More about problems with reading instruction
Regular readers know the Bluegrass Institute released my report on Monday about What Milton Wright knew about reading instruction, but lots of teachers apparently don’t, but there is a whole lot more to the story about why a huge number of kids in Kentucky and across the nation are not learning to read well.
Among the national media contributions, I don’t think any are more important than the excellent series of podcasts and articles Emily Hanford at American Public Media has created.
Hanford’s podcasts and articles covers four areas of interest:
What the Words Say — which is about how children of color are less likely to get help with reading problems. There is an extensive list of references at the bottom of this article;
At a Loss for Words — which discusses what's wrong with how schools teach reading. This article also has extensive endnotes with references;
Hard Words — which discusses “why aren't our kids being taught to read?” And,
Hard to Read — which discusses how American schools fail kids with dyslexia.
Each of the four links has both an audio podcast and a written article.
Hanford has done some really heavy-duty research over the past four years and every teacher and parent should spend some time with her.
By the way, teachers struggling with the implications of possibly not having taught reading properly, perhaps for many years, could take solace from what Hanford writes about teachers in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania confronting this reality. In Hard Words, Hanford writes:
“After learning about the reading science, these teachers were full of regret. ‘I feel horrible guilt,’ said Ibarra, who's been a teacher for 15 years.
‘I thought, 'All these years, all these students,'’ said Bosak, who's been teaching for 26 years.
To help assuage that guilt, the Bethlehem school district has adopted a motto: ‘When we know better, we do better.’ And soon, they were doing much better.”
It’s time for Kentucky’s educators to do better, too. They need to confront the fact that many of them have not been taught what science shows works best to teach reading. As of the latest available National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Grade 4 Reading results, it is clear that far too many Kentucky students, overall around 200,000 of them, are being failed. Far too few, as Figure 1 and other comments in our new report show, are really learning to read well, and the situation is much worse for the Bluegrass State’s Black students.
So, while feeling guilt for the past won’t accomplish anything, continuing to not confront and change a program that only teaches a low percentage of Kentucky’s students to read well, that would be a real problem. That’s especially so because, as our new report and comments from people like Emily Hanford point out, it doesn’t need to be this way.