Millions of kids can't read well. Scientists have known for decades how children learn to read but many schools are ignoring the research. They buy teacher training and books that are rooted in a disproven idea. Emily Hanford investigates four authors and a publishing company that have made millions selling this idea.
27 episodes transcribedAt an experimental preschool in Illinois, Zig Engelmann and his colleagues begin turning his ideas into a classroom teaching method. Along th...
In the 1960s, an education outsider named Zig Engelmann begins challenging conventional ideas about what young children can learn. He teaches...
Sold a Story is back with a new season that goes beyond reading. Emily Hanford explores an approach to teaching that's been largely rejected...
The New Yorker staff writer David Owen opened a recent piece with a personal story: To hide that she couldn’t read, his niece turned pages wh...
Early in her teaching career, Margaret Goldberg was skeptical of the science of reading. Today, she is working with neuroscientist Reid Lyon...
Education research is at a turning point in the United States. The Trump administration is slashing government funding for science and disman...
Steubenville became a model of reading success. Then a new law in Ohio put it all at risk. In this episode, we look at the "science of r...
There’s a name for the program at the heart of Steubenville’s remarkable reading results. It’s called Success for All. It’s been around for d...
There’s a school district in eastern Ohio where virtually all the students become good readers by the time they finish third grade. Many of t...
Nationally acclaimed journalist Emily Hanford's work is changing the ways schools around the country teach reading. In this award-winning pod...
Some of the teachers, students, parents and researchers we met in Sold a Story talk about the impact the podcast has had on their lives and i...
Schools around the country are changing the way they teach reading. And that is having major consequences for people who sold the flawed theo...
A Spanish adaptation of Sold a Story is now available. Hosted by journalist Valeria Fernández, the podcast is condensed into one 58-minute ep...
Across the country, school districts are dropping textbooks, state legislatures are going so far as to ban teaching methods, and everyone, it...
Messages poured in: voicemails, emails, tweets. We got a lot of messages from people after they heard Sold a Story. In this bonus episode, we...
This week we have an episode of a show called Brains On. It’s a science podcast for kids from our colleagues at APM. In this episode, Emily j...
There are kids like C.J. all over the country. Schools tell their parents they are reading at grade level, but the kids are not. And whether...
Molly Woodworth had a secret: She couldn’t read very well. She fought her way through text by looking at the first letter of a word and think...
Jack Silva had a problem. He was the chief academic officer of a school district in Pennsylvania, and more than 40% of the kids in his distri...
The parents knew something wasn’t right. The school said everything would be fine. But their kids weren’t learning how to read. In this docum...
