Why are we still teaching reading the wrong way?

“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.” This is a quote from Emily Hanford’s September, 2018 podcast and article published in APMreports by American Public Media. Her piece highlights the lack of teacher knowledge about science-based reading instruction, due in part from not being taught reading science in teacher preparation schools, and in part from incorrect beliefs about how children learn to read.

Not long after the APM report, the New York Times published a related opinion piece by Hanford in October. Both pieces caught my attention and created a stir across social media in the literacy education community. There is much of what Hanford says that I agree with, and it is refreshing to see the spotlight shine on the problem of teachers not knowing (or choosing to not use) what we know from science about how to teach children to read.

Here are some quotes from Hanford’s APM and New York Times pieces:

“The basic assumption that underlies typical reading instruction in many schools is that learning to read is a natural process, much like learning to talk. But decades of scientific research has revealed that reading doesn’t come naturally. The human brain isn’t wired to read. Kids must be explicitly taught how to connect sounds with letters – phonics. …But this research hasn’t made its way into many elementary school classrooms.”

“The prevailing approaches to reading instruction in American schools are inconsistent with basic things scientists have discovered about how children learn to read. Many educators don’t know the science, and in some cases actively resist it. The resistance is the result of beliefs about reading that have been deeply held in the educational establishment for decades, even though those beliefs have been proven wrong by scientists over and over again.”

“Our children aren’t being taught to read in ways that line up with what scientists have discovered about how people actually learn. It’s a problem that has been hiding in plain sight for decades. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, more than six in 10 fourth graders aren’t proficient readers. It has been this way since testing began. A third of kids can’t read at a basic level. How do we know that a big part of the problem is how children are being taught? Because reading researchers have done studies in classrooms and clinics, and they’ve shown over and over that virtually all kids can learn to read — if they’re taught with approaches that use what scientists have discovered about how the brain does the work of reading. But many teachers don’t know this science.”

Hanford points out that many teachers describe their approach to reading instruction as “balanced literacy” which basically means “give kids lots of good books, and with some guidance and enough practice, they become readers.”

The Problem Starts With Colleges and Universities

Hanford explains that many teachers nationwide are not being taught reading science in their teacher preparation programs because many deans and faculty in colleges of education either don’t know the science or dismiss it. Referencing a 2016 published article in the Journal of Childhood & Developmental Disorders Hanford says that faculty at some schools of education have ignored the scientific knowledge that informs reading acquisition, and the pre-service teachers who are being educated at these institutions fail to receive the training they need. She also references a study completed in 2016 by the National Council on Teacher Quality that reviewed the syllabi of teacher preparation programs across the country and found that only 39 percent of them appeared to be teaching the components of effective reading instruction.

Explicit Phonics Instruction is Not Enough

We know that children who do not learn phonics and develop fluent decoding skills will never be good readers. We also know that, while some children need more explicit instruction and guided practice to master these skills than others, all children benefit from phonics instruction. But phonics instruction alone is not sufficient to develop readers who can comprehend what they are reading. Hanford agrees that children also need explicit instruction in vocabulary and comprehension strategies, including exposure to quality text.

Kathleen Mikulka wrote a piece in the Hechinger Report in October in response to Hanford addressing this issue saying, “Phonics instruction that is all worksheets all the time and those little decodable books is boring. All picture books all the time is great fun, but students are being shortchanged without the phonics piece. Balanced literacy has come to mean a whole language approach with a little bit of phonics presented “as necessary.” Since balanced literacy means different things to different people, we need to come up with an alternative name that encompasses the best of both worlds. This new program should be reading instruction, including systematic and explicit phonics, read aloud, guided reading, and free-choice reading.” 

Effective Use of Reading Blocks

In a recent blog post (January, 2019) titled Why aren’t American reading scores higher? Tim Shanahan makes some spot-on comments that should be considered when thinking about the Hanford pieces.

Shanahan says, “We simply don’t spend enough time on those things that make a difference in making kids proficient. Most American elementary schools these days pride themselves on their 90 minute reading blocks… but much of that time gets devoted to things that do little to promote children’s reading ability:  the kids are supposedly reading on their own or doing keep-busy-but-keep-quiet sheets while the teachers are working with other kids. I’d love it if instead of a 90-minute block, we’d commit to providing 90 minutes of teaching and guided practice to each child each day.  This instructional time should be devoted to explicit teaching and guided practice aimed at developing knowledge of words (including phonemic awareness, phonics, letter names, spelling, morphology, vocabulary); oral reading fluency; reading comprehension; and writing. “

He ends his piece with this quote:

“If we want more of our kids to be reading proficiently at the levels needed in the 21st century, it will take a lot of dedicated teaching of the key things that matter in learning.”

Hanford has reminded us that one of those key things that really matter is instruction that is based on reading science!