Adopting a new, “science-based” methodology is not enough to address students’ difficulties with reading.

Over the last several years, the field of literacy instruction has come to focus a great deal of attention on what’s known as the science of reading (SoR) — which emphasizes systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Its supporters tout SoR as the antidote to the widespread use of ineffective teaching practices in the nation’s elementary schools (Loewus, 2019). For instance, Reading Research Quarterly (a leading journal) recently opted to publish not one but two special issues exploring what’s known about the science of reading (Goodwin & Jiménez, 2020, 2021). And in 2021, when another leading journal, Literacy Research and Instruction, published the results of its annual “What’s hot in literacy?” survey, it chose the title “Beyond the science of reading” (Cassidy et al., 2021), implying that debates about SoR have become ubiquitous (and, perhaps, have run their course).

How should we make sense of this wave of interest in phonics and other aspects of early reading instruction, both in the research literature and popular media (e.g., Hanford, 2018; Wexler, 2018)? Some observers have argued that what we’re seeing is, in effect, just the latest resurgence of long-standing “reading wars” (David, Consalvo, & Makhtari, 2021). Indeed, headline-making debates about how to teach children to read are anything but a new phenomenon. In the 1950s, Rudolf Flesch’s bestselling Why Johnny Can’t Read (1955), argued that a lack of phonics instruction in public schools had created a national security crisis. In the ’60s and ’70s, we saw the emergence of a “great debate” between code- and meaning- focused instruction (Chall, 1976). In the late ’80s and ’90s, “reading wars” broke out again, pitting advocates of phonics instruction against proponents of whole language. (The argument was driven in no small part by the landmark 1983 report A Nation at Risk, which claimed that a decline in phonics instruction had led to a dramatic drop in the SAT scores of American students — a claim that was subsequently refuted; National Commissions on Excellence in Education, 1983; Carson, Huelskamp, & Woodall, 1993). Then, in the 2000s, the reading wars flared up again, in the form of a struggle between “scientifically based reading research” and “balanced reading instruction” (Kim, 2008). Today, the conflicting terms (or perhaps teams) are the science of reading and balanced literacy, but the point of the debate is the same: Warning of a reading crisis among the nation’s children, advocates of rigorous, code-based instruction argue that we need to reject “unscientific” teaching strategies and get back to basics.

The question is, have we learned anything from our past debates, or are we just going in circles?

A manufactured crisis?

Some have argued that a permanent sense of crisis in K-12 education has been “manufactured” by those who aim to undermine the institution of public schools and “scapegoat educators as a way of diverting attention from America’s deepening social problems’’ (Berliner & Biddle, 1995, p. 7), including income and wealth inequality and racial, linguistic, and religious discrimination. We argue, further, that there is not currently (or historically) a pedagogical crisis specific to literacy. Rather, what we see is an ongoing crisis of equity that cuts across all domains of children’s opportunities to learn. This is an important distinction: Different diagnoses of what ails us invite different solutions.

There is not currently (or historically) a pedagogical crisis specific to literacy. Rather, what we see is an ongoing crisis of equity that cuts across all domains of children’s opportunities to learn.

One of the rhetorical moves driving public debate right now is the idea that bad reading pedagogy (and to some extent, curriculum) has been inflicted on students across the U.S. — wealthy as well as poor, Black as well as white (“The Reading Wars,” 2021). Occasionally, proponents of SoR argue that a lack of access to scientifically based reading instruction is a racial justice issue because balanced literacy approaches specifically fail Black and Latinx children (Wexler, 2020). However, there is little evidence to suggest that whole language or balanced literacy approaches are more common in schools that are racially segregated and/or serve mainly low-income children. In fact, the available evidence suggests the opposite: Children in under-resourced schools and children who have been labeled “poor readers’’ are more likely to be taught “the basics” (e.g., letter-sound correspondence) and less likely to be given opportunities to engage with complex ideas found in texts (Bacon, Connor, & Ferri, 2016; Eppley & Dudley-Marling, 2019; Haberman, 1991; Northrop & Kelly, 2019).

