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Educators rethink how to teach reading after flaws are revealed in prior methods

Elissa Nadworny

Some states have passed laws or implemented policies related to evidence-based reading instruction — as two-thirds of children struggle to read. How are colleges that train teachers responding?

ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:

Educators are rethinking how reading should be taught in schools. New research has highlighted flaws in decades-old methods. As a result, dozens of states have passed laws or implemented new policies related to evidence-based reading instruction. This comes at a time when two-thirds of children in the U.S. are struggling to read. So how are colleges and universities that train teachers responding? That's the question NPR's Elissa Nadworny, with the help of a dozen member station reporters, has been asking. My colleague A Martínez spoke with her about that.

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

So, Elissa, what did you find? I mean, are teacher prep programs aligning with the science of reading?

ELISSA NADWORNY, BYLINE: So NPR and our member stations reached out to a dozen institutions with education schools. Many said they were constantly changing and updating their curriculum to match current research on reading. A recent study by the National Council on Teacher Quality that looked at 700 teacher training programs at universities found that too many programs weren't aligned with the research on how to teach kids to read. Here's Heather Peske. She's the president of the organization that did that study.

HEATHER PESKE: Only about a quarter of the teachers who leave teacher preparation programs across our nation enter classrooms prepared to teach kids to read aligned to the science and research on reading, while the rest of the teachers who've invested lots of money and lots of time in learning to teach enter classrooms unprepared.

NADWORNY: One of the persistent strategies not backed by research is the cueing system. So that's where students rely on context and sentence structure to identify words they don't know. This method often downplays phonics and sounding out letters. And the study found that many teacher prep programs still were using that method.

MARTÍNEZ: OK, so then how should we be teaching reading?

NADWORNY: Well, research shows there are five core components of teaching reading, including phonics, vocabulary and comprehension. I want you to listen in on a reading class at Oklahoma State University. That member station reporter, Beth Wallis of StateImpact Oklahoma, visited. And you're going to hear some really good examples of university students learning about syllables and sounds from their professor, Robin Fuxa.

ROBIN FUXA: So the first one, the phoneme, that sound is fuh (ph). So you're going to think about how your mouth is positioned and take some notes there. When you say buh (ph), what does your mouth do?

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: Buh.

FUXA: Everybody ready? We're determining how many sounds are in this word. So let's do the word map.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: Map.

FUXA: What about peat (ph)?

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: Peat.

MARTÍNEZ: Wow. Elissa, that takes me back to when I was learning English in the first grade, you know, when I got up at first grade. I mean, OK, so for the places who have changed the way they train their teachers, I mean, how did they do it?

NADWORNY: Well, in many places, it was because politicians got involved. Or the state set new standards better aligned with the research. One example is in North Carolina, where the legislature passed a law mandating that curriculum be backed by the science of reading. They also evaluated universities in 2021 on how well they were doing at that. Brianna Atkinson from member station WUNC talked with faculty at several universities in North Carolina. And many said the changes have not been easy. Here's Gretchen Robinson, a professor and department chair at UNC Pembroke.

GRETCHEN ROBINSON: So it's taken some time to kind of get the buy-in. It's taken some time for for faculty to kind of understand the changes and things.

NADWORNY: You know, she said there have been faculty that have left who weren't on board with the new approaches. And so they've had to hire new faculty who are.

MARTÍNEZ: You know, Elissa, despite all of the new research and the attention on reading, there's still a fear at some universities that politicians are kind of getting involved, throwing their thumb in the pie there. So, I mean, did you hear from educators who felt wary of that?

NADWORNY: We did. Yeah, we heard that a lot. Several states have passed laws to remove things like that cueing strategy we talked about. Florida is one of them. WUSF reporter Kerry Sheridan in Tampa Bay talked with Jenifer Jasinski Schneider about this. She's a professor of literacy studies in the College of Education at the University of South Florida. And she said USF is not changing their way of teaching reading because they've always taught phonics and incorporated, you know, those five pillars. But she really balked at the idea that politicians would get involved.

JENIFER JASINSKI SCHNEIDER: Legislating how we teach reading - no legislators, no collective group of legislators have the knowledge to do that.

NADWORNY: And, you know, she's right. It can't just be politicians. But it is clear that many training programs need a push or at least a strong incentive to change. And look. The bottom line is too many kids in this country are not learning to read. The good news, of course, is that we have the tools and the science to be able to turn that around.

MARTÍNEZ: All right. NPR's Elissa Nadworny covers higher education for NPR. Elissa, thanks.

NADWORNY: Thank you.

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How the Science of Reading Informs 21st‐Century Education

The science of reading should be informed by an evolving evidence base built upon the scientific method. Decades of basic research and randomized controlled trials of interventions and instructional routines have formed a substantial evidence base to guide best practices in reading instruction, reading intervention, and the early identification of at-risk readers. The recent resurfacing of questions about what constitutes the science of reading is leading to misinformation in the public space that may be viewed by educational stakeholders as merely differences of opinion among scientists. Our goals in this paper are to revisit the science of reading through an epistemological lens to clarify what constitutes evidence in the science of reading and to offer a critical evaluation of the evidence provided by the science of reading. To this end, we summarize those things that we believe have compelling evidence, promising evidence, or a lack of compelling evidence. We conclude with a discussion of areas of focus that we believe will advance the science of reading to meet the needs of all children in the 21st century.

For more than 100 years, the question of how best to teach children to read has been debated in what has been termed the “reading wars”. The debate cyclically fades into the background only to reemerge, often with the same points of conflict. We believe that this cycle is not helpful for promoting the best outcomes for children’s educational success. Our goal in this paper is to make an honest and critical appraisal of the science of reading, defining what it is, how we build a case for evidence, summarizing those things for which the science of reading has provided unequivocal answers, providing a discussion of things we do not know but that may have been “oversold,” identifying areas for which evidence is promising but not yet compelling, and thinking ahead about how the science of reading can better serve all stakeholders in children’s educational achievements.

At its core, scientific inquiry is the same in all fields. Scientific research, whether in education, physics, anthropology, molecular biology, or economics, is a continual process of rigorous reasoning supported by a dynamic interplay among methods, theories, and findings. It builds understandings in the form of models or theories that can be tested. Advances in scientific knowledge are achieved by the self-regulating norms of the scientific community over time, not, as sometimes believed, by the mechanistic application of a particular scientific method to a static set of questions (National Research Council, 2002, p. 2).

What is the Science of Reading and Why are we Still Debating it?

The “science of reading” is a phrase representing the accumulated knowledge about reading, reading development, and best practices for reading instruction obtained by the use of the scientific method. We recognize that the accrual of scientific knowledge related to reading is ever evolving, at times circuitous, and not without controversy. Nonetheless, the knowledge base on the science of reading is vast. In the last decade alone, over 14,000 peer-reviewed articles have been published in journals that included the keyword “reading” based on a PsycINFO search. Although many of these studies likely focused on a sliver of the reading process individually, collectively, research studies with a focus on reading have yielded a substantial knowledge base of stable findings based on the science of reading. Taken together, the science of reading helps a diverse set of educational shareholders across institutions (e.g., preschools, schools, universities), communities, and families to make informed choices about how to effectively promote literacy skills that foster healthy and productive lives ( DeWalt & Hink, 2009 ; Rayner et al., 2001 ).

An interesting question concerning the science of reading is “Why is there a debate surrounding the science of reading?” Although there are certainly disputes within the scientific community regarding best practices and new areas of research inquiry, most of the current debate seems to settle upon what constitutes scientific evidence, how much value we should place on scientific evidence as opposed to other forms of knowledge, and how preservice teachers should be instructed to teach reading ( Brady, 2020 ). The current disagreement in what constitutes the scientific evidence of reading (e.g., Calkins, 2020 ) is not new. During the last round of the “reading wars” in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s these same issues were discussed and debated. Much of the debate focused on conflicting views in epistemology between constructivists and positivists on the basic mechanisms associated with reading development. Constructivists, such as Goodman (1967) and Smith (1971) , believed that reading was a “natural act” akin to learning language and thus emphasized giving children the opportunity to discover meaning through experiences in a literacy-rich environment. In contrast, positivists, such as Chall (1967) and Flesch (1955) , made strong distinctions between innate language learning and the effortful learning required to acquire reading skills. Positivists argued for explicit instruction to help foster understanding of how the written code mapped onto language, whereas constructivists encouraged children to engage in a “psycholinguistic guessing game” in which readers use their graphic, semantic, and syntactic knowledge (known as the three cuing system) to guess the meaning of a printed word.

Research clearly indicates that skilled reading involves the consolidation of orthographic and phonological word forms ( Dehene, 2011 ). Work in cognitive neuroscience indicates that a small region of the left ventral visual cortex becomes specialized for this purpose. As children learn to read, they recruit neurons from a small region of the left ventral visual cortex within the left occipitotemporal cortex region (i.e., visual word form area) that are tuned to language-dependent parameters through connectivity to perisylvian language areas ( Dehaene-Lambertz et al., 2018 ). This provides an efficient circuit for grapheme-phoneme conversion and lexical access allowing efficient word-reading skills to develop. These studies provide direct evidence for how teaching alters the human brain by repurposing some visual regions toward the shapes of letters, suggesting that cultural inventions, such as written language, modify evolutionarily older brain regions. Furthermore, studies suggest that instruction focusing on the link between orthography and phonology promote this brain reorganization (e.g., Dehaene, 2011 ). Yet, arguments between philosophical constructivists and philosophical positivists on what constitutes the science of reading and how it informs instruction remain active today (e.g., Castles et al., 2018 ). In a recent interview with Emily Hanford, Ken Goodman defended his advocacy for the three cuing system saying that the three-cueing theory is based on years of observational research. In his view, three cueing is perfectly valid, drawn from a different kind of evidence than what scientists collect in their lab and later he stated that “my science is different” ( Hanford, 2019 ).

As scientists at the Florida Center for Reading Research, we are often frustrated when what we view to be the empirically supported evidence base about the reading process are distorted or denied in communications directed to the public and to teachers. However, Stanovich (2003) posited that “in many cases, the facts are secondary—what is being denied are the styles of reasoning that gave rise to the facts; what is being denied is closer to a worldview than an empirical finding. Many of these styles are implicit; we are not conscious of them as explicit rules of behavior” (pp. 106-107). Stanovich proposed five different dimensions that represent “styles” of generating knowledge about reading. For our purposes, here, we focus on the first dimension: the correspondence versus coherence theory of truth. It hits at the heart of how people believe something to be true. People who believe that a real world exists independent of their beliefs, and that interrogating this world using rigorous principles to gain knowledge is a fruitful activity are said to subscribe to the correspondence theory of truth. In contrast, those who subscribe to the coherence theory of truth believe that something is “true” if the beliefs about something fit together in a logical way. In essence, something is true if it makes sense.

Stanovich believed these differing truth systems might lie at the heart of the disagreements surrounding the science of reading. One side shouting, “Look at this mountain of evidence! How can you not believe it?” and the other side shouting, “It doesn’t make sense! It doesn’t match up with our experiences! Why should we value your knowledge above our own?!” By approaching the science of reading from the perspective of the correspondence theory of truth, we consider how compelling evidence can be generated, what we believe is the compelling evidence, what we think lacks evidence, and what we think is promising evidence.

How We Build a Case for Compelling Evidence

Research is the means by which we acquire and understand knowledge about the world ( Dane, 1990 ) to create scientific principles. Relatively few scientists would argue with the importance of using research evidence to support a principle or to make claims about reading development and the quality of reading instruction. Where significant divergence often occurs is in response to policy statements that categorize research claims and instructional strategies into those with greater or lesser levels of evidence. This divergence is typically rooted in applied epistemology, which can be understood as the study of whether the means by which we study evidence are themselves well designed to lead to valid conclusions. Researchers often frame the science of reading from divergent applied epistemological perspectives. Thus, two scientists who approach the science of reading with different epistemologies will both suggest that they have principled understandings and explanations for how children learn to read; yet, the means by which those understandings and explanations were derived are often distinct.

The correspondence and coherence theories of truth described above are examples of explanations from contrasting epistemological perspectives. Consistent with these perspectives, researchers approaching the science of reading using a correspondence theory typically prioritize deductive methods, which embed hypothesis testing, precise operationalization of constructs, and efforts to decouple the researchers’ beliefs from their interpretation and generalization of empirical evidence. Researchers approaching the science of reading using a coherence theory of truth typically prioritize more inductive methods, such as phenomenological, ethnographic, and grounded theory approaches that embed focus on the meaning and understanding that comes through a person’s lived experience and where the scientist’s own observations shape meaning and principles (e.g., Israel & Duffy, 2014 ).

When the National Research Council published Scientific Research in Education (2002), a significant amount of criticism levied against the report boiled down to differences in epistemological perspectives. Yet, these genuine contrasts can often obscure contributions to the science of reading that derive from multiple applied epistemologies. Observational research, using both inductive (e.g., case studies) and deductive (e.g., correlational studies) approaches, substantively informs the development of theories and of novel instructional approaches (e.g., Scruggs et al., 2007 ). Public health research offers a useful parallel. As it would be unethical to establish a causal link from smoking cigarettes to lung cancer through a randomized controlled trial, that field instead used well-designed observational studies to derive claims and principles. These findings then informed later stages in the broader program of research, including randomized controlled trials of interventions for smoking cessation.

In the science of reading, principles and instructional strategies should indeed capitalize on a program of research inclusive of multiple methodologies. Yet, as the public health domain ultimately takes direction from the efficacy of smoking cessation programs, so too must the science of reading take direction from theoretically informed and well-designed experimental and quasi-experimental studies of promising strategies when the intention is to evaluate instructional practices. The use of experimental (i.e., randomized trials) and quasi-experimental (e.g., regression discontinuity, propensity score matching, interrupted time series) designs, in which an intervention is competed against counterfactual conditions, such as typical practice or alternative interventions, provides the strongest causal credibility regarding which instructional strategies are effective. The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) of the Institute of Education Sciences (e.g., What Works Clearinghouse, 2020) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA; Every Student Succeeds Act, 2015 ) are efforts by the US Department of Education to hierarchically characterize the levels of evidence currently available for instructional practices in education. The WWC uses a review framework, developed by methodological and statistical experts, for evaluating the quality and scope of evidence for specific instructional practices based on features of the design, implementation, and analysis of studies. Similarly, ESSA uses four tiers that focus on both the design of the study and the results of the study in which the tiers differ based on the quantity of evidence and quality of evidence supporting an approach. For both WWC and ESSA, quantity of evidence refers to the number of well-designed and well-implemented studies, and quality of evidence is defined by the ability of a study’s methods to allow for alternative explanations of a finding to be ruled out, for which the randomized controlled trial provides the strongest method.

As outlined above, the “science of reading” utilizes multiple research approaches to generate ideas about reading. Ultimately, the highest priority in the science of reading should be the replicable and generalizable knowledge from observational and experimental methods, rooted in a deductive research approach to knowledge generation that is framed in a correspondence theory of truth. In this manner, the accumulated evidence is built on a research foundation by which theories, principles, and hypotheses have been subjected to rigorous empirical scrutiny to determine the degree to which they hold up across variations in samples, measures, and contexts. In the following sections, we summarize issues related to the nature, development, and instruction of reading for which we believe the science of reading either has or has not yielded compelling evidence, identify what we believe are promising areas for which sufficient evidence has not yet accumulated, and suggest a number of areas that we believe will help move the science of reading forward, increasing knowledge and enhancing its positive impacts for a variety of stakeholders.

Compelling Evidence in the Science of Reading

In this section, we focus on a number of findings centrally important for understanding the development and teaching of reading in alphabetic languages. The evidence base provides answers varying across orthographic regularity (e.g., English vs. Spanish), reading subskill (i.e., decoding vs. comprehension), grade range or developmental level (e.g., early childhood, elementary, adolescence), and linguistic diversity (e.g., English language learners, dialect speakers).

There are large differences among alphabetic languages in the rules for how graphemes represent sounds in words (i.e., a language’s orthography). In languages like Spanish and Finnish there is a near one-to-one relation between letters and sounds. The letter-sound coding in these languages is transparent, and they have shallow orthographies. In other languages, most notably English, there is often not a one-to-one relation between letters and sounds. The letter-sound coding in these languages is opaque, and they have deep orthographies. Children must learn which words cannot be decoded based solely on letter-sound correspondence (e.g., two, knight, laugh) and learn to match these irregular spellings to the words they represent. Where a language’s orthography falls on the shallow-deep dimension affects how quickly children develop accurate and fluent word-reading skills ( Ellis et al., 2004 ; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005 ) and how much instruction on foundational reading skills is likely needed. Studies indicate that children learning to read in English are slower to acquire decoding skills (e.g., Caravolas et al., 2013 ). Ziegler et al. (1997) reported that 69% of monosyllabic words in English were consistent in spelling-to-phonology mappings and 31% of the phonology-to-spelling mappings were consistent. Thus, in teaching children to read in English, the “grain size” of phoneme, onset-rime, and whole word matters ( Ziegler & Goswami, 2005 ) and the preservation of morphological regularities in English spelling matters (e.g., vine vs. vineyard ).

Gough and Tunmer’s (1986) “simple view of reading” model, which is supported by a significant amount of research, provides a useful framework for conceptualizing the development of reading skills across time. It also frames the elements for which it is necessary to provide instructional support. The ultimate goal of reading is to extract and construct meaning from text for a purpose. For this task to be successful, however, the reader needs skills in both word decoding and linguistic comprehension. Weaknesses in either area will reduce the capacity to achieve the goal of reading. Decoding skills and linguistic comprehension make independent contributions to the prediction of reading comprehension across diverse populations of readers ( Kershaw & Schatschneider, 2012 ; Sabatini et al., 2010 ; Vellutino, et al., 2007 ). Results of several studies employing measurement strategies that allow modeling of each component as a latent variable indicate that decoding and linguistic comprehension account for almost all of the variance in reading comprehension (e.g., Foorman et al., 2015 ; Lonigan et al., 2018 ). The relative influence of these skill domains, however, changes across development. The importance of decoding skill in explaining variance in reading comprehension decreases across grades whereas the importance of linguistic comprehension increases (e.g., Catts et al., 2005 ; Foorman et al., 2018 ; García & Cain, 2014 ; Lonigan et al., 2018 ). By the time children are in high school linguistic comprehension and reading comprehension essentially form a single dimension (e.g., Foorman et al., 2018 ).

Children’s knowledge of the alphabetic principle (i.e., how letters and sounds connect) and knowledge of the morphophonemic nature of English are necessary to create the high-quality lexical representations essential to accurate and efficient decoding ( Ehri, 2005 ; Perfetti, 2007 ). Acquiring the alphabetic principle is dependent on understanding that words are composed of smaller sounds (i.e., phonological awareness, PA) and alphabet knowledge (AK). Both PA and AK are substantial correlates and predictors of decoding skills (e.g., Wagner & Torgesen, 1987 ; Wagner et al., 1994 ). Prior to formal reading instruction, children are developing PA and AK as well as other early literacy skills that are related to later decoding skills following formal reading instruction ( Lonigan et al., 2009 ; Lonigan et al., 1998 ; National Early Literacy Panel [NELP], 2008 ; Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998 ). Reading comprehension takes advantage of the reader’s ability to understand language. In most languages, written language and spoken language have high levels of overlap in their basic structure. Longitudinal studies indicate that linguistic comprehension skills from early childhood predict reading comprehension at the end of elementary school ( Catts et al., 2015 ; Language and Reading Research Consortium & Chiu, 2018 ; Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux, 2010 ; Storch & Whitehurst, 2002 ; Verhoeven & Van Leeuwe, 2008 ). The developmental precursors to skilled reading are present prior to school entry. Consequently, differences between children in the development of these skills forecast later differences in reading skills and are useful for identifying children at risk for reading difficulties.

The science of reading provides numerous clear answers about the type and focus of reading instruction for the subskills of reading, depending on where children are on the continuum of reading development and children’s linguistic backgrounds. Much of this knowledge is summarized in the practice guides produced by the Institute of Education Sciences ( Baker et al., 2014 ; Foorman et al., 2016a ; Gersten et al., 2007 , 2008 ; Kamil et al., 2008 ; Shanahan et al., 2010 ) and in meta-analytic summaries of research (e.g., Berkeley et al., 2012 ; Ehri, Nunes, Stahl et al., 2001 ; Ehri, Nunes, Willows et al., 2001 ; NELP, 2008 ; Therrien, 2004 ; Wanzek et al., 2013 , 2016 ). Whereas the practice guides list several best practices, here we emphasize those practices classified as supported by strong or moderate evidence based on WWC standards.

Since the publication of the Report of the National Reading Panel ( National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000 ) and supported by subsequent research (e.g., Gersten et al., 2017a ; Foorman et al., 2016a ), it is clear that a large evidence base provides strong support for the explicit and systematic instruction of the component and foundational skills of decoding and decoding itself. That is, teaching children phonological awareness and letter knowledge, particularly when combined, results in improved word-decoding skills. Teaching children to decode words using systematic and explicit phonics instruction results in improved word-decoding skills. Such instruction is effective both for monolingual English-speaking children and children whose home language is other than English (i.e., dual-language learners; Baker et al., 2014 ; Gersten et al., 2007 ) as well as children who are having difficulties learning to read or who have an identified reading disability ( Ehri, Nunes, Stahl et al., 2001 ; Gersten et al., 2008 ). Additionally, providing children with frequent opportunities to read connected text supports the development of word-reading accuracy and fluency as well as comprehension skills ( Foorman et al., 2016a ; Therrien, 2004 ).

Similarly, a number of instructional activities to promote the development of reading comprehension have strong or moderate supporting evidence. For younger children, teaching children how to use comprehension strategies and how to utilize the organizational structure of a text to understand, learn, and retain content supports better reading comprehension ( Shanahan et al., 2010 ). For older children, teaching the use of comprehension strategies also enhances reading comprehension ( Kamil et al., 2008 ) as does explicit instruction in key vocabulary, providing opportunities for extended discussion of texts, and providing instruction on foundational reading skills when children lack these skills; such instructional approaches are also effective for children with significant reading difficulties ( Berkeley et al., 2012 ; Kamil et al., 2008 ).

Lack of Compelling Evidence in the Science of Reading

In the above section, practices were highlighted that have sufficient evidence to warrant their widespread use. In this section, we address reading practices for which there is a lack of compelling evidence. Some practices have simply not yet been scientifically evaluated. Other practices have been evaluated, but either the evidence does not support their use based on the generalizability of the results or the studies in which they were evaluated were not of sufficient quality to meet a minimal standard of evidence (e.g., WWC standards). Although we lack sufficient space to present a comprehensive list of practices that do not have compelling evidence, we provide examples of practices that are commonplace and vary in the degree to which they have been scientifically studied.

