First of all the majority of states that enacted Science of Reading or research-based literacy laws did so in the past year or 2 and primarily for grades K-2 or K-3. Improvements will not show up in grades 4 or 8 yet and anyone who understands that will know this. Secondly science of reading is not just phonics and none of the legislation says that and the Louisiana work was much more than phonics with a heavy focus on content-rich text to build knowledge as well. It is important to be honest about this.
This has been a frustration of mine in the reporting as well; anyone who understands will know this, as will anyone on the ground in public schools. Even those districts that are working hard to change know that retraining teachers, curriculum adoption, and change management won't show up in a year or two automatically.
I agree, but none of this changes the fact that children who can't decode the words obviously can't comprehend the text. Regarding the states' extremely recent passage of LETRS legislation, far too recent to have had any effect on current scores: This stuff is a farce that legislatures and school systems, both blue and red, have been pulling on naive voters for decades. Public school reading instruction has been completely insane for over 80 years now; in 1955, Rudolf Flesch published "Why Johnny Can't Read", exposing how utterly preposterous their reading ideology had already become during the decade following the end of WW2. Since then, three generations of parents have labored under the fallacy that the system could be reformed if only the supposed professionals within the system could be shown the light by those of us outside. I know because I was part of the second generation to do so back in the late 1990s. We had no idea what we were up against. To get some idea of how preposterous it is that we're still fighting to get public schools to do what nearly every home-schooling mom does successfully at her own kitchen table, find "My Child Will Read".
I'm a fan of the late John Taylor Gatto, particularly his 2008 book "Weapons of Mass Instruction - A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling". It's a scathing, humorous, and slightly loony critique of U.S. public schools.
Kudos Natalie! You covered all the bases. Time for a paradigm change in reading instruction and assessment. Having students read and write about what they learned/are learning as a form of assessment makes the most sense. And with regard to phonics, as you say, it is needed for most students but let’s remember that there are thousands of profoundly deaf children who exclusively use American Sign Language and who are born to deaf parents who read just fine. Phonics is certainly important but certainly not mandatory.
If you want to go from print to words (decoding), sounding out words is the most efficient and effective way to do it. It goves you principles, not just vague patterns. Typically developing kids will eventually learn to read no matter how ineffectively you teach them, but for kids with dyslexia, it matters. We have over 40 years and multiple disciplines attesting that phonics is the best way to learn to *decode*.
IMO, problem is that people forget that reading is more than decoding -- we also need *comprehension*. So, they neglect to teach what words mean or how to understand texts. However, no actual reading scientist thinks that's a good idea.
(BTW, at least as of ~2020, deaf kids typically *are* behind in reading...though that could also be due to language deprivation)
With the caveat that I'm not a neurologist. My understanding is that lack of ability to hear, see etc means your brain develops differently (differently doesn't mean different side). I also know that learning to read actually rewires the brain. I would bet money that there's almost certainly some strange interactions between all of them.
Either way, for normal children the "science of reading" seems to be REALLY clear. The vast majority of them will need explicit phonics instruction to learn to read properly.
In particular the study where they took people that already knew how to read and made them learn a new made up written language was interesting. They had one group learn the new language phonetically, the other one by just trying to memorize the words. At first the memorization group did better, but then the phonetic group took off and left them in the dust.
Phonics really is important for the decoding part of learning to read.
Thank you, Natalie Wexler! Keep fighting the fight. "For students to acquire the kind of knowledge that enables reading comprehension, schools need to build it systematically, through a content-rich curriculum, ideally beginning in kindergarten."
It takes a high-quality knowledge-building curriculum, a strong foundational skills curriculum, a robust system that includes knowledge-building for educators with coaching support, and a strong mission and vision.
I think how the test is administered is another topic for discussion. We are assessing students, using a computer, which includes long passages that have to be read and reread by scrolling.
I don't disagree with any of your points about reading comprehension and knowledge-rich curriculum. Please keep banging the drum!
However, it's worth noting that even though NAEP Reading comprehension is an assessment of "comprehension" and does not isolate decoding/word reading or fluency, the 2018 NAEP Oral Reading Fluency Study found a correlation between NAEP level and average accuracy and words correct per minute. (They broke down the Below Basic category into low, medium, and high). https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/studies/orf/
Low Below Basic 82%. accuracy 71 wcpm
Medium Below Basic 92% accuracy 95 wcpm
High Below Basic 94% accuracy 108 wcpm
Basic 96% accuracy 123 wcpm
Proficient 97% accuracy 142 wcpm
Advanced 98% accuracy 160 wcpm
This should not be surprising. Being able to demonstrate reading comprehension on a test like this is the outcome of many things, including word reading accuracy, reading fluency, AND knowledge and language. I know you know that, but I think it's important to emphasize that skills (and deficits) in these components usually go hand in hand.
