A revolt over how children are taught to read, steadily building for years, is now sweeping school board meetings and statehouses around the country. 'Kids can't read:' The revolt that is taking on the education establishment:
Robert Palazzo, the principal at Panther Valley Elementary School in Nesquehoning, Pa. on April 4, 2023.
A revolt over how children are taught to read, steadily building for years, is now sweeping school board meetings and statehouses around the country. About 1 in 3 children in the United States cannot read at a basic level of comprehension, according to a key national exam. The outcomes are particularly troubling for Black and Native American children, nearly half of whom score “below basic” by eighth grade.“The kids can’t read — nobody wants to just say that,” said Kareem Weaver, an activist with the NAACP in Oakland, California, who has framed literacy as a civil rights issue and stars in a new documentary, “The Right to Read.
The movement has not been universally popular. School districts in Connecticut and teachers unions in Ohio, for example, pushed back against what they see as heavy-handed interference in their classrooms. “I’m sure it will be on a T-shirt soon,” he said. “But actually, nobody has won until we’ve actually seen we’ve improved literacy outcomes — especially with kids in groups where there is a long history of being left behind.”It all feels a bit familiar to Susan Neuman, an education official under former President George W. Bush.
During pandemic Zoom lessons, McGahee said, other parents in her affluent, mostly white suburb known for its schools also began to question why their children were not getting more explicit instruction. But amid calls for racial justice after Floyd’s murder, Hampton saw an opportunity to address gaps in reading outcomes for Black and Hispanic students, compared with white and Asian students in her district.“I told them, ‘If you don’t switch this, I’m going to make sure that every time anybody Googles your name, what’s going to come up is your statistics and the racial discrepancy in how kids are learning to read here,” Hampton recalled.
But teachers complained: It wasn’t working. Just one-quarter of third graders were meeting benchmarks.Fountas and Pinnell pointed to research supporting their program and said “countless schools” had achieved positive results. Their approach, they said, includes phonics. There is also the danger of overemphasizing phonics. To establish true literacy, students need to be able to not only sound out words, but also read quickly and build enough vocabulary and background knowledge for comprehension.When Mississippi improved reading scores in 2019, it was touted as a “miracle.” In fact, progress came over many years, with systemic reform that included sending literacy coaches to the state’s lowest-performing schools.
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