USA: Reviews Give Failing Marks to 2 Reading Programs - Fountas & Pinnell's, & Lucy Calkins' + Emily Hanford's reporting

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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USA: Reviews Give Failing Marks to 2 Reading Programs - Fountas & Pinnell's, & Lucy Calkins' + Emily Hanford's reporting

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

How many literacy programmes have failed children and failed their teachers? This has gone on far too long and everyone should now know better with the long-standing research in reading instruction:

New Curriculum Review Gives Failing Marks to Two Popular Reading Programs

Fountas and Pinnell, Calkins’ Units of Study get low marks on EdReports


By Sarah Schwartz — November 09, 2021 14 min read
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learnin ... 84c2d19ca3
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Re: USA EdWeek: 'New Curriculum Review Gives Failing Marks to Two Popular Reading Programs'

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Influential authors Fountas and Pinnell stand behind disproven reading theory

The education professors double down on a flawed approach that encourages pictures and context to read words. Heinemann — their publisher — faces harsh criticism.

November 19, 2021 | by Emily Hanford and Christopher Peak

https://www.apmreports.org/story/2021/1 ... ing-theory
Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, two of the biggest names in literacy education, are breaking their silence in the debate over how best to teach kids to read, responding to criticism that their ideas don’t align with reading science.

Fountas, a professor at Lesley University in Massachusetts, and Pinnell, professor emeritus at Ohio State, are authors of some of the most widely used instructional materials in American elementary schools, and their approach to teaching reading has held sway for decades. But at the core of their approach is a theory about how people read words that has been disproven by cognitive scientists.

A 2019 podcast episode and story by APM Reports helped bring the discrepancy to wide public attention. Since then, Lucy Calkins of Teachers College Columbia, whose work relies on the disproven theory, has admitted she was wrong. But Fountas and Pinnell had remained largely silent until earlier this month, when they released a series of blog posts to address the controversy.

The 10-part series, posted on the website of their publisher, Heinemann, was billed as an effort to “offer clarity around mischaracterizations of our work.”

At the center of the controversy are teaching techniques that encourage children to use context, pictures and sentence structure, along with letters, to identify words. Fountas and Pinnell reiterated their allegiance to this approach in their blog. “The goal for the reader is accuracy using all sources of information simultaneously,” they wrote. “If a reader says ‘pony’ for ‘horse’ because of information from the pictures, that tells the teacher that the reader is using meaning information from the pictures, as well as the structure of the language, but is neglecting to use the visual information of the print. His response is partially correct, but the teacher needs to guide him to stop and work for accuracy.”

Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies reading and language development, said this statement doesn’t square with what decades of scientific research has shown about how reading works. “If a child is reading ‘pony’ as ‘horse,’ these children haven’t been taught to read. And they’re already being given strategies for dealing with their failures. This is backwards. If the child were actually given better instruction in how to read the words, then it would obviate the need for using all these different kinds of strategies.”
Do read the whole report!
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Re: USA EdWeek: 'New Curriculum Review Gives Failing Marks to Two Popular Reading Programs'

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Reading Matters

Connecting Science and Education
https://seidenbergreading.net/2021/11/2 ... /#comments
Clarity about Fountas and Pinnell

Posted on November 20, 2021 by Mark Seidenberg

Fountas and Pinnell have written a series of blog posts defending their popular curriculum, which is being criticized as based on discredited ideas about how children learn to read. (See Emily Hanford’s post here; EdReports evaluation here, many comments in the blogosphere.) The question is why school systems should continue to invest in the F&P curriculum and other products if they are inadequate.

Their blog posts indicate that Fountas and Pinnell (hereafter F&P) have not benefited from ongoing discussions about approaches to reading instruction. They are staying the course. The posts are restatements of their views that add little new information.

Here are some further observations, from a reading researcher who has been looking closely at several curricula that dominate the enormous market for such materials. I’ve summarized basic flaws in their approach and responded to their defense of it. The quotes are from the F&P “Just to clarify” posts.

1. Fountas and Pinnell’s misconceptions about the knowledge and mental operations that support reading, and how they are acquired, make both learning to read and teaching children to read more difficult.

Being able to read and understand words quickly and accurately is the basic foundation for reading, which enables the development of more advanced forms of literacy.

Because the F&P curriculum doesn’t adequately address the development of these skills, it focuses on coping with the struggles that follow. Beginning readers are seen as plodders who, knowing little about the written code, need ways to figure words out. This can be done by using several “word solving” strategies. There is greater emphasis on teaching children how to cope with their lack of basic skills than on teaching those skills in the first place.

Thus: Fountas and Pinnell’s approach to reading creates learning difficulties for which their curriculum then offers solutions. The rationale for the approach collapses if children are given sufficient opportunities to gain basic skills.

