The link in the article about emphasising phonics[0] vaguely answers that question in the reverse, in terms of what was being taught instead; a podcast series from 2022 called Sold a Story[1] (transcripts also available at the link) gives a much more detailed answer about why.
Wow. That is spot on, and a little disturbing that it's so obvious. I took a recent excursion to the royal throne, so I read reddit on my phone for about 20min. I then sat back down and edited my comment while waiting for a compile.
What an awfully negative take on a positive story…I really don’t understand what people gain by being negative and cynical all the time. Does it make them feel smart or something?
You don't understand why a story about a bad thing that happened, misrepresenting the information as positive, is a negative story? Reality doesn't have a take. You don't need to feel positive or negative about a fact. It just is - the states in the article defunded public schools and worsened education.
Or do you think it's a coincidence that when they give examples of improved scores, they only give them for newly opened private schools. Wouldn't the average or median reading level for the state, compared to the old level for the state, be the metric that shows.. reading level for the state? When they do give a number for the state, that number is not a score - it's a rank. Do you know how rank works? It's not a measure of how good you're doing compared to how you were doing before. It's a measure of how good you're doing now compared to someone else now.
Yes, looking at a very basic fact and recognizing someone completely misrepresented that fact, makes them feel comparatively smarter than the person who does not recognize that even after it was explained to them. Now your comment - it did not make me smarter. It did increased my rank on that chart though.
very classic response to facts. not a single comment you made has actually addressed any points stated, and you declared yourself the winner. just like you keep owning those libs on a daily basis i'm sure.
I’m not here for political war, but it’s obvious you love arguing to supposedly feel smart and superior despite making a comment that got rightly flagged to death. Reddit is a URL away>>
That's hilarious. I posted a reply to The Article showing how it's not true. You then posted a comment of feelings and opinion, with a personal attack, while not addressing a single of my points. You then accuse me of starting an argument?
The reason I'm talking about politics, is because people who think and behave like you, well there's a template y'all follow, and a group y'all belong to.
the comment that was flagged, was up by quite a bit first before the rooster call. hence my edit. no one cares if y'all flag or downvote. i suggest you just go through my comments and flag them all to, ya know, own the libs. it does literally nothing.
> The reason I'm talking about politics, is because people who think and behave like you, well there's a template y'all follow, and a group y'all belong to.
Please go to Reddit to continue your in-group/outgroup hullabaloo...I'm not even American, lol, but you're here accusing me of owning the libs and caring about the election.
Occam's razor suggests that when states that are actively at war with their teachers "magically" buck the statistical learning trends from everywhere else, the statistics are more likely to be falsified than the students improved so dramatically.
Especially when I see: "The states have consequences in place if schools don’t teach kids how to read, but also offer help to keep kids on track." The schools WILL pass those statistical measures someway, somehow if it means that the school loses funding or people lose their jobs.
There’s a narrative that fits this buck in the trend: the curriculum simply rejected teachings that didn’t work.
Highly recommend reading about the ‘whole word’ v ‘phonics’ wars. Generations of children have been and continue to be left behind because an ineffective teaching style that doesn’t work became popular among America’s educators. Here’s an oped from a few years ago to get started with. It's honestly a bit depressing, but things have gotten better since and Mississippi is the proof of that.
Institutional promotion of this "new style" of teaching reading is garbage cope and grift. Schools have been teaching reading successfully for decades to kids who are prepared to learn it, using a long-proven curriculum.
Middle and lower-middle class kids arrive in primary school already pre-literate and prepared to further learn at primary school level. Due to parental habits.
Statistically speaking, lower class kids arrive without the same number of years of preparation at the same level. They do not arrive pre-literate. They arrive illiterate.
I agree that special attention and programs need to be implemented to make up for this state of affairs, but lets not reward grifters and their unqualified media lackeys with attention simply because the public doesn't understand how literacy development works, in general, and these people are willing to exploit that.
This is a centuries-long debate with both of the two methods I mentioned being centuries old. Who are these grifters you are talking about? What is this new style you are talking about?
This comment reads like ChatGPT being asked to be contrarian for contrarian's sake.
One of the remarkable pieces of data is that lower socioeconomic students actually learn more in school than their peers. That's right. They actually start closing the gap while they're in school.