Evidence-based decision making regarding effective literacy programs and practices for classroom use can be difficult. Often, there is no evidence of effectiveness for a program or the evidence is of poor quality. For instance, of the five most popular reading programs used nationwide (i.e., Units of Study for Teaching Reading, Journeys, Into Reading, Leveled Literacy Intervention and Reading Recovery; Schwartz, 1999) only Leveled Literacy Intervention and Reading Recovery, both interventions for struggling readers, have studies that meet WWC standards. The evidence indicates that there were mixed effects across outcomes for Leveled Literacy Intervention and positive or potentially positive effects for Reading Recovery (e.g., Chapman & Tunmer, 2016 ). Classroom reading programs are typically built around the notion of evidence-informed practices – teaching approaches that are grounded in quality research – but have not been subjected to direct scientific evaluation. As a consequence, it is currently impossible for schools to select basal reading programs that adhere to strict evidence-based standards (e.g., ESSA, 2015 ). As an alternative, schools must develop selection criteria for choosing classroom reading programs informed by the growing scientific evidence on instructional factors that support early reading development (e.g., Castles et al., 2018 ; Foorman et al.2017 ; Rayner et al., 2001 ).

Common instructional approaches that lack generalizable empirical support include such practices as close reading ( Welsch et al., 2019 ), use of decodable text ( Jenkins et al., 2004 ), sustained silent reading ( NICHD, 2000 ), multisensory approaches ( Birsh, 2011 ), and the three-cueing system to support word recognition development (Seidenberg, 2017). Some of these instructional approaches rest on sound theoretical and pedagogical grounds. For example, giving beginning readers the opportunity to read decodable texts provides practice applying the grapheme-phoneme relations they have learned to successfully decode words ( Foorman et al., 2016a ), thus building lexical memory to support word reading accuracy and automaticity (Ehri, this issue). However, the only study to experimentally examine the impact of reading more versus less decodable texts as part of an early intervention phonics program for at risk first graders found no differences between the two groups on any of the posttest measures ( Jenkins et al., 2004 ). Such a result does not rule out the possibility of the usefulness of decodable texts but rather indicates the need to disentangle the active ingredients of effective interventions to specify what to use, when, how often, and for whom.

Similarly, multisensory approaches (e.g., Orton-Gillingham) that teach reading by using multiple senses (i.e., sight, hearing, touch, and movement) to help children make systematic connections between language, letters, and words ( Birsh, 2011 ) are commonplace and have considerable clinical support for facilitating reading development in children who struggle to learn to read. However, there is little scientific evidence that indicates that a multisensory approach is more effective than similarly structured phonological-based approaches that do not include a strong multisensory component (e.g., Boyer & Ehri, 2011 ; Ritchey & Goeke, 2006 ; Torgesen et al., 2001 ). With further research, we may find that a multisensory component is a critical ingredient of intervention for struggling readers, but we lack this empirical evidence currently.

Instruction in reading comprehension is another area where despite some studies showing moderate or strong support (see section on compelling evidence) other practices are employed despite limited support for them (e.g., Boulay et al., 2015 ). The complexity of reading comprehension relies on numerous cognitive resources and background knowledge; as a result, intervention directed exclusively at one component or another is not likely to be that impactful. For example, research shows a clear relation between breadth and depth of vocabulary and reading comprehension ( Wagner et al., 2007 ). One implication of this relation is that teaching vocabulary could improve reading comprehension. Numerous studies have tested this implication using instructional approaches that vary from teaching words in isolation to practices that involve instruction in the use of context to learn the meaning of unfamiliar words. Instruction has also included strategies to determine meaning of words through word study and morphological analysis (e.g., Beck & McKeown, 2007 ; Lesaux et al., 2014 ). Although these practices have been effective in increasing vocabulary knowledge of the words taught, there is limited evidence of transfer to untaught words (as measured by standardized measures) or to improvement in general reading comprehension ( Elleman et al., 2009 ; Lesaux et al., 2010 ). Such findings do not mean that vocabulary instruction is not a useful practice; rather, by itself, it is not sufficient to improve reading comprehension. To make meaningful gains, intervention for reading comprehension likely requires addressing multiple components of language as well as teaching content knowledge (see next section) to make sizable gains.

Other instructional practices go directly against what is known from the science of reading. For example, the three-cueing approach to support early word recognition (i.e., relying on a combination of semantic, syntactic, and graphophonic cues simultaneously to formulate an intelligent hypothesis about a word’s identity) ignores 40 years of overwhelming evidence that orthographic mapping involves the formation of letter-sound connections to bond spelling, pronunciation, and meaning of specific words in memory (see Ehri, this issue). Moreover, relying on alternative cuing systems impedes the building of automatic word-recognition skill that is the hallmark of skilled word reading ( Stanovich, 1990 ; 1991 ). The English orthography, being both alphabetic-phonemic and morpho-phonemic, clearly privileges the use of various levels of grapheme-phoneme correspondences to read words ( Frost, 2012 ), with rapid context-free word recognition being the process that most clearly distinguishes good from poor readers ( Perfetti, 1992 ; Stanovich, 1980 ). Guessing at a word amounts to a lost learning trial to help children learn the orthography of the word and thus reduce the need to guess the word in the future ( Castles et al., 2018 ; Share, 1995 ).

Similarly, alternative approaches to improving reading skills for struggling readers often fall well outside the scientific consensus regarding sources of reading difficulties. Some of these approaches are based on the tenet that temporal processing deficits in the auditory (e.g., Tallal, 1984 ) and visual (e.g., Stein, 2019 ) systems of the brain are causally related to poor word-reading development. Although there is some evidence that typically developing and struggling readers differ on measures tapping auditory ( Casini et al., 2018 ; Protopapas, 2014 ) and visual (e.g., Eden et al., 1995; Olson & Datta, 2002 ) processing skill, there is little evidence to support the use of instructional programs designed to improve auditory or visual systems to ameliorate reading problems ( Strong et al., 2011 ). Further, interventions designed to decrease visual confusion (e.g., Dyslexie font) or modify transient channel processing (e.g., Irlen lenses) to improve reading skill for children with reading disability have also failed to garner scientific support ( Hyatt et al., 2009 ; Iovino et al., 1998 ; Marinus et al., 2016 ). Similarly, although use of video games to improve reading via enhanced visual attention is reported to be an effective intervention for children with reading disability ( Peters et al., 2019 ), studies of this supplemental intervention approach have not compared it to standard supplemental approaches. Finally, studies of interventions designed to enhance other cognitive processes, such as working memory, also lack evidence effectiveness in terms of improved reading-related outcomes (e.g., Melby-Lervåg et al., 2016 ).

Promising but Not (Yet) Compelling Evidence in the Science of Reading

There are many promising areas of research that are poised to provide compelling evidence to inform the science of reading in the coming years. As we do not have space to provide a comprehensive list, we highlight only a few promising areas in prevention research and elementary education research.

Promising Directions in Prevention Research

Research on the prevention of reading problems is critical for our ability to reduce the number of children who struggle learning to read. One area of prevention research that has great promise but needs more evidence is how to more fully develop preschoolers’ language abilities that support later reading success. Both correlational and experimental findings indicate that providing children with opportunities to engage in high-quality conversations, coupled with exposure to advanced language models, matters for language development ( Cabell et al., 2015 ; Dickinson & Porche, 2011 ; Lonigan et al., 2011 ; Wasik & Hindman, 2018). Yet, most programs have a more robust impact on children’s proximal language learning (i.e., learning taught words) than on generalized language learning as measured with standardized assessments ( Marulis & Neuman, 2010 ).

Promising studies that have demonstrated significant effects on children’s general language development elucidate potential points of leverage. First, improving the connection between the school and home contexts by including parents as partners can promote synergistic learning for children as language-learning activities in school and home settings are increasingly aligned (e.g., Lonigan & Whitehurst, 1998 ). A second leverage point is increasing attention to children’s active use of language in the classroom to promote a rich dialogue between children and adults (e.g., Lonigan et al., 2011 ; Wasik & Hindman, 2018). A third leverage point is integrating content area instruction into early literacy instruction to improve language learning, for example, building children’s conceptual knowledge of the social and natural world and teaching vocabulary words within the context of related ideas (e.g., Gonzalez et al., 2011 ).

Promising Directions in Elementary Education Research

We present two promising areas in reading research with elementary-age students, one focused on improving linguistic comprehension and one focused on improving decoding, consistent with the simple view of reading.

The knowledge a reader brings to a text is the chief determinant of whether the reader will understand that text ( Anderson & Pearson, 1984 ). Thus, building knowledge is an essential, yet neglected, part of improving linguistic comprehension (Cabell & Hwang, this issue). Teaching reading is most often approached in early elementary classrooms as a subject that is independent from other subjects, such as science and social studies ( Palinscar & Duke, 2004 ). As such, reading is taught using curricula that do not systematically build children’s knowledge of the social and natural world. Instruction in reading and the content areas does not have to be an either/or proposition. Rather, the teaching of reading and of content-area learning can be simultaneously taught and integrated to powerfully impact children’s learning of both reading and content knowledge (e.g., Connor et al., 2017 ; Kim et al., 2020 ; Williams et al., 2014 ). This area of research is promising but not yet compelling, due to the small number of experimental and quasi-experimental studies that have examined either integrated content-area and literacy instruction or content-rich English Language Arts instruction in K-5 settings (approximately 31 studies). Through meta-analysis, this corpus of studies demonstrates that combining knowledge building and literacy approaches has a positive impact on both vocabulary and comprehension outcomes for elementary-age children ( Hwang et al., 2019 ). Further rigorous studies are needed that test widely used content-rich English Language Arts curricula (Cabell & Hwang, 2020, this issue); also required is new development of integrative and interdisciplinary approaches in this area.

There is also promising research on helping students to decode words more efficiently. It is widely accepted that students with reading difficulties often have underlying deficits in phonological processing (e.g., Brady & Schankweiler, 1991 ; Stanovich & Siegel, 1994 ; Torgesen, 2000 ; Vellutino et al., 1996 ) and these deficits are believed to disrupt the acquisition of spelling-to-sound translation routines that form the basis of early decoding-skill development (e.g., van IJzendoorn & Bus, 1994 ; Rack et al., 1992 ). For developing readers, decoding an unfamiliar letter string can result in either full or partial decoding. During partial decoding, the reader must match the assembled phonology from decoding with their lexical representation of a word ( Venezky, 1999 ). For example, encountering the word island might render the incorrect but partial decoding attempt, “izland”. A child’s flexibility with the partially decoded word is referred to as their “set for variability” or their ability to go from the decoded form to the correct pronunciation of a word. This skill serves as a bridge between decoding and lexical pronunciations and may be an important second step in the decoding process ( Elbro et al., 2012 ).

The matching of partial phonemic-decoding output is facilitated by the child’s decoding skills, the quality of the child’s lexical word representation, and by the potential contextual support of text ( Nation & Castles, 2017 ). Correlational studies indicate that students’ ability to go from a decoded form of a word to a correct pronunciation (their set for variability) predicts the reading of irregular words ( Tunmer & Chapman, 2012 ), regular words ( Elbro, et al., 2012 ), and nonwords ( Steacy et al., 2019a ). Set for variability has also been found to be a stronger predictor of word reading than phonological awareness in students in grades 2-5 (e.g., Steacy et al., 2019b ). Recent studies in this area suggest that children can benefit from being encouraged to engage with the irregularities of English ( Dyson et al., 2017 ) to promote the implicit knowledge structures needed to read and spell these complex words. Additional research suggests that set for variability training can be effective in promoting early word reading skills (e.g., Savage et al., 2018 ; Zipke, 2016 ). The work done in this area to date suggests that set for variability requires child knowledge structures and strategies, which can be developed through instruction, that allow successful matching of partial phonemic-decoding output with the corresponding phonological, morphological, and semantic lexical representations.

Where Do We Go Next in the Science of Reading?

Basic science research.

The science of reading has reached some consensus on the typical development of reading skill and how individual differences may alter this trajectory (e.g., Boscardin et al., 2008 ; Hjetland et al., 2019; Peng et al., 2019 ). Less is known about factors and mechanisms related to reading among diverse learners, a critical barrier to the field’s ability to address and prevent reading difficulty when it arises. Investigations with large and diverse participant samples are needed to improve understanding of how child characteristics additively and synergistically affect reading acquisition ( Hernandez, 2011 ; Lonigan et al., 2013 ). Insufficient research disentangles the influence of English-learner status for children who also have identified disabilities (Solari et al., 2014; Wagner et al., 2005 ). Greater attention to how language variation (e.g., dialect use) and differences in language experience affect reading development is crucial ( Patton Terry et al., 2010 ; Seidenberg & MacDonald, 2018; Washington et al., 2018). New realizations of the interaction between child characteristics and the depth of the orthography have also highlighted the importance of implicit learning in early reading ( Seidenberg, 2005 ; Steacy et al., 2019). Innovative cross-linguistic research is exploring how diverse methods of representing pronunciation and meaning within different orthographies, and children’s developing awareness of these methods, jointly predict reading skills (e.g., Kuo & Anderson, 2006 ; Wade-Woolley, 2016 ). Furthermore, a better understanding of the role of executive function, socio-emotional resilience factors, and biopsychosocial risk variables (e.g., poverty and trauma) on reading development is critical. Additional research like this, in English and across languages, is needed to develop effective instruction and assessments for all leaners.

A clearer understanding of child and contextual influences on the development of reading also will support improvements in how early and accurately children at risk for reading difficulties and disabilities are identified. Currently, numerous challenges remain in identifying children early enough to maximize benefits of interventions ( Colenbrander et al., 2018 ; Gersten et al., 2017b ). Investigators often use behavioral precursors or correlates of reading to estimate children’s risk for reading failure. Whereas this work has shown some promise ( Catts et al., 2015 ; Compton et al., 2006 , 2010 ; Lyytinen et al., 2015 ; Thompson et al., 2015 ), identification of risk typically involves high error rates, especially for preschoolers and kindergarteners who might benefit most from early identification and intervention. Similar challenges to accuracy have emerged when identifying older children with reading disabilities. Historically, this process has relied on discrepancy models (e.g., such as between reading skill and general cognitive aptitude), often yielding a just single comparison on which decisions are based (Waesche et al., 2011).

Challenges to identification for both younger and older children may be best met with frameworks that recognize the multifactorial casual basis of reading problems ( Pennington et al., 2012 ). Newer models of identification that combine across multiple indicators of risk derived from current skill, and that augment these indicators with other metrics of potential risk, may yield improved identification and interventions (e.g., Erbeli et al., 2018 ; Spencer et al., 2011). In particular, future research will need to consider and combine, while considering both additive and interactive effects, a wide array of measures, which may include genetic, neurological, and biopsychosocial indicators ( Wagner et al., 2019 ). Furthermore, more evaluation is needed of some new models of identification that integrate both risk and protective, or resiliency, factors, to see if these models increase the likelihood of correctly identifying those children most in need of additional instructional support (e.g., Catts & Petscher, 2020 ; Haft et al., 2016 ). Even if beneficial, it is likely that for early identification to be maximally effective, early risk assessments will need to be combined with progress monitoring of response to instruction ( Miciak & Fletcher, 2020 ). Of course, for such an approach to be successful, all children must receive high-quality reading instruction from the beginning and interventions need to be in place to address children who show varying levels of risk ( Foorman et al., 2016a ). Identifying children at risk and providing appropriate intervention early on has the potential to significantly improve reading outcomes and reduce the negative consequences of reading failure.

Intervention Innovations

Despite successes, too many children still struggle to read novel text with understanding, and intervention design efforts have not fully met this challenge ( Compton et al., 2014 ; Phillips et al., 2016 ; Vaughn et al., 2017 ). Greater creativity and integration of research from a broader array of complementary fields, including cognitive science and behavioral genetics may be required to deal with long-standing problems. For example, genetic information may have causal explanatory power; randomized trials are needed to evaluate the efficacy of using such information to select and individualize instruction and intervention ( Hart, 2016 ).

The field would benefit from increased attention to the problem of fading intervention effects over time. Although there can be detectable effects of interventions several years after they are completed (e.g., Blachman et al., 2014 ; Vadasy et al., 2011 ; Vadasy & Sanders, 2013 ), invariably effect sizes reduce over time. A meta-analysis of long-term effects of interventions for phonemic awareness, fluency, and reading comprehension found a 40 percent reduction in effect sizes within one year post-intervention ( Suggate, 2016 ). Perhaps reading interventions with larger initial effects or sequential reading interventions with smaller but cumulating effects would be more resistant to fade-out.

Solutions to the problem of diminishing effects may be inspired by examples from other fields. The field of memory includes examples of content that appears immune from forgetting. This phenomenon has been called permastore ( Bahrick, 1984 ). For example, people only meaningfully exposed to a foreign language in school classes will still retain some knowledge of the language 50 years later. Additionally, expertise in the form of world-class performance appears to result from cumulative effects of long-term deliberate practice ( Ericsson, 1996 ), and skilled reading can be viewed as an example of expert performance ( Wagner & Stanovich, 1996 ). Informed by these concepts and by advances in early math instruction (e.g., Sarama et al., 2012 ; Kang et al., 2019 ), reading intervention studies should prioritize follow-up evaluations, including direct comparisons of follow-through strategies aimed at sustaining benefits from earlier instruction. For example, studies should evaluate booster interventions, professional development that better aligns cross-grade instruction, and how re-teaching and cumulative review may consolidate skill acquisition across time (e.g., Cepeda et al., 2006 ; Smolen et al., 2016 ).

Translational and Implementation Science

If the science of reading is to be applied in a manner resulting in achievement for all learners, the field must increase its focus on processes supporting implementation of evidence-based reading practices in schools. The field can leverage its considerable evidence-base to systematically investigate, with replication, both the effectiveness of reading instructional practices with diverse learners and to investigate processes that facilitate or prevent adoption, implementation, and sustainability of these practices (National Research Council, 2002; Schneider, 2018 ; Slavin, 2002 ). Research on these processes in educational contexts may be best facilitated by making use of methodological and conceptual tools developed within the traditions of translation and implementation science research ( Gilliland et al., 2019 ; Eccles & Mittman, 2006 ). For example, these frameworks can support studies on whether and how educators and policymakers use information about evidence to inform decision making (e.g., Farley-Ripple et al., 2018 ) and studies on how institutional routines may need to be adapted to best integrate new procedures and practices (e.g., scheduling changes in the school day; Foorman et al., 2016b ).

Reading research that uses translational and implementation science frameworks and methodologies will make more explicit the processes of adoption, implementation and sustainability and how these interact within diverse settings and with multiple populations ( Brown et al., 2017 ; Fixsen et al., 2005 , 2013 ). This work will be guided by new questions, not only asking “what works” but also “what works for whom under what conditions” and “what factors promote sustainability of implementation.” Innovative studies would adhere to rigorous scientific standards, prioritize hypothesis testing within a deductive, experimental framework, and leverage qualitative methodologies to systematically explore implementation processes and factors ( Brown et al., 2017 ). Results could iteratively inform the breadth of scientific reading research, including basic mechanisms related to reading and the development of novel assessments and interventions to support achievement among diverse learners in diverse settings ( Cook & Odom, 2013 ; Douglas et al., 2015 ; Forman et al., 2013 ).

There has recently been a resurgence of the debate on the science of reading, and in this article, we described the existing evidence base and possible future directions. Compelling evidence is available to guide understanding of how reading develops and identify proven instructional practices that impact both decoding and linguistic comprehension. Whereas there is some evidence that is either not compelling or has yet to be generated for instructional practices and programs that are widely used, the scientific literature on reading is ever-expanding through contributions from the fields education, psychology, linguistics, communication science, neuroscience, and computational sciences. As these additions to the literature mature and contribute to an evidence base, we anticipate they will inform and shape the science of reading as well as the science of teaching reading.

Acknowledgments

First author was determined by group consensus. Authors equally contributed and are listed and alphabetically. The authors’ work was supported by funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Institute of Education Sciences (R305A160241, R305A170430, R305F100005, R305F100027, R324A180020, R324B19002) and Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P50HD52120, P20HD091013, HD095193, HD072286).

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Science News

It’s time to stop debating how to teach kids to read and follow the evidence.

Too many teachers are using the wrong approach

Many U.S. teachers are not using the most science-based approaches to teach reading.

Ariel Skelley/DigitalVision/Getty Images

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By Emily Sohn

April 26, 2020 at 7:00 am

On a chilly Tuesday back in January, my 7-year-old son’s classroom in Minneapolis was humming with reading activities. At their desks, first- and second-graders wrote on worksheets, read independently and did phonics lessons on iPads. In the hallway, students took turns playing a dice game that challenged them to spell out words with a consonant-vowel-consonant structure, like wig or map .

In another part of the classroom, small groups of two or three children, many missing their two front teeth, took turns sitting on a color-block carpet with teacher Patrice Pavek. In one group, Pavek asked students to read out loud from a list of words. “Con-fess,” said a dimpled 7-year-old named Hazel, who sat cross-legged in purple boots and a black fleece. Pavek reminded Hazel that a vowel sound in the middle of a word changes when you put an e at the end. Hazel tried again. “Con-fuse,” she said. “Beautiful!” Pavek beamed.

When Hazel returned to her desk, I asked her what goes through her mind when she gets to a word she doesn’t know. “Sound it out,” she said. “Or go to the next word.” Her classmates offered other tips. Reilly, age 6, said it helps to practice and look at pictures. Seven-year-old Beatrix, who loves books about unicorns and dragons, advocated looking at both pictures and letters. It feels weird when you don’t know a word, she said, because it seems like everyone else knows it. But learning to read is kind of fun, she added. “You can figure out a word you didn’t know before.”

Like the majority of schools in the United States, my son’s district uses an approach to reading instruction called balanced literacy. And that puts him and his classmates in the middle of a long-standing debate about how best to teach children to read.

The debate — often called the “reading wars” — is generally framed as a battle between two distinct views. On one side are those who advocate for an intensive emphasis on phonics: understanding the relationships between sounds and letters, with daily lessons that build on each other in a systematic order. On the other side are proponents of approaches that put a stronger emphasis on understanding meaning, with some sporadic phonics mixed in. Balanced literacy is one such example.

The issues are less black and white. Teachers and reading advocates argue about how much phonics to fit in, how it should be taught, and what other skills and instructional techniques matter, too. In various forms, the debate about how best to teach reading has stretched on for nearly two centuries, and along the way, it has picked up political, philosophical and emotional baggage.

In fact, science has a lot to say about reading and how to teach it. Plenty of evidence shows that children who receive systematic phonics instruction learn to read better and more rapidly than kids who don’t. But pitting phonics against other methods is an oversimplification of a complicated reality. Phonics is not the only kind of instruction that matters, and it is not the panacea that will solve the nation’s reading crisis.

Cutting through the confusion over how to teach reading is essential, experts say, because reading is crucial to success, and many people never learn to do it well.

