The Reading League, which promotes the Science of Reading and evidence-based instruction, recently had a conference sponsored by companies (listed below) selling reading programs and materials, including online instruction. Where’s evidence these companies provide authentic research indicating they work?
Some states and school districts now mandate the Science of Reading (Schwartz, 2022). They have ruled out several programs, Lucy Calkins Units of Study, Reading Recovery, and Fountas and Pinnell claiming they do not reflect science. However, it’s hard to find evidence that these other advertised programs work despite the constant demand that schools use evidence-based instruction.
Educational programs have always had a competitive welcome seat at the table. Teachers use resources, and school districts purchase these programs at a high cost for instruction. However, an overall examination should include broad peer-reviewed research of all reading programs from those not connected to the companies and not compensated for their reviews.
Here are additional concerns:
- Many reading programs are online and collect data on children, and it isn’t always clear how that data is used and whether third parties have access to it for marketing purposes. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was weakened years ago, so parents should ask questions about online instruction.
- School districts may purchase these programs at a high cost to the taxpayer due to slick marketing, despite little research, and forgo other programs that could be more beneficial.
- While some say there’s no way teachers can be replaced, school reformers have made a bi-partisan effort for years to replace teachers with screens known as anyplace, anywhere learning. Here it’s described in a report before COVID, Betsy DeVos Pushes Online Learning, written by Dora Taylor, founder of Parents Across America. While parents may not like their children to be at home online, cyber schools are increasingly a concern.
- Some programs are connected to school reformers wanting to end democratic public schools. EdReports, for example, is funded by billionaires, and they judge programs according to what they want, despite little research provided as proof.
- Many of these reading programs are praised by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), which is funded by private organizations that promote school privatization.
- Some of these reading programs have been in public school classrooms for years, so if they taught students how to read, why aren’t students doing better? Why aren’t these programs being reviewed by the same individuals who have complained about Calkins, Reading Recovery, and Fountas and Pinnell?
- Most of the studies for these programs are done in-house, or those who work for the company are included as authors. Isn’t this a conflict of interest? Will one ever find an in-house study that raises concerns over its own program?
- Quite a few of these companies began during Reading First, called scandalous and ineffective, where students came away knowing sounds but not how to comprehend what they read, and where researchers appeared more intent on reading for profit.
- Many professors and those considered literacy experts sign on to advertising programs, some of which are promoted by wealthy individuals, when they have little research other than what’s done in-house. Are they being compensated? Isn’t this a conflict of interest?
America needs a new National Reading Panel of researchers, teachers, parents, and students. Thus far, there needs to be more initiative for a new NRP. Could it be that the Science of Reading would crumble under such scrutiny?
Here are the sponsors that promoted The Reading League’s recent conference. Some simply sell decoding books. If aware of peer-reviewed studies that I may have overlooked for any of these programs or assessments, please share.
- Acadience Learning
- AIM Institute for Learning and Reading
- Amplify
- Benchmark Education
- Curriculum Associates iReady
- Lexia
- 95 Percent
- Express Readers
- Learning A-Z
- Hand2Mind
- Junior Learning
- Learning Without Tears
- Great Minds
- Heggerty
- Multi-sensory Education
- Logic of English
- Reading Horizons
- Really Great Reading
- Sadlier School
- Phonic Books
- Savvas
- Sylla Sense
- Voyager Sopris Learning
- Wilson Language Training
- Whole Phonics
- Zaner-Bloser
In the moment, my gr5 son is in a Pen Pal program with South Korean students that write in perfect English and my husband and I are both in global industries interfacing with European and Japanese English speakers and readers. How can we have so many reading programs and methods in the the US without progress over decades while other countries are able to teach their children English as an “elective?” Do I need to send my son to France to learn English? Exaggerating to make a point 🙂
I’d like to know which reading program your son learned to read from in school if there was one particular one. But that’s a good point. Thanks, Paula.
I have been following the Science of Reading on their Facebook page. I do not profess to be well versed in their research, but I do know I am knowledgeable about what has worked with my kindergarten students , my reading intervention students, and my private students ( many have been diagnosed with specific learning disabilities impacting reading development). After over 50 years of teaching reading, I have watched trends come and go. I have seen the most vulnerable students negatively affected by inappropriate reading practices.. I have seen what works and what doesn’t. A lot depends on the educational needs of individual students. Too many so called experts never taught reading long enough to make this determination or they never taught reading..
I have always tried to keep up with current research , but when it comes to choosing how to help struggling readers, I assess and then choose the proper approach to support reading development for my students. I’m so glad I know longer need to follow mandates from school districts that often tie excellent teachers hands. My former district made a list of “approved supplementary reading materials. “. It didn’t matter to them that my 33 kindergarten students outperformed my district, state, and the entire country on their Waterford Early Reading Summary Reports for not only kindergarten, but for many first grade classrooms. Fortunately I had more than enough years to retire so I did. Let’s stop jumping on bandwagons and use common sense.