So, where exactly do you stand? Here’s my well-rooted stance, speaking from 25 years of digging into and monitoring BAD science that is claimed to be the “science of reading (SOR).”
It has been like watching two children fight relentlessly over a toy—and neither is bothering to look at the evidence!
SOR was only ever designed to answer the question: What is the best way to teach basic skills? Well—why are we surprised that SOR then delivers only 3 out of 10 kids who read proficiently? The majority read EXACTLY the way they were taught to read.
A member of the National Reading Panel WARNED the nation this would happen in the NRP Minority View. READ IT. It clearly states why SOR isn’t working.
Making excuses and ignoring the failure doesn’t help kids. I tutor about 20 hours a week online—and the methods I use (40 years in the making) both help brand-new readers read excellently from the beginning, and remediate about most of the students I tutor. How? By explicitly teaching the STABLE consonants, and moving students after they master those into highly predictable books. Equipped with these two “tools,” my students figure out how to use phonics information strategically—not through decoding. Strategic use of phonics produces reading hat is fully comprehended and sounds just like natural speech. It’s brilliant—but it isn’t “SOR.” My thanks to Dee Tadlock, Ph.D. for developing the methods. Not only do I feel tremendous satisfaction helping kids out of the quicksand of reading problems, my grandkids started public school reading above grade level—and have never needed classroom instruction in reading. Their mother made sure their reading potential wasn’t destroyed by over-emphasis on phonics and decoding—the TRUE CAUSE of most reading problems.
As an eighth grade teacher, these scores just add numbers to years of observations.
Beyond the classroom, folks ignore the role of culture here. With TikTok and so on, kids have been creating their own culture for some time now. Gone are the days of pastiche on Nickelodeon, when great plots were borrowed for children's television.
Culture has everything to do with knowledge building--even if it only plants the seeds. I'd lend you 1,000 words here if you wanted.
Thank you Natalie Wexler!!! In Florida, there is a mandatory retention if students cannot pass the FAST (Florida’s state test). I think that a foundational skills assessment (phonics, fluency & sight words) short be given to K-2 students. Those that cannot pass should be retained in 2nd grade in order to master foundational skills.
I enjoyed this and hoped you would respond to the scores. I'm surprised you didn't also add that background knowledge isn't assumed on these tests- yet again making the results irrelevant.
Actually, background knowledge IS assumed on these tests! That’s the problem. The reading passages assume kids have knowledge that many actually don’t have.
It's so important to understand the link between Reading Comprehension and Writing! The better children are at reading and truly understanding what they've read, the better they are at writing.
"We have made the mistake of trying to teach comprehension as though it were a set of transferable skills. In fact, comprehension is far more dependent on knowledge. Whether you can find the main idea of a text has a lot more to do with whether you have relevant knowledge in long-term memory than with how much you’ve practiced finding the main idea." Exactly! One needs "hooks" in one's brain for new information encountered. Otherwise, one experiences "buffer overflow."
This analysis raises important points about how NAEP scores are interpreted and what factors contribute to reading comprehension. Given that test scores don’t necessarily capture the full picture of learning, what do you think should be the role of standardized assessments in shaping literacy policy? Should we be focusing more on qualitative measures, such as classroom observations and student engagement with reading and writing, rather than primarily on test data?
I think standardized tests like NAEP can tell us generally that we have a problem, but they can't really tell us what to do about it. Unfortunately, since they purport to measure comprehension skills, it's presumed that the way to address low scores is to spend MORE time teaching comprehension skills rather than building knowledge and vocabulary.
I wouldn't just rely on classroom observations -- and student engagement is an unreliable guide. It's quite possible for students to be engaged but not actually learning much of anything.
Ideally, I think we would have a system that combined classroom observations (provided the observers actually know what to look for) with testing grounded in the content of the curriculum.
That would be hard with a national test like the NAEP, because content standards vary from state to state. But the designers of the NAEP could survey state social studies and science standards, identify as much common content as possible, and then base the reading passages in that content. That would not only help level the playing field, it would also give teachers an incentive to focus on content rather than largely illusory comprehension skills.
First of all the majority of states that enacted Science of Reading or research-based literacy laws did so in the past year or 2 and primarily for grades K-2 or K-3. Improvements will not show up in grades 4 or 8 yet and anyone who understands that will know this. Secondly science of reading is not just phonics and none of the legislation says that and the Louisiana work was much more than phonics with a heavy focus on content-rich text to build knowledge as well. It is important to be honest about this.