2. In defense of their approach, F&P (like Lucy Calkins) cite the example of a child who reads the word HORSE as PONY. This example clarifies what is at stake.

For F&P such errors are a natural occurrence in beginning reading. The error shows that the child understands the context (perhaps from pictures) and just needs the tools to correct the error, with the teacher’s support. Later they will be taught to “monitor” their own reading to identify when errors have been made and use the strategies to correct them.

I view the error quite differently: it indicates an astonishing instructional flaw, failing to teach the child basic facts about print. A child who is attending to the printed word and has learned that the spelling of a word represents its sound would know that the word cannot be PONY. This type of error is called a semantic paralexia when it occurs in adults whose reading is impaired because of stroke or other brain injury. It’s a rare error among beginning readers unless they haven’t been adequately taught about print.
Again - please follow the link and read the full post.
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Re: USA EdWeek: 'New Curriculum Review Gives Failing Marks to Two Popular Reading Programs'

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Here is another post with reference to Fountas and Pinnell and their highly-flawed multi-cueing word-guessing approach to reading instruction:
Heartbreak and illiteracy: Three cueing creates instructional casualties

By James Dobson

Community contribution / November 15, 2021
https://educationhq.com/news/heartbreak ... es-108331/#
Three cueing is often seen as a hallmark of ‘balanced literacy’. Although there is no clear definition of what balanced literacy actually is, it is nevertheless popular term in Australian schools.

It certainly featured prominently in my training as a primary teacher just over a decade ago. One of the texts we were referred to was Fountas & Pinnell’s chapter called ‘Guided Reading Within a Balanced Literacy Program’ (1996).

So imagine my surprise when the same authors posted a blog this week distancing themselves from the term ‘balanced literacy’!

Unfortunately, this shift away from the balanced literacy label doesn’t seem to coincide with any substantive change in their approach to teaching reading.

Recently, social media erupted as a moderator for Fountas & Pinnell’s facebook group suggested that we should accept that 20 per cent students will be unable to read proficiently. I am not sure where this figure came from, and Fountas & Pinnell have since apologised. However, to claim that 1 in 5 was an acceptable rate of failure caused an outburst.

Imagine the outcry if 20 per cent of students didn’t have lunch! This equates to over 800,000 current students in Australia. As educators, we should not accept this high number of instructional casualties.

Many parents shared the stories of their children, who are instructional casualties of three cueing. The devastation, heartbreak and illiteracy that are perpetuated by the prevalence of this practice is shocking!

Think about your family and friends. How many of them are you willing to allow to be instructional casualties? How can we possibly condemn such a large proportion of them to a life of struggling to read?
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Re: USA: Reviews Give Failing Marks to Two Popular Reading Programs - Fountas & Pinnell's, and Lucy Calkins'

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Journalist, Emily Hanford, provides podcasts featuring the challenges faced in the USA to achieve research-informed instruction in all schools for all children:
Sold a Story
https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It's an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn't true and are now reckoning with the consequences — children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.
Please note there are podcasts and also transcripts available:
EPISODES

E1 The Problem
Corinne Adams watches her son's lessons during Zoom school and discovers a dismaying truth: He can't read. Little Charlie isn't the only one. Sixty-five percent of fourth graders are not proficient readers. Kids need to learn specific skills to become good readers, and in many schools, those skills are not being taught.

TRANSCRIPT | DOWNLOAD

E2 The Idea
Sixty years ago, Marie Clay developed a way to teach reading she said would help kids who were falling behind. They'd catch up and never need help again. Today, her program remains popular and her theory about how people read is at the root of a lot of reading instruction in schools. But Marie Clay was wrong.

CLEAN VERSION | TRANSCRIPT | DOWNLOAD

E3 The Battle
President George W. Bush made improving reading instruction a priority. He got Congress to provide money to schools that used reading programs supported by scientific research. But backers of Marie Clay’s cueing idea saw Bush’s Reading First initiative as a threat.

TRANSCRIPT | DOWNLOAD
Emily refers to 'Reading Recovery', here is a link with information about people who have worked hard to draw attention to the flaws in Reading Recovery based on research findings:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=861

Emily refers to the Bush era and figures such as Reid Lyon and Bob Sweet who worked so hard for many years to achieve research-informed reading instruction. Here is some further information about this:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1172

It is chilling beyond all measure that research findings from decades ago provided a steer for the ingredients of reading instruction and yet STILL literacy programmes, their flawed guidance, and flawed practices persist in so many schools teaching English.