Many low-performing schools (which disproportionately serve low-income, Black, Latinx, and/or Indigenous children) have already experienced reforms that tried and failed to increase achievement by increasing their use of explicit phonics instruction. For example, we saw this on a large scale with the Reading First initiative that was implemented under the George W. Bush administration from 2000 to 2008. The federal government invested $6 billion to incentivize and enforce the use of the program’s “scientifically based” reading pedagogies for early literacy instruction in Title I schools. Further, the program precluded the use of whole language or balanced literacy approaches, mandated systematic and explicit instruction in phonics and other foundational skills, and closely monitored participating schools to ensure compliance. By 2007, Reading First had been implemented in 5,880 schools (Gamse et al., 2008). It was a massive investment in the premise that the primary cause of underachievement in reading was pedagogical, and, specifically, that disparities in reading comprehension could be fixed if students who did poorly on reading tests were provided more explicit instruction in decoding and other foundational skills.

However, a large quasi-experimental evaluation found that, in the end, Reading First did not improve students’ reading comprehension (Gamse et al., 2008). In some cases, reading scores declined, particularly when phonics-intensive instruction conflicted with other important priorities, such as culturally relevant instruction. For example, one study tracked student progress at a school on the Navajo Nation that shifted from a bilingual/bicultural whole language-based model in the late ’80s and ’90s to intensive, English-only phonics instruction under No Child Left Behind and Reading First. It found that this shift in pedagogy coincided with a dramatic decline in reading test scores, as much as 50% in some cases (McCarty, 2009).

Improving phonics-based instruction is, in fact, quite beneficial for many students. However, both large- and small-scale studies from the Reading First era suggest that it is a mistake to assume that a lack of phonics instruction is the primary cause of low literacy rates in the U.S. or that more phonics instruction will solve that problem.

Bigger problems than pedagogy

Consider the recent “right to literacy” lawsuit brought by a group of Detroit public school students who were deeply dissatisfied with their schools’ capacity to teach them and their peers how to read. The plaintiffs described barriers to learning to read that went far beyond teaching methodology: Students — as many as 50 at a time — were packed into moldy classrooms that were sweltering in summer, freezing in winter, infested with cockroaches and mice, and had too few desks or space for everyone to sit down (Gary B. et al. v Whitmer, 2020). Teacher turnover at these schools was extremely high; consequently, children were frequently taught by uncertified teachers, long-term substitutes, or — in one particularly egregious example — a fellow 8th grader.

Focusing on structural, systemic improvements to our schools is not a distraction or incompatible with improving instruction. Indeed, it is necessary to do both.

It is hard to imagine that a change in curriculum or laws mandating particular instructional methods could lead to lasting improvements without addressing a context in which large numbers of children were not being taught by certified teachers, did not have access to basic supplies, and were attending schools in miserable conditions. Moreover, although the suit sought to establish the right to literacy, these schools did not fare better at teaching math, science, or social studies. Rather, plaintiffs described their schools as failing them almost universally, across all subject areas. It’s absurd to insist that their experience of learning to read would have been adequate if only their teachers had chosen a different instructional model. The students demanded not a pedagogical shift but institutional changes.

To be sure, some aspects of this case are specific to Detroit. For example, the Detroit Public Schools Community District is extremely constrained in its ability to raise money because much of the tax revenue collected by the city is diverted to service old debts (Pulkkinen, 2021). However, the conditions described in the Detroit lawsuit are not unique to that city. Such barriers to literacy development are found in many school districts across the country, particularly those that — like the five schools in the Detroit lawsuit — almost exclusively serve low-income children of color. Such (re)segregated schools are far more likely to struggle with inadequate resources, decaying facilities, high teacher turnover, large numbers of uncertified teachers, and low test scores in reading and other subjects (Kozol, 2005; Reardon, 2016; Zeichner, 2002). In contrast, schools serving predominantly affluent and white students tend to have highly qualified teachers, low turnover, facilities in good repair, and high test scores (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2017; Owens, 2018; Quillian, 2014). And yet, we’re supposed to blame our “reading crisis” on balanced literacy?

Addressing root causes

Some prominent advocates for SoR argue that literacy researchers and teachers who focus on poverty or racism deflect necessary attention from improving the quality of reading instruction in the U.S. (Seidenberg, Borkenhagen & Kearns, 2020). We disagree. To be sure, pedagogy and instruction matter, and literacy researchers should continue to improve the field’s understanding of what teaching approaches work best, for which students, and under which circumstances, and to share this knowledge as part of teacher preparation and development.

