Are The Reading Wars Finally Over?

John Merrow Uncategorized

Are The Reading Wars Finally Over?   They should be, because it’s clear that a combination of Phonics and Word Recognition–what I like to call “Shapes and Sounds”–is the most effective way to teach reading.  Very young children start by learning to identify the 26 letters (the “Shapes”) and the 44 sounds they make (the “Sounds”). As they progress, Phonemic Awareness and Phonics (more “Sounds”) take precedence, although Word Recognition (more “Shapes”) remains essential. 

Unfortunately, American educators and politicians have been fighting The Reading Wars for close to 200 years, with disastrous results.  About 50% of living American adults read at or below a Sixth Grade level, and literally millions of Americans have lived and died as functional illiterates.  Scary headlines to the contrary, today’s students are doing OK–more than half of 4th graders score above grade level. But many of the kids who can read don’t! Yes, they have TikTok, Instagram, and other social media at their disposal, but that doesn’t explain why they are seemingly uninterested in reading.  I think that what turns off young readers is how poorly reading is taught–not as liberating fun but as something they are going to be tested on. 

The numbers are daunting:  

  1. Young people are reading less than half the number of books that older generations read;
  2. Americans between the ages of 15 and 44 spend ten minutes or less a day reading books; and
  3. More than half of adult Americans haven’t read a full book in over a year. 
  4. The percentage of 13-year-olds who ‘never or hardly ever’ read for fun has increased dramatically, from 22 percent in 2012 to 31 percent in 2022.   

All of these non-readers, whether dead or alive, are victims of an ongoing battle over the ‘right way’ to teach reading.  Like most actual shooting wars, The Reading Wars are a stupid and dangerous waste of human potential.  

In recent years, 31 states and the District of Columbia have embraced what they call “The Science of Reading,” meaning a strong emphasis on Phonics and Phonemic Awareness.  The strongest evidence for “The Science of Reading” comes from Mississippi, whose Fourth graders scored 199 (out of 500) on the 1992 NAEP test, 18 points below the national average. The state invested millions (much of it coming from one private individual) in pre-school and teacher training, and it required retention of third graders who read below grade level.  At one point, 9.6 percent of Third graders were being retained, and it seemed to work because in 2019 only Mississippi’s Fourth Graders posted statistically significant gains on NAEP.  In 1992 Black Fourth Graders in Mississippi scored six points below all Black Fourth Graders, but in 2022, they outperformed their Black peers by five points. The so-called “Mississippi Miracle” has received significant praise, including this gushing piece from the New York Times columnist Nick Kristoff. Omitted from most coverage of Mississippi’s reading program, however, are the continuing racial disparities; to wit, white Fourth Graders in Mississippi continue to outscore Black Fourth graders on the 2022 NAEP tests by a large margin, a discrepancy that mirrors the national gap. Shouldn’t a ‘miracle cure’ work for all children?  Some suspect that budget-obsessed politicians are embracing “The Science of Reading” as a cheap alternative to addressing the larger social issues of poverty, substandard housing, and poor nutrition, and inadequate health care, all the while ignoring evidence that forced retention is counter-productive.

Unfortunately, it appears that the champions of “The Science of Reading” want to declare Phonics as the winner.   Here is where U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, who has been disappointingly silent, ought to step in and declare that neither side has won this costly and unnecessary conflict but that the war is over!  

Moreover, he and every other prominent educator should make it clear that reading is not the end but the means to achieving multiple goals.  Reading is fundamental, but it also must be fun!   

Embracing “The Science of Reading” may seem to tamp down the Reading Wars, but that alone will not solve the problem because SOR fails to recognize the importance of Word Recognition.  Right now public policy should turn its attention to making things right.  Children and teachers are the casualties here. Classroom teachers were victimized by inadequate professional training, because almost all their education professors taught them to use the Whole Language approach, which focuses on Word Recognition and guessing meanings from context, with scant attention to Phonics.  

The long term solution requires major changes in pre- and in-service teacher education and the removal of financial incentives that now support the Whole Language model.  

In the short term, we need to retrain elementary school teachers so they can be successful.  To make that possible, President Biden should ask the House and Senate to pass “The Right to Read Act,” which would provide block grants to all US States and territories for the retraining of Kindergarten, First, Second and Third Grade teachers in Phonics and Phonemic Awareness, in the importance of Word Recognition, and in the art of teaching those skills in ways that engage students.  Ideally, this Bill would also provide funds for literacy training for any adults seeking to learn to read with confidence.

These paid summer workshops should also be open to teachers in other grades, including Middle and High School teachers, so that all educators are equipped to help struggling readers. 

Retraining several hundred thousand teachers will take time, skill, and patience; after all, we’re asking them to unlearn and abandon habits and patterns, and then relearn a new way of teaching reading.  Imagine asking a saxophonist to play the violin, or a soccer player to play point guard on a basketball team. Those are comparable challenges.  

However, not retraining teachers would inevitably mean a reliance on scripted Phonics drill, often on screens.  Pre-packaged ‘Phonics Kits’ seem to me to be a sure-fire recipe for turning kids away from reading.

For its part, the US Department of Education should fund and make available videos of a dozen or so outstanding teachers at work. In these videos, we should see effective teaching and also hear the teachers explain what they are doing, and why.

And bear in mind, good teaching is more art than science. It cannot be programmed into a machine or taught straight out of a textbook. So, please, let buyers beware of snake oil salesmen peddling Phonics schemes ‘guaranteeing’ that teachers and students will master Phonics in a week or two. 