This has been a frustration of mine in the reporting as well; anyone who understands will know this, as will anyone on the ground in public schools. Even those districts that are working hard to change know that retraining teachers, curriculum adoption, and change management won't show up in a year or two automatically.
I agree, but none of this changes the fact that children who can't decode the words obviously can't comprehend the text. Regarding the states' extremely recent passage of LETRS legislation, far too recent to have had any effect on current scores: This stuff is a farce that legislatures and school systems, both blue and red, have been pulling on naive voters for decades. Public school reading instruction has been completely insane for over 80 years now; in 1955, Rudolf Flesch published "Why Johnny Can't Read", exposing how utterly preposterous their reading ideology had already become during the decade following the end of WW2. Since then, three generations of parents have labored under the fallacy that the system could be reformed if only the supposed professionals within the system could be shown the light by those of us outside. I know because I was part of the second generation to do so back in the late 1990s. We had no idea what we were up against. To get some idea of how preposterous it is that we're still fighting to get public schools to do what nearly every home-schooling mom does successfully at her own kitchen table, find "My Child Will Read".
And when you're done perusing that, you might try understanding why no amount of reform effort under the current system can possibly succeed: "No, we are not going to fix the public schools": https://daveziffer.substack.com/p/no-we-are-not-going-to-fix-the-public
I'm a fan of the late John Taylor Gatto, particularly his 2008 book "Weapons of Mass Instruction - A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling". It's a scathing, humorous, and slightly loony critique of U.S. public schools.
Roland Fryer did, and wrote how to do it.
Everybody else just refuses
Kudos Natalie! You covered all the bases. Time for a paradigm change in reading instruction and assessment. Having students read and write about what they learned/are learning as a form of assessment makes the most sense. And with regard to phonics, as you say, it is needed for most students but let’s remember that there are thousands of profoundly deaf children who exclusively use American Sign Language and who are born to deaf parents who read just fine. Phonics is certainly important but certainly not mandatory.
My understanding is that the process of sounding out is actually important it engages a certain part of the brain.
Comparisons with deaf children are probably not relevant. As brain development is going to be different with a deaf child
Definitely!
If you want to go from print to words (decoding), sounding out words is the most efficient and effective way to do it. It goves you principles, not just vague patterns. Typically developing kids will eventually learn to read no matter how ineffectively you teach them, but for kids with dyslexia, it matters. We have over 40 years and multiple disciplines attesting that phonics is the best way to learn to *decode*.
IMO, problem is that people forget that reading is more than decoding -- we also need *comprehension*. So, they neglect to teach what words mean or how to understand texts. However, no actual reading scientist thinks that's a good idea.
(BTW, at least as of ~2020, deaf kids typically *are* behind in reading...though that could also be due to language deprivation)
Left-hemisphere processing of linguistic input for both hearing and deaf children
With the caveat that I'm not a neurologist. My understanding is that lack of ability to hear, see etc means your brain develops differently (differently doesn't mean different side). I also know that learning to read actually rewires the brain. I would bet money that there's almost certainly some strange interactions between all of them.
Either way, for normal children the "science of reading" seems to be REALLY clear. The vast majority of them will need explicit phonics instruction to learn to read properly.
In particular the study where they took people that already knew how to read and made them learn a new made up written language was interesting. They had one group learn the new language phonetically, the other one by just trying to memorize the words. At first the memorization group did better, but then the phonetic group took off and left them in the dust.
Phonics really is important for the decoding part of learning to read.
Thank you, Natalie Wexler! Keep fighting the fight. "For students to acquire the kind of knowledge that enables reading comprehension, schools need to build it systematically, through a content-rich curriculum, ideally beginning in kindergarten."
It takes a high-quality knowledge-building curriculum, a strong foundational skills curriculum, a robust system that includes knowledge-building for educators with coaching support, and a strong mission and vision.
I think how the test is administered is another topic for discussion. We are assessing students, using a computer, which includes long passages that have to be read and reread by scrolling.
I don't disagree with any of your points about reading comprehension and knowledge-rich curriculum. Please keep banging the drum!
However, it's worth noting that even though NAEP Reading comprehension is an assessment of "comprehension" and does not isolate decoding/word reading or fluency, the 2018 NAEP Oral Reading Fluency Study found a correlation between NAEP level and average accuracy and words correct per minute. (They broke down the Below Basic category into low, medium, and high). https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/studies/orf/
Low Below Basic 82%. accuracy 71 wcpm
Medium Below Basic 92% accuracy 95 wcpm
High Below Basic 94% accuracy 108 wcpm
Basic 96% accuracy 123 wcpm
Proficient 97% accuracy 142 wcpm
Advanced 98% accuracy 160 wcpm
This should not be surprising. Being able to demonstrate reading comprehension on a test like this is the outcome of many things, including word reading accuracy, reading fluency, AND knowledge and language. I know you know that, but I think it's important to emphasize that skills (and deficits) in these components usually go hand in hand.