For example, a growing body of evidence points to the important role that children’s content knowledge plays in their literacy development (Cervetti & Wright, 2020). In turn, this has important implications for how teachers use their classroom time, suggesting that it was a mistake for schools to cut back on the teaching of science and social studies in response to the pressures of high-stakes testing in reading and math (Davis & Wilson, 2015; Neumann, 2016). However, incorporating new developments in reading research (like the value of content knowledge) does not mean that schools (or districts) need to also choose a new side in a long-standing ideological conflict. We can perhaps escape getting bogged down in endless “reading wars” by thinking of improvements in our understanding of reading pedagogy as incremental progress rather than pendulum swings. By framing reading pedagogy and research in terms of two opposing sides, we lose the possibilities of “both/and”: Teachers can address meaning and code, knowledge and skills. There is nothing unscientific about recognizing this complexity.

However, a focus on questions of pedagogy is insufficient to address the root causes of low reading scores. The quality and nature of instruction that students receive matters, but instruction is inseparable from other structural dimensions of schooling that are deeply influenced by material inequalities and racism (Anyon, 2005; Flores & Chaparro, 2018). As in the case in the Detroit litigation, these structural issues that deeply influence literacy outcomes can include teacher recruitment, teacher turnover and retention, building conditions, curricular resources, and even time-on-task. Focusing on structural, systemic improvements to our schools is not a distraction or incompatible with improving instruction. Indeed, it is necessary to do both.

As we’ve learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, challenges to our school system affect some children significantly more than others (Grooms & Childs, 2021; Lai & Widmar, 2020; McLoughlin et al., 2020). Moreover, many of the proposed solutions for increasing instructional quality (e.g., new legislation requiring teachers to take an additional certification test in SoR) may worsen teacher shortages by increasing barriers to entering the profession while leaving intact the systemic factors driving teachers to leave. As one sophomore in Detroit, Imani Harris, asked in an open letter:

Who wants to work in a school district where ceilings fall on student’s heads, and mushrooms grow in the hallways? I did not have an English teacher for the first four months of school, and last year I did not have a French teacher the whole first semester. (Gross, 2016)

As Harris noted, school funding and working conditions contribute to schools’ abilities to find and retain qualified teachers, and hence students’ access to high-quality instruction. Changes to reading pedagogy or curriculum alone cannot solve (and have not solved) these kinds of structural problems that prevent many children from learning to read well.

The reading wars likely capture our collective attention because they promise an easy, inexpensive solution to complex, persistent problems. However, the pedagogical focus of the endless reading wars represents one dimension of what Lilia Bartolomé (1994) called the methods fetish — the idea that there is a technical approach that can be applied universally to guarantee student learning. If we can learn anything from decades of debate, it is that there is no single magic (or scientific) technique that can solve the most intractable problems of our educational system (Strauss et al., 2021).

The idea that fixing our schools requires no material resources or political capital, but only an attitude shift, is seductive. But as tempting as that message may be, it is a mirage.

This generation’s Why Johnny Can’t Read (Flesch, 1955) may well be Reading at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It (Seidenberg, 2017). In this popular book, Mark Seidenberg argues that teachers taking up new, more scientific approaches to instruction would fix the nation’s problems with reading. Moreover, he claims, “these [approaches] do not require more tests or new federal laws; they do not require vast infusions of money . . . what they require is changing the culture of education from one based on beliefs to one based on facts” (p. 9). The idea that fixing our schools requires no material resources or political capital, but only an attitude shift, is seductive. But as tempting as that message may be, it is a mirage. The past five years have seen SoR increasingly mandated in elementary schools as well as in teacher preparation programs. As of 2021, 46 states and the District of Columbia have passed early literacy laws, and most of those laws explicitly require instruction based on SoR (Cummings, 2021; Pondiscio, 2021). At the same time, reading scores on assessments like the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) are trending down rather than up (Barshay, 2021). Moreover, this is accompanied by increasing inequality; the scores of strong readers are better than ever, and scores for weaker readers are declining (Craw, 2020; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2018).

No doubt, some of the strategies recommended by SoR advocates are helpful for some students, in some schools. However, genuine, lasting improvement in reading instruction in the U.S. requires more than pedagogical changes; it necessitates structural ones. Fixing reading education is not solely a matter of research or implementation at the classroom level; it also a matter of political will.

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This article appears in the May 2022 issue of Kappan, Vol. 103, No. 8, pp. 14-19.