Whole Word and Whole Language now reign AND SO…
- 1970 to 1980: Commissioner of Education James E. Allen launches the Right-to-Read Program, a literacy call-to-arms. He gives up after ten years, saying, “Whole Word is too ingrained.”
- 1975: Phonics proponent Marva Collins founds West Side Preparatory and says, “We have an epidemic… No one has found the cure… except for the few of us trying to spread the truth.”
- 1975-2000: Because of Chall’s evidence-filled book and parent pushback, Whole Word, aka Look/Say, falls out of favor, replaced with Goodman’s Whole Language, not Synthetic Phonics.
- 1981: Goodman follows Gray as president of the International Reading Association.
ANTI-WHOLE LANGUAGE VOICES GET LOUDER
- 1981: Justin Flesch writes Why Johnny Still Can’t Read; the title speaks for itself.
- 1981: Says Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss): “I think killing phonics is one of the greatest causes of illiteracy in the country.”
- 1982: Says author Samuel Blumenfeld: “While the United States has the highest proportion of young people in college of any major nation, it has yet to figure out how to teach millions of its citizens.”
- 1986: Says Rudolf Flesch: “Dewey has probably done more harm to children attempting to learn how to read English than any other development in reading instruction… and it still reverberates to this day.”
- 1992: Says William H. Kohlberg, president of the National Alliance of Business: “The NAEP, aka the Nation’s Report Card, results indicate that we are producing yet another generation of poor readers who will not be prepared to enter the workforce.”
In 1993, the U.S. Department of Education reported that 90 million adults are barely literate, saying they are “so severely dumbed down by their schooling they could hardly qualify for a decent job.”
NEXT UP:
- 1990s: Lucy Calkins comes on the scene championing Balanced Literacy, combining Whole Language and Phonics with lists of sight words to memorize, guessing, invented spelling, reading levels and styles, and predictable books, but no planned scope and sequence. It’s often described as “a little bit of everything.”
Downplaying phonics, she pushes the 3-cueing system: 1) Semantic: provides word meaning-related information; 2) Syntactic: provides word order, punctuation, and grammatical features to help see if a word sounds right; 3) Graphophonic: refers to letter-sound relationships. The 3-cueing system held sway over reading instruction for many years.
- 2000: The National Reading Panel’s 480-page report concludes that phonics instruction is best, as “it promotes phonemic awareness and phonics skills, reading words in text accurately and fluently, and applying comprehension strategies consciously and deliberately.”
However, Furnam University’s P.L. Thomas explains that the NRP report determined “that systematic phonics and whole language were about equally effective, BUT that phonics instruction was found to be effective for pronunciation, not comprehension, and only in grade 1.” His conclusion: “In short, the NRP was never a definitive overview of reading science or a confirmation about teaching systematic phonics to all students.”
- 2000s: Calkins changes course about phonics instruction, admits issues with cueing, and about phonics says, “Instruction that benefits students with dyslexia also benefits all students.”
- 2017: The term Science of Reading makes a comeback with cognitive neuroscientist Mark Seidenberg’s Language at the Speed of Sight. Called by the New York Times an “important and alarming” book, it continues by saying that “the way we teach reading is not working, and it cannot continue. We have largely abandoned phonics-based reading instruction, despite research that supports its importance for word recognition…”
- 2022: Journalist Emily Hanford’s Sold a Story hits podcast gold with millions of views. Episode One notes that 65% of fourth graders don’t read proficiently, and in Episode Two, Hanford takes on Marie Clay’s Reading Recovery Program, concluding: “Marie Clay was wrong.”
Episode 13 presents Steubenville School District and its 25-year history with Success for All’s systematic and explicit phonics instruction, letter-sound correspondence, and structured sequence. The result: Over the years, a 93 %+ proficiency rate on state tests and top 10% scores in 3rd-grade reading nationwide. For more about this winning program, click here.
And yet… Just 500 of our 13,300 school districts currently use Success for All, citing cost, possible implementation issues, and lack of district support.
- 2023: A September 17 Washington Post headline reads: Columbia Quietly Walks Away from [Calkins’] Teachers College Project That Ruined Countless Lives. In other words, Calkins is out—but not finished.
- 2023: Calkins launches Rebalancing Literacy, defined as “teaching reading in a way that meets students’ needs while promoting a love of reading.” Here, she offers articles, downloadable resources, and study groups, along with Mossflower Literacy, with resources, workshops, and Moonlit Mountain Readers from Heinemann Publishing.
Next up: The scores…
~ With my thanks, Carol
