US: Parents fight back - open letter 'response to opinion' of objections to Emily Hanford's 'Sold a Story' series

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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US: Parents fight back - open letter 'response to opinion' of objections to Emily Hanford's 'Sold a Story' series

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

At the time of posting this parents' letter - with its growing number of signatories - journalist Emily Hanford's series 'Sold a Story' is causing quite a stir in the United States. Bearing in mind that we have an international community, ripples of this development are travelling around the world too!

You can read about some back-story to Emily's series re the perpetuation by big publishers of the flawed and potentially damaging 'multi-cueing word-guessing' which is often referred to as '3-cueing' here:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1429

Mention is made of Marie Clay who is the founder of the 'Reading Recovery' intervention programme that has also caused alarm in its methodology for some considerable time - you can read about these worries here:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=861

So here is the open letter representing parents' views and understanding of the Science of Reading - including plenty of references to support their position:
21 November 2022

The Parent Response to "Opinion: A call for rejecting the newest reading wars" in The Hechinger Report
https://openletter.earth/the-parent-res ... t-3f703f9f

To All of the Above Named:

Parents have sat by and watched for decades while our children have not been successfully taught how to read or write within the American education system, with curriculums that have been written and supported by the signers of the Letter to the Editor for The Hechinger Report.

For decades our cries for content rich curriculum that is founded on and dedicated to the empirical data on how the brain learns how to read and write as evidenced by the work of Dr. Guinevere Eden, Dr. Stanislas Dehaene, Dr. Sally Shaywitz, Dr. Bennett Shaywitz, Dr. Mark Seidenberg, Dr. Maryanne Wolf, Dr. Louisa Moats, Dr. Joseph Torgesen, Dr. Daniel Willingham, Dr. Jack Fletcher, Dr. G. Reid Lyon, and countless others, has fallen on deaf ears. (See reference list appended to this letter for the scientific data your letter was lacking.)

Finally, in a very small way, acknowledging the outcries now echoing out of the megaphone provided to our voices by the reporting of Emily Hanford, you crafted a letter to state that your own research has been ignored, yet you do not provide a single link to a single research paper, blind study, or other scientifically recognized medium to prove data and show real results; instead what you present is only your emotional blustering that your work and the work of your self-proclaimed martyrs like Marie Clay, is ignored at best, and defamed at worse.

Sadly, in your willful dismissal of the evidence before you over the proceeding decades, you choose yet again to dismiss our pleas as misinformed, misdirected, divisive, and irresponsible.

Collectively, we are forced to send our children to compulsory education where the products you prostitute are forced onto our children who are incapable of quantifying their struggle. Few among our populace can afford private schools that may have alternative curriculums seated in the Science of Reading, and fewer still can make the necessary sacrifices to homeschool children to salvage their education.
Do read the full piece and note all the references. It's fantastic and needed saying, many years ago, and many times over until everyone gets the message - including the publishers!
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