According to U.S. government data, only one-third of fourth-graders have the reading skills to be considered proficient, which is defined by the National Assessment of Educational Progress as demonstrating competency over challenging subject matter. And a third of fourth-graders and more than a quarter of 12th-graders lack the reading skills to adequately complete grade-level schoolwork, says Timothy Shanahan, a reading researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Those struggles tend to persist. As many as 44 million U.S. adults, or 23 percent of the adult population, lack literacy skills , according to U.S. Department of Education data. Those affected may be able to read movie listings, or the time and place of a meeting, but they can’t synthesize information from long passages of text or decipher the warnings on medication inserts. People who can’t read well are less likely than others to vote, or read the news or secure employment. And today’s technology-based job market means students need to achieve more with reading than in the past, Shanahan says. “We are failing to do that.”

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Lessons in decoding

The vast majority of children need to be taught how to read. Even among those with no learning disabilities, only an estimated 5 percent figure out how to read with virtually no help, says Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and author of Raising Kids Who Read . Yet educators have not reached consensus on how best to teach reading, and phonics is the part of the equation that people still argue about most.

The idea behind a systematic phonics approach is that children must learn how to translate the secret code of written language into the spoken language they know. This “decoding” begins with the development of phonological awareness, or the ability to distinguish between spoken sounds. Phonological awareness allows children, often beginning in preschool, to say that big and pig are different because of the sound at the beginning of the words.

Once children can hear the differences between sounds, phonics comes next, offering explicit instruction in the connections between letters, letter combinations and sounds. To be systematic, these skills need to be taught in an organized order of concepts that build on one another, preferably on a daily basis, says Louisa Moats, a licensed psychologist and literacy expert in Sun Valley, Idaho. Today, phonics proponents often advocate for the simple view of reading, which emphasizes decoding and comprehension, the ability to decipher meaning in sentences and passages.

Support for phonics has been around since at least the 1600s, but critics have also long expressed concerns that rote phonics lessons are boring, prevent kids from learning to love reading and distract from the ability to understand meaning in text. In the 1980s, this kind of thinking led to the rise of whole language, an approach aimed at making reading joyful and immersive instead of mindless and full of effort.

By the 2000s, a more all-around and phonics-inclusive approach called balanced literacy was gaining popularity as the leading theory in competition with phonics-first approaches.

In a 2019 survey of 674 early-elementary and special education teachers from around the United States, 72 percent said their schools use a balanced literacy approach , according to the Education Week Research Center, a nonprofit organization in Bethesda, Md. The implementation of balanced literacy, however, varies widely, especially in how much phonics is included, the survey found. That variation is probably preventing lots of kids from learning to read as well as they could, decades of research suggests.

In the late 1990s, with the reading wars in full swing, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development brought together a panel of about a dozen reading experts to evaluate the evidence for how best to teach reading. The National Reading Panel’s first task was to figure out which types of teaching tasks to include in the analysis, says Shanahan, a panel member. Ultimately, the group chose eight categories and conducted a meta-analysis of 38 studies involving 66 controlled experiments from 1970 through 2000. The results showed support for five components of reading instruction that helped students the most.

Five essentials

A meta-analysis of 38 studies found five components of reading instruction were most helpful to students.

Phonemic awareness Knowing that spoken words are made of smaller segments of sound called phonemes

Phonics The knowledge that letters represent phonemes and that these sounds can combine to form words

Fluency The ability to read easily, accurately, quickly and with expression and understanding

Vocabulary Learning new words

Comprehension The ability to show understanding, often through summarization

Source: National Reading Panel

Two components that rose to the top were an emphasis on phonemic awareness (a part of phonological awareness that involves the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words) and phonics. Studies included in the analysis showed that higher levels of phonemic awareness in kindergarten and first grade were predictors of better reading skills later on. The analysis couldn’t assess the magnitude of benefits, but children who received systematic phonics instruction scored better on word reading, spelling and comprehension, especially when phonics lessons started before first grade. Those children were also better at sounding out words, including nonsense words, Shanahan says.

Vocabulary development was another essential component, as was a focus on comprehension. The final important facet was a focus on achieving fluency — the ability to read a text quickly, accurately and with proper expression — by having children read out loud, among other strategies.

Even before the panel released its results in 2000 , numerous studies and books from as early as the 1960s had concluded that there was value in explicit phonics instruction. Studies since then have added yet more support for phonics.

In 2008, the National Early Literacy Panel, a government-convened group that included Shanahan, considered dozens of studies on phonological awareness (including phonemic awareness) plus phonics instruction in preschool and kindergarten. Children who got decoding instruction scored substantially bette r on tests of phonological awareness compared with those who didn’t. The benefit was equivalent to a jump from the 50th percentile to the 79th percentile on standardized tests, suggesting those students were better prepared to learn how to read.

Likewise, a 2007 meta-analysis of 22 studies conducted in urban elementary schools found that minority children who received phonics instruction scored the equivalent of several months ahead of their minority peers on several academic measures. Studies have not addressed whether phonics might help close demographic achievement gaps, but research suggests that whole language approaches are less effective in disadvantaged populations than in other groups.

“There are several thousand studies at least that converge on this finding,” Moats says. “Phonics instruction has always had the edge in consensus reports.”

It is difficult to quantify how substantial the gains are from explicit phonics instruction, partly because the bulk of published research is full of ambiguities. Randomized trials are rare. Studies tend to be small. And in schools where teachers have autonomy to respond to students at their discretion, control groups are often not well-defined, making it hard to tell what phonics-focused programs are really being compared with, or how much phonics the control groups are getting. The reality of instruction can differ from classroom to classroom, even within the same school. And students who aren’t getting intensive phonics at school may have the blanks filled in at home, where parents might sound out words and talk about letters while reading bedtime stories.

The data that are available suggest that kids who get systematic phonics lessons score the equivalent of about half a grade level ahead of kids in other groups on standardized tests, Shanahan says. That’s not a giant leap, but it helps. “Overwhelmingly in studies, both individually and in a meta-analysis where you’re combining results across studies, if you explicitly teach phonics for some amount of time, kids do better than if you don’t pay much attention to that or if you pay a little bit of attention to [phonics],” he says.

Real experiences

Some of the most compelling evidence to support a phonics-focused approach comes from historical observations: When schools start teaching systematic phonics, test scores tend to go up. As phonics took hold in U.S. schools in the 1970s, fourth–graders began to do better on standardized reading tests.

In the 1980s, California replaced its phonics curriculum with a whole language approach. In 1994, the state’s fourth-graders tied for last place in the nation: Less than 18 percent had mastered reading. After California re-embraced phonics in the 1990s, test scores rose. By 2019, 32 percent achieved grade-level proficiency.

Those swings continue today. In 2019, Mississippi reported the nation’s largest improvement in reading scores ; the state had started training teachers in phonics instruction six years earlier. For the first time, Mississippi’s reading scores matched the nation’s average, with 32 percent of students showing proficiency, up from 22 percent in 2009, making it the only state to post significant gains in reading in 2019.

England, too, started seeing dramatic results after government-funded schools were required in 2006 to teach systematic phonics to 5- to 7-year-olds. When the country implemented a test to assess phonics skills in 2012, 58 percent of 5- and 6-year-olds passed. By 2016, 81 percent of students passed. Reading comprehension at age 7 has risen, and gains seem to persist at age 11. These population trends make a strong case for teaching phonics, says Douglas Fuchs, an educational psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

A boost with phonics

After adding explicit phonics instruction statewide in 2013, Mississippi reported the nation’s largest improvement in reading scores among fourth-graders.

Mississippi fourth-grade reading proficiency

Source: National Assessment of Educational Progress 2019

Despite the evidence that children learn to read best when given systematic phonics along with other key components of a literacy program, many schools and teacher-training programs either ignore the science, apply it inconsistently or mix conflicting approaches that could hinder proficiency. In the 2019 Education Week Research Center survey, 86 percent of teachers who train teachers said they teach phonics. But surveyed elementary school teachers often use strategies that contradict a phonics-first approach: Seventy-five percent said they use a technique called three cuing. This method teaches children to guess words they don’t know by using context and picture clues, and has been criticized for getting in the way of learning to decode. More than half of the teachers said they thought students could understand written passages that contained unfamiliar words, even without a good grasp of phonics.

The disconnect starts at the top. In a 2013 review of nearly 700 teacher-training institutions, only 29 percent required teachers to take courses on four or five of the five essential facets of reading instruction identified by the National Reading Panel. Almost 60 percent required teachers to complete coursework on two or fewer of the essentials, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality, a research and policy group based in Washington, D.C.

Teacher’s choice

In a random sample of almost 700 U.S. early-elementary and special education teachers, most reported using a method called balanced literacy to teach reading. The simple view of reading, focused on phonics, was a distant second.

Balanced literacy Instruction includes a bit of everything, usually with some phonics.

Simple view The emphasis is on phonics, with a focus on two skills: decoding and language comprehension.

Whole language Instruction emphasizes whole words and phrases in meaningful contexts, including a strategy called three cuing.

How U.S. educators teach reading

Source: EdWeek Research Center 2020

In 2019, the Education Week Research Center also surveyed 533 postsecondary educators who train teachers on how to teach reading. Only 22 percent of those educators said their philosophy was to teach explicit, systematic phonics. Almost 60 percent said they support balanced literacy. And about 15 percent thought, contrary to evidence, that most students would learn to read if given the right books and enough time.

“The majority of classrooms in this country continue to embrace instructional practices and programs that do not include systematic instruction in foundational skills like phonemic awareness and phonics and spelling,” Moats says. “They just don’t do it.”

At my son’s Minneapolis school, reading specialist Karin Emerson told me about her early days teaching kindergarten, first and second grades in the 1990s. She was trained to use a whole language approach that included the three cuing technique.

Emerson described a typical reading lesson: “I’m going to show you a big book, and I’m going to cover up all of the letters of the word except the b , and I’m going to say, ‘Look at this page. It says this is a …’ What do you think it’s going to say?” Then she would point out the butterfly in the picture and ask the students to think about whether the b sound could refer to anything in the picture. “What does butterfly start with? A ‘b-uh.’ Do you think it’s going to be butterfly? I think it is going to be butterfly. It is.”

Eight years later, Emerson switched from classroom teacher to reading specialist, helping third-graders who weren’t reading yet. Many were the same students she had taught to read in younger grades. After reviewing the reading research, she implemented systematic phonics. By the end of third grade, students in her groups advanced an average of two grade levels. She now encourages early-grade teachers to add at least 20 minutes of phonics a day into literacy lessons.

Looking back to her classroom-teaching days, Emerson says parents often told her they were concerned that their children weren’t reading yet. “I would say, ‘Oh, they’ll be fine because they’re well spoken, they’re bright and you’re reading to them.’ Well they weren’t fine,” Emerson says. “Some people learn how to read super easy, and that’s great. But most people need to be taught, and there’s a pretty big chunk who need to be taught in a systematic way.”

While learning about ongoing battles over reading instruction, I have been marveling at my son’s transformation from nonreader to reader. One recent afternoon, he came home from school and told me that he had learned how to spell the word “A-G-A-I-N.” I asked him how he would spell it if it looked like it sounded. He worked it out, one sound at a time: “U-G-E-N.” We agreed the English language is pretty strange. It’s amazing anyone learns to read it at all.

This is your brain on reading

Reading is a relatively new activity for the human brain, which hasn’t had time to evolve specialized areas devoted to the task. Instead, our brains enlist areas, such as the visual system, that originated for other reasons, says Guinevere Eden, a neuroscientist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. An object like a tree or a lion needs to be recognizable from any angle, she says. But when we read, we need to override that kind of pattern recognition to distinguish, say, b from d , two letters that look identical to a beginning reader.

To translate squiggles and dots into sounds, several key brain areas, in both the visual and language systems, get involved. And how involved those areas are during reading shifts with increasing mastery, according to brain-imaging studies from the last two decades. When early or experienced readers sound out an unfamiliar word, they tap into the posterior and superior temporal lobes and inferior parietal lobe, which are involved in language and sensory processing. When the brain encounters a familiar word, on the other hand, the visual cortex takes over, suggesting that known words become like any other object that the brain recognizes instantly. As a person’s reading skills improve and the mental menu of familiar words grows, activity is more pronounced in the visual cortex during reading, Eden says.

Eden uses brain scans to understand what goes wrong in children with reading disabilities, who have trouble sounding out words. One of her goals is to evaluate interventions for children with dyslexia to see if the interventions target the brain processes that are most impaired.

Despite heavy marketing by companies that sell reading products using brain scans as evidence that the companies’ methods help children learn to read, Eden says that imaging studies cannot yet answer questions about which types of reading instruction are best for children, with or without reading disabilities.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Teaching reading: a case study through mixed methods.

• 1 Departamento de Didácticas Específicas, Universidad de la Laguna, San Cristóbal de la Laguna, Spain
• 2 Departamento de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Universidad de la Laguna, San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain
• 3 Departamento de Psicología Clínica, Psicobiología y Metodología, Universidad de La Laguna, San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain

The present study analyzes the relationship between teachers’ beliefs about learning to read, teaching practices, and discourse. To carry out this study, we benefited from the collaboration of six teachers in kindergarten and the first levels of primary education. First, an attribution questionnaire was used to analyze beliefs about learning to read ( Jiménez et al., 2015 ). Secondly, to study teaching practices, an observation tool was used ( Suárez et al., 2018 ). Thirdly, in order to know the opinion of teachers about how to teach reading, we adapted the instrument to assess teaching perspectives elaborated by Clark and Yinger (1979) . Finally, all the information was triangulated and analyzed using mixed methods. The results indicated that the relationship between beliefs, practices, and discourse is not always consistent. In all teachers, a relationship was found between some of their beliefs, practices, and discourse. At the level of beliefs, all teachers presented one predominant attributional profile, although to a lesser extent, their beliefs were also attributable to other learning theories. The results indicated that all the teachers carried out teaching practices associated with the different learning theories. Similarly to their discourse, all teachers showed diverse opinions about the learning processes involved in reading. These results indicate that teachers maintain eclectic approaches, both when they carry out activities in the classroom and when they think about learning to read.

Introduction

For almost three decades, research has documented the influence of teachers’ beliefs on educational practice ( Berthelsen and Brownlee, 2007 ; Kuzborska, 2011 ; Barrot, 2015 ). Teacher’s beliefs are thoughts, perceptions, and values about their roles as educators, education, and how students learn ( Vartuli, 2005 ). It has even been shown that if teachers are aware of their own beliefs, the repertoire of teaching skills can be increased ( Tracey and Mandel, 2012 ), leading to a change in classroom decision making, and teaching strategies and evaluation. If we want to achieve improvements in teaching, it is necessary to examine the teachers’ beliefs and modify them ( McAlpine and Weston, 2002 ). A great deal of research in this direction has shown that instructional events can be catalysts for changing beliefs ( Stevens, 2002 ; Theurer, 2002 ; Fazio, 2003 ), since beliefs are permeable mental structures susceptible to change ( Thompson, 1992 ), although there appears to be no consensus on this ( Block and Hazelin, 1995 ; Richardson, 1996 ).

More recent studies have provided us with more detailed information on how beliefs and implicit knowledge influence teachers’ instructional practices ( Cunningham and Zibulsky, 2009 ), actions, and strategies that they implement to teach reading in the classroom. The research carried out in this regard has focused on differentiating three traits appearing in the teaching and learning of reading. Thus, Tolchinsky and Ríos (2009) analyzed the relationship between what teachers say and do (2.250), teaching practice ( N = 2), and students’ knowledge ( N = 814). To do this, they used a self-report questionnaire of 30 questions, with high reliability (α = 0.81) and a Likert scale (0–6). Through a cluster analysis, they detected three differentiated profiles: instructional practices focused on teaching the names of letters, letter–sound relationships, as well as the importance of learning products; a situational approach to activities arising from classroom situations, where students look for the means to understand texts that they do not know; and multidimensional activities such as letter knowledge, recognition, and letter–sound association, as well as reading and writing work from situations that arise in the classroom. The results showed the following distribution: instructional (33.87%), situational (37.06%), and multidimensional (29.06%). Also, they found that 30% of the children were able to recognize unknown words and did not seem to have difficulty in mastering the code, and that teachers used explicit, early, and systematic teaching practices.

Also, in Spain, Barragán and Medina (2008) , analyzed the practices teachers use through questionnaires. They found significant differences depending on the profile and educational level. Thus, nursery/kindergarten teachers showed a higher profile of situational practices (50%), compared to elementary school teachers who showed a profile of instructional practices (70%). Subsequently, they analyzed the profile of practices according to geographical area, finding that the teachers who carried out the greatest number of situational practices were those of the Basque country, followed by teachers from Almería, Cantabria, Catalonia, and the Community of Madrid (more than 50%). Catalonia and Cantabria showed a lower frequency of instructional practices (less than 20%); however, the teachers from León and Asturias used these practices more frequently (more than 55%). The same authors also observed six Early Childhood Education classrooms in Almeria. The results showed a relationship between the declared belief profile and its practices in the classroom. In another study, Ríos et al. (2010) demonstrated the relationship between the knowledge learned and the practices in teaching reading of two Infant Education teachers. They found that the contents worked on by the teacher with a situational profile were reading and writing functions, identification of words in reading, and letter names and sound values.

The teacher with an instructional profile used word identification and word reading. In the study carried out by Baccus (2004) , a direct relationship was found between the teachers’ beliefs and the instructional time dedicated to the teaching of reading. In addition, Rapoport et al. (2016) focused on analyzing the beliefs that teachers maintain ( N = 144) regarding the contribution of executive functions in reading performance and their teaching practice. Their results showed a positive relationship between these two variables ( r = 0.512, p < 0.01).

Ethnicity has been another feature highlighted in studies assessing the dyad of beliefs and practices in teaching. The Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement [CIERA] (2001) examined the beliefs and practices of 250 early childhood teachers. Their results showed a relationship between beliefs (based on the importance of the development of alphabetic knowledge, word recognition, stories, and oral language) and practices. Differences in relation to beliefs were found based on the ethnicity of teachers. African American teachers tended to believe that it was more important for the child to learn to read through teaching the alphabet (e.g., naming letters, saying their sounds), while white teachers thought it was more important for children to learn to read from teaching oral language activities (e.g., answering questions about a story or telling a story from a drawing). On the other hand, they found significant differences depending on the academic training received, so teachers with a higher academic level believed that teaching of oral language was more important, while teachers with lower academic levels did not share this belief.

Also, the report presented by the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) ( OCDE, 2009 ) provides detailed information on the development of variables involved in the teaching and learning process. This report analyzed the beliefs of secondary school teachers in several countries. Their results indicated that most countries (Northeastern Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, and Korea) showed constructivist positions ( p < 0.05). Humanities teachers presented more structured beliefs and were little oriented toward students ( p < 0.05), also with differences depending on teaching experience, so the teachers with more years of experience thought and performed more structured practices ( p < 0.05). The analyses also revealed a positive correlation between constructivist beliefs and practices in teachers from different countries ( p < 0.05), except in Korea, where a weak relationship was found between beliefs and practices with a direct style. Finally, they found that positioning depended largely on the quality of the learning environment and job satisfaction ( p < 0.05). In subsequent reports ( OCDE, 2013 ), an average 95% of OECD teachers stated that they agree with constructivist practices.

Other lines of research have not found a bidirectional relationship between the teachers’ thinking and their action in the classroom. An example is the study carried out by Miglis et al. (2014) with 90 Norwegian teachers. They used a 130-item questionnaire to measure beliefs (e.g., their role as teachers, the role of teachers in teaching reading, consistency with current research about the importance of early literacy) and teaching practices (e.g., books, book contents, alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness, and reading and writing). They found that teachers reported moderately positive beliefs about their role as a teacher in their students’ reading success, and they “agreed” with the idea that research has found that early literacy is necessary. These beliefs were not related to their practices, since the time devoted to this type of instruction was minimal. However, they discovered that the most widely used practice was “shared reading and reading aloud for 10 min a day” (29.3%). There are numerous studies that have not found a relationship between these two variables ( Wilcox-Herzog, 2001 ). Thus, for example, through two teachers’ collaboration, Pérez-Peitx (2013) was able to observe classroom practices and analyze interviews. Their results also indicated that there was no relationship between these two variables. Along the same lines, another recent study ( Utami et al., 2019 ) based on socio-cognitive theory studied teacher beliefs and practices in reading comprehension tasks. They found that the practices were not always consistent with their beliefs.

To our knowledge, there is no research assessing the profile of the teacher and teaching practices, in relation to all the theoretical principles that govern the teaching and learning processes of reading (i.e., innatist, maturationist, corrective, repetition, sociocultural, constructivist, psycholinguistic approaches).

The objective of this study is to find out whether or not there is a relationship between the beliefs, practices, and discourse used in teaching reading in the classroom, in order to propose more effective teaching strategies.

Materials and Methods

The study was carried out from a mixed methods perspective, integrating qualitative and quantitative sources of information through “merge” ( Creswell and Plano-Clark, 2007 ). The proposed design was triangulation ( Morse, 2003 ; Creswell and Plano-Clark, 2007 ; Tashakkori and Teddlie, 2010 ; Anguera et al., 2012 , 2018 ; Creswell, 2014 ), which was found suitable for the aims. A direct observation of teaching reading practices was carried out. The observational study was configured based on three criteria: study’s units, temporality, and dimensionality ( Anguera et al., 2011 ). The observational design can be classified as Nomothetic/Follow-up/Multidimensional (N/F/M) ( Sánchez-Algarra and Anguera, 2013 ; Portell et al., 2015 ). Frequency was analyzed. In order to analyze the relationship between teacher’s beliefs, practices, and discourse, a Pearson’s correlation was carried out.

Participants

Six teachers with an age between 25 and 50 years participated. The teachers’ years of experience ranged from 10 to 35 years. They belonged to different Infant and Primary Education units on the island of Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain). The selection criteria were based mainly on the fact that the staff member taught the subject Spanish Language and Literature, devoting an average time period of 1 h a day to the teaching of reading.

To carry out this study, three fundamental tools were used: a questionnaire to know the teachers’ beliefs, an observation tool to analyze their practices, and a semi-structured interview to analyze the teachers’ speech about teaching and learning to read.

– Questionnaire on Beliefs about Learning and Teaching Reading , composed of 60 items (see Suárez et al., 2013 ; Jiménez et al., 2014 , 2015 ) corresponding to the basic postulates of each learning theory: innatist, maturationist, sociocultural, constructivist, corrective, repetition, and psycholinguistic (see for review Tracey and Mandel, 2012 ). Teachers had to respond according to their degree of agreement or disagreement using a Likert scale of 0–10, where 0 means strongly disagree, and 10, strongly agree. Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.88.