Unfortunately, their higher socioeconomic peers outpace them significantly over the summer. And this swamps the gains made during the school year so the lower socioeconomic students are again at a disadvantage. This is particularly frustrating to people who really do want things to improve education because it is perniciously difficult to counteract--this is where the "year round school" push comes from.
So, the 3 worst states magically managed to overcome every mechanism arrayed against them simply by teaching phonics in the classroom? Even during the height of a pandemic in which teachers could barely corral the students let alone teach them something?
And, by the way, people have been collecting and pushing data about phonics for years--the data always comes back inconclusive to weak. Many places still teach it. Most places see the same things--focused effort regardless of system results in slight increases in performance.
There was a thread about Sold A Story a few weeks ago, but tldr while phonics helps test scores in the short term, it craters them in the long term, which is mostly what reading teachers were warning about. The UK is ahead of us here: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/jan/19/focus-on-p...
Interesting study, worth noting that UCL study isn't finding in favour of whole word vs phonics, but rather "[the findings] suggest that a balanced instruction approach is most likely to be successful", which seems reasonable and hopefully education boards develop an approach to get the best of both worlds. The NYT article I linked quoted the former State Superintendent of Education who spearheaded the Mississippi project saying "Each year we tweak our methods, but the goals always remain the same" so it seems they have mechanisms in place to react to the new research.
You could have a point with the consequences bit. We’ve seen government education policy fail in that way before.
The first part of your comment though seems to imply that you’ve digested some rather biased news reporting about some states. This article comes from the AP. Not exactly known for being a right leaning news outlet.
Also, what's the threshold for Special Ed, and are any such students exempt from testing?
However, I don't doubt that extra time training teachers to teach phonics would help their students turn those letters on the page into sensible sounds, and I'm happy for the students that seem to be helped here. My mother was a middle (and then high) school Spanish teacher, and her favorite party trick for her new students was to promise them that within the first week, they'd be able to read out most Spanish text put in front of them (albeit with a horrible accent). English pronunciation is notoriously inconsistent; Spanish is particularly consistent.
I'd love to know how long schools in Spanish-speaking countries spend on basic "pronounce the words on the page" level literacy compared to English-speaking ones.
Fair assumption; but anyone who’s done any research into the history of education in the U.S will tell you that phonics has vastly superior outcomes to “whole language” schemes.
Learning to read via phonics vs the alternative is like the difference between being born into wealth and opportunity, and being born a slave.
States are not "at war" with teachers. The dramatic language is unhelpful to your argument.
The States in question implemented a literacy program of the type that is normally reserved for kids with minor disabilities whose parents have money to pay for it.
While there is always a chance of fraud when political pressure is on, I don't see where there is evidence of it that overtakes the variable of the extra reading support.
What this looks like to me is that the States in question found success by implementing a program that essentially is meant to make-up for the fact that impoverished kids are the most likely to receive the least reading instruction and access to books at home. Also, they are the least likely to be spoken to and to be read to from infancy.
These are the factors that are at the root of low literacy levels in impoverished communities. If there is success due to a school's effort, these are the fundamental factors that it is overcoming.
These kids are entering primary school at a massive literacy disadvantage, from day one. Statistically speaking, they are years behind kids whose parents have been promoting literacy from the cradle.
If these States want more success, they need to educate new parents in how to promote language development and literacy from birth.
32 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 73.9 ms ] threadOne of the things briefly touched on in the article is that it seems these states have rediscovered teaching phonics.
When did the stop teaching that and why? I was thought that way in the 70s.
It's like programmers deciding to write a 3d game in Java instead of the known and functional method of c++.
[0] https://apnews.com/article/phonics-science-reading-c715dea43...
[1] https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
Or do you think it's a coincidence that when they give examples of improved scores, they only give them for newly opened private schools. Wouldn't the average or median reading level for the state, compared to the old level for the state, be the metric that shows.. reading level for the state? When they do give a number for the state, that number is not a score - it's a rank. Do you know how rank works? It's not a measure of how good you're doing compared to how you were doing before. It's a measure of how good you're doing now compared to someone else now.
Yes, looking at a very basic fact and recognizing someone completely misrepresented that fact, makes them feel comparatively smarter than the person who does not recognize that even after it was explained to them. Now your comment - it did not make me smarter. It did increased my rank on that chart though.