This is very helpful, Miriam. Thank you!
So, where exactly do you stand? Here’s my well-rooted stance, speaking from 25 years of digging into and monitoring BAD science that is claimed to be the “science of reading (SOR).”
It has been like watching two children fight relentlessly over a toy—and neither is bothering to look at the evidence!
SOR was only ever designed to answer the question: What is the best way to teach basic skills? Well—why are we surprised that SOR then delivers only 3 out of 10 kids who read proficiently? The majority read EXACTLY the way they were taught to read.
A member of the National Reading Panel WARNED the nation this would happen in the NRP Minority View. READ IT. It clearly states why SOR isn’t working.
Making excuses and ignoring the failure doesn’t help kids. I tutor about 20 hours a week online—and the methods I use (40 years in the making) both help brand-new readers read excellently from the beginning, and remediate about most of the students I tutor. How? By explicitly teaching the STABLE consonants, and moving students after they master those into highly predictable books. Equipped with these two “tools,” my students figure out how to use phonics information strategically—not through decoding. Strategic use of phonics produces reading hat is fully comprehended and sounds just like natural speech. It’s brilliant—but it isn’t “SOR.” My thanks to Dee Tadlock, Ph.D. for developing the methods. Not only do I feel tremendous satisfaction helping kids out of the quicksand of reading problems, my grandkids started public school reading above grade level—and have never needed classroom instruction in reading. Their mother made sure their reading potential wasn’t destroyed by over-emphasis on phonics and decoding—the TRUE CAUSE of most reading problems.
As an eighth grade teacher, these scores just add numbers to years of observations.
Beyond the classroom, folks ignore the role of culture here. With TikTok and so on, kids have been creating their own culture for some time now. Gone are the days of pastiche on Nickelodeon, when great plots were borrowed for children's television.
Culture has everything to do with knowledge building--even if it only plants the seeds. I'd lend you 1,000 words here if you wanted.
Thank you Natalie Wexler!!! In Florida, there is a mandatory retention if students cannot pass the FAST (Florida’s state test). I think that a foundational skills assessment (phonics, fluency & sight words) short be given to K-2 students. Those that cannot pass should be retained in 2nd grade in order to master foundational skills.
I am begging you! lol Please visit me. Law school drop out. 10th year 2nd grade teacher. 8th largest school district in California. CA is willld.
I enjoyed this and hoped you would respond to the scores. I'm surprised you didn't also add that background knowledge isn't assumed on these tests- yet again making the results irrelevant.
Actually, background knowledge IS assumed on these tests! That’s the problem. The reading passages assume kids have knowledge that many actually don’t have.
The kids who get it do fine with tech. The kids who do not get it, do not need tech. Simple.
It's so important to understand the link between Reading Comprehension and Writing! The better children are at reading and truly understanding what they've read, the better they are at writing.
Digging a little deeper into Louisiana's gains should bring one to looking at their changes in teacher preparation and certification.
"We have made the mistake of trying to teach comprehension as though it were a set of transferable skills. In fact, comprehension is far more dependent on knowledge. Whether you can find the main idea of a text has a lot more to do with whether you have relevant knowledge in long-term memory than with how much you’ve practiced finding the main idea." Exactly! One needs "hooks" in one's brain for new information encountered. Otherwise, one experiences "buffer overflow."
This analysis raises important points about how NAEP scores are interpreted and what factors contribute to reading comprehension. Given that test scores don’t necessarily capture the full picture of learning, what do you think should be the role of standardized assessments in shaping literacy policy? Should we be focusing more on qualitative measures, such as classroom observations and student engagement with reading and writing, rather than primarily on test data?
I think standardized tests like NAEP can tell us generally that we have a problem, but they can't really tell us what to do about it. Unfortunately, since they purport to measure comprehension skills, it's presumed that the way to address low scores is to spend MORE time teaching comprehension skills rather than building knowledge and vocabulary.
I wouldn't just rely on classroom observations -- and student engagement is an unreliable guide. It's quite possible for students to be engaged but not actually learning much of anything.
Ideally, I think we would have a system that combined classroom observations (provided the observers actually know what to look for) with testing grounded in the content of the curriculum.
That would be hard with a national test like the NAEP, because content standards vary from state to state. But the designers of the NAEP could survey state social studies and science standards, identify as much common content as possible, and then base the reading passages in that content. That would not only help level the playing field, it would also give teachers an incentive to focus on content rather than largely illusory comprehension skills.