Today, Explained - The Today, Explained Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

For decades, American schools have taught reading with an approach that doesn’t work very well. Emily Hanford of the podcast “Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong” explains how things are starting to change. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Victoria Chamberlin, engineered by Michael Raphael, and hosted by Noel King. We're taking Monday off for Juneteenth and will be back with a new episode on Tuesday, June 20. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization called the National Council on Teacher Quality released a big report with a notable finding. Forty percent of teacher training programs in the United States are using outdated methods to teach teachers to teach kids how to read. The knock-on effect of this has been... Lots of schools in this country are not teaching kids how to read, which is sort of shocking to hear, but it's true. Kids all over the country are not being taught how to read in ways that line up with what cognitive scientists and others have figured out about how reading actually works.

How reading actually works. Reporter Emily Hanford spent the better part of a decade looking into it, and guess what she and many others found is the key. It's our Knicks. Coming up on Today Explained. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications.

Or how about more ways to customize your casino page with our new favorite and recently played games tabs. And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Emily Hanford is a senior correspondent and producer for APM Reports.

She's the host of a very, very good podcast called Sold a Story about kids who can't read good, but more importantly, why they can't read good. It is not their fault, and it's not been without some debate. There's been a debate for a long time about how to teach kids to read, but what's happened is over the past 40 or 50 years, cognitive scientists have done all this research, and they've really figured out how we learn to read. And that has a lot of implications for how kids should be taught. A couple of big takeaways from that research is number one, learning to read is not something that happens naturally by being in an environment full of books and print, right? Learning to talk is something that you learn to do when people talk to you,

but it's not the same with reading. Learning how to read the words is something that people need to be explicitly taught how to do. Now, some people don't need much instruction. They start to figure out a lot of it on their own, but some people need a lot of instruction, including very, very smart people.

And one other big takeaway from the scientific research on reading is that the starting point for reading is sound. Well, hello, boys and girls. Welcome to our classroom. Say hello, boys and girls. Hi! So that what you need to know and be able to do to become a good reader is understand how the words that you know how to say are represented by letters and combinations of letters.

This is the capital letter N. N. N says n. Put your tongue at the top of your mouth and say n. N. And that is essentially phonics instruction, so phonics is connecting the sounds in words with the letters that represent those sounds.

Okay, that's N, N says nuh. This is a small letter E, what does it say? Eh. This is a small letter S. S says ssss. This is a small letter T and it says tuh. Now let's sound it. Nuh, eh, sssst.

Nuh, eh,S-T. Nest. So you've got to be able to connect the spelling and the pronunciation of a word with its meaning. And when you connect those three things, a word gets mapped into your memory, and when you know thousands of words by sounding them out and connecting the sound, the pronunciation, the spelling, and the meaning, that's how those words get into your brain and enables you to be a fluent reader. What is being taught in a lot of schools? If I'm five, six, seven years old in elementary school today, and I'm learning the way most American children are learning, what am I being taught? What you'll find when you talk to people and when you look at some survey data is that most schools say or said, at least according to some of the most recent data, that they teach what's broadly known as balanced literacy, which sounds really good. And the idea here is that kids are taught some phonics,

but what they're also typically taught in a balanced literacy classroom is that kids don't have to sound out the words. They don't need to rely on phonics skills because they have all these other strategies they can use to figure out the words. You can also teach kids to do things like look at the first letter, look at the last letter, think of a word that makes sense, look at the picture. A lot of early kids' books will have a picture that will really help you figure out what's going on. And you can kind of like through the context, through looking at some of the letters, you can sort of figure out what's going on in a book and you can start to figure out the words and eventually that will become reading. What does this actually look like? Yeah, you can hear an example of this in the first episode of Sold a Story

where a parent got a video sent home to her during COVID. We're going to look at our book, Zelda and Ivy, The Runaways. I'm going to read a little bit of this story to you. And if I get stuck on a word, I want you to try to help me figure out what that word could be. This was an early first grade lesson.

