Special effort can help kids become readers
Struggle doesn’t mean a student cannot succeed
Professor Bob Nash told me something a couple of decades ago that stuck with me: About 70% of kids are going to learn how to read, how ever they are taught. But those other 30% — and that’s a lot of kids — need to be taught reading in a well-chosen way.
Nash was an interesting character. Dyslexic himself, he struggled greatly with reading and succeeded in earning a doctorate. He created an unusual and complicated style of analyzing words, breaking them into components, marking them up with symbols and decoding them. He made it his life work to teach his method to struggling readers, especially dyslexics.
I observed his work with Project Success at the University of WisconsinOshkosh, where he taught dyslexic college students to read. At first, I thought the system bordered on crazy and I never quite got how it worked — except that I watched students do it successfully. Some of them told me they had never really been able to read, even as they made it to college, before learning Nash’s system.
Nash left Oshkosh, worked in several other places (including a brief and unsuccessful time as a consultant to Milwaukee Public Schools). Nash, who lived in Poy Sippi, west of Oshkosh, died at 90 in 2017.
I don’t know if his 30% figure is right. It might be higher, but I doubt it’s lower. His point that I hold onto is this: It may take a special, even mighty effort, but lots of kids who struggle as readers can succeed.
Furthermore, all students are better off if they learn to read early. It is one of the few ideas in education that draws almost universal agreement: Kids who can’t read well by the end of third grade have lower chances for long-term success in school and beyond.
This leads me to return to what I wrote in this space last week and to respond to some reactions to that column, which offered input from a couple of experts on the need to do better in turning kids into readers. It also described efforts, including from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, to increase the use of phonics in reading instruction.
About that dishwasher.
Nell Duke, a University of Michigan professor whose specialty is early reading education, told a group of Wisconsin legislators and others recently that higher levels of reading success would be a good goal for Wisconsin.
She said that in 1994, Wisconsin ranked third in the country for the percentage of fourth-graders rated proficient or better in reading by the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). In 2019, Wisconsin ranked 27th. It isn’t that Wisconsin scores went down much — it’s that other states improved.
Duke said about 60% of Wisconsin fourth-graders were rated below proficient in reading. She used a metaphor of a dishwasher that doesn’t clean 60% of its dishes. You’d want to do something about that dishwasher — and Wisconsin should do something about reading.
This was challenged by a reader who said it is not true that 60% of Wisconsin kids are not reading at grade level.
It is correct that “grade level” is different than the NAEP definition of “proficient.” NAEP is a tough grader and “proficient” is actually a pretty high level.
But what if we added the NAEP category called “basic” to the figures? That would come a lot closer to what most people would think of as “grade level,” even if that term itself has no single definition.
In 2019, among fourth-graders in Wisconsin, 35% were rated proficient or better in reading (which means 65% were below proficient, making Duke’s metaphor accurate). Another 30% were rated as basic. That comes to 65%, meaning that roughly a third of Wisconsin kids were below basic. Among minority and low-income students, the below-basic numbers were much higher.
Phonics, yes, but more than that
About phonics.
I quoted Gloria Ladson-Billings, a respected University of Wisconsin-Madison education professor, saying phonics education (basically — knowing how to sound out letters) is a valuable part of reading education. One reader who took the trouble to watch the one-hour video of Ladson-Billings’ presentation said she had a lot more to say than that, including her emphasis on culturally appropriate reading materials.
So to make the record a bit fuller, Ladson-Billings and Duke both told legislators a lot of things go into a strong approach to teaching reading. Phonics is not the single solution to reading education.
There is no one button to push that makes kids readers. Home environment, exposure to quality literature, stimulating experiences, well-trained teachers, and a lot of other elements go into the recipe — along with specific curriculum and approaches.
A sidelight: An interesting report was released several days ago by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washingtonbased education think tank. It said improving reading outcomes nationwide is urgent, but it questioned whether classroom time, including long blocks of literacy instruction, was being well spent.
The report said increased instructional time in social studies is associated with improved reading scores, especially for girls and low-income children. In other words, lead kids to know more and get interested more in the world around them and they’ll read better. No baby aspirin.
I described a metaphor used by Ladson-Billings that if a baby is spiking a fever and the doctor keeps telling you to give her baby aspirin. At some point, you say, no, we’re going to the emergency room.
A pediatrician at Children’s Hospital chided me that it has been 45 years since doctors stopped telling parents to give a feverish child baby aspirin, for safety reasons. So give a feverish baby medication that is safer.
But we still need to take our reading problems to the emergency room. As Bob Nash said years ago, there are thousands of kids who could become good readers if they were given better paths to succeed.
Alan J. Borsuk is senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk@marquette.edu.
There is no button to push that makes kids readers. Home environment, exposure to quality literature, stimulating experiences, teachers, and a lot of other elements go into the recipe.