A break in the ‘reading wars’?
How explicit is the term “explicit”? And how explicit does a description of the woes in reading ability for Wisconsin students need to be before there is a fresh, broad wave of effort to improve things?
Those are two ways of asking what, if anything, will change about the teaching of reading in Wisconsin in the light of an eye-catching new policy statement from the foremost national organization focused on reading instruction.
For three decades or so, “reading wars” have been a major education subject nationwide. Disputes over how to teach kids to read have been on the front burner at times and on the middle burner at others. You could say that “whole language” vs. “phonics” transitioned into “balanced literacy” vs. “explicit phonics,” and you could say there’s more middle ground now. But the war never really ended.
The International Literacy Association is the umbrella organization of the reading education world, from classroom teachers through university researchers. It generally has been regarded as favoring “balanced literacy” approaches, which call for using various ways to teach, including, but not leaning heavily, on phonics.
But a new policy brief from the organization calls for use of “explicit and systematic phonics instruction.”
Research has shown “that phonics instruction is helpful for all students, harmful for none, and crucial for some,” the paper says. It says there are other essentials to good reading instruction. But research on the value of phonics is consistent and goes back decades, it says.
“Teaching students the basic lettersound combinations gives them access to sounding out approximately 84% of the words in English print,” the paper says.
Phonics advocates in Wisconsin and elsewhere think this is a big deal. Steve Dykstra, a leader of the pro-phonics Wisconsin Reading Coalition, called the paper “revolutionary.” He said, “I would not go so far as to say this is the end of the reading wars. Maybe it’s the beginning of the end of the reading wars.”
Others are reacting more cautiously. Deborah Cromer, president of the Wisconsin State Reading Association, the main group of Wisconsin reading teachers, said in a statement that the organization supports the use of phonics. But she described other needs, including better staffing of classrooms and better training of teachers.
She quoted a different passage from the international group’s brief: “Students progress at a much faster rate in phonics when the bulk of instructional time is spent on applying the skills to authentic reading and writing experiences, rather than isolated skill-anddrill work.”
Phonics vs. whole language
Let’s pause to define phonics instruction, admittedly too generally. It focuses on teaching students the connection between printed letters and the sounds they make and how to understand (or “decode”) words based on letter sounds. This is especially important for young kids from homes where they don’t get a lot of exposure to the alphabet and for kids with dyslexia (some say that involves 15% or more of children). Some say that de-emphasis on sounding out words is a big reason a lot of kids don’t read better.
The alternative approach, once known as whole language, emphasizes reading for meaning and figuring out words by their context or clues around them. Advocates say phonics is too drill-oriented and associate it with weak comprehension and inadequate love of reading.
There has been some narrowing of the divide over the years, including in Wisconsin where revised reading standards were adopted about a decade ago.
Sheila Briggs, the state Department of Public Instruction’s assistant superintendent overseeing academic programs, said, “It’s somewhat settled that phonics is key and phonics is important.” There are always going to be differences in how people teach, she said, but DPI “is not shy about its stance in supporting the importance of phonics.”
That said, Briggs said the emphasis on “explicit phonics” in the policy statement is new. “Explicit,” in this case, generally means emphasizing phonics more.
Why is this urgent in Wisconsin? Because we’re not doing so well. National Assessment of Educational Progress results released in 2017 showed that Wisconsin fourth graders scored overall below the national average, that Wisconsin’s decline in the percentage of proficient students from 2015 to 2017 was one of the largest in the country, and that Wisconsin kids of all races and ethnic groups were proficient at rates below the national average of each group — including that Wisconsin white kids were below white kids nationally.
A couple of decades ago, Wisconsin fourth grade reading ranked among the best in the United States. The state now ranks in the mid-30s.
Furthermore, initiatives in Wisconsin in recent years do not seem to be bearing much fruit. They include stronger requirements for getting a license to teach reading to elementary kids and a state requirement (not enforced) that school districts screen kindergartners to spot and respond to reading problems early.
And in Milwaukee? For many years, the proportion of children at all grades who are rated proficient or better in reading on state tests has hovered around 20%. That’s generally true for both public school kids and kids attending private schools using publicly funded vouchers.
I told the DPI’s Briggs that the flat and overall-low reading scores really concern me. “We feel the same,” she said. She said new and better instructional materials were becoming widely available and that alignment is improving between what state standards call for and what is being done in classrooms.
No one step is going to solve reading problems, nor is there a quick solution. It’s not just a schools issue — it’s a home issue, a community issue, a broad cultural issue.
But maybe the scene is set for the reading wars to fade. Maybe it’s time for a different reading war — an all-out broad effort to get more Wisconsin kids on the way to the good reading skills that are central to succeeding in life.