Thanks, Judy. You bring up a great point that it’s not the program but the teacher’s expertise that matters most. Thank you.
“Half of America’s children score below average in reading! It’s an outrage! Defund public schools!”
So many sponsors of these programs believe Lake Wobegone is a real place.
Yes, Christine. There’s a magical program, or many magical programs, that fix all reading problems. You’ve got that right. (Well, not really). Thanks.
Diane posted Valerie Strauss’ response to the misguided CREDO self serving report this summer on the effectiveness of charter schools. What strikes me is that nothing has moved the reading or math dial since we began pretending to measure such progress. Advocates for the Science of Reading, including the New York Times, tend to use anecdotal reporting while showing no evidence that overall reading success has improved. They report that this is because districts do not use their methods, when in fact they are practiced in districts all over the country with little to no discernible effect. Learning is about exposure to stimuli based on opportunity. Period. These companies that spend so much money trying to debunk the public schools simply want to keep all prosperity for themselves.
That is so true, Paul. Thank you. It puzzles me that few stop and realize that many reading programs and assessments, along with Common Core State Standards, have been in classrooms for years, and should be reviewed if students are doing poorly. They are ignored. Why?
There is an elephant in the reading-war room. All the pearl clutching is based on the use of crappy (Lookin’ at you David Colemen) vague, subjective, and developmentally inappropriate language arts performance standards that produce crappy “objective” tests with invalid results. Tests that have zero consequences (no-stakes) for students who view them (and the pleas of their teachers) as little more than “white noise”.
There is something very wrong with a system that is asking students to work for the adults.
Far more kids have basic reading skills than the scores indicate. The weak links are primarily underdeveloped working vocabularies and very limited exposure to all forms of language. The ability of an 8-year-old to read, speak, write and listen has much less to do with school than it does their lifetime of language exposure and acquisition through conversations and general life experiences.
Excellent point, Rick! I love how PBS broadcaster and journalist John Merrow put it.
“For complicated, bizarre, and political reasons, NAEP [The Nation’s Report Card] established only four benchmarks: Below Basic, Basic, Proficient, and Advanced. As veteran school superintendent Jim Harvey points out, the media and those hostile to public education are quick to assume that “proficient” means being on grade level. It does not! In fact, students who score at the ‘basic’ level are on track to graduate. And, as you will read below, half of 17-year-olds denigrated by NAEP as ‘basic’ have earned their college degrees!”
Here’s the post. https://themerrowreport.com/2022/05/25/educations-proficiency-deception/
Common Core seems untouchable when it comes to criticism. Why?
Money, money, money!
Wealthy and connected folks cannot be wrong.
Yes! There is a pedagogy to teaching reading and with such a push for programs, that gets lost in translation. Teachers are pushed to teach the program.
In the sciences, inquiry generally begins with discovery and exploration. Data is gathered and interpreted. Assumptions are tested and refined. Contradictory information is explored. Feedback is received and processed. All of this activity seeks to refine the expected outcome of the inquiry.
The so-called science of reading doesn’t seem to follow this pattern. It starts with Natural Language Acquisition, then throws out one of the two types of human language acquisition to focus exclusively on Analytic Language Processors (ALP). For Gestalt Language Processors (GLP), we’re assigned the “disordered” label and ignored in the general education classroom. Those with the privilege of place or wealth may get an IEP that addresses their “deficits.” Others, like me in my youth, are simply promoted through graduation … remaining largely illiterate.
To my mind, the vendors in the so-called science of reading space create the problems that their products hope to solve. It’s a huge scam that is propelled forward by the bandwagon effect.
Interesting point. Thank you, Dr. Hoerricks. We identified students with reading difficulties in the general ed. class for a while and assessed their progress. Students got individualized or small group instruction in a resource class and were then mainstreamed back into the general ed class. All with an IEP that many folks signed off on, including parents.
IDEA changes in 1998 and 2004 focused on inclusion, and I doubt many parents remember the resource room, nor do they want it. Nothing will do but the general ed. class and that all students get the same instruction. Of course the resource class set-up most likely cost more.
But I agree that the SoR vendors likely have the ultimate goal in mind and I fear it’s not the student’s reading ability.
I know of science based, peer reviewed studies about reading. Here are a few but the greedy, think they-know-it-all and want-it-all, robbing from the working class to get richer, billionaires are NOT going to like these fact based studies and pretend they do not exist.