Never forget that reading with confidence is neither a goal nor an end in itself. It is a means to an infinite number of ends—following recipes, assembling a toy or an outdoor grill,delving into history and biography, and being transported into fictional worlds, etc, etc.  Reading is fundamental, but reading is also fun!

This is a national crisis, which means we cannot continue teaching reading the way we do.  Embracing Phonics as the engine and Word Recognition as the chassis is the best way to teach children to read with confidence and competence. Doing that is essential if we truly want our public schools to be a ladder up and a pathway to success for anyone who’s willing to work hard.  

11 thoughts on “Are The Reading Wars Finally Over?”

  1. Hi John–For years, if not decades, my family and friends have given me books for my birthday and Christmas. Over the past couple of years they have been stacking up, and I’ve only read a relative few. This is despite my spending a number of hours each day reading, spending the same amount of time that I always have. Instead of books, I’ve been reading more and more online magazine articles and blogs about politics and about education, including yours. And I’m presumably not the only person doing this. Just thought you might want to know.

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      • I actually prefer reading books–physical books–as well as other physical materials such as magazines. Books can present ideas and stories in great detail, making it much easier to “lose oneself” in a book. But online articles are more immediate and, with politics the way it is these days, I’m finding it necessary to stay on top of it more than ever, given that if Trump gets reelected it would be the end of constitutional democracy in the US.

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  2. I found your article both thought-provoking and extremely depressing. However, I did find your suggestions of steps that need to be taken very useful. I’m off to write some politicians!

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  4. As you probably remember, I loved teaching my 5 and 6 year old K students (at Ft. Bragg, NC) to read using a combination of many approaches, including sight word and letter songs I wrote for them, phonics, story time, home readers they chose from our class library and from the school library, educating their parents about reading to and with them them for pleasure, word collections (sets of index cards they each had which included sight words and selected words that were meaningful to each of them personally), word Bingo, assigned 20 minute literacy stations (reading, writing, listening, computers, songs stations) first thing each school day, classroom labels using sentences and much more. When reading is only taught as a subject, its joyful nature and power are often lost. Scripted reading programs alone are not enough. Teachers who love to read and share that passion with their students in age appropriate, creative and fun ways must be allowed the freedom to supplement any district chosen reading programs with their own ideas. I retired shortly after a scripted, dull reading program was mandated and teachers’ original approaches were no longer valued or acceptable. All the best, Nancy W.

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  5. Thanks for your ideas on the subject of reading. I do believe however that the “science of reading” has at long last Won the reading wars at least in the primary grades. Even leading “balanced literacy” leaders like Dr. Lucy Calkins are modifying their curriculum based on the science research.
    HOWEVER, let’s keep in mind that the science of reading includes the multi tiered system of student support which informs instruction. Most children who come to kindergarten as non readers really need a science-based approach. Students do not become good readers by guessing. Our brains are wired to learn to speak but they are not wired to learn to read. That must be learned and going all the way back to the 2000 National Reading Report, an explicit reading instruction model was recommended. That was the “science” of reading. So for kids who do not know how to read proficiently, the science of reading will teach them. For proficient readers, balanced literacy curriculum is rich. Heck use the phone book (do they still exist?)

    The more important question in my view is ridding the notion that every single last student must be proficient by the end of 3rd grade. That is not going to happen nor should it be expected. It is counter to the notion of personalization to have the same goals for all. Let’s keep in mind that that there is a years difference in each grade; the August birthdays and September birthdays. Second we have millions of ELL kids. Why would we expect them to read in English so quickly? It would be far better to say that each student will meet the personalized targets set for them in collaboration with their parents. With the MTSS system, students receive assistance immediately as soon as they need it rather than having to wait for them to fail which is the current model.

    Ok….let’s say the reading war is over. Not so fast. It is alive and well in pre-k. Again the research is being ignored and the billions spent on pre-k is not improving beginning reading skills very much. If one wants to see several reports documenting what works, google University of Chicago Evaluation of Minnesota Pre- Reading Corps.

    Getting both higher education and our k-12 system to change is the greatest problem as always. Systems change is difficult. The billions of Covid dollars run out after two years. Then what? I predict our system will say…”Hey that science stuff works pretty well. Let’s do more.”

    Robert Wedl
    MN Commissioner of Education (retired)

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  6. Bravo John. What I don’t understand is why this ever needed to be a war. Teachers need every tool in the tool box to reach every child in their classrooms. The only thing they probably don’t need is a single prescription. Literacy will only be reached if children are ready (you and Rick touched on many parts of what that means, and there is more) motivated (including engaging their curiosity and playfulness) and taught within an atmosphere of encouragement and respect. I don’t doubt that many students were as deeply injured by the rote teaching of No Child Left Behind, (certainly the predecessor of SOR), as any were by Whole Language taught without the balance of phonics and phonemic awareness and adequate assessing of the individual learner. I will write to my congresspeople about the Right To Read Act.

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  7. I salute you for continuing to wage war on behalf of readers and education in general, John. I learned to read by listening to my mother (a teacher) reading out loud to me every night and subtly therefore teaching me the joys of reading and entering other worlds. when I was in grade school, we studied phonics, and i had to fill out workbooks which bored me to tears, but i used phonics all the time to sound out words. I read voraciously to avoid being bored. When I had children I read out loud to them every night, and when they were old enough, we would take turns reading out loud==one night I did, one night they did. I managed to instill a love of reading in all 3 of my offspring, and they all managed to graduate from college or university. I think a good bit of the job of teaching reading depends on the desire of the parent to support the child, the teacher and the process. We can’t entirely blame the system–parents need to take some of the blame. Lots of parents either don’t understand how important it is to read to their children, or they are too tired at the end of the day or unable to read themselves.

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