Observation Tool on Reading Teaching Practices. This tool used here was developed by Suárez et al. (2018) and combines a field format and systems of categories. This consists of 14 criteria—alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness, use of teaching resources, prior knowledge of children, reinforcement, feedback, modeling, direct instruction, guided oral instruction, extracurricular tasks, reading and writing, psychomotor skills, functional reading skills, and vocabulary—and 77 categories on practices in teaching reading. For the measurement plan, the results showed that the absolute and relative generalizability measures were acceptable (at 0.970 and 0.989) at 30 sessions and that 40 sessions were needed to reach 0.977 and 0.992, respectively. For the generalizability indexes to measure inter- and intraobserver reliability, a four-faceted SRC/O (Session, Criterion, Category/Observer) design was used, and analysis showed the greatest percentage of variability to be related to the Criterion facet (33%), while the Observer facet showed no variability at all. The absolute generalizability coefficient was 0.999, and the relative coefficient was also 0.999. With respect to the intra-rater reliability, using a four-faceted SRC/M (Session, Criterion, Category/Moment) design, analysis showed that 32% of variability corresponded to the Session facet and 33% corresponded to Criterion, while Moment showed no variability. The absolute and relative generalizability coefficients obtained for Observer 1 were both 0.999. The absolute and relative coefficients for Observer 2 were both 0.997, facet showed no variability at all. The absolute generalizability validity using a two-faceted model [Observation (2) and Criterion (74)] showed a value of 0.000 (absolute and relative validity).

– Four digital video cameras and Match Vision 3.0 software ( Perea et al., 2006 ) were used for the sessions to record teaching practices. Data quality was analyzed using the Generalizability Study (GT) version 2.0.E program ( Ysewijn, 1996 ) and the SAS 9.1 statistical package. Teacher discourse was analyzed using Atlas.ti 6.0 ( Friese, 2011 ).

– Structured Teacher Interview on Teaching Practices . We adapted the interview on teaching perspectives elaborated by Clark and Yinger (1979) , composed of 28 questions on aspects related to teaching and learning: general questions about teaching, daily classes, teaching and learning, curriculum, time, and teachers’ “philosophy.” Changes were included in the nomenclature of the subjects of the curriculum and in the section on teacher philosophy (F), where the questions were guided toward the field of reading (see Table 1 ).

Table 1. Interview adapted from Clark and Yinger (1979) .

– For the interviews, a video camera and two Panasonic recorders, model RR-US455 (with 66 h of recording capacity), were used to ensure safe information storage.

– To transcribe information, the program Naturally Dragon Speaking ( Baker, 1975 ), version 12 was employed, and Atlas.ti, version 6, for information analysis ( Friese, 2011 ).

Before the recordings were made, authorization was obtained from both the teachers and the pupils’ parents. All participants provided written informed consent prior to their participation. Likewise, a schedule was agreed on for when the study would be carried out. On the day indicated, the belief questionnaire was applied to the participating teachers, their doubts in this regard were clarified, and approximately an hour was spent to complete it. Seven recording sessions per teacher (twice a week for 1 h each day) led to total of 42 h of recording (see Suárez et al., 2018 ). The interviews were held with the participating teachers and recorded in classrooms devoid of noise. Cameras were located in front of each teacher, and the furniture was arranged in an interview layout. The interviews of the six teachers were recorded, each lasting approximately 1 h. The audio was later transferred to the computer for the literal transcription of the interviews. Subsequently, the available information was collated and all the material subject to data processing organized. To conclude this phase, each interview was reviewed to gain an overall impression of the information provided by each teacher.

In the next phase, the document was segmented and coded through the Atlas.ti 6.0 program. The data were processed using the thematic analysis technique, according to the proposal of Braun and Clarke (2006) . Initially, the hermeneutic units were defined according to the interview questions, taking into account the theories about learning to read. Subsequently, the primary documents were worked on and information segmented. In this case, we focused on words as well as phrases/sentences and texts. The relevant information was then selected, and these units were encoded. Later, we established code families composed of the different variables affecting teaching and its context. Teachers’ opinions about learning to read were categorized. The code families structured the relationship between the previously identified categories and theories on the learning of reading (e.g., innatist, maturationist, sociocultural, constructivist, corrective, repetitive, and psycholinguistic).

In order to classify each teacher according to his/her attributional profile, factor scores for each theoretical approach defined the teachers’ beliefs according to the percentiles (see Table 2 ).

Table 2. Teachers’ profiles in each theory in percentiles.

To determine which theory should be attributed most to each teacher, the score was set around the percentile ≥75, and to determine which theories fitted less, around percentile ≥50 (see Figure 1 ).

Figure 1. Example teacher F. profile.

Although all teachers were characterized by a predominant attributional profile that defined their particular beliefs, we found that their reading teaching behavior could also be attributed to any of the other theories to a lesser extent (see Table 3 ).

Table 3. Summary of teachers’ profiles.

Regarding teaching reading practices, it was found that the most used was feedback (praising or correcting the student), followed by the use of teaching resources (e.g., stories, songs, or poetry), direct instruction (e.g., individual–group reading, aloud or silent, with or without intonation, and fluency) and functional knowledge of reading (e.g., summary, questions, comprehension exercises). To a lesser extent, they used literacy activities, reinforcement through praise (e.g., tangible or verbal), reading and writing, and work on alphabetic knowledge.

The latter strategy indicated that teachers mostly referred to constructivist theory, except teacher M.C., who chose to position herself in psycholinguistic theory. Similarly, teacher F. emphasized that students should build their learning and that teachers should function as a guide. To a lesser extent, she commented on aspects of the maturation and behaviorist theory (see Figure 2 ). Teacher M. also focused on the foundations of constructivism (e.g., prior knowledge, children discover their learning). She also talked about the importance of psychomotor skills, correctness in reading, as well as the involvement of parents. Teacher C. commented that students learn through construction and must discover reading autonomously through the support offered by the teacher. She also emphasized the role that parents play in reading, the importance of resources, oral language work, phonological awareness, as well as maturity in the development of reading. Teacher M.C. placed greater emphasis on the development of phonological awareness and oral language to teach reading. However, teacher S. focused more on student autonomy in the learning process and to a lesser extent on oral language, use of resources, and correction during reading (feedback). Teacher I. focused mostly on the construction of learning and less so on the role of oral language and the use of resources (library).

Figure 2. Teacher F. Network summarizing key concepts associated with the teaching process.

Subsequently, the information was triangulated after analyzing the beliefs, practices, and discourse of the teachers. For this, several researchers who are experts in the learning and teaching of reading skills agreed on the following relationship, in accordance with the basic postulates of each of the theories considered (see Table 4 ).

Table 4. Triangulation between theoretical profile, teaching practices, and teacher discourse.

Then the teachers’ scores were compared in relation to their beliefs, teaching practices (in terms of frequency), as well as teacher discourse, previously analyzed through its categorization into teaching–learning processes and their context (see Table 5 ). Finally, the results were interpreted according to Pearson’s correlation analysis. The results showed a high correlation ( r = 0.72, p < 0.05) in teacher F. and in teacher I. ( r = 0.71, p < 0.05) and a negative and high correlation in teacher M. ( r = −0.81, p < 0.05) between beliefs and practices. Moreover, they showed a moderate correlation in teacher C. ( r = 0.52) and in teacher M. ( r = 0.45) between beliefs and discourse. Finally, the results showed a negative and high correlation in teacher I. ( r = −0.74, p < 0.05) and in teacher M.C. ( r = −0.76, p < 0.05) between practices and discourse.

Table 5. Percentages of teachers’ beliefs, reading practices, and discourse.

Teacher F. showed links between his theoretical profile and his practices. A relationship between corrective beliefs (27.8%) and practices (29.2%) was found. On the other hand, we observed that in his practices, he used activities associated with other theories: repetition (23.5%), constructivism (19.9%), and psycholinguistic (16%). This also happened when he thought about how children learn to read, since he considered that the construction of learning (77.8%), maturation (11.1%), and providing feedback (11.1%) were fundamental. Other discourse makers, teacher M. did not show a link between her sociocultural (22%) and maturationist (23.4%) theoretical profile and her practices (5.7% and 0.6%). However, the results indicated that her maturationist (23.4%), sociocultural (22%) beliefs were related only to her discourse. So, she thought that the use of psychomotor skills (21.4%), teaching resources such as stories, stories, poems, and texts (14.3%), and teaching previous knowledge (50%) were important. However, practices based on other currents were observed: corrective reading (32.6%) and repeated reading (25.2%), as well as constructivism (19.1%), such as working previous knowledge or reading and writing and psycholinguistic skills (16.6%) [e.g., alphabetic knowledge: teaching letter names and sounds, rules with support rhymes, etc.; phonological awareness: stimulating children to become aware of letter sounds, saying words that begin with a certain sound, separating words into syllables, playing the game veo-veo (I spy.); vocabulary: teaching the meaning of words]. During the interview, opinions related to other theories were also found (i.e., corrective).

As for teacher C., there was a bidirectional relationship between her sociocultural theoretical profile (39.6%) (e.g., use of teaching resources such as stories, songs, writings from different sources, etc.) and her discourse (33.3%). Also, it was found that her psycholinguistic profile (28.9%) was related to her discourse (11.1%) (e.g., oral language or phonological awareness). However, the results indicated that this teacher carried out other practices not related to her theoretical beliefs, such as: feedback (50.8%) and repetition (16.9%). The same occurred with her discourse; she thought that maturation was also important (22.3%).

Regarding teacher M.C., a negative relationship was found between her psycholinguistic discourse (59.3%) and her teaching practices (4.1%). The same happened with her corrective practices (37.6%) and her discourse (14.8%) (e.g., correct when the child is wrong, point out, provide examples, deny). However, when we analyzed her practices, we found activities justified by other theories, such as functional knowledge of reading or use of teaching resources (13%) or repetition (19.6%) and constructivism (13%) (e.g., previous reading and writing, and likewise when we asked her opinion about how children learn to read (e.g., constructivism).

Regarding teacher S., she showed a corrective (17.6%), innatist (17.6%), sociocultural (17.6%), maturationist (16.6%), and constructivism (15.3%) profile. Then, she carried out corrective (35.1%) practices (e.g., feedback, direct instruction). During her discourse, opinions were also found that were constructivist (47.9%) and psycholinguistic (20%). Nevertheless, repetition practices (36%) were observed that had nothing to do with her expressed beliefs.

A relationship was found between the constructivism profile (23%) of teacher I. and her practices (19.3%). Then the result showed a relationship between corrective (12.6%) and repetitive (12.6%) beliefs and practices. Furthermore, this teacher used other practices unrelated to any of her attributed beliefs, such as: sociocultural (10.6%). No relationship between corrective (23%) and repetition (25.3%) practices and discourse were found. In the same way, she referred to the implication of other (e.g., sociocultural and psycholinguistic) theories in infant readers’ learning. The innatist profile of teacher I. was not related to her practices or discourse.

The results of the present study are congruent with previous study results that showed that teachers hold eclectic positions ( Clemente, 2008 ; Jiménez and O’Shanahan, 2008 ; Clemente et al., 2010 ; Rodríguez and Clemente, 2013 ). Other research has shown quite different results, from studies finding a relationship between beliefs and teaching practices in reading learning ( Cunningham and Zibulsky, 2009 ; Tolchinsky and Ríos, 2009 ; Rapoport et al., 2016 ) to studies which indicated a moderate correlation ( Baumann et al., 1998 ). On the opposite side, other authors found no such relationship ( Pérez-Peitx, 2013 ; Miglis et al., 2014 ; Enyew and Melesse, 2018 ; Utami et al., 2019 ).

The data extracted from the belief questionnaires have been complemented with the analysis of teaching practices and each teacher’s interviews, which allowed us to provide additional information ( Castañer et al., 2013 ). In our case, the interview helped us complete the teacher’s profile. We found that the teaching and learning processes are mediated by multiple contextual variables that were not identified by the questionnaire or recorded observations.

Analysis of the practices allowed us to identify not only what activities the teachers performed in their real teaching context but also how their sequence of instruction was oriented in all cases toward the use of their own multiple resources, applying other theories. The relationship found between some beliefs and practices in this study suggests that if teachers are aware of their own beliefs, the repertoire of teaching practices can be increased ( Tracey and Mandel, 2012 ), causing changes in decision making in the classroom and in teaching and evaluation strategies. In addition, as all teachers used many activities characteristic of other theories they did not explicitly hold, we focused on the opposite process, modifying their practices to cause a change in their beliefs ( Fazio, 2003 ), since these are permeable mental structures that can be modified ( Thompson, 1992 ). But how can we achieve this? Some studies confirm that people form their implicit theories through the knowledge they acquire ( Suárez and Jiménez, 2014 ).

The first step is to achieve the teacher’s predisposition to change, always through invitation ( Baena, 2000 ), by encouraging reflection. To do this, they should become aware how their own beliefs are involved in their teaching practice and how they influence student performance. In addition, the false myths about learning to read and teaching practices should be recognized, as prescribed by the National Reading Panel [NRP] (2000) . The question remains whether teachers have received training based on the latest advances in scientific research on the teaching of reading, in order to provide young students (who may or may not have difficulties) with the tools necessary for their learning to proceed optimally.

Online training offers teachers the opportunity to recycle their knowledge ( Costi et al., 2005 ; Jiménez, 2015 ; Jiménez et al., 2015 ; Jiménez and O’Shanahan, 2016 ), which generates an important pillar supporting success, integration, and sustainability in education ( Haydon and Barton, 2007 ; Somekh, 2008 ). It is also an alternative solution to the lack of time and difficulties in reconciling work and family life. It has been found that experience with these resources plays a fundamental role, since it favors a positive attitude of teachers and also confidence in the use of these tools for education ( BECTA, 2009 ). Joshi et al. (2009) found that the training teachers receive is inadequate because textbooks and courses in education reflect superstitions, anecdotes, and beliefs that are not based on scientific evidence. Research has also found that teachers do not properly use the practices that are based on scientific evidence ( Moats, 2009 ). If the learning environment is effective, it can even happen that only a small percentage of students present difficulties in learning to read ( Cunningham and Zibulsky, 2009 ).

The updating of knowledge according to research conclusions is proposed as an alternative for teachers who specialize in teaching reading, since teaching quality is one of the main factors determining the academic success of students ( European Council, 2008 ). For teachers to learn good practices, it is important that they have the following knowledge at their disposal: (1) fundamental research and theories about the development of language and reading; (2) strategies for use in the classroom to teach word recognition, vocabulary, text comprehension, and fluency; (3) tools to work on reading and writing at the same time; (4) the best strategies to teach reading and the materials to use; (5) different techniques for student evaluation; (6) how to maintain a good balance between theory, practice, and information technologies; (7) knowledge of dyslexia and other learning disorders ( IRA, 2007 ); and (8) how to interpret and administer assessment tests to plan teaching ( IDA, 2010 ). In addition, they must learn to ask more complex questions to help students make inferences and more elaborate reflections, as well as work with students’ prior knowledge ( RAND, 2002 ). However, the teacher alone should not be responsible for this process, because we have confirmed that in the teaching environment, there are other strong factors such as society or culture ( Quintana, 2001 ). The challenge now consists of achieving a change in the ways of thinking of those responsible for educational administration. The necessary means should also be provided to facilitate refresher courses and ongoing e-learning for teachers, with training programs that include content based on scientific evidence. One limitation is that the study consisted of six teachers and is not generalizable to a greater audience.

In general terms, we can conclude that the relationship between beliefs, practices, and discourse varies according to certain nuances. Thus, of the two beliefs attributed to teacher F., only one (corrective) was related to his form of instruction and his opinion. Among the four beliefs attributed to teacher M. (sociocultural, maturationist, repetition, and psycholinguistic), a relationship was found only between her maturationist and sociocultural profile and her discourse. Both beliefs attributed to teacher C. (sociocultural and psycholinguistic) were related to the discourse content. Of the two beliefs attributed to teacher M.C. (corrective and psycholinguistic), neither of them was related to her actions and reflections. Among the five beliefs attributed to teacher S. (sociocultural, innatist, corrective, maturationist, and constructivist) only two (corrective and sociocultural) were related to her active practices and discourse comments. Finally, of the two beliefs of teacher I. (innatist and constructivist), only constructivism was related to her practices or her opinion.

Although it is true that a relationship was found in all the teachers between some of their beliefs, practices, and discourse, as revealed in their discursive talks, all the teachers thought that learning to read depended on factors underlying other theories not related to their attributional profile. Therefore, despite attributing to them certain beliefs when they teach children to read and when they think of learning to read, it can be concluded that all teachers maintain an eclectic approach.

Data Availability Statement

All datasets generated for this study are included in the article/supplementary material.

Ethics Statement

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

Author Contributions

NS: this author’s grant was used to run the project Integrando creencias y prácticas de enseñanza de la lectura (Integrating beliefs and practices about teaching reading), ref: PSI2009-11662. She participated actively in the research, analyzed the teaching practices and discourse, and was responsible for the literature review and drafting of this manuscript. JJ: supervised the project and the preparation of the study, offered theoretical guidance, and was responsible for reviewing the manuscript. CS: supervised the design and preparation of the study, offered guidance on methodology, and helped review the manuscript. All authors approved the final version of this article.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

This research has been funded through the Plan Nacional I + D + i (R+D+i National Research Plan of the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness), project ref: PSI2009-11662 and project ref: PSI2015-65009-R, with the second author as the principal investigator. We also gratefully acknowledge the support of a Spanish Government subproject, Integration ways between qualitative and quantitative data, multiple case development, and synthesis review as main axis for an innovative future in physical activity and sports research (PGC2018-098742-B-C31) (2019–2021) (Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación, y Universidades/Agencia Estatal de Investigación/Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo regional), that is part of the coordinated project New approach to research in physical activity and sport from a mixed methods perspective (NARPAS_MM) (SPGC201800 × 098742CV0).

Key Concepts

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Keywords : beliefs, teaching practices, reading, teacher discourse, triangulation, mixed methods

Citation: Suárez N, Jiménez JE and Sánchez CR (2020) Teaching Reading: A Case Study Through Mixed Methods. Front. Psychol. 11:1083. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01083

Received: 30 November 2019; Accepted: 28 April 2020; Published: 10 June 2020.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2020 Suárez, Jiménez and Sánchez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Natalia Suárez, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

How Do Kids Learn to Read? What the Science Says

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Corrected : A previous version of this article misstated the year Keith Stanovich coined the term “Matthew Effect in Reading.” It was 1986.

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How do children learn to read?

For almost a century, researchers have argued over the question. Most of the disagreement has centered on the very beginning stages of the reading process, when young children are first starting to figure out how to decipher words on a page.

One theory is that reading is a natural process, like learning to speak. If teachers and parents surround children with good books, this theory goes, kids will pick up reading on their own. Another idea suggests that reading is a series of strategic guesses based on context, and that kids should be taught these guessing strategies.

But research has shown that reading is not a natural process (1) , and it’s not a guessing game. Written language is a code. Certain combinations of letters predictably represent certain sounds. And for the last few decades, the research has been clear: Teaching young kids how to crack the code—teaching systematic phonics—is the most reliable way to make sure that they learn how to read words.

Of course, there is more to reading than seeing a word on a page and pronouncing it out loud. As such, there is more to teaching reading than just teaching phonics. Reading requires children to make meaning out of print. They need to know the different sounds in spoken language and be able to connect those sounds to written letters in order to decipher words. They need deep background and vocabulary knowledge so that they understand the words they read. Eventually, they need to be able to recognize most words automatically and read connected text fluently, attending to grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.

But knowing how to decode is an essential step in becoming a reader. If children can’t decipher the precise words on the page, they’ll never become fluent readers or understand the passages they’re reading.

That’s why we’ve put together this overview of the research on early reading, in grades K-2. It covers what’s known about how we should teach letter-sound patterns, and what we don’t know for sure yet. It touches on what else should be part of early reading programs. And it explains why we know that most children can’t learn to read through osmosis or guessing.

Here’s what the evidence shows.

Don’t children learn to read the way they learn to speak?

Infants learn to speak (2) by listening to and repeating sounds made by adults and connecting them to meanings. They don’t consciously distinguish individual sound units (called phonemes) when hearing spoken language. Some research suggests infants learn probabilistically—for example, hearing the sound “ball” at the same time as the sight of a round, bouncy object over time makes the child associate the two—while other studies suggest children map meaning to a word after experiencing it just once or twice. Within the first two years, typically developing toddlers’ brains focus on the most common sounds in their native languages and connect those sounds to meaning. A child develops understanding of speech through exposure to language and opportunities to practice the “serve and return”(3) patterns of conversation, even without explicit instruction.

By contrast, children do not naturally develop reading skill through exposure to text. The way they learn to connect oral and written language(4) depends on what kind of language(5) they are learning to read.

Alphabetic languages, like English or French, use letters to stand for sounds that make up spoken words. To read an alphabetic language, children must learn how written letters represent spoken sounds(6), recognize patterns of letter sounds as words, and match those to spoken words whose meanings they know. This differs from Chinese, for example. It uses a tonal spoken language, conveying meaning with small differences in stress or pitch. Its writing system is partially logographic—in which written symbols correspond directly to a word or concept—and also includes words that couple symbols for meaning and symbols for sound. Someone reading Chinese hanzi characters could not “sound out” unfamiliar words character by character(7).

What is systematic, explicit phonics instruction, and why is it important?

Connecting printed letters on a page to written sounds isn’t intuitive(8). While some young children may make those connections themselves, most do not. One set of studies from 1989-90 illustrates this phenomenon well(9).

In these studies, conducted by Brian Byrne and Ruth Fielding-Barnsley, researchers taught young children between ages 3 and 5 to read whole words aloud, like “fat” and “bat.” These children didn’t already know their letter names.

Then, the researchers tested whether the children could transfer their knowledge to reading a new word. They gave them the word “fun,” and asked whether the word was “fun” or “bun.” Very few of the students could do this successfully. They couldn’t break down the original word into phonemes and then transfer their knowledge of those phonemes to a new word.

But children could succeed on this task if they were first given some explicit instructions. When children were taught how to recognize that certain letters represented certain sounds, and taught how to segment words to identify those individual letters and sounds, they had much greater success on the original transfer test. Neuroscience research has since confirmed and helped explain these findings. When learning how to read new words in an unfamiliar made-up language, participants had more long-term success if they were first taught which symbols correspond to which sounds, than if they tried to remember words as wholes. Brain imaging of these readers finds that the two teaching strategies tap into different neural pathways in the brain. Readers taught to connect print to meaning directly could recall words initially more quickly, but less accurately; readers taught to connect print to sound and then to meaning read aloud more quickly and correctly, better recalled the correct meanings of words, and transferred their knowledge to new words.

Decades of research has shown that explicit phonics instruction benefits early readers, but particularly those who struggle to read.

