Can we Afford to Ignore the Science of Reading
[Music]
in 2013
atul gawande wrote a piece for the new
yorker about slow
ideas these are ideas that despite
mounds of evidence and research failed
to take off
gawande tells the story of the inception
of anesthesia
and antiseptics both were seen as
promising new ideas in the mid-1860s
but only one of these groundbreaking
developments took off
it was anesthesia anesthesia addressed
an immediate issue
pain during surgery antiseptics however
addressed an invisible problem
germs antiseptics were not adopted until
a generation later
slow ideas have always been with us
climate change
too much sugar is bad for you think
about how long it took to convince
people
that seat belts save lives
as a teacher i’m here today to talk to
you about another long simmering slow
idea
structure phonics is the most effective
way to teach children how to read
phonics is connecting the sounds from
our oral language
to the letters or groups of letters that
represent those sounds
in an alphabetic writing system human
beings learn to speak in the early years
of life
babies develop speech as they hear it
from their caregivers
speaking is intuitive to humans
we have been speaking for so long that
our brains have evolved a language
center
we are hardwired for speech which means
that given adequate exposure to oral
language we will become proficient in
its use
no instruction required however we are
not hardwired to read
our brains need explicit instruction
that literally rewires it
creating connections that would not
otherwise exist
in public schools today we teach reading
as if it is as natural as speaking we
teach reading as if it is a skill to
absorb
not a skill to be explicitly
currently we teach children letter
sounds sight words to memorize
and encourage them to use context such
as pictures to decipher words
this method is known as balanced
literacy and it has been the most
commonly used method
to teach reading since the 1980s
essentially children are presented with
some knowledge and then are left to
create meaning from that knowledge
let me give you an example when i taught
kindergarten i would give my students
small books called leveled readers
within the pages of these books were
words that corresponded with pictures on
the page
as we would get ready to read as the
teacher i would use a series of
cues or prompts to guide my students so
if the sentence was i have a pet cat
i would remind my students that they
knew the words i and have as sight words
i would then maybe encourage them to get
their mouth ready to say the
in pet
i would then usually point to the
picture of the cat to draw their
attention to that
with enough cues the students would
recite the words
the next year i jumped up to fourth
grade where it became quickly apparent
that many of my students did not have
any strategies for sounding out longer
words
the pictures were gone and
the pictures were gone and the guessing
strategies no longer worked because the
text was too complex
as a teacher i should have known how to
help them but i didn’t know
because i had never been taught that
feeling
of frustration led me down the road to
structured phonics
structured phonics involves teaching all
letter sounds
how those sounds work together and how
to break those sounds apart
this is probably the point in the talk
where you are wondering
this all sounds familiar are you sure we
don’t teach phonics in schools
well like everything in education it’s a
little bit more complicated than it
should be
yes all schools teach phonics but most
schools do not teach a structured and
systematic phonics curriculum throughout
the 80s and 90s
reading scores began to fall so much
that congress convened a national
reading panel
to look at all the reading research up
until that point
the evidence was clear structured
phonics was the most effective way to
teach children how to read
it led to the greatest gains in reading
accuracy for children
study after study shows that phonics in
the early grades works
and yet we are still teaching children
to read with the balanced literacy
method
reading scores have barely budged in 30
years
and people of color and low income
people have suffered the most
in 2019 the national assessment for
educational progress
revealed data that showed that only 37
percent
of american 12th graders were reading
proficiently
only 15 of black 12th graders were
reading proficiently
now this is news to you but this is not
news in education circles
the data has looked like this for the
past 30 years
so this begs the question why do we
ignore this data
do we really believe that people have a
civil right to read
now we often only talk about children
when we talk about reading research
but those children become adults today’s
struggling reader
is tomorrow’s partially illiterate adult
illiterate is a very strong word one
often reserved for developing nations
but illiteracy is alive and well here in
the united states
only 48 percent of adults are reading at
a level
that allows them to identify and
interpret information
that is lengthy and complicated and 14
of adults cannot read well enough to
fill out a job application
reading poorly as an adult means that
going to vocational school or college or
entering the workforce will be
exponentially more difficult
and the ramifications extend far beyond
employment
how does a person with such low skills
understand a health diagnosis
and participate in their own health care
how does that person
read their own mail or a rental
agreement
how does that person read a ballot
initiative
individual’s pain has and will continue
to become our collective pain
because when an adult does not read well
it impacts their economy
the public health and our democracy
phonics advocates have been sounding the
alarm for years
but changing the way we teach reading is
a very
slow idea so let’s take a look at what
it would take to switch from a balanced
literacy method to a structured phonics
method
number one train education professors in
the science of reading
number two ed schools of education need
to train teachers in training
and number three school districts will
need to adopt
and purchase new curriculum and train
existing
teachers accordingly practically
everyone involved would need to abandon
their old ways
and for many balanced literacy is the
only theory
and method that they know we would put
in a lot of difficult
and expensive work for an eventual
reward
now some states are well on this path
due to legislation that has essentially
forced to change
however we know with other social and
cultural movements the legislation is
only a part
for an issue to be successful you must
have buy-in
you must talk about it and give the idea
a lot of oxygen
and the good news is that this is
happening teachers across the country
are talking about the need for phonics
once hushed conversations are now out in
the open
parent advocacy groups have sprung up
across the nation
and legislation has passed in multiple
states
that is bringing evidence-based teaching
back to the classroom
the idea is picking up speed
so where do we go from here well it’s
important to note that phonics will not
solve all reading comprehension issues
it’s important to note that phonics will
not solve all reading comprehension
issues
poverty trauma vocabulary instruction
and content knowledge
all play a role but shouldn’t we start
somewhere
instructional methods are something that
schools can actually control
in 2015 the state of mississippi decided
to get serious about raising reading
scores
legislation allocated money for all
elementary teachers to be retrained in
the science of reading
and phonics instruction guess which
state
was the only state to make reading gains
in 2019.
how can we make phonics a nationwide
movement and not a piecemeal state by
state intervention
i am a firm believer that we can do this
through education
legislation and old-fashioned grassroots
organizing
we have to keep talking about this issue
and we need to keep asking the question
why do we ignore the data why are we
okay with poor reading scores
if you feel inspired today to see this
idea come to light go talk to someone
your child’s teacher a school district
administrator
the director of a school of education
because we can no longer sit back and
rely on adult literacy programs
and prison volunteers to teach our
fellow human beings
how to read at the end of the day this
is not about teaching
children this is about teaching future
adults
yes children need to read in order to
learn but adults need
to read in order to live to participate
in society
to be a citizen so help us move this
slow idea along
because school years come to an end our
students move on and typically
we have no idea what happens to them all
we have is the data
and we can turn that data around because
we know what works
the research is abundant and clear
phonics is an idea worth spreading
thank you