel that reviewed science standards. They were given a set of statements and about a day and half to go through them for the state department, then headed by Ken Huffman. I had the same experience when we were asked to write questions for an exit test for a math course some 30 years ago. We also had a day and a half for the process. Another time, I was involved in editing questions on-line. Any protest I made about the quality of the questions relative to the standards was met with a strident hostility. It seems all these things have in common the need for truncating the process. One cannot keep from suggesting why reading the essay above.
Thanks for your faithful work.
Research is tricky business in general, and now that there are so many nonprofit organizations intent on destroying public education and the teaching profession it is difficult to know who to trust.
I recently read glowing so-called research about the online program Reading Plus, only to learn it was published by Reading Plus. If you search more you will find not so glowing remarks from students and parents.
And you’re right about the time factor. Thanks, Roy.
Thank you
https://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2019/05/14/the-enduring-influence-of-the-national-reading-panel-and-the-d-word/
Thank you, Paul Thomas!
This anti-NPR ideology is about as bad as flat earthers and anti-vaccine Poole, or worse. I’ve been directly involved in reading and writing instruction in and outside of the school and looking closely at formal assessment data for over 20 years, and all I’ve seen is complaining and a wide anti NRP view in the schools. I see far higher scores and skills when using good instruction that has a core focus on the alphabet principle, or “phonics.” I worked with teachers recently that give virtually no direct instruction and don’t know how to test letter sounds for 1st-2nd graders. They don’t know basic sounds of alphabet principle. It’s a disgrace.
Strange. Phonics has been around for as long as I can remember. I wonder who all these teachers are who don’t know about it. Are they from Teach for America? Also why aren’t there any questions or concerns about Common Core State Standards pushed into classrooms for years? I never hear the pro-phonics, direct instruction crowd criticize them.
Which direct instruction program do you like best? Which one do you use for 1st and 2nd graders? What is your role?
Thanks for commenting. I know so many good early childhood teachers that I would disagree with you, but I appreciate your concern about how reading is taught.