That’s because small strengths or deficits at the start of reading compound over time. It’s what reading expert Keith Stanovich in 1986 dubbed(10) the “Matthew Effect in Reading,”(11) after the Bible verse in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer: “The combination of deficient decoding skills, lack of practice, and difficult materials results in unrewarding early reading experiences that lead to less involvement in reading-related activities,” Stanovich wrote. “Lack of exposure and practice on the part of the less-skilled reader delays the development of automaticity and speed at the word recognition level. Slow, capacity-draining word-recognition processes require cognitive resources that should be allocated to comprehension. Thus, reading for meaning is hindered; unrewarding reading experiences multiply; and practice is avoided or merely tolerated without real cognitive involvement.”

My reading curriculum includes letter-sound instruction. Am I providing enough phonics?

Not all phonics instruction is created equal.

The most effective phonics programs are those that are systematic. The National Reading Panel found this in 2000(12), and since then, further research reviews have confirmed that this type of instruction leads to the greatest gains in reading accuracy for young students(13).

A systematic phonics program teaches an ordered progression of letter-sound correspondences. Teachers don’t only address the letter-sound connections that students stumble over. Instead, they address all of the combinations methodically, in a sequence, moving on to the next once students demonstrate mastery. Teachers explicitly tell students what sounds correspond to what letter patterns, rather than asking students to figure it out on their own or make guesses.

In one series of experiments(14), Stanford University neuroscientist Bruce McCandliss(15) and his colleagues made up a new written language and taught three-letter words to students either by asking them to focus on letter sounds or on whole words. Later, the students took a reading test of both the words they were taught and new words in the made-up language, while an electroencephalograph monitored their brain activity. Those who had focused on letter sounds had more neural activity on the left side of the brain, which includes visual and language regions and is associated with more skilled reading. Those who had been taught to focus on whole words had more activity on the right side of the brain, which has been characteristically associated with adults and children who struggle with reading. Moreover, those who had learned letter sounds were better able to identify unfamiliar words.

Early readers benefit from systematic phonics instruction. Among students in grades K-1, phonics instruction led to improvements in decoding ability and reading comprehension across the board, according to the National Reading Panel(16). Children at risk of developing future reading problems, children with disabilities, and children from all socio-economic backgrounds all benefited. Later research reviews have confirmed that systematic phonics instruction is effective for students with disabilities, and shown that it also works for English-language learners(17).

Most studies of phonics instruction test its immediate effectiveness—after the intervention, are children better readers? Among students in older grades, the results are less clear. A recent meta-analysis of the long-term effects of reading interventions(18) looked at phonics and phonemic awareness training, mostly in studies with children in grades K-1. Both phonics and phonemic awareness interventions improved reading comprehension at an immediate post-test. But while the benefits of phonemic awareness interventions persisted in a follow-up test, the benefits of phonics interventions faded much more over time. The average length of all interventions included in the study was about 40 hours, and the follow-up assessments were conducted about a year after the interventions were complete, on average.

Some of my students didn’t need phonics instruction to learn to read. Why are you saying that all kids benefit?

Depending on the estimate(19), anywhere from 1 percent to 7 percent of children figure out how to decode words on their own, without explicit instruction. They may spot the patterns in books read to them or print they see in their environment, and then they apply these patterns. These include children with a neurotypical form of “hyperlexia”(20)—a condition in which children may begin decoding as early as 3—but this is more frequently associated with children who have autism-spectrum disorders and often have separate problems with reading comprehension.

It may seem like these children are reading words as whole units, or using guessing strategies to figure out what comes next in the story. But they are attending to all of the words’ individual letters—they’re just doing it very quickly(21).

A systematic phonics program can still benefit these students, who may have gaps in their knowledge of spelling patterns or words that they haven’t encountered yet. Of course, phonics instruction—like all teaching—can and should be differentiated to meet the needs of individual students where they are. If a student can demonstrate mastery of a sound, there’s no need to continue practicing that sound—he or she should move on to the next one.

There’s another answer to this question: Students may look like they’re decoding when they’re actually not. For example, a child may see an illustration of an apple falling from a tree, and correctly guess that the sentence below the picture describes an apple falling from a tree. This isn’t reading, and it doesn’t give the teacher useful information about how a student will tackle a book without pictures.

Can cueing strategies help students to read?

Many early reading classrooms teach students strategies to identify a word by guessing with the help of context cues. Ken and Yetta Goodman of the University of Arizona(22) developed a “three-cueing system,” based on analysis of common errors (or “miscues”) when students read aloud. Ken Goodman famously called reading development a “psycholinguistic guessing game,”(23) and cueing systems teach students to guess at a new word based on:

• Meaning/Semantics, or background knowledge and context, such as vocabulary a student has already learned;
• Structure/Syntax, or how the word fits in common grammar rules, such as whether the word’s position in a sentence suggests it is a noun, verb, or adjective; and
• Visual/Graphophonics, or what a word looks like, such as how upper- and lowercase letters are used (suggesting a proper noun, for example) or common spelling patterns.

Cueing systems are a common strategy in whole-language programs, and also are used in many “balanced literacy” programs that incorporate phonics instruction. Cueing systems were designed by analyzing errors(24) rather than practices of proficient readers, and have not shown benefits in controlled experiments(25).

Moreover, cognitive and neuroscience studies have found that guessing is a much less efficient way to identify a new word, and a mark of beginning or struggling readers, not proficient readers. Skilled readers instead sound out new words to decode them.

Balanced literacy programs often include both phonics and cueing, but studies suggest cueing instruction can make it more difficult for children to develop phonics skills because it takes their attention away from the letter sounds.

I know phonics instruction is supposed to be explicit and systematic. But beyond that, how should I teach it? Does the research say anything about what content I need to cover, and how should it be sequenced?

There is a general path that most children follow as they become skilled decoders. Research can tell us how children usually progress along this path, and which skills specifically predict better reading performance.

Before starting kindergarten, children generally develop some early phonological awareness—an understanding of the sounds that make up spoken language. They can rhyme, break down multi-syllable words, and recognize alliteration(26).

A next step in the process is understanding that graphemes—combinations of one or more letters—represent phonemes, the smallest units of spoken language. It’s easier for students to learn these letter-sound correspondences(27) if they already have early phonological skills like rhyming and alliteration, along with knowledge of the names of the letters of the alphabet.

And while vocabulary is important for reading comprehension, research has also found that it’s a component in decoding ability. One study found that when children know a word’s meaning, they can more quickly learn how to recognize it automatically(28), because the visual letters, corresponding sounds, and meaning all map together when a reader recognizes a word.

There are other early skills that relate to later reading and writing ability as well(29), regardless of IQ or socio-economic status. Among these are writing letters, remembering spoken information for a short time, rapidly naming sequences of random letters, numbers, or pictures, and other phonological skills—like the ability to segment words into phonemes.

To decode words, students need to be taught to blend together the phonemes that graphemes represent on the page. For example, a young reader must learn to recognize that /r/, /o/, /d/ are three sounds that together form the word “rod,” but also that the word “rock” also contains three sounds, /r/, /o/, /k/ This is a process that builds on itself rapidly. Though there are some 15,000 syllables in English(30), after a child has learned the 44 most common sound and letter combinations(31), they will begin to sound out words as they read. These include both the basic letter and vowel sounds, but also common combinations such as “th,” “sh,” and “-ing.” There are two main ways to demonstrate to children that words are made up of sound-letter correspondences. In one method, students learn the sounds of the letters first and then blend these phonemes together to sound out words. That’s synthetic phonics—they’re synthesizing phonemes into greater whole words. The other method, analytic phonics, takes an inverted approach: Students identify—or analyze—the phonemes within words, and then use that knowledge to read other words.

Take the word “bat.” In synthetic phonics, students would first learn the /b/ sound, then the /a/ sound, then the /t/ sound and blend them together to sound out “bat.” In analytic phonics, students would learn the word “bat” alongside words like “cat,” “mat,” and “hat,” and would be taught that all these words end in the “at” sound pattern.

So there’s synthetic phonics and analytic phonics—is one way better than the other?

A few studies have found synthetic phonics to be more effective than analytic phonics. Most notably, a seven-year longitudinal study from Scotland found that synthetic phonics taught in 1st grade gave students an advantage in reading and spelling over analytic phonics(32). Still, when examined as a whole, the larger body of reading research doesn’t surface a conclusive winner. Two landmark research reviews(33) haven’t found a significant difference in the effectiveness of the two methods. Other more recent research is still inconclusive(34).

Do these strategies apply to words that don’t follow traditional sound-spelling patterns? What about words like “one” and “friend”—can those words still be taught with phonics?

Yes, but not alone; spelling and semantic rules go hand-in-hand with teaching letter sounds. Words like “lime” and “dime,” have similar spelling and pronunciation. But some words with similar spelling have different pronunciations, like “pint” and “mint.” And others have different spellings and similar pronunciations, like “jazz” and “has.” Brain imaging studies(35) find that when readers see word pairs that are inconsistent, they show greater activity in the areas of the brain associated with processing both visual spelling and spoken words. This shows that young readers use systems of understanding of both printed shapes and sounds when they see any written word. When those two systems conflict, the reader may call on additional rules, such as understanding that words at the end of lines of a rhyming poem (such as “has” and “jazz”) likely rhyme even if their spelling would not suggest it.

Some research has found that teaching common irregular words, like “one” and “friend,” as sight words can be effective(36). Still, in these studies, children were also taught phonics along with sight words—and that’s important. Understanding phonics gives students the foundation to read these irregular words. Take “friend.” While the “ie” doesn’t produce the same sound it normally does, the other letters in the word do. Research has suggested(37) that children use the “fr” and the “nd” as a framework when they remember how to read the irregular word “friend.”

When should children start to learn how to sound out words? Is there a “too early”?

Even very young children can benefit from instruction designed to develop phonological awareness. The National Early Literacy Panel Report (2009)(38), a meta-analysis of early literacy studies, found that teaching preschoolers and kindergartners how to distinguish the sounds in words, whether orally or in relationship to print, improved their reading and writing ability. The children in these studies were generally between the ages of 3 and 5.

Studies suggest progress in phonics is less closely linked to a child’s age than to the size and complexity of his spoken vocabulary, and to his opportunities to practice and apply new phonics rules. There is some evidence(39) that “decodable” books(40), designed to help students practice specific letter-sound combinations, can benefit the earliest readers. But it is mixed, and students very quickly progress enough to get more benefit from texts that provide more complex and irregular words—and often texts that students find more interesting.

How much time should teachers spend on teaching about letters and sounds in class?

There isn’t yet a definitive “best” amount of time to spend on phonics instruction. In several meta-analyses, researchers haven’t found a direct link between program length and effectiveness(41).

The National Reading Panel report found that programs focusing on phonemic awareness, the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the smallest units of speech sounds, that lasted less than 20 hours total had the greatest effect on reading skills. Across the studies that the researchers looked at, individual sessions lasted 25 minutes on average.

But the authors of the NRP are quick to point out that these patterns are descriptive, not prescriptive. The studies they looked at weren’t specifically testing the effectiveness of different time lengths, and it may be that time wasn’t the relevant factor in these shorter programs performing better.

Eventually, a skilled reader doesn’t need to sound out every word that she reads. She sees the word and recognizes it immediately. Through reading the word again and again over time, her brain has linked this particular sequence to this word, through a process called orthographic mapping(42).

But neuroscience research has shown that even if it feels like she’s recognizing the word as a whole, she’s still attending to the sequence of individual letters in the word for an incredibly short period of time. That’s how skilled readers can tell the difference between the words “accent” and “ascent.”

What else—aside from phonics—is part of a research-based early reading program?

Phonics is essential to a research-based reading program. If students can’t decode words, they can’t derive any meaning from them. But understanding the alphabetic code doesn’t automatically make students good readers. There are five essential components of reading(43): phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

The National Reading Panel addressed all five of these components. The researchers found that having students read out loud with guidance and feedback improved reading fluency. Vocabulary instruction, both explicit and implicit, led to better reading comprehension—and it was most effective when students had multiple opportunities to see and use new words in context. They also found that teaching comprehension strategies can also lead to gains in reading achievement, though most of these studies were done with students older than 2nd grade.

For younger students, oral language skills; understanding syntax, grammar, vocabulary, and idioms; and having general and topic-specific background knowledge are also essential for reading comprehension.

This is one of the premises of the Simple View of Reading(44), a framework to understand reading first proposed by researchers Philip B. Gough and William E. Tunmer in 1986(45). In the simple view, reading comprehension is the product of decoding ability and language comprehension. If a student can’t decode, it doesn’t matter how much background knowledge and vocabulary(46) he understands—he won’t be able to understand what’s on the page. But the opposite is also true: If a student can decode but doesn’t have a deep enough understanding of oral language, he won’t be able to understand the words he can say out loud. Since Gough and Tunmer first proposed this framework, many studies have confirmed its basic structure—that comprehension and decoding are separate processes(47). One meta-analysis of reading intervention studies finds that phonics-focused interventions were most effective through grade 1; in older grades—when most students will have mastered phonics—interventions that targeted comprehension or a mix of reading skills showed bigger effects(48) on students’ reading skills.

For young students, early oral-language interventions can help set them up for success even before they start formal school.

The National Early Literacy Panel found that both reading books to young children and engaging in activities aimed at improving their language development improved their oral language skills(49).

If children don’t learn to read naturally from being exposed to reading, why are parents and teachers encouraged to read to infants and preschoolers?

The amount of time adults read with preschoolers and young children(50) does predict their reading skills in elementary school. One of the most important predictors of how well a child will learn to read is the size and quality of his spoken language and vocabulary, and children are more likely to be exposed to new words and their meanings or pick up grammar rules from reading aloud with adults.

In a series of studies in the late 1990s of 5-year-olds who had not yet learned to read, Victoria Purcell-Gates(51) found that after controlling for the income and education level of the children’s parents, children who had been read to regularly in the last two years used more “literary” language, longer phrases, and more sophisticated sentence structures. Moreover, an adult reading with a child is more likely to explain or expand on the meanings of words and concepts that the child does not already know, adding to their background knowledge.

Reading with trusted adults also helps children develop a love of reading. “The association between hearing written language and feeling loved provides the best foundation for this long process [of emergent literacy], and no cognitive scientist or educational researcher could have designed a better one,” notes cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf(52).

What about independent choice reading?

In a choice reading period—also known as sustained silent reading or Drop Everything and Read—students get to pick a book to read independently in class for a set amount of time. The premise behind this activity is that children need time to practice reading skills on their own to improve.

There is a lot of correlational research that shows that children who read more are better readers(53). But many of these studies don’t quantify how much reading students are actually doing. While they may specify a time frame—15 minutes of sustained silent reading, for example—the studies don’t report whether kids spend this time reading. That makes it difficult to know how effective choice reading actually is.

More importantly, these studies don’t provide experimental evidence—it’s not clear whether reading more is what makes students better readers, or if better readers are likely to read more. The National Reading Panel found that there wasn’t evidence that choice reading improved students’ fluency.

Does it make a difference whether children learn to read using printed books or digital ones?

In the last decade or so, access to Internet-based text has continued to expand, and schools have increasingly used digitally based books(54), particularly to support students who do not have easy access to paper books at home. Yet some emerging evidence suggests children learn to read differently in print versus digitally(55), in ways that could hinder their later comprehension.

Researchers that study eye movements find that those reading digital text are more likely to skim or read nonlinearly, looking for key words to give the gist, jump to the end to find conclusions or takeaways, and only sometimes go back to find context in the rest of the text. In a separate series of studies since 2015(56), researchers led by Anne Mangen found that students who read short stories and especially longer texts in a print format were better able to remember the plot and sequence of events than those who read the same text on a screen.

It’s not yet clear how universal these changes are, but teachers may want to keep watch on how well their students reading electronically are developing deeper reading and comprehension skills.

Related Education Week Stories

• Influential Reading Group Makes It Clear: Students Need Systematic, Explicit Phonics
• Dealing With Dyslexia: ‘It’s Almost Like It’s a Naughty Word’
• Meet the Moms on the Front Lines of the Latest Reading Wars
• Battle Over Reading: Parents of Children With Dyslexia Wage Curriculum War
• Teachers Criticize Their Colleges of Ed. for Not Preparing Them to Teach Reading
• Opinion: We Have a National Reading Crisis

1. For one early argument, see “ Why Reading Is Not a Natural Process ”.

2. For more, read “ FAQ: Language Acquisition ”.

3. “ Key to Vocabulary Gap Is Quality of Conversation, Not Dearth of Words ”

4. In this video , cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham discusses the implications of the science of reading with Education Week assistant managing editor Liana Heitin Loewus. For Willingham’s book, click here .

5. “ Cross-Cultural Effect on the Brain, Revisited ”

6. One way to see the connection between sound recognition and reading is to look at the effects of one of the most common early childhood illnesses, middle-ear infections. Studies have found children who had repeated infections before age 3 had lower reading performance in grades 1 and 2 than children without ear infections. The infections were directly related to lower phonological awareness, alliteration, and rhyme, as well as expressive language, word reading and definitions. “ The Effects of an Early History of Otitis Media on Children’s Language and Literacy Skill Development ”

7. Scholars of historic language development suggest that one of the earliest writing systems, Sumerian cuneiform, evolved from a mostly logographic system to one that used characters to represent sounds in its spoken language. See: Proust and the Squid - Maryanne Wolf . You can also see Wolf discuss the evolution of spoken versus written language in this Nature interview .

8. Hear teachers’ perspectives on phonics instruction in this video interview .

9. For the full studies, see: “ Phonemic awareness and letter knowledge in the child’s acquisition of the alphabetic principle ” and “ Acquiring the alphabetic principle: A case for teaching recognition of phoneme identity ”.

10. Keith Stanovich discusses how early differences build over time in this video interview .

11. Stanovich adapted the concept from sociologists Robert Merton and Harriet Zuckerman. The “ Matthew Effect ” has been applied to areas from law to geopolitics as a way to describe how early advantage builds on itself.

12. Overall, systematic phonics programs produced a moderate and statistically significant effect size, d=0.44. The report concluded that these findings suggest systematic phonics programs have a greater positive effect than other programs that provide unsystematic phonics, or no phonics. See “ National Reading Panel, Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction, Reports of the Subgroups .”

13. This 2006 review found that systematic phonics instruction had a moderate and statistically significant effect on reading accuracy. The review didn’t find that phonics had a statistically significant effect on reading comprehension, but the authors note that this finding was based on weak evidence–only four randomized controlled trials that examined comprehension were included. “ A systematic review of the research literature on the use of phonics in the teaching of reading and spelling ”. This Australian review of reading research determined systematic phonics instruction to be an essential component of reading instruction, as part of a program that explicitly teaches phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

14. “ Hemispheric Specialization for Visual Words Is Shaped by Attention to Sublexical Units During Initial Learning .” For a broader discussion of the experiments, see: Brain wave study shows how different teaching methods affect reading development.

15. In a Stanford University lecture, Bruce McCandliss explained how different kinds of neural activity relate to reading .

16. “ National Reading Panel, Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction, Reports of the Subgroups ”

17. Effectiveness of Treatment Approaches for Children and Adolescents with Reading Disabilities: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials The review found that phonics instruction had a small but statistically significant effect on reading performance across the studies in children and adolescents. Studies in children with mild reading disabilities had a greater effect than studies in children with moderate and severe reading disabilities. Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth English-language learners need the well-rounded reading instruction that their native English speaking peers do–instruction that integrates phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Still, within phonemic awareness, it may be most effective to give students more work with phonemes that appear in English, but not in their native language. Oral language development in English is also especially important for ELLs.

18. A Meta-Analysis of the Long-Term Effects of Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, and Reading Comprehension Interventions .

19. “ Precocious Readers: Past, Present, and Future ,” “ Early Literacy Development and Instruction: An Overview ,” “ Precocious Readers: Case Studies of Spontaneous Learning, Self-Regulation and Social Support in the Early Years ”

20. “ Hyperlexia: Systematic Review, Neurocognitive Modelling, and Outcome .”

21. Research has shown that when young readers know words on sight, it’s because they recognize the sound-letter patterns in those words–not because they’ve stored the words in their visual memory. See: “ Phonological and semantic processes influence beginning readers’ ability to learn to read words ,” Phonological recoding and orthographic learning: A direct test of the self-teaching hypothesis.

22. Kenneth and Yetta Goodman Collection 1953-2015 Goodman, (Kenneth S., Yetta M.) Collection.

23. “ Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game ”.

24. “ What I Know About Reading, I’ve Learned From Children ”

25. This is laid out in several reports, including “ Phonics and Early Reading: An Overview for Headteachers, Literacy Leaders and Teachers in Schools, and Managers and Practitioners in Early Years Settings, ” “ Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert ,” and “ Meeting the Challenges of Early Literacy Phonics Instruction .“

26. “ Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties, David A. Kilpatrick ” (book).

27. “ Letter names and phonological awareness help children to learn letter–sound relations .” “ Acquisition of literacy: A longitudinal study of children in first and second grade. ” “ The contributions of phonological awareness and letter-name knowledge to letter-sound acquisition—a cross-classified multilevel model approach .”

28. The Role of Children’s Phonological and Semantic Knowledge in Learning to Read Words

29. “ Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel ”

30. Psycholinguistics expert Mark Seidenberg estimates the English language has as many as 15,000 syllables. See his book: “ Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’t, And What Can Be Done About It. ”

31. You can hear pronunciations of the most common English phonemes here .

32. For the Scotland study, see “ The Effects of Synthetic Phonics Teaching on Reading and Spelling Attainment: A Seven Year Longitudinal Study .” The British government also commissioned a review of the research in teaching early reading, published in 2006, that suggested synthetic phonics was more effective. This recommendation was made based on observations of classroom practice, though, not experimental research. For this review, see “ Independent review of the teaching of early reading .”

33. Both the National Reading Panel and a 2006 reading review didn’t find a significant difference between the two methods. “ A Systematic Review of the Research Literature on the Use of Phonics in the Teaching of Reading and Spelling ,” “ National Reading Panel, Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction, Reports of the Subgroups ”

34. “ Effective Word Reading Instruction: What Does the Evidence Tell Us? ” This 2017 review of recent research comparing analytic and synthetic phonics found that both methods were effective for teaching young and struggling readers.

35. “ The Interaction Between Orthographic and Phonological Information in Children: An fMRI Study ”

36. “ Differing Effects of Two Synthetic Phonics Programmes on Early Reading Development ” In this study, two groups of early elementary school students were taught with different programs: One was taught multiple letter-sound correspondences, and the other was taught the most consistent letter-sound patterns along with sight words. Overall, the two programs were equally effective, and for both groups of students, phonological awareness was significantly related to reading ability. But within the program that only taught letter-sound patterns, there was a closer link between phonological awareness and ability to read words that broke traditional phonemic rules. On the other hand, children who had less phonological awareness when they started school improved more in reading under the program that also taught sight words.