“The Poverty Trifecta — According to Dr. Burns, there are three major factors that adversely impact learning and reading on children who come from homes of poverty”
https://www.scilearn.com/3-ways-poverty-impacts-children-learning-read/#:~:text=They%20simply%20do%20not%20get,and%20be%20ready%20to%20learn.
“The Relationship between Socioeconomic Status and Literacy … Many people of lower socioeconomic statuses have lower literacy levels, this relationship resulting both from how SES can influence literacy and from how literacy can influence SES (Rea, 2020).”
https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2023/01/05/the-relationship-between-socioeconomic-status-and-literacy-how-literacy-is-influenced-by-and-influencesses/#:~:text=Many%20people%20of%20lower%20socioeconomic,SES%20(Rea%2C%202020).
“It is undeniable that poverty leads to disparities in reading and language development. Research has consistently demonstrated that poverty levels are associated with a decrease in phonological awareness, vocabulary, and syntax throughout the various stages of child development.”
https://www.latinoliteracy.com/el-parents-and-language-development/#:~:text=It%20is%20undeniable%20that%20poverty,various%20stages%20of%20child%20development.
Those toxic, malignant billionaires profiting from and paying for the war against public education are not willing to be pay higher taxes to increase funding for public school that have high rates of children living in poverty and increase incomes to employees that are paid poverty wages, because that is the only science that’s going to work..
Why aren’t these toxic, malignant billionaires willing to follow the results of scientific, peer reviewed studies that show without doubt that growing up in poverty is the primary reason many children do not keep up with increasing their literacy skills?
They’d have to join a twelve step program to overcome their addiction to greed.
Thanks, Lloyd. I agree. I appreciate the links.
Of course.
But, counterintuitively, that’s why how reading and writing are taught matters.
Students with affluent parents get tutoring and enrichment to make up for the shortfalls of bad curriculum.
Students who come from underprivileged backgrounds don’t get tutoring and other expensive supports outside of school.
As a result, bad teaching techniques magnify inequalities.
I see this clearly in my public district, which relies on Units of Study.
As a district, we outperform because the families in our district are affluent and can make up for shortfalls by privately tutoring their kids – I live next to a tutoring center so I see this firsthand.
But when you dig into the state data and compare apples to apples, comparing, say affluent Whites against affluent Whites, or underprivileged Hispanics against underprivileges Hispanics, we lag behind state averages.
The California Reading Coalition has done a great job of unpacking all of this.
https://www.careads.org/
Sorry, Brian. I cry BS. I once taught at a school with what you’d call underprivileged. Know what we needed? Resources and a better facility. I had trouble getting a classroom!
Professional teachers know how to teach reading and writing, and I question the tests and meaning of the words like NAEP “proficiency” which people confuse all the time.
And until someone tells me why kindergarteners are now made to read before 1st grade, I can’t buy the claim that so many can’t read.
And tutoring is ultimately about replacing teachers with those who are inexperienced and this will involve online learning.
And here are the funders of the California Reading Coalition. https://www.careads.org/about
I’m sharing firsthand observations, not hearsay. My insights come from the data of our public school district and daily views from my window.
Affluent Tutoring: Living next to a tutoring center, I see affluent parents, including myself, seeking extra support for their children daily.
District Performance: Our district seems successful, but a deeper look into the data reveals we fall short of state averages in many demographic comparisons.
Debates about “proficient” definitions or online learning’s merits sidetrack from these core issues.
Your expertise is essential, Nancy. Yet, my firsthand perspective as a parent is equally vital. It’s disheartening when such observations are dismissed.
Public schools risk losing supporters like me, which weakens our society. Collaborative focus on real challenges is crucial for public education’s future.
“a deeper look into the data reveals we fall short of state averages in many demographic comparisons.” I simply don’t trust this. For example, in Florida, they’re making the tests harder. It’s behind a paywall but catch the title. Why? When students just got through the pandemic, why do this? https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2023/10/18/florida-test-fast-scores/
Parents should be questioning the tests given to their children and whether what’s being expected of them is developmentally appropriate.
I’m not dismissing you as a parent. Parental support of public education is vital. But parents are being misled. When some tell me that it’s important to push phonics in K, so children won’t get behind, or that screen usage is acceptable for instruction, or that outside tutors are critical because teachers aren’t doing their jobs correctly, it is usually due to parents expecting more out of their children than what should be age appropriate. Tutors are IN. They were pushed after Covid while teachers were slammed by the media and school reformers like Betsy DeVos for trying to protect children. Where’s the big-time push to get teachers back into the field to reduce teacher shortages?
Proficient is above Basic in the NAEP scoring. So when it’s said that students aren’t proficient, it doesn’t mean they aren’t reading. If they’re reading Basic, they’re doing fine.
Also, private and parochial schools have an unfair advantage because most don’t have to report their test results, or they have their tests, and they let go of students who don’t do well.