https://www.the74million.org/article/ro ... -politics/Rotherham: Phonics. Whole Language. Balanced Literacy. The Problem Isn’t That We Don’t Know How to Teach Reading — It’s Politics
Policymakers are focusing on the craft of teaching reading. They must also focus on the politics.
Last year’s NAEP scores continued a lackluster streak and set off a predictable bout of handwringing. This time, it was reading instruction — or, more precisely, our national pandemic of ineffective reading instruction — catching the flak. In response, the Council of Chief State School Officers held a summit on reading last month, and the media is starting to pay attention. It’s certainly better than nothing. Yet when a National Council on Teacher Quality study found that about half of the nation’s teacher preparation programs are teaching reading instruction based on science, it was received as great news. Indeed, it was progress — only about a third did in 2013. Still, some analysts, at least the cranky ones, wondered how half was in any way really good news. Half? It’s a disaster for millions of kids.
Given the long, tortuous history on this issue, we might pause to ask whether some articles and meetings are really going to get at the core problem. And we might ask whether we even have the core problem correctly defined. Our reading problem and how we approach it is broadly illustrative of a confusion that often pervades education reform efforts: We conflate problems of education politics with problems of educational craft.
About Andrew Rotherham:On reading, fierce ideological debates persist despite a lot of research. To the casual observer, “compromises” like balanced literacy sound like reasonable common ground when they are, in fact, a fig leaf for further guerrilla warfare and camouflaging of teaching methods that have little grounding in rigorously evaluated evidence. Don’t take my word for it; here’s an actual line from The New York Times:
“The guardians of balanced literacy acknowledge that phonics has a place. But they trust their own classroom experience over brain scans or laboratory experiments, and say they have seen many children overcome reading problems without sound-it-out drills.”
In other words, who cares about replicable and falsifiable approaches to evidence — I have this great story! Just last month, a panel of reading experts showed that one of the most popular approaches used in school is misaligned with what research demonstrates about the importance of systemic reading instruction and the role of phonics in that instruction — especially for low-income students. It’s merely the latest in a long line of such analyses about various popular approaches and conventional wisdom. No one is against making sure kids develop a love of reading, as well as the skills to be readers. The consensus falls apart around the question of how much to systemically teach the skills. In practice, what should be an “and” becomes an “or” when it comes to research-based approaches.
Surely part of the problem is how to hold various identifiable publishers, and politicians, and academics, and lecturers, and others to account. Holding people in authority to account is more than just an uphill struggle.Andrew J. Rotherham is a co-founder and partner at Bellwether Education, a national nonprofit organization working to support educational innovation and improve educational outcomes for low-income students, and serves on The 74's board of directors. In addition, among other professional work, he is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report, writes the blog Eduwonk.com, teaches at The University of Virginia and is a senior advisor at Whiteboard Advisors.
Take the case of Anne Glennie's petition in Scotland:
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The IFERI forum illustrates how many people in various roles and organisations undermine the provision of research-informed programmes and practices for reading instruction - as we continue to recognise and identify 'phonicsphobia' widely across the world.