11 Reasons Why We Oppose the Science of Reading

Why we oppose the science of reading –

1. What exactly are the new SOR approaches??In terms of teacher behaviors related to literacy instruction, what instructional behaviors is there too little of??What instructional behaviors are there too much of??How do we know??How do we know these instructional behaviors are the variables related “below-average” reading scores???How would the new curriculum differ from the current curriculums?

2. What is wrong with current curriculum??What exactly should there be more of??What exactly should there be less of??How do you know??SOR advocates give the illusion that there are magic approaches or programs.?The thinking is that if we would just adopt a certain method or approach, all reading problems would be solved.?However, there are no one-size-fits-all curricula or programs that work best for all students.?Rather, there are magic teachers with toolboxes full of research-based strategies who are empowered to adopt and adapt curriculums to meet the needs of their students.

3. It’s not a single variable issue.?Assuming there is a downward spiral of reading scores, the SOR has determined, to have isolated the single variable.?This is not a single variable problem.?These all impact scores on standardized tests:

?a. normal fluctuation of scores

?b. word-wide pandemic with people dying.

?c. devasting impact of poverty

?d. class sizes

?e. teaching conditions

?f. number of well-educated teachers

?g. teacher empowerment

?h. number of books in school and classroom libraries

?i. amount of time devoted to sustained silent reading each day

?j. culturally responsive pedagogy

?h. culturally neutral assessment

?i. legitimate professional development for teachers

?j. adequate health care for all

?k. economic and job opportunities for people of lower SES

4. This is a surface-level equity solution. “Closing” the opportunity gap for multilingual learners by training teachers to drill multilingual children’s phonemic systems into a Standardized English system is NOT an equity-minded approach. It’s a way to pad the data to make it look like we’re closing the gap. It’s like trying to make the racial inequities in policing look better by tinkering with the demographic information instead of getting at the heart of systemic inequitable policing. And in literacy, those inequitable systems are classrooms where students of color are too often seen through a deficit lens.??Their identities aren’t valued, their lived experiences aren’t reflected in the books and literacy discussions in the classrooms, and their cultural identities are erased.

5. Teachers will leave the field. ?We already have a shortage of teacher.?Another top-down mandate will increase teacher shortages. ?This SOR movement has already happened in other countries such as the UK and been a total failure (flocks of teachers leaving the profession as a result.)

6. Lower-level thinking.?This movement is an attempt to move teachers and students away from critical readings of texts and toward a simple view of reading (reading as simply a process of decoding words.) The science of reading and this push is very much a response to the critiques of teachers and teacher educators as promoting a leftist agenda in schools by promoting critical literacy.

7. RFI: It’s been tried before and has not worked.?We’ve seen this movie before.?It was called Reading First Initiative (RFI).?It came out of Bush’s No Child Left Behind.?It was a massive and very expensive skills-based failure.?This science of reading initiative will be a failure as well.?In the meantime, hundreds of millions of dollars that could have been spent on things we know impact learning (reducing class size, child poverty, teachers’ wages, legitimate professional development), will have been wasted.??

8. Who’s profiting here??Just like RFI, the publishing companies will make millions at the expense of schools who cannot afford expensive new reading curriculum.

9. Everybody teaches phonics.?Everybody agrees that phonics instruction is important.?That’s never been at issues here.?It’s not the “what” of phonics instruction; it’s the “how” and the “how much” that is at issue.?Those with a simple view of reading (SOR) believe the answer to be “a whole bunch of phonics for everybody”.?Those with a meaning-based understanding of reading realize the “how” and the “how much” questions should be determined by the reader.

10. Everybody uses direct instruction.?Direct instruction is a pedagogical strategy.?Everybody believes that it is important.?It is not, nor should it be an approach or method.?There are places where it is effective and places where it’s not.?A golf analogy would be a pitching wedge.?Everybody should have it in the bag for use in certain situations.?If this is the only club in the bag, you are not going to be a very good golfer.

11. The “gold” standard should be used to support SOR. ??SOR advocates often do not use the same SOR standards when coming to conclusions about reading. That is, the "gold standard" should be used to select research to conclude balanced literacy is a bad thing. If balanced literacy is a bad thing, support your thesis using research studies published in a blind,?peer-reviewed journal, that use control and experimental groups comparing balanced literacy to something else --- or whole language to something else. Not a meta-analysis, not a white paper, not a famous person saying something, but some good old gold standard research.

Podcasts

How Science Works: Reading Science, Reading Research, and Reading Theories

The Science of Reading, or the Ideology of Reading?

The Science of Reading, Phonics, and the National Reading Panel Report

A Comprehensive Literacy Program and the Science of Reading

The Pseudo-Science of Reading and Space Alien Gravity Theory

Science of Reading Advocates are Teaching Children to Guess at Words

Videos

The Science of Reading: 5 Questionable Claims

What the NRP Report Actually Says about Phonics: Things the Science of Reading Forgot