You are very smart indeed. Thanks for letting a dumb mere mortal like me know that. I am grateful to have interacted with the Einstein of our time…/s
The reason I'm talking about politics, is because people who think and behave like you, well there's a template y'all follow, and a group y'all belong to.
the comment that was flagged, was up by quite a bit first before the rooster call. hence my edit. no one cares if y'all flag or downvote. i suggest you just go through my comments and flag them all to, ya know, own the libs. it does literally nothing.
the stolen election is that way>>
Please go to Reddit to continue your in-group/outgroup hullabaloo...I'm not even American, lol, but you're here accusing me of owning the libs and caring about the election.
Occam's razor suggests that when states that are actively at war with their teachers "magically" buck the statistical learning trends from everywhere else, the statistics are more likely to be falsified than the students improved so dramatically.
Especially when I see: "The states have consequences in place if schools don’t teach kids how to read, but also offer help to keep kids on track." The schools WILL pass those statistical measures someway, somehow if it means that the school loses funding or people lose their jobs.
Highly recommend reading about the ‘whole word’ v ‘phonics’ wars. Generations of children have been and continue to be left behind because an ineffective teaching style that doesn’t work became popular among America’s educators. Here’s an oped from a few years ago to get started with. It's honestly a bit depressing, but things have gotten better since and Mississippi is the proof of that.
https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho...
Some reading specifically on how Mississippi is responsible for their own success. It wasn’t magic: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/education/learning/missis...
Middle and lower-middle class kids arrive in primary school already pre-literate and prepared to further learn at primary school level. Due to parental habits.
Statistically speaking, lower class kids arrive without the same number of years of preparation at the same level. They do not arrive pre-literate. They arrive illiterate.
I agree that special attention and programs need to be implemented to make up for this state of affairs, but lets not reward grifters and their unqualified media lackeys with attention simply because the public doesn't understand how literacy development works, in general, and these people are willing to exploit that.
This comment reads like ChatGPT being asked to be contrarian for contrarian's sake.
Unfortunately, their higher socioeconomic peers outpace them significantly over the summer. And this swamps the gains made during the school year so the lower socioeconomic students are again at a disadvantage. This is particularly frustrating to people who really do want things to improve education because it is perniciously difficult to counteract--this is where the "year round school" push comes from.
So, the 3 worst states magically managed to overcome every mechanism arrayed against them simply by teaching phonics in the classroom? Even during the height of a pandemic in which teachers could barely corral the students let alone teach them something?
And, by the way, people have been collecting and pushing data about phonics for years--the data always comes back inconclusive to weak. Many places still teach it. Most places see the same things--focused effort regardless of system results in slight increases in performance.
The first part of your comment though seems to imply that you’ve digested some rather biased news reporting about some states. This article comes from the AP. Not exactly known for being a right leaning news outlet.
However, I don't doubt that extra time training teachers to teach phonics would help their students turn those letters on the page into sensible sounds, and I'm happy for the students that seem to be helped here. My mother was a middle (and then high) school Spanish teacher, and her favorite party trick for her new students was to promise them that within the first week, they'd be able to read out most Spanish text put in front of them (albeit with a horrible accent). English pronunciation is notoriously inconsistent; Spanish is particularly consistent.
I'd love to know how long schools in Spanish-speaking countries spend on basic "pronounce the words on the page" level literacy compared to English-speaking ones.
Learning to read via phonics vs the alternative is like the difference between being born into wealth and opportunity, and being born a slave.
No hyperbole.
The States in question implemented a literacy program of the type that is normally reserved for kids with minor disabilities whose parents have money to pay for it.
While there is always a chance of fraud when political pressure is on, I don't see where there is evidence of it that overtakes the variable of the extra reading support.
What this looks like to me is that the States in question found success by implementing a program that essentially is meant to make-up for the fact that impoverished kids are the most likely to receive the least reading instruction and access to books at home. Also, they are the least likely to be spoken to and to be read to from infancy.
These are the factors that are at the root of low literacy levels in impoverished communities. If there is success due to a school's effort, these are the fundamental factors that it is overcoming.
These kids are entering primary school at a massive literacy disadvantage, from day one. Statistically speaking, they are years behind kids whose parents have been promoting literacy from the cradle.
If these States want more success, they need to educate new parents in how to promote language development and literacy from birth.