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