This is a travesty, and it beggars belief that fundamentally flawed ideas and practices continue to this day.
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Re: USA: Reviews Give Failing Marks to 2 Reading Programs - Fountas & Pinnell's, & Lucy Calkins' + Emily Hanford's repor

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Read about the fantastic development in the US of parents fighting back in response to publishers' and academics' resistance to, and complaint of, Emily Hanford's 'Sold a Story' series. The link below is from the IFERI's 'Parent Forum':
21 November 2022

The Parent Response to "Opinion: A call for rejecting the newest reading wars" in The Hechinger Report

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1455&p=3096#p3096
You have had your opportunity, and you have failed to rise to that challenge.

All of us who have signed our names here are the ones invested in doing the real work, and we truly care about coming together and moving forward in a productive way, but you have proven time and time again that you are not truly invested in change, or admitting that the curriculums you’ve written and / or supported are wrong. Your continued efforts to dismiss the cries of parents begging you for change is what is wasting our time. We are here to focus on what matters most – our children.

You also do not get to brush us aside because we are “just parents.” That blatant dismissal isn’t going to work anymore. We all possess Ph.D.’s in our children, and we see their struggle. Collectively we are raising our voices so that you can plainly see with your own eyes that parents are the ones demanding you change your curriculums for the sake of all children. We know and fully understand what is needed. We have not been “sold a story” on a mythological idea that is the Science of Reading, and we are not going to let you off the hook as you attempt to PR spin your way out of this. We are informed, we are watching, invested, and paying keen attention to what you do next. We are also openly advocating for change at our school boards, and in our state legislatures.

Prove to us that you are collectively dedicated to the hard work of change for the sake of all children’s ability to read and write or do us all a favor and retire so you will stop harming them.
Do follow the link in this message, and read the full letter of the parents and other supporters! This is very important.

In England's context, it has been official since 2006, from successive governments, that schools should provide 'systematic synthetic phonics' with decodable reading material and teachers should not promote 'multi-cueing word-guessing' (called the 'searchlights reading strategies' in England's National Literacy Strategy 1998 to 2006). Thus, England is officially way ahead of the game and a world-leader. Very sadly, however, the same cannot be said for the whole of the United Kingdom as Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are yet to come fully on board with clarity regarding official guidance for teachers - for both mainstream and intervention provision.
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Re: USA: Reviews Give Failing Marks to 2 Reading Programs - Fountas & Pinnell's, & Lucy Calkins' + Emily Hanford's repor

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-o ... ce=twitter
The Rise and Fall of Vibes-Based Literacy

Is a controversial curriculum, entrenched in New York City’s public schools for two decades, finally coming undone?


By Jessica Winter

September 1, 2022
An extract:
I looked online for help, and learned that our Brooklyn public school’s main reading-and-writing curriculum, Units of Study, is rooted in a method known as balanced literacy. Early readers are encouraged to choose books from an in-classroom library and read silently on their own. They figure out unfamiliar words based on a “cueing” strategy: the reader asks herself if the word looks right, sounds right, and makes sense in context. My daughter was taught to use “picture power”—guessing words based on the accompanying illustrations. She memorized high-frequency “sight words” using a stack of laminated flash cards: “and,” “the,” “who,” et cetera.

It seemed to me that, rather than learning to decode a word using phonics, by matching sounds to letters with close adult guidance, a reader following this method is conditioned to look away from the word, in favor of the surrounding words or the accompanying illustrations—to make a quasi-educated guess, perhaps all on her own. It seemed possible that my kid’s scattered, self-directed reading style wasn’t entirely a product of her age or her temperament. To some extent, it had been taught to her.

Units of Study was developed by the education professor Lucy Calkins, the founding director of Columbia’s Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, which she started in 1981. Calkins trained thousands of teachers in Units of Study, becoming so synonymous with the curriculum that educators often refer to it—and even to balanced literacy itself—by the shorthand “Teachers College” or simply “Lucy Calkins.” The curriculum has dominated New York City’s approach to early reading for nearly twenty years. But literacy rates remain dismal: as of 2019, only about forty-seven per cent of the city’s students in grades three through eight were considered proficient in reading, according to state exams, including just thirty-five per cent of Black students and less than thirty-seven per cent of Hispanic students. “Lucy Calkins’ work, if you will, has not been as impactful as we had expected and thought and hoped that it would have been,” David Banks, the New York City schools chancellor, told reporters in the spring. (Calkins declined my requests for an on-the-record interview.)
Jessica's article is packed full of information - do read the whole piece.
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Re: USA: Reviews Give Failing Marks to 2 Reading Programs - Fountas & Pinnell's, & Lucy Calkins' + Emily Hanford's repor

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

This thread below has information about further articles in USA newspapers with references to Emily Hanford's 'Sold a Story' series and the work of Lucy Calkins:

viewtopic.php?p=3107#p3107
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