37. “ Learning to Read Words: Theory, Findings, and Issues ” In this 2005 paper, reading researcher Linnea Ehri theorized that this is how children remember irregular words. Research studies, conducted both before and after this paper was released, lend support to this framework. For example, see “ Phonology constrains the internal orthographic representation .” In these experiments, subjects were more likely to judge incorrectly spelled words as correct if they had been repeatedly exposed to the incorrect spellings. Other research has shown that young children who have not yet developed phonemic awareness can use letter names to make sense of words. For example, see “ Young Children’s Ability to Read and Spell Their Own and Classmates’ Names: The Role of Letter Knowledge ,” and “ Letter names help children to connect print and speech. ”

38. “ Developing Early Literacy: A Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. ”

39. “ A Comparison of Children Aged 4–5 Years Learning to Read Through Instructional Texts Containing Either a High or a Low Proportion of Phonically-Decodable Words .” For a discussion of research on decodable books, see: “ Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert. ”

40. For an interesting discussion of the pros and cons of decodable text, see: “ Should We Teach with Decodable Text? ”

41. “ Why What We Teach Depends on When: Grade and Reading Intervention Modality Moderate Effect Size ”, “ A Meta-Analysis of the Long-Term Effects of Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, and Reading Comprehension Interventions ”, “ National Reading Panel, Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction, Reports of the Subgroups ”

42. Orthographic mapping is why we can recognize words on sight. In this process, a reader anchors the written sequence of letters that make up a word to the pronunciation and definition that she knows for that word. Eventually, she doesn’t need to actively decode the word anymore–she automatically recognizes the letter-sound patterns and knows that they represent the word in her vocabulary. This happens over time, as the reader is exposed repeatedly to words that he or she can decode and comprehend. To do this, readers need a well-developed oral vocabulary and strong phonemic awareness skills. Empirical evidence for this process was first found by Linnea Ehri, an educational psychologist at Graduate Center of the City University of New York. See: “ Movement into Reading: Is the First Stage of Printed Word Learning Visual or Phonetic? ” For a review of the research, see: “ Orthographic Mapping Facilitates Sight Word Memory and Vocabulary Learning, in Reading Development and Difficulties. ”

43. Later, the National Early Literacy Panel added to this, noting six skills that predicted later reading skills even after accounting for a child’s IQ or other background information:

• alphabet knowledge, or understanding names and sounds associated with specific written letters;
• phonological awareness, the ability to understand auditory aspects of speech independent of its meaning, including distinguishing individual syllables or phonemes;
• rapid automatic naming (RAN) of a random series of numbers or letters;
• RAN of a series of pictures of colors or objects;
• Naming, the ability to write individual spoken letters or to write one’s name; and
• Phonological memory, or the ability to recall spoken information after a brief period of time.

“ Developing Early Literacy: A Report of the National Early Literacy Panel ”

44. “ The Simple View of Reading ”

45. Decoding, Reading, and Reading Disability - Philip B. Gough, William E. Tunmer, 1986 — SAGE Journals

46. Vocabulary does not complicate the simple view of reading

47. “ Language deficits in poor comprehenders: a case for the simple view of reading "; “ Should the Simple View of Reading Include a Fluency Component? "; “ Vocabulary Does Not Complicate the Simple View of Reading ”. Other research suggests that there are additional factors that influence students’ reading comprehension abilities, such as their ability to pay attention to specific tasks. See: Attentional control and the Simple View of reading

48. Why what we teach depends on when: grade and reading intervention modality moderate effect size.

49. “Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel,”

50. Based on a meta-analysis of interventions the National Early Literacy Panel found shared reading significantly improved young children’s spoken language skills and print knowledge. To put the effects in context, the panel noted that if average children who were not read to would have scored a 100 on a test of oral language, the children who were read to would have performed 11 points higher. “ Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel ”

51. “Parents as Literacy Brokers” in “The Routledge International Handbook of Early Literacy Education”

52. Proust and the Squid - Maryanne Wolf

53. “ Growth in Reading and How Children Spend Their Time Outside of School. ” Teaching for Literacy Engagement - John T. Guthrie, 2004 For a review, see “ Independent Reading and School Achievement. ” Some other correlational research has suggested that guided independent reading, with some intervention or direction from the teacher, has a positive effect on comprehension. See “ Does Practice Make Perfect? Independent Reading Quantity, Quality and Student Achievement. ”

54. The effects of digital storybooks seem to depend on specific aspects. One analysis of 43 studies found that multimedia elements such as animated pictures or sound effects improved comprehension. Yet interactive elements, such as built-in games or pop-ups for dictionaries or additional information, distracted students and hurt comprehension. “ Benefits and Pitfalls of Multimedia and Interactive Features in Technology-Enhanced Storybooks: A Meta-Analysis ”

55. Reader, Come Home - Maryanne Wolf

56. “ The evolution of reading in the age of digitisation: an integrative framework for reading research ” “ The Digitization of Literary Reading — Wiley Online Library ” “ Comparing Comprehension of a Long Text Read in Print Book and on Kindle: Where in the Text and When in the Story? ”

Further Reading Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert Learning to Read: What We Know and What We Need to Understand Better Development of Sight Word Reading: Phases and Findings Developing Early Literacy Skills: A Meta-Analysis of Alphabet Learning and Instruction Discovering the Literacy Gap: A Systematic Review of Reading and Writing Theories in Research What Reading Does for the Mind What Research Tells Us About Reading Instruction Neuroscience, Learning, and Educational Practice: Challenges, Promises, and Applications Does Dyslexia Exist? Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade

How to Cite This Article Schwartz, Sarah and Sparks, Sarah D. (2019, October 2). How Do Kids Learn to Read? What the Science Says. Education Week. Retrieved Month Day, Year from https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-do-kids-learn-to-read-what-the-science-says/2019/10

An alternative version of this article was published in the December 4, 2019 edition of Education Week. A version of this article appeared in the December 04, 2019 edition of Education Week as How Do Kids Learn to Read?

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What Research Really Says About Teaching Reading (Even Beyond ILA 2019)

The sound of chatter filled the room as teachers, educators, and researchers made their way into the theater on the second day of ILA 2019. With coffee in hand, the crowd eagerly awaited the beginning of the newly added panel, What Research Really Says About Teaching Reading—and Why That Still Matters.

Abiding the Rules of the Road

David Pearson took the stage shortly after the clock struck 7:00 a.m. From the start of his presentation, Pearson gave the packed room a reminder: He’s all for research-based practice, but if we’re going to go down that road, let’s make sure we have a road map and follow the rules of the road. Delving into research-based practice, Pearson went on to share his version of the rules of the road:

Rule #1: Policymakers have to read beyond the headline (or have a reader on staff).

Pearson stressed that readers looking at the headline but not taking it a step further by reading all the content is problematic. Headlines can leave out a lot of the details, nuances, and truth.

Rule #2: When research is applied, it ought to be applied in an even-handed way.

No cherry picking. You must look at all research, not just the bits that fit your biases. This also includes equity among students and teachers, said Pearson.

Rule #3: It’s our moral and ethical obligation to use the best evidence we can muster for making policy decisions of consequence.

Pearson explained that if we applied the best available evidence standard we would not have so many phonics programs for older students, would not mandate percentages of decodable text, and would still have bilingual education programs in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts.

Rule #4: When you invoke the mantle of science, you have to accept the full portfolio of methods scientists use.

“When you invite the research family to the policy table, you have to invite them all, even the cousins you’d rather not talk to,” said Pearson, who received laughs from the crowd.

Rule #5: Build your case on your evidence, not on the back of a straw person.

To this point, Pearson said that often educators try to advance the practice they want to promote by asserting that the problem is that no one is currently doing what they advocate. In reality, there is little evidence to warrant the claim that no one is doing it.

Last, Rule #6: You have to talk to others in the field who you don’t share basic assumptions about how to do research or what the research says.

According to Pearson, you must stay at the table and cut through the rhetoric. While individuals tend to stay with people who are like them, this approach is bad for educational policy and a problem for society today.

As the engaged crowd digested Pearson’s road map, he moved the program into the panel format featuring renowned literacy experts Nell K. Duke, Sonia Cabell, and Gwendolyn Thompson McMillon.

The group began the panel by discussing what research tells us about teaching and facilitating in the early years. According to Cabell, children start developing the skills they need for later literacy success from birth. Preschool teachers can help facilitate this at a young age by drawing children’s attention to print while they’re reading out loud, playing phonological games, and practice writing in settings that inspire curiosity.

“Children must develop their language skills as early as possible,” said Cabell, “By the end of kindergarten children’s language skills start to stabilize. They grow in their skills, but really they are in the same place as their peers.”

Early on, the code-related skills predict achievement well in kindergarten and first grade. But by the time students get to third grade, it’s the early oral language where the emphasis is on meaning that has the better predicting value predicting later reading achievement, added Pearson.

Addressing the Scripted Curriculum Conundrum

Gwendolyn Thompson McMillon shifted the conversation to the pros and cons of scripted curriculum. In research, McMillon found that when preservice and inexperienced teachers get into the classroom, they are more comfortable when they’re given direction on what to say and do. Also, depending on how the scripted program is presented, it can increase engagement among students. However, she moved to explained how the cons of scripted curriculum can cost both educators and students. 

“If it’s a scripted program, my concern is that students who may not get the kind of language interaction at home, and often times that’s students who are socioeconomically impoverished, may not get that in the classroom,” McMillon said. “Then when would it happen? I’m concerned that the interaction [with scripted programs] isn’t there.”

It wouldn’t be professionally responsible for any of us to recommend using scripted programs with no responsiveness to children in front of us. It’s about how much guidance you’re putting into the program, Duke added.

Cabell joined the discussion by adding that some of the goal for scripted programs is to teach teachers how to teach a topic, therefore they may be a benefit to many.

Exploring Texts for Beginning Readers

Pearson turned to Duke to move the conversation to texts for beginning readers.

“The weight of the evidence suggests that decodability is an important factor in texts for beginning readers,” Duke says. “That degree to which the texts are decodable does matter for children and for their development. More decodable texts foster literacy development better, even though it’s not what some people want to hear.”

There is also evidence that suggests other factors in the text that are important: The diversity of genres represented, natural language, and the degree the text is engaging the kids, Duke continued. In her opinion, the most promising work in the area is what is currently is referred to as multiple criteria texts, which focus decodability but do not stop there. She recommends educators learn more at TextProject.org.

Tackling Reading Comprehension

There is a large body of research supporting the explicit teaching of comprehension strategies using a gradual release of responsibility model, said Duke. There’s no doubt about its importance.

“It’s as though because we think content knowledge building is so important, we’re just going to ignore three decades of research on comprehensive strategy instruction,” said Duke. “This isn’t a zero-sum game saying, ‘if you can’t attend to content, then you can’t teach comprehension strategies’ or ‘if you teach comprehension strategies, you must not be paying enough attention to vocabulary or morphology.’”

There is also concern that the literacy field is usurping content instruction in school districts. Meaning, literacy is dominating the day with some programs having curricula addressing social studies and science standards. This leaves districts feeling as if teaching both subjects are optional. This is deeply problematic, said Duke. Literacy practitioners should be advocating for science and social studies instruction.

“For too long, literacy has been a bully and pushed science and social studies off of the stage,” Pearson said in his final comments. “Literacy should be a buddy, not a bully, for science and social studies.”

Though the panel came to a close, the critical conversations were just beginning. Attendees could be heard exiting the crowded auditorium debriefing the panel with fellow colleagues, while Twitter (referred to as “the wires” by Pearson) was buzzing using the hashtag #ILAresearch. Although ILA 2019 has come and gone, we look forward to educators and researchers continuing the conversation about what research really says about teaching reading.

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California's Reading Dilemma

Edsource special report, a movement rises to change the teaching of reading, low test scores fuel demands for change, karen d'souza, august 17, 2022.

When Esti Iturralde’s daughter Winnie was in first grade, the girl struggled with learning to read. Like most parents, Iturralde blamed herself at first.

“I thought there was something wrong with my kid. I thought there was something wrong with us,” said the Bay Area mother of two. “I just couldn’t really understand what was going on.”

The teacher consoled that Winnie just wasn’t ready, but Iturralde, a psychologist, began to suspect the type of reading instruction was holding her child back.

“Her teacher was wonderful,” she said. “She created a really vibrant classroom for literacy with beautiful read-alouds and publishing parties. She involved families in reading to the children. So I thought, what’s missing here?”

Iturralde ended up getting a crash course in the science of reading. Part of what she learned is that the human brain is wired to speak but not to read, because written language remains a relatively new invention in human history.

Many educators, however, believe that reading comes naturally, like talking, if the child is immersed in a language-rich environment. That’s why Winnie didn’t get enough explicit instruction in school about phonics, the link between letters and sounds.

The reading wars

Phonics, a method of correlating sounds with letters, may not seem like a controversial concept, but it’s anathema in some academic circles. Many teachers dismiss the practice of sounding out words as old-fashioned drudgery that prevents children from loving literature.

This view of reading harks back to Horace Mann, the father of American public education, who attacked teaching phonics and the alphabet in the 1800s. He believed children should learn to recognize whole words, one of the keystones of the “whole language” movement, which set the foundation for the “balanced literacy” approach used in many California schools from one end of the state to the other.

For the record, balanced literacy touches on phonics, experts say, but it does not give it the laser focus of a “structured literacy” program, which is rooted in phonics and other fundamentals and steeped in the science of reading.

“There’s a phobia about breaking down words into little parts. If you boil it down to the letters on the page, they fear, certain magic may be lost,” said Iturralde. “There’s also the belief that you have to let children discover things for themselves.”

Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

Esti Iturralde with her two daughters, Winnie, left, and Lorea, right.

The philosophical tug-of-war between teaching phonics, how to sound it out, and teaching meaning, how to think it through, persists despite exhaustive research suggesting that most children must be explicitly taught how to connect sounds with letters. To make matters worse, most of this is an insider debate that most parents and caregivers know little about. Even the terminology, from balanced literacy to structured literacy, seems designed to scare off the uninitiated.

How many children have been collateral damage in this war of words? The pendulum has been swinging between these competing approaches for decades, despite a body of research on the subject that was codified as far back as 1999 when Congress convened the National Reading Panel .

Some call this battle over reading strategy, “the reading wars.” It’s a conflict that is resurfacing in California and inciting change across the country.

This ongoing EdSource series will do a deep dive into the scope of the literacy crisis in California, digging into emerging research, state policy, a groundbreaking lawsuit, teacher training and bilingual issues, to assess just how much is at stake in a state that fails to teach more than half of its children how to read.

“A generation of kids got sold down the river,” said Austin Beutner, a former Los Angeles Unified superintendent. “They have no grounding in the fundamentals of phonics and decoding. Less than half the kids can read. That’s staggering to me. How can we find that acceptable?”

With New York City and several states shifting their approach and balanced literacy guru Lucy Calkins admitting to flaws in her influential curriculum, “Units of Study,” this academic debate is coming to a head in California. Educators and policymakers are at odds over myriad thorny issues, from battles over curricula  and the politics of teacher credentialing to a newly-funded program to place reading coaches into high-need schools as the literacy crisis deepens in the wake of the pandemic. The central question emerges: Why do so many children struggle to read, and how can their teachers and caregivers help them?

Credit: "The Right To Read" documentary by Jenny Mackenzie

Jessica Reid Sliwerski, right, founder of reading tutoring and curriculum non-profits, helps teacher Sabrina Causey with her first-grade class at Markham Elementary School in East Oakland.

“The literacy crisis in our country is not because kids can’t learn to read,” said Jessica Reid Sliwerski, a literacy expert and founder of Open Up Resources , a nonprofit that offers accessible curricula. “The problem is that a huge swath of our population of young children never gets access to the type of instruction they need. They never get the opportunity to learn how to crack the code.”

Only a third of American students were found proficient in reading, according to 2019 scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as NAEP, the Nation’s Report Card. And that is before the pandemic disrupted schooling, sending test scores into a tailspin. 

“Our hair should be on fire. And the way in which we douse that fire is by getting really, really clear about how the science of reading can equip us to promote that liberatory outcome that reading can be,” said Zaretta Hammond, author of “ Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain .” “Reading is how the brain levels up.”

In California, 48.5% of the state’s third-graders tested at grade level or above in English language arts in 2019. (Non-English learner students tested 57% at grade level.) Students who aren’t reading at g rade level by the third grade will struggle to catch up throughout their educational career, research suggests , quickly falling behind their classmates and widening the achievement gap.

How does the brain learn to read?

One of the key concepts here is that lessons in phonics and other reading fundamentals help change the circuitry of the brain, experts say, forging pathways between the parts of the brain that interpret the auditory and the visual.  

When a child learns to read, as neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene , author of “Reading in the Brain,” puts it, the brain creates an “interface between your vision system in your brain and your spoken language system.” 

That’s why children must be taught how to link the sounds of the words with the symbols on the page, experts say , how to connect speech to print. These neural pathways are like superhighways that become smoother and wider through use, experts say. Helping children forge these connections efficiently is the core of what experts call “structured literacy,” a phonics-based approach.   

“How kids learn is settled science, but we have this big implementation gap from research to practice, getting the knowledge to the classrooms,” said Becky Sullivan, a literacy expert at the Sacramento County Office of Education. “We basically have 360 days to get it right. You have kindergarten and first grade to get kids reading. … You have got to get it done, or you set your kids up for an intervention situation.”

The pillars of structured literacy instruction are often defined as phonics (connecting letters to sounds,) phonemic awareness (identifying distinct units of sound,) fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Without a firm grounding in these foundational lessons, experts say, many children flounder. 

Iturralde, who has a doctorate in behavioral science, conducted some experiments with her first grader, dubbed the Purple Challenge , to see if Winnie would blossom with more phonics, which she did. But she is quick to point out that she lays no blame at the feet of teachers, who have little control over curriculum and strategy.

Teachers at a loss

In fact, many teachers, unaware of the compelling brain research, do not realize that skimping on phonics and other fundamentals may come at a cost. While some children will thrive anyway, experts say, others will falter unnecessarily. 

It’s only by looking back on their experiences with struggling readers that many teachers have a light bulb moment. Many say they will never forget the children they tried, and failed, to help because they didn’t have the expertise they needed. 

“I taught reading wholeheartedly and with a lot of gusto. I tried my hardest, but it was not systematic, it was not explicit,” said Monica Ng, a former kindergarten teacher turned educational consultant. “It was very sad because there were kids who were really struggling to read, and I remember saying to their families, ‘I don’t know what I can do to help you.'”

“It was very sad because there were kids who were really struggling to read, and I remember saying to their families, ‘I don’t know what I can do to help you.’”

Sabrina Causey, a first grade teacher at Oakland’s Markham Elementary, recalls going home and crying after a long day of trying to teach with a balanced literacy curriculum, which she now believes lacked enough phonics to be effective. 

“I was trying to teach the lessons, but they didn’t make sense,” said Causey. “For instance, I taught lessons in how to ‘scoop up’ words, but the kids in my class didn’t know letters or sounds. These kids had no basic skills. So I had one kid who could read that year.”

One of the most controversial practices in balanced literacy is “ three-cueing,” which teaches children to guess at words. When faced with a hard word, like purple, Winnie had been taught to look for contextual clues , such as illustrations, instead of sounding out the word. Take the pictures away and she stumbled.  That’s why champions of structured literacy put the words first.  

“The biggest problem we have is that teachers haven’t been taught how the brain works,” said Nancy Cushen White,  a clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco and a reading specialist. “Fifty years ago, it was understandable, but there’s really no excuse for it now. And the worst part is the teachers are working just as hard. Teachers will say, ‘Why didn’t somebody tell me this 10 years ago?’”

Critics of structured literacy, however, feel the phonics-based philosophy is  too reductive. They worry that it’s a series of endless “drill and kill” exercises that will diminish the joy of reading. 

Champions counter that if a child doesn’t get firmly grounded in the fundamentals right off the bat, they may never get to fluency. Children run the risk of falling so far behind that they never master the deep comprehension that is mandatory in later grades. The sooner children can master the fundamentals, they say, the sooner they can immerse themselves in the splendors of great literature.

The secret is that once you get the basics baked into your brain, experts say, reading feels effortless and automatic. The pleasure of reading is the endgame. Phonics is just the warmup. 

The reading wars assume a dichotomy between foundational skills and rich comprehension that doesn’t exist, some experts say. Instead, they are entwined like the braided strands of a rope, growing stronger with every additional thread, as the metaphor of Scarborough’s Reading Rope illustrates.  Put simply, you have to be able to read skillfully before you can think deeply about what you’ve read.

“It’s just like building a house,” said Carol Tolman, a literacy expert and co-author of Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, or LETRS , a science-of-reading-based training for teachers. “If you build a foundation with a crack and you leave that cra ck, the first floor is going to be a little shaky.” 

Of course, children have varying needs, but only about 5-10% of children will learn to read without very explicit instruction, some experts say. These effortless readers may have given rise to the notion that learning to read should come naturally, but that is not the case for most.

While about 35% of children will learn to read no matter how they are taught, according to many experts , about 40-45% will struggle without clear and consistent lessons in the fundamentals. The remaining 10-15% qualify as dyslexic, and these children benefit the most from a structured literacy program.

“From an equity standpoint, foundational skills are something that is good for all kids,” says Sliwerski, who also created Ignite Reading, which specializes in Zoom-based tutoring, “but they are absolutely essential for the vast majority of the children.”  

Children who struggle with reading often internalize feelings of failure that may set the tone for their academic career, and time-pressed parents blame themselves, experts say, instead of realizing they are snarled in a systemic failure to teach reading effectively. 

“There’s an assumption on the part of the school that if students are not reading well, that’s the kid’s problem,” said Ng, the teacher turned consultant. “It’s a kid-level problem and not an instructional problem.”

Winnie, for her part, became a huge fan of phonics, zooming from reading level B (a kindergarten level) to level O (a second-grade level) by the end of first grade. She was so excited when her mom ordered a phonics book that she took a selfie with it. Now going into third grade, she’s an avid reader, with a special fondness for the Harry Potter canon. 

“I’m proud of her,” said Iturralde. “She talks about loving to read and it being her favorite part of school.” 

Unfortunately, not everyone has a highly educated parent like Iturr alde around to help them connect the dots. Most families can’t afford a private tutor . That leaves far too many children out in the cold, educators say. 

“If the teachers don’t change the practice in the classroom,” said Timothy Shanahan, a literacy expert and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chi­cago, “you can’t possibly expect reading achievement to go up.” 

“If the teachers don’t change the practice in the classroom,” said Timothy Shanahan, a literacy expert and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chi­cago, “you can’t possibly expect reading achievement to go up.”

Is the tide turning?

While many California school districts use a balanced literacy approach, a compromise between whole-language, which focuses on whole words, and structured literacy, which focuses on phonics, change is underway in many quarters. 

New York City will require all elementary schools to adopt a phonics-based reading program in the coming school year. Oakland Unified began making that switch last year. 

Many states are also considering legislation that would require teacher preparation to include the science of reading.  A few states, such as Louisiana and Arkansas, have recently banned three-cueing, which encourages students to rely on clues, such as pictures, to guess the word. In California, SB 488 requires newly credentialed teachers to receive training in the science of reading, but implementation remains a sticking point . Changing classroom practice by virtue of legislation is no mean feat.

