NPR Gets It Mostly Right

In the long ago days when I first learned to teach reading phonetically, I truly did not know what to expect. I know what I hoped for, but with phonics being frowned up in favor of "whole language," I thought that maybe there was a good reason. Before that, when I first began teaching and became aware of the controversy, I naively assumed that the educational experts had the best interests of children at heart. I thought that the only reason for teaching children was because one truly wanted students to learn. I was not aware of the political and economic considerations, and over the years, I've discovered that I was wrong in my assessment. There is too much money to be made and too much political advantage to be made in educational failure. People and companies make bundles of cash on remedial education and on NEW! and IMPROVED! reading programs. Politicians and reading "experts" become heroes, riding to the school districts' rescue - again.

There isn't much money to be made with pencil and paper. There's even less to be made when students are proficient readers and don't need extra reading programs.

NPR has profiled a Bethlehem PA school district in which a school official has decided to do his own research to figure out why so many students can't read, and why the failure in reading instruction is so wide-spread. The answer has nothing to do with adding technology to the classroom, or increased use of "leveled books," or self esteem, or more student-centered learning. It's got to do with learning what sounds the letters make. In some of the new basal reading programs, a token amount of phonetic instruction has been added to the curriculum, but not enough to insure that students become proficient readers. And teachers still aren't learning the phonetic structure of English. Teacher instruction is still based on methods that have failed for generations.

This was a class on the science of reading. The Bethlehem district has invested approximately $3 million since 2015 on training, materials and support to help its early elementary teachers and principals learn the science of how reading works and how children should be taught.

In the class, teachers spent a lot of time going over the sound structure of the English language.

Since the starting point for reading is sound, it's critical for teachers to have a deep understanding of this. But research shows they don't. Michelle Bosak, who teaches English as a second language in Bethlehem, said that when she was in college learning to be a teacher, she was taught almost nothing about how kids learn to read.

"It was very broad classes, vague classes and like a children's literature class," she said. "I did not feel prepared to teach children how to read."

Even though NPR doesn't use the word, perhaps fearing that it is still a word of ill repute, the teachers are learning phonics, how to teach reading phonetically, the way it should be taught if students are to learn. But, as teachers can't teach what they don't know, teachers must first learn the letter sounds. From the article, it's not clear as to whether students are explicitly and systematically taught the letter sounds and then led to practice them, but-

At the end of each school year, the Bethlehem school district gives kindergartners a test to assess early reading skills.

In 2015, before the new training began, more than half of the kindergartners in the district tested below the benchmark score, meaning most of them were heading into first grade at risk of reading failure. At the end of the 2018 school year, after the science-based training, 84 percent of kindergartners met or exceeded the benchmark score. At three schools, it was 100 percent.

Silva says he is thrilled with the results, but cautious. He is eager to see how the kindergartners do when they get to the state reading test in third grade.

"We may have hit a home run in the first inning. But there's a lot of game left here," he says.

Since they've made such huge investments in technology, and since standardized testing is now done on computers, I fear that most districts will still cling to the vain hope that laptops, tablets, and smart boards will save the educational day.

They won't. Explicit phonics instruction will.