Credit: Palo Alto Unified

Todd Collins

“Given flexibility, teacher preparation programs will change little,” said Todd Collins, a Palo Alto school board member and an organizer of the California Reading Coalition , a literacy advocacy group. “And then, even if the standards are clear, there is a major gap between the rules and what actually happens.”

Issues of quality control and consistency dog the teacher training sphere as a whole, experts say. 

“There are about 1,500 teacher training organizations in the U.S. and they are poorly monitored and poorly supervised,” said Shanahan , founding di­rector of the UIC Center for Literacy. “We’re putting resources in, but our bucket has a hole in it.”

Meanwhile, in California, the governor and the Legislature are setting aside $250 million for reading specialists in the highest poverty schools in the 2022-23 budget, with $15 million more to train these coaches in evidence-based literacy strategies. State Superintendent Tony Thurmond has launched a literacy initiative to get all third-grade students reading by 2026, but he has also said he does not support a comprehensive statewide strategy , rejecting “ a one-size-fits-all approach.”

Without clear guidance, schools and districts often pivot from one approach to another, experts say, creating confusion for students and teachers alike. Oakland and New York City have both flipped back and forth in recent years.

An issue of equity

Some advocates are calling for more accountability. They believe school districts have made mistakes for which students have paid the price. The ramifications of this failure, they warn, include a generation of young people who can’t compete in a knowledge-based economy. 

“This is a civil rights issue because people are being systematically denied access to their civil liberties and their opportunities because they’re illiterate,” said Kareem Weaver, member of the Oakland NAACP Education Committee and co-founder of the literacy advocacy group FULCRUM . “This is a social justice issue.” Weaver is prominently featured in the documentar y “The Right to Read.”

“The Right to Read” documentary is the story of the early reading crisis in America. Watch the trailer here .

The key question now, some experts say, is how to build a consensus for change. Bridging the gap between scientists and educators, each laboring in their own silo, may strike at the core of the problem, as Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, argues in “Language at the Speed of Sight.” 

“The gulf between science and education has been harmful,” according to Seidenberg. “A look at the science reveals that the methods commonly used to teach children are inconsistent with basic facts about human cognition and development and so make reading more difficult than it should be. They inadvertently place many children at risk for reading failure.”

The need to connect high-level research to classroom practice drives Margaret Goldberg, the literacy coach at Nystrom Elementary in West Contra Costa. She also collaborated with Seidenberg on a presentation about guiding principles to help educators design evidence-based curricula for the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading conference.

“I try to talk teacher-to-teacher in a way that makes teachers curious about the research,” said Goldberg, the co-founder of the Right to Read Project, a group of teachers, researchers, and activists. “A lot of us were underserved by our teacher preparation and underserved by our curriculum. There are a lot of conflicting messages out there about what we’re supposed to do and why.”

Reading research was the North Star for Kymyona Burk, a principal architect of Mississippi’s reading program. The poorest state in the nation, Mississippi was the only state to post significant gains on the NAEP in 2019. That turnaround was driven by a statewide literacy push that revolved around teacher training.  

“All children deserve teachers who have been trained in the science of reading,” said Burk, who is now policy director for early literacy at the Foundation for Excellence in Education, an education think tank. “ We not only said we need children reading by the end of third grade, we also said we’re going to help you get there . We put literacy coaches in our lowest-performing schools, and we provided professional development to our teachers.”

Burk describes illiteracy as one of the most solvable issues of our time, but y ou can’t teach what you don’t know. In Mississippi, every teacher goes through LETRS, a science-of-reading-based training.   Still, even statewide strategies and teacher training are not magic bullets, experts warn. 

“It’s not something that’s easy to learn,” said Dale Webster, vice president of language and literacy at CORE, a nonprofit education consulting organization. “It’s not, you get a little course in teaching reading, and then you get a program, and then you just go to town. It takes a long time to learn the skills, and teachers need ongoing support to be able to do it effectively.” 

There’s also the issue of curriculum whiplash, experts say. Teachers who have been tugged back and forth by the reading wars may be resistant to yet another wave of change.

“You’re asking someone to change their identity,” said Aaron Bouie III,  executive director of PreK-5 curriculum in Ohio’s Youngstown City School District. “It is not easy to change a mindset. There will be tears. It’s not for the faint of heart.”

However, grassroots awareness of the issue is growing, reading advocates say, often fueled by social media conversations between parents, teachers and experts. The Facebook group “Science of Reading: What I Should Have Learned in College ” now has roughly 170,000 members. There’s a Science of Reading corner on TikTok with short how-to videos. On Twitter, the hashtag #ScienceofReading is a hotbed of discourse.

Adding to that awareness was American Public Media education reporter Emily Hanford, who challenged the educational establishment by asking why educators were ignoring scientific research in the teaching of reading in a probing series of stories beginning in 2018.

One major sign of the times is that Calkins, a titan in the world of balanced literacy and a professor of education at Columbia University, has revised some of her philosophy , which largely viewed children as natural-born readers. Amid a rising chorus of criticism , she is revising her materials to acknowledge the science of reading.  

Credit: LinkedIn

Lucy Calkins

While the launch of the revised curriculum has been delayed, and details remain fluid, the reboot appears to downplay three-cueing, a mainstay of balanced literacy, include easy-to-read “decodable” books, and encourage sounding out words.

“When a child is reading a sentence such as, “It was cold, so I put on my jacket,” and the child gets stuck on jacket,” Calkins writes on her publisher’s blog. “We now suggest the teacher nudge by saying, “Look at the letters, have a go with that word,” rather than saying, “Think about what’s happening. What might the boy put on?”

This marks a clear shift in focus from the context to the text, where many argue it should always have been.

“To actually have a leader at an Ivy League institution that’s been held up as a kind of pinnacle of teacher preparation say, ‘I learned a lot of stuff in the past five years,’ that’s a big deal,” said Goldberg, who has penned several open letters to Calkins. “The research has been around for decades, and you recently learned about it as a result of public outcry?”

“To actually have a leader at an Ivy League institution that’s been held up as a kind of pinnacle of teacher preparation say, ‘ I learned a lot of stuff in the past five years,’ that’s a big deal.”

This high-profile pivot in thinking about learning to read, coupled with the disruptions wrought by the pandemic, may be leading the education world to a watershed moment, some say, a way to move beyond the latest skirmish in the reading wars. 

“We can seize this opportunity to get really effective instruction in place,” said Goldberg. “If we can allow teachers to have access to the information they need about how the human brain develops, how learning is best accelerated by explicit teaching, then teachers can be responsive to the tactic that will get the most kids, the furthest, the fastest.”

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Donna L Taylor 7 months ago 7 months ago

Taking phonics out of the curriculum was a disastrous mistake. So let’s fix it.

Sandra Smith 12 months ago 12 months ago

Thank you for the excellent article. I hope, for the sake of our children, that the public education system can see the errors in its ways, and make adjustments based on proven, science-based approaches. I can personally relate to many of the points in the article and comments. Out of my 3 kids, only one had difficulty learning to read. Despite spending hours with him, and trying to have him sound out words, it just … Read More

Thank you for the excellent article. I hope, for the sake of our children, that the public education system can see the errors in its ways, and make adjustments based on proven, science-based approaches.

I can personally relate to many of the points in the article and comments. Out of my 3 kids, only one had difficulty learning to read. Despite spending hours with him, and trying to have him sound out words, it just didn’t connect. After spending countless hours googling and researching, I concluded he had dyslexia, which he inherited from his dad. After meeting with his teachers and pointing out the signs in his reading and writing, they agreed that there was a problem, but had no idea how to identify the problem, nor what to do about it. They just weren’t trained. After trying to get help from his public school, and a disastrous 5th grade year that took a terrible toll mentally on my son (and me), I found a private school (The Prentice School), that uses research-based multi-sensory methods including the Orton-Gillingham Approach. After spending 6-8th grade there, he was a new kid, could read and write well, regained confidence in himself, happy, and went on to public high school and graduate college.

Unfortunately, the price of the private school is out of reach for many families of kids who could really benefit. Teaching our public school teachers is the key! Adding similar special teaching programs at public schools would be well worth the expense!!

Sheila Murphy 1 year ago 1 year ago

So good: “Our hair should be on fire. And the way in which we douse that fire is by getting really, really clear about how the science of reading can equip us to promote that liberatory outcome that reading can be,” said Zaretta Hammond, author of “Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain.” “Reading is how the brain levels up.””

Zoe Danielson 1 year ago 1 year ago

I have an early childhood directors credential, a multiple subject teaching credential and a science credential for middle school. I have four children. No, children don't all learn the same way. Two of my sons learned through whole language and two learned through structured phonics. I paid for private school and tutoring for my "phonics kids." For myself, I never learned to read in school. I woke up one day in fourth grade and … Read More

I have an early childhood directors credential, a multiple subject teaching credential and a science credential for middle school. I have four children. No, children don’t all learn the same way. Two of my sons learned through whole language and two learned through structured phonics. I paid for private school and tutoring for my “phonics kids.” For myself, I never learned to read in school. I woke up one day in fourth grade and could suddenly read, retain, and comprehend at the level of a college graduate. Go figure.

Vanessa 1 year ago 1 year ago

Great article. I have no idea why schools thought it was a good idea to take phonics out of the curriculums. My sons always had trouble with writing and I bet had they had phonics from the start, they would have been better readers and writers.

Margaret Sisson 1 year ago 1 year ago

I read this entire article and kept thinking why don’t they mention Montessori education? The reading program is based on phonics. An excellent program that was developed 100 years ago. No reason to reinvent the wheel …

Ruby 1 year ago 1 year ago

Great article. A lot to think about in there. Reading for Pleasure is key but how do children get there if they aren’t taught the basics alongside?

Cindy Mc Cartney 1 year ago 1 year ago

I was trained in Balanced Early Literacy for two years. I went to conferences given by lit leaders from all over at least once a month. I was teaching first grade at the time. All of my students displayed success in their reading skills. Phonics are just part of the balanced lit program, which turned out to be quite successful. Because I was the lit leader at our school site, I received more extensive … Read More

I was trained in Balanced Early Literacy for two years. I went to conferences given by lit leaders from all over at least once a month. I was teaching first grade at the time. All of my students displayed success in their reading skills. Phonics are just part of the balanced lit program, which turned out to be quite successful. Because I was the lit leader at our school site, I received more extensive training. Perhaps that is the key to successful teaching. What if all of the kindergarten and first grade teachers received the training I had the opportunity to receive? Incorporating balance with phonics, and offering explicit training is what gives positive results. Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.

Erik Kengaard 2 years ago 2 years ago

What happened to parents helping their kids? I don’t recall reading being a problem in the 1930s and 1940s. It’s insane to leave learning such an important skill as reading to K12 teachers. Same for basic math, physics, . . .

Lois Horner 2 years ago 2 years ago

I taught many first graders to read using a program called The Writing Road to Reading by Romalda Spaulding. Her program was based on the Orten-Gillingham method of teaching reading using structured phonics.

Neiani 2 years ago 2 years ago

Great article! Teaching the science of reading to teachers is a must!!

Tina Costantino-Lane, EdD 2 years ago 2 years ago

Thank you for an informative article; however, one aspect that was not presented was that the kindergarten standards have only recently included extensive phonics. Some kindergarten students are not ready for the abstract nature of phonics, others have underdeveloped language, and still others have no interest in learning how to read. Some students who struggle with reading in kindergarten may not struggle, if extensive phonics was postponed until first grade. Learning to read is not … Read More

Thank you for an informative article; however, one aspect that was not presented was that the kindergarten standards have only recently included extensive phonics. Some kindergarten students are not ready for the abstract nature of phonics, others have underdeveloped language, and still others have no interest in learning how to read.

Some students who struggle with reading in kindergarten may not struggle, if extensive phonics was postponed until first grade. Learning to read is not merely learning letter/sound correspondences as English has 26 letters but 44 sounds, and some words cannot be decoded. When the reading curriculum takes up most of the day, there is little time for other subjects. The content areas develop language that enable decoding.

Sylvie Matte 2 years ago 2 years ago

This article is music to my ears!! I am a parent of a very high IQ kid who could not read, was diagnosed with dyslexia and was going to totally fail and probably drop out of school if I didn’t intervene to get her the instructions she needed. The system put the blame on me, on her but never on themselves. These years were the most stressful and frustrating of my and my daughter’s life. … Read More

This article is music to my ears!! I am a parent of a very high IQ kid who could not read, was diagnosed with dyslexia and was going to totally fail and probably drop out of school if I didn’t intervene to get her the instructions she needed.

The system put the blame on me, on her but never on themselves. These years were the most stressful and frustrating of my and my daughter’s life. I will do anything I can to help other kids not to go through this. It’s a nightmare.

Sharon M Thurmond 2 years ago 2 years ago

Thank you Karen for this informative article. I will share it with my community. And yes, in order to enjoy reading and be proficient in any subject,…”children must be taught how to link the sounds of the words with the symbols on the page”. Our educational system has failed the majority of our students, but those of us who care, like The Natoma Black Parents United group. can and will stimulate change.

Robert Bowman 2 years ago 2 years ago

As a reading instruction specialist, I have taught dozens of students how to read, using a phonics based approach. Every single student learned to read well. Teaching the sounds of letters is the key. Once a student grasps the fact that 16 of the 26 letters make only 1 sound, and 10 letters make more than 1 sound, the student begins to understand how to read.

Sherry Goldojarb 2 years ago 2 years ago

I was a kinder teacher for 23 years with Los Angeles Unified. Most of my students were 2nd language learners. I would tell parents that one of the challenges was making the connection between letter forms and sounds. I provided an eclectic manner of teaching reading in order to meet the varying abilities of each student. I would say that 95 percent of my students were reading and writing by the end of their … Read More

I was a kinder teacher for 23 years with Los Angeles Unified. Most of my students were 2nd language learners. I would tell parents that one of the challenges was making the connection between letter forms and sounds. I provided an eclectic manner of teaching reading in order to meet the varying abilities of each student. I would say that 95 percent of my students were reading and writing by the end of their kinder year. I would evaluate my success if the 1st grade teachers were happy with their incoming students.

One thing I found helpful with just learning the alphabet was to include something physical, so we would learn the alphabet also using American Sign Language. It really helped some of the struggles. Unfortunately, school districts go with a reading program that is one size fits all. It doesn’t. They need to give teachers a little leeway to work in things that work for their own students and style of teaching.

Harvey Daniels 2 years ago 2 years ago

SOR is not settled science. This is all about political control of schools.

Renae Skarin 2 years ago 2 years ago

The author is correct in that the SOR systematic phonics instruction, along with, and not excluding the other strands of Scarborough's reading rope are essential to skilled reading. "The Reading Rope consists of lower and upper strands. The word-recognition strands (phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition of familiar words) work together as the reader becomes accurate, fluent, and increasingly automatic with repetition and practice. Concurrently, the language-comprehension strands (background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal … Read More

The author is correct in that the SOR systematic phonics instruction, along with, and not excluding the other strands of Scarborough’s reading rope are essential to skilled reading. “The Reading Rope consists of lower and upper strands. The word-recognition strands (phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition of familiar words) work together as the reader becomes accurate, fluent, and increasingly automatic with repetition and practice.

Concurrently, the language-comprehension strands (background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge) reinforce one another and then weave together with the word-recognition strands to produce a skilled reader. This does not happen overnight; it requires instruction and practice over time.” (dyslexiada.org)

What needs to be emphasized is that phonics instruction alone is not enough for many kids to learn to read skillfully. The author places great emphasis on the reading wars and the issue of phonics vs. balanced literacy. While I agree that not enough training in phonics has disadvantaged kids, a lack of attention to language comprehension is equally as detrimental to reading development, especially for kids who arrive in classrooms with a different primary language then the one taught in schools.

In addition, English learners may need support in contrasting the sounds of their home language as compared to English, along with a lot of oral language development to familiarize themselves with the sounds of English (which may be different from the home language). “Students may not be able to “hear” or produce a new sound in a second language. Students who cannot hear and work with the phonemes of spoken words will have a difficult time learning how to relate these phonemes to letters when they see them in written words.” (Colorin Colorado). In addition, some of the topics in texts may not be familiar to students from culturally diverse contexts, and if they are not taught vocabulary and background knowledge, they will be reading without comprehending what they are reading.

We must be careful not to oversimplify the complexity of literacy instruction to “Just give them phonics and it’ll solve everything.” I don’t imagine that was the intention of the author, but the other important aspects of the reading rope were greatly deemphasized.

Cynthia Damico 2 years ago 2 years ago

Great article! Thank you for the in-depth research and clarity of expression. I believe that the “science of reading” must not stop with reading words. Students further benefit when taught how words work within the structure of a sentence and are provided with the metalinguistic tools to discuss syntax and structure when reading and writing.

Beto 2 years ago 2 years ago

Thank god I learned to read and write in another country. Americans’ obsession over this is nuts.

Olive Josuweit 2 years ago 2 years ago

We are at a time of change. Thanks for writing this article. Children deserve the right to be explicitly taught how to read.

Caroline Grannan 2 years ago 2 years ago

The battle between phonics and the various names of the alternate concept has been going on for decades. I'm 68, and my mom taught me to read before I started K with a book called "Why Johnny Can't Read," which demonstrates that the battle was happening in the '50s. (Of course we have no idea if or how well I'd have learned without the phonic focus.) My take as a longtime watcher of education is: … Read More

The battle between phonics and the various names of the alternate concept has been going on for decades. I’m 68, and my mom taught me to read before I started K with a book called “Why Johnny Can’t Read,” which demonstrates that the battle was happening in the ’50s. (Of course we have no idea if or how well I’d have learned without the phonic focus.) My take as a longtime watcher of education is: people learn in different ways; it’s not like it was *better* in some magical past when phonics was the mode of the day; and it’s unrealistic to believe there’s a watershed moment coming. Hope I’m proved wrong (but don’t place any bets you can’t afford).

J J 2 years ago 2 years ago

And. …cursive needs to be taught again. How can a newly employed individual read a handwritten messages from an upper level staff member?

Kathy DAIGLE 2 years ago 2 years ago

Excellent article Karen D’Souza. Thank you for summarizing so many issues on one article.

Tom Adams 2 years ago 2 years ago

Readers of this article should examine California’s English Language Arts/English Language Development Curriculum Framework. It combines the ELA and ELD standards into a coherent curriculum. The framework is available at https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/ .

Dr. Bill Conrad 2 years ago 2 years ago

This is a beautifully written article! Thank you! I spent a career as an assessment and accountability director advocating for scientific approaches to the teaching of reading only to be consistently rejected. I had to resign my position for my advocacy of the science of teaching reading. The teachers are not to blame. The state board, administrators and governance are to to blame. State Superintendent Tony Thurmond continues to advocate that it is up … Read More

This is a beautifully written article! Thank you!

I spent a career as an assessment and accountability director advocating for scientific approaches to the teaching of reading only to be consistently rejected. I had to resign my position for my advocacy of the science of teaching reading.

The teachers are not to blame. The state board, administrators and governance are to to blame. State Superintendent Tony Thurmond continues to advocate that it is up to school districts to choose their reading curriculum. This is unacceptable.

Read The Fog of Education!

Thank you again for a fantastic article!

Rivkah Sass 2 years ago 2 years ago

As a former public librarian, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. A wise woman once told me that reading scores had not fundamentally changed in 50 years which might have served as a clue to educators that the approach to teaching reading using whole language and context was part of the problem, not the solution. Instead, as Emily Hanford pointed out in her excellent podcast series on the science of reading (2019), former … Read More

As a former public librarian, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. A wise woman once told me that reading scores had not fundamentally changed in 50 years which might have served as a clue to educators that the approach to teaching reading using whole language and context was part of the problem, not the solution.

Instead, as Emily Hanford pointed out in her excellent podcast series on the science of reading (2019), former educators were making lots of money selling their products making it difficult for school districts to make substantive change that would actually benefit children. The result? Frustrated teachers who know better, kids who are behind and parents who blame themselves. What a shame.

ann 2 years ago 2 years ago

Oh, so much to comment on. In 1989 when I was home with my infant child and not yet an educator, I avidly read the once great Los Angeles Times. That year they had a long form article called, no less, "The Reading Wars." So comprehensive was the research stated there I naively believed that our educational institutions must be rapidly adjusting to systematic reading instruction. I believed the "war" had been won. Yet when … Read More

Oh, so much to comment on.

In 1989 when I was home with my infant child and not yet an educator, I avidly read the once great Los Angeles Times. That year they had a long form article called, no less, “The Reading Wars.” So comprehensive was the research stated there I naively believed that our educational institutions must be rapidly adjusting to systematic reading instruction. I believed the “war” had been won.

Yet when I did enter the field a decade later, even with the National Reading Panel out and available across the country, I came across the hard heads and bullies in the California educational system from Sacramento down to the district and school level, who refused to “accept the science” (ironic). Our “teaching institutions” have stubbornly resisted preparing our teaching workforce to teach reading, saddling our schools with teachers who either adopt a resistant stance to teaching reading systematically, grow frustrated and dissatisfied with education and leave the field, or just spend a career thinking some kids just can’t learn.

This also has lead to over referral to Special Education. Hundreds of thousands of students have lost the opportunity to learn to read and we all know the damaging consequences to them personally and to society. This institutional failure of teacher training has also been documented clearly by reports from the National Council on Teacher Quality, first in the early 2000s and continuing today but literally denied by tax payers supported public universities in California! Though I appreciate this reporting today, Ed Source has also been wishy washy on the subject over the past decade since I have been following. The comments by Webster and Boui are nonsense. Reading science is not difficult to learn and doesn’t take years to learn. If Mississippi can do it, why not California? By the way the brave reporter in Mississippi was named Emily Hanford, a true and rare hero journalist and her piece can be listened to here: https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2018/09/10/hard-words-why-american-kids-arent-being-taught-to-read .

Finally, though I am passionate about this subject and have much more to say, when Tony Thurmond, the State Superintendent, cannot be a firm supporter of the science, he does not deserve (never did in my view) to hold his position!

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Academic Success in Online Programs pp 111–124 Cite as

Skills and Strategies for Research and Reading

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Part of the book series: Springer Texts in Education ((SPTE))

In addition to study skills and study habits, students need to be able to effectively engage in the process of research and college-level reading. Chapter 8 explains the significance of effective research and reading skills on academic performance. There are many types of research activities that college and university students are expected to actively participate in to complete various course requirements. Similarly, there are many different forms of literature that a student will encounter while engaging in the research process. College and university libraries provide access to a many of resources to support students through the research process. Thus, this chapter introduces students to the different types of research activities they can expect to engage in through their courses, explains the different forms of literature that a student may encounter during the research process, and provides insight into the many resources that libraries often provide to support student research activities and student development of college-level research skills. One of the areas of student development is in reading skills. Hence, Chapter 8 explains the various types of reading materials that a student may encounter in college or university courses, provides information on the styles of reading academic texts, and presents strategies to promote effective research and reading, including best practices for evaluating the relevancy and credibility of information sources.

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Iowa Reading Research Center

Rethinking How We Teach Literacy in Tier 1: Targeted, Small-Group Instruction

This is the second blog post in a series of three that details the process of differentiating Tier 1 instruction of essential skills through flexible, skill-based grouping. 

In the first blog post of this series, we highlighted the importance of familiarizing ourselves with the framework and process for continuous improvement adopted by the Iowa Department of Education to ensure we make instructional decisions that meet students' needs. We introduced the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) framework and the Continuous Improvement Process (CIP). As a reminder, there are five steps involved in the CIP:

• Step 1 - Assess: Where are we now and where do we want to be?
• Step 2 - Prioritize: Why?
• Step 3 - Plan: What are we going to do, and how are we going to do it?
• Step 4 - Implement: Are we doing what we said we would do?
• Step 5 - Evaluate: Did our plan work?

We discussed a scenario in which we completed steps 1 and 2 of the CIP process and established the goal that 80% or more of our students should be meeting grade-level expectations as a result of Tier 1 instruction. Now, in step 3 of the CIP process, we must make a plan to determine how we are going to achieve that goal. If we are falling short of our goal, we should first look at universal screening data. If there is a wide range in performance on a skill,  we use diagnostic data to differentiate Tier 1 instruction so that it is aligned with the needs of each student. Dr. Stephanie Stollar, educational consultant and creator of the Reading Science Academy, refers to this as the primary prevention of reading failure. As Stollar explains, when we differentiate Tier 1 instruction, we are “teaching reading the first time around in a way that’s lined up to student needs—not teaching over their heads, not teaching something that they already know, but matching first instruction to student needs (Stollar, 2023). 

It is not uncommon to teach most elements of literacy in a whole-group setting. However, research would encourage us to consider another option. While whole-group instruction certainly has a time and a place, research indicates that small-group instruction allows for differentiation and equity, leading to better outcomes for all students. Valiandes (2015) found that, in classrooms where teachers focused work on their students’ skill needs, students made more progress compared to students in classrooms where teachers used traditional whole-class instruction. In addition to allowing for differentiation and equity, small-group instruction also offers students additional practice opportunities and immediate corrective feedback. 

When essential skills are taught in a whole-group setting, all students are getting the same instruction, regardless of their individual needs. Whether they are students who are not meeting benchmarks or students who have already mastered skills being taught, they are getting the same instruction. As an alternative, differentiated, small-group instruction can benefit students at all skill levels because it relies on data to target their specific needs. In a meta-analysis by Elbaum, et al. (1999), alternative instructional groupings (i.e., pairs and small groups) were found to yield the highest effect sizes for reading outcomes for students with disabilities. Those findings echoed the work of another meta-analysis done three years prior by Lou, et al. (1996) on small-group instruction for students without disabilities, which also yielded significantly high effect sizes for small-group instruction. Students instructed in small groups learned much more than students who were not instructed in small groups (Lou, et al., 1996). 

Not only is there research in support of differentiated, small-group instruction for struggling readers, there is also evidence indicating that students who have already met or exceeded expectations would benefit from instruction that is designed to meet their specific needs. As described by Young (2024), “Unnecessary instruction for students who are advanced in reading is likely to delay learning and may result in student frustration and boredom” (p.197). 

We understand that Tier 1 small-group instruction might be a significant shift for many teachers and districts. A common instructional model is whole-group instruction followed by a small group of students (sometimes considered Tier 2) being pulled to a table with their homeroom teacher for additional instruction while the rest of the class works independently. Advocates for differentiated, small-group Tier 1 instruction are not referring to this model. Rather, we are discussing a model in which ELA blocks are strategically scheduled so that additional staff members are available to push into a classroom or a grade level to teach those foundational concepts that may have otherwise been taught in the whole-group setting. Students are placed in small groups that have been formed by carefully assessing skills.

Small-group instruction is necessary because our students need different levels of support, and their instruction should be designed to meet those needs, even in Tier 1. In other words, it can support educational equity, which is “not achieved when all children are treated ‘equally’ by receiving the same instruction, the same resources, and the same allocation of time” (Diamond, 2023). Rather, differentiating Tier 1 instruction of essential skills through flexible, skill-based grouping allows teachers to provide their students with exactly what the data indicate the students need. 

In our next and final blog post of this series, we will provide examples of how this model could look in your classroom or building and finish out the remaining steps in the 5-step continuous improvement model. 

Diamond, L. (2023) Small group reading instruction and mastery learning: The missing practices for effective and equitable foundational skills instruction [White paper]. Collaborative Classroom. https://cdn.collaborativeclassroom.org/white-paper/small-group-reading-instruction-and-mastery-learning.pdf

Elbaum. B., Vaughn. S., Hughes. M., Moody, S. W. (1999). Grouping practices and reading outcomes for students with disabilities. Exceptional Children , 65 (3), 399-415. https://doi.org/10.1177/00144029990650030

Lou, Y., Abrami, P. C., Spence, J. C., Poulsen, C., Chambers, B., & d’Appolonia, S. (1996). Within-class grouping: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research , 66 (4), 423-458. 

The Reading League Wisconsin. (2023, September 12). Tier 1 Instruction is Risk Reduction [Webinar]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zmgVT-Tufk

Valiandes, S. (2015). Evaluating the impact of differentiated instruction on literacy and reading in mixed ability classrooms: Quality and equity dimensions of education effectiveness. Studies in Educational Evaluation , 45 , 17–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2015.02.005  

Young, N. (2024). Advanced in reading (AIR). In N. Young & J. Hasbrouck (Eds.), Climbing the ladder of reading and writing: Meeting the needs of ALL learners  (pp. 184-197). Benchmark Education Company.

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Meeting Students' Needs With Iowa's Continuous Improvement Framework and Process

Critical Elements of Implementing Small-Group, Skills-Based Instruction

Setting goals, facilitating professional development, and measuring success toward small-group, skills-based literacy instruction implementation.

The Best Way to Teach Reading Is Proven — What Mississippi, Colorado Get Right

This is the second piece in a two-part series that tracks Texas’ attempts to adopt the science of reading over 25 years. The lessons learned in this series are relevant to the many states who have adopted — or are attempting to adopt — the science of reading in schools. Read the first piece here .

Texas lawmakers passed a measure at the end of their regular 2023 session that helped move the state forward in its effort to improve reading outcomes. HB 1605 includes several elements, including creating a process and incentives for districts to purchase high quality instructional materials approved by the State Board of Education. Importantly, it also bans the use of three-cueing, an ineffective instructional practice commonly used in balanced literacy that teaches young readers to rely on visual and meaning cues to guess a word.

Research tells us that early readers need, instead, to learn how letters and sounds work together to create words . Thanks to HB 1605, three-cueing can no longer be used in classrooms or taught in teacher preparation programs, an incremental step toward improving reading outcomes.

The word “incremental” is key here. Texas policymakers have been trying to improve reading rates for decades, from 1996’s Texas Reading Initiative, and 2019’s HB 3, which created “Reading Academies” to train teachers and principals . But Texas has not had the single-minded focus that states like Mississippi have used to improve reading outcomes for all students.

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What’s more, Texas legislators missed an opportunity this spring to approve a deeper overhaul of reading instruction in Texas classrooms. Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, proposed legislation that would have required schools and districts to teach reading based on the five elements of the science of reading . The bill stalled during the session, but one element survived in HB 1605— a ban on three-cueing, a reading instruction method that encourages students to rely on context clues like repetitive sentence patterns, the first letter of a word, and pictures as they learn to read.

As Texas legislators look forward to the 2025 session, they have an opportunity to create a comprehensive policy that ensures all students receive research-based instruction — and remove ineffective strategies like balanced literacy from Texas classrooms. Such a policy needs to include support for educators and accountability for change — along with giving districts access to high quality instructional materials and early screeners.

Success takes more than passing a law. The hardest work comes next.

That lesson is important for Texas and any other state seeking to improve reading instruction. States that devote serious attention to improving reading outcomes — Mississippi and Colorado , for example — excel in implementing change after a strong policy is signed into law. They focus on:

• Insisting upon the use of research-based reading principles — the science of reading — in classroom instruction and in curriculum and materials;
• Providing a culture of accountability to ensure change happens and an infrastructure of support so that educators are able to make the needed changes;
• Ensuring schools of education and teacher training programs understand and embrace the science of reading so that new teachers are ready to teach reading well;
• Working with parents and community leaders to communicate clearly about the changes and to champion effective reading strategies; and
• Sticking to these fundamentals even when results do not improve overnight.

Research-Based Lessons from the Magnolia State

Texas can learn from Mississippi the absolute importance of relentlessly embracing research in improving student reading. Mississippi’s 2013 Literacy-Based Promotion Act requires all students receive instruction based on the science of reading. Classrooms must use research-based instruction and materials. And aspiring elementary school teachers must pass a foundational reading test before receiving a state license.

After legislators passed that law, state education officials, led by Carey Wright, the Mississippi superintendent of education from 2013-2022, and Kymyona Burk , then literacy director at the Mississippi Department of Education, got busy implementing the law.

They deployed reading coaches trained in science of reading to the lowest performing schools. Coaches were assigned to classrooms to work with teachers a few days a week for the entire school year, building relationships with instructors and providing consistent job-embedded learning. Research shows that hands-on professional development is most effective for educators. The state still follows that strategy.

The state similarly provided a training program, Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling ,– so that sitting educators could learn and practice the science of reading. Burk traveled the state to help teachers and principals understand LBPA’s requirements. Wright regularly reported on progress to the Legislature.

The strategies have paid off. In 2012, Mississippi ranked 49th out 50 states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in fourth grade reading. In 2022 , Mississippi ranked 21st. 

To be sure, Texas has attempted to embrace some research-backed practices. The Reading Academies legislators authorized in 2019 require K-3 teachers and principals to complete and pass an intensive course on the science of teaching reading. The Texas Education Agency projects that 132,000 teachers will have completed the academies by the end of this year.

But the implementation of the academies has been inconsistent. Districts can hire an outside expert to lead a comprehensive and immersive cohort with live coaching, or they can choose to implement it locally, hiring the cohort leaders themselves. The district may also choose an online-based model versus a more expensive and intensive in-person version. So, while districts have options to best implement given their context, that also creates wide variation in what content is delivered. It is easy for districts immersed in a balanced literacy approach to use the academies to reinforce that flawed philosophy, rather than help teachers and principals understand and implement the science of reading.

Providing a Culture of Accountability and Infrastructure of Support

A key element of Mississippi’s 2013 law is that all the state’s third graders must read at grade level by the end of their school year. If they do not, students cannot enter fourth grade, unless they pass the state’s reading exam during subsequent opportunities or receive an exemption.

This aspect of the law mirrors what Texas passed under then-Gov. George W. Bush in 1999. Texas, however, no longer requires third graders to pass a reading test before advancing to the next grade. Given that only 48% of Texas third graders met the state’s standards on Texas’ 2023 reading exam, legislators and education leaders should study how Mississippi has used this practice to good effect.

Of course, the decision to hold students back is never an easy one. That’s why Wright, Burk and their team worked hard to design — and communicate — a plan that would neither be punishment nor repetition. Instead, they insisted upon retention as intervention. Students who are held back have personalized, specific reading plans and supports designed to ensure the student can develop missing skills.

The state’s use of retention as an intervention has paid off. A recent Boston University study found that Mississippi students who repeated the third grade scored higher on the state reading exams in sixth grade than fellow students who barely passed the third-grade test.

Mississippi’s requirement that aspiring elementary school teachers pass a Foundation of Reading test before receiving a state license is another part of the state’s culture of accountability. The test not only impacts who gets credentialed, but the exam informs the state which schools lag in preparing candidates.

Accountability plays a key role as well in Colorado’s effort to improve reading instruction. The state’s Reading to Ensure Academic Development Act emphasizes the need for teachers to be proficient in the science of reading, channels resources to students below proficiency in the science of reading, and sets district reporting requirements to hold schools accountable.

For example, districts must provide teachers at least 45 hours of training in the science of reading. And starting in the 2024-2025 budget cycle, districts must show proof to the state that principals and administrators have passed the evidence-based training.

What’s more, districts must screen K-3 students to assess any reading deficits. They must also report to the state the number of students with significant reading deficiencies and their progress in reading.

In a report released in June, NCTQ found that only 27% of Texas’ 51 preparation programs adequately provide training in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, and offer little-to-no instruction that contradicts research-based practices.

The organization also reported that 20 of the state’s 51 programs teach multiple techniques or approaches that contradict proven research. Only three schools —Houston Baptist University, Texas A&M-Texarkana, and Sul Ross State University — earned an A+ for their use of the science of reading.

As NCTQ concluded , better teacher preparation will lead to more students learning to effectively read.

Colorado certainly has focused on better preparation after state lawmakers insisted upon it. The state created strong teacher preparation standards, a rigorous licensure test, and assistance helping preparation programs instruct prospective teachers in the science of reading.

In Colorado, NCTQ found , teacher preparation programs used an average of 4.6 of those five elements. That was the highest score of any state and beat the national average of 2.6. NCTQ also reported that 11 of the state’s 16 schools of education received an A or A+ on the organization’s scorecard for effectively preparing educators to teach reading.

What’s more, Colorado requires all teacher preparation programs meet state standards before becoming fully licensed. Otherwise, the State Board of Education will sanction the program until its reading coursework improves.

Texas and other states can learn from this model. NCTQ found that while Texas requires a licensure test for reading instructors, it recommends that the state requires pre-K through fifth-grade teachers pass a licensure test that aligns with scientifically-based reading instruction. The organization also recommends the state publish the passing rates for those tests.

Working with Parents and Community Leaders to Champion Effective Reading Strategies

Here, too, Texas and others should learn from Colorado, Minnesota and Mississippi in giving parents the information and tools to effectively use their voice.

Colorado’s READ initiative calls upon schools to provide parents regular, recurring updates about the progress of interventions their students might receive. That kind of information matters. Parents need data before they can sound off.

In Minnesota, the National Parents Union organized across several groups to engage parents, business leaders and educators to push the state to adopt a science of reading approach. This summer, their efforts paid off when Gov. Tim Walz signed the READ Act, which requires the use of high-quality screeners, research-based curriculum, better information for parents and provides resources to train educators on the science of reading. Balanced literacy is pervasive in Minnesota classrooms, and reading scores fell sharply in the pandemic and have not recovered.

In Mississippi, Kymyona Burk and others within the state’s education department traveled the state to talk with educators and parents about what the law means for children and to clearly outline the roles and responsibilities for educators and parents. This focused on communications was intentional: to inform parents and teachers and to enlist them as champions of quality reading instruction.

Mississippi also benefited from the commitment of Jim Barksdale, a Mississippi native who previously served as Netscape’s CEO. His $100 million gift to create the Barksdale Reading Institute helped state leaders spread understanding about the importance of the science of reading.

To be sure, Texas students have champions like the Katy Literacy Coalition , which advocates for the science of reading in an affluent suburban district outside of Houston. Likewise, the Parent Shield organization that Trenace Dorsey-Hollins founded in Fort Worth is driving an important conversation in that city about reading instruction, especially in disadvantaged communities. The Fort Worth Education Partnership is working across the community to help parents understand precisely where their children stand in their reading proficiencies. But there is not a statewide advocate ensuring that Texas does this right for every child, in every classroom across the state.

Sticking to These Fundamentals Even If Results Don’t Improve Overnight

Scores on the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress reading exam show that Colorado fourth graders dipped slightly lower than their results on the 2019 NAEP reading exam. That was not unusual. Most states declined . None showed an increase. Still, Colorado’s fourth graders scored significantly higher than the national average.

The state’s eighth grade reading scores were similar. They slightly declined for Colorado eighth graders , as they did in many states. Still, Colorado eighth graders scored higher than the national average.

Mississippi’s results tell a similar story for the state’s fourth graders . Their scores beat the national average, even though they declined from the 2019 NAEP reading exam. And those fourth-grade scores continued a longer upward trajectory. The fourth-grade performance in 2022 showed an increase of eight points from 2011.

The good news is that Brown University researchers found that South Carolina, Iowa, Mississippi and Tennessee have now recovered from or exceeded COVID-related declines in reading. Most other states did not experience that same progress. The improvements were attributed to each state’s focus on improved reading instruction as well as a faster return to in-person learning.

The lesson for Texans — and anyone in a state taking on this work — is that progress takes time. And sometimes it is uneven. It takes persistence for all of the needed changes to line up in ways that change student outcomes.

Success requires committing to the research-based approach to reading, unequivocally. All ideas are not good ones when it comes to teaching reading, and it matters to say that out loud. There are many open questions in education, but how to best teach reading is mercifully not one of them. Education has no shortage of fads and shiny new things, implemented poorly, that seasoned educators can just ignore or wait out. The science of reading can’t be one.

Texas is poised to make an incredible impact on its young people if it figures out how to teach reading consistently well. Nearly 6 million students are enrolled in Texas public schools — about 60% of those children are economically disadvantaged and nearly 22% are English language learners. 

Creating 6 million strong readers means giving 6 million children the ability to learn and navigate their futures.

Disclosure: Anne Wicks served as an advisor to the Highland Park Literacy Coalition, a parent organization which advocated for Highland Park ISD to eliminate balanced literacy and to embrace the science of reading. The Texas district announced that change in the spring of 2022.

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The Higher Education Program at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is continuing its investment in Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) and in the establishment of partnerships between MSIs and graduate programs at other colleges and universities. Sloan’s Creating Equitable Pathways to STEM Graduate Education grants will engage the expertise of MSIs—and the unique experiences of their faculty and students—to model effective systems and practices that remove barriers and create opportunities for equitable learning environments in STEM graduate education so all students can thrive. Grant awards will support sharing MSIs’ institutional know-how on equitable undergraduate and graduate education, as well as modeling that know-how to create systemic changes that enhance pathways from MSIs to master’s and doctoral degree programs in astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer science, data science, Earth sciences, economics, engineering, marine science, mathematics, physics and statistics at partner institutions.

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About half of americans say public k-12 education is going in the wrong direction.

About half of U.S. adults (51%) say the country’s public K-12 education system is generally going in the wrong direction. A far smaller share (16%) say it’s going in the right direction, and about a third (32%) are not sure, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in November 2023.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand how Americans view the K-12 public education system. We surveyed 5,029 U.S. adults from Nov. 9 to Nov. 16, 2023.

The survey was conducted by Ipsos for Pew Research Center on the Ipsos KnowledgePanel Omnibus. The KnowledgePanel is a probability-based web panel recruited primarily through national, random sampling of residential addresses. The survey is weighted by gender, age, race, ethnicity, education, income and other categories.

Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

A majority of those who say it’s headed in the wrong direction say a major reason is that schools are not spending enough time on core academic subjects.

These findings come amid debates about what is taught in schools , as well as concerns about school budget cuts and students falling behind academically.

Related: Race and LGBTQ Issues in K-12 Schools

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say the public K-12 education system is going in the wrong direction. About two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (65%) say this, compared with 40% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. In turn, 23% of Democrats and 10% of Republicans say it’s headed in the right direction.

Among Republicans, conservatives are the most likely to say public education is headed in the wrong direction: 75% say this, compared with 52% of moderate or liberal Republicans. There are no significant differences among Democrats by ideology.

Similar shares of K-12 parents and adults who don’t have a child in K-12 schools say the system is going in the wrong direction.

A separate Center survey of public K-12 teachers found that 82% think the overall state of public K-12 education has gotten worse in the past five years. And many teachers are pessimistic about the future.

Related: What’s It Like To Be A Teacher in America Today?

Why do Americans think public K-12 education is going in the wrong direction?

We asked adults who say the public education system is going in the wrong direction why that might be. About half or more say the following are major reasons:

• Schools not spending enough time on core academic subjects, like reading, math, science and social studies (69%)
• Teachers bringing their personal political and social views into the classroom (54%)
• Schools not having the funding and resources they need (52%)

About a quarter (26%) say a major reason is that parents have too much influence in decisions about what schools are teaching.

How views vary by party

Americans in each party point to different reasons why public education is headed in the wrong direction.

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say major reasons are:

• A lack of focus on core academic subjects (79% vs. 55%)
• Teachers bringing their personal views into the classroom (76% vs. 23%)

In turn, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to point to:

• Insufficient school funding and resources (78% vs. 33%)
• Parents having too much say in what schools are teaching (46% vs. 13%)

Views also vary within each party by ideology.

Among Republicans, conservatives are particularly likely to cite a lack of focus on core academic subjects and teachers bringing their personal views into the classroom.

Among Democrats, liberals are especially likely to cite schools lacking resources and parents having too much say in the curriculum.

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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Kimberly McFadden Receives Hammill Institute Doctoral Fellowship

McFadden's research focuses on word reading intervention for students with reading difficulty in the upper grades.

Special Education doctoral student Kimberly McFadden has received a competitive  Hammill Institute on Disabilities Doctoral Fellowship .

Esther R. Lindström , assistant professor of special education who serves as McFadden’s faculty advisor, said, “Kim was nominated in recognition of her research interests supporting secondary students with reading difficulties and her emerging leadership in special education and teacher preparation.”

Specifically, her research focuses on word reading intervention for students with reading difficulty in the upper grades.

“As a former middle and high school special education teacher, I found that many of my students had decoding difficulty,” McFadden explained. “However, the research addressing how to teach decoding skills in the upper grades was very limited at the time.”

When McFadden enrolled in the Special Education Ph.D. program at Lehigh, these experiences as a practitioner informed her research focus.

Her qualifying project is a systematic review of word reading interventions for students with reading difficulty in Grades 4-12.

“The Lehigh University Alumni Association was incredibly supportive of my project, and their contributions to my crowdfunding campaign last spring made this work possible,” McFadden added.

The results of her study indicate that many word reading intervention studies report a positive effect on reading outcomes, but additional work is needed to maximize efficacy and to investigate the social validity of such interventions.

She will propose her dissertation in the fall, building on her qualifying project. McFadden plans to recruit a national sample of secondary special education teachers and investigate their knowledge and perceptions of word reading interventions for their students with reading difficulty.

“The Hammill Institute on Disabilities Doctoral Fellowship will enable me to continue my research, and I am incredibly grateful for their support.”  - KIMBERLY MCFADDEN

Housed within the College of Education (COE), the Special Education program takes a person-centered approach to education and the inclusion of all people with disabilities in school and society. The program offers master’s and doctoral degrees. Learn more about the COE’s Special Education program.

The Hammill Institute on Disabilities awards the Hammill Institute on Disabilities Doctoral Fellowship for research that furthers the Institute’s charitable mission. The Fellowship provides financial assistance to students enrolled in a doctoral program, either full or part time. Learn more about the Hammill Institute on Disabilities.