And the kids were following along. This was on Zoom. So they were looking at a video and they were following along in the text. And the teacher was reading out loud. And then they came to a word and the teacher had covered the word with a little sticky note. Okay, so we're going to stop right here on this covered word. We're gonna see if the picture helps us to figure out what that word would be.

And so it was a little story about these two little kids who basically ran away, and their parents now something them. And what was it? The kids had run away, and the parents were trying to find them? Scold them? scold them? Do you think that covered word could be the word miss?

Because now that they're gone, maybe their parents will miss them? It turns out that the parents missed them. They were missing them. Let's do our triple check and see. Does it make sense? Does it sound right? How about the last part of our triple check? Does it sound right? How about the last part of our triple check? Does it look right? Let's uncover the word and see if it looks right. It looks right too. Good job. Very good job.

Pause for a second and realize that that is a fine lesson if what you're trying to help children understand is the word miss and what it means, right? But if you're trying to help children understand is the word miss and what it means, right? But if you're trying to help children read that word and you've covered up the word so that while you're talking about the word and what it means and what it sounds like, we're saying the word miss, miss, what does it mean? You're connecting these two things. This was ostensibly a lesson to teach children how to read the words, because these are

kids in early first grade who don't know how to read many words yet. You lift up the sticky note, and there's the word. The problem here is that the kids were not connecting, miss, miss, miss, miss. And that's what you need to do. So this is, I think, the way that a lot of parents started to connect the dots on this, because they got kind of a front row seat in how their kids are being taught. And this is how I think a lot of people have been able to understand that some of the problems their kids are having with reading are connected to instruction, the way they're actually being taught how to read. How did balanced literacy or this reading strategy that de-emphasizes phonics,

how did that become the thing that schools are doing? People who want to become teachers go to teacher preparation programs. And in many teacher preparation programs, they are not taught very much about how to teach reading. They're not taught very much about how kids actually learn to read. And they are not taught very much about how to actually do it. What has happened is there have become some very influential people who have taken these ideas and made them very popular in schools. So that's really what's happened over the past 30 or 40 years is these ideas have become, schools have bought into them, and people have been selling them in the name of this is what

you want to do to teach kids to read without recognizing. And I think in a lot of cases without really knowing that there was research that said otherwise. This at a certain point becomes politicized. Tell me about what happens around the late 90s, early 2000s. What happened is in the 90s, this research was really sort of maturing. Like this research that had started being done in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, there were now 30 years of this research

really showing some things that were quite different than how reading was being taught in schools. And there was an idea of like, oh my gosh, we have to do something about this. We have to make sure teachers in schools know about this research. And there was a big, huge report that was actually commissioned by Congress in the late 90s called the National Reading Panel.

Phonemes are the smallest sound units in the English language. The National Reading Panel found the most effective way to teach children to read is through systematic and explicit manipulation of phonemes in words in a balanced reading program. The idea was to take all of the research about reading and be like, and so what do we know? What can we say about teaching based on all the stuff we've learned about reading and how it works? What's so exciting is that we now have evidence-based education. So just the same as in medicine, before we select a treatment, we say, what is the evidence? Now we can do the very same thing for education. And then George Bush came into office in the early 2000s,

and George Bush and the Bush family had actually long been interested in literacy. And this actually partly comes from a personal story, because there is a, one of George Bush's younger brothers had a really hard time learning how to read. And his mom, Barbara Bush, was very committed to literacy. And his wife, Laura, who had been a teacher and a librarian, was very interested in literacy. So this is a big thing in the Bush family. And George Bush really took this on. And we're going to make sure every child has the opportunity to learn to read. It means we're going to have scientific-based knowledge at the cornerstone of our curriculum. He wanted to be the education president, and in particular, he really wanted to help kids learn how to read,

and he wanted to get this scientific research into schools. This is not a Republican issue. It's not a Democrat issue. It's not an independent issue. This is an American issue, and the most fundamental of all American issues. So there was a huge effort, multi-years, many billions of dollars, more than $6 billion in taxpayer money, to try to get the scientific research into schools. And it became very political for lots of different reasons. Lots of things about every presidency become political. The Bush presidency became very political.

He thought he was focusing on education and suddenly his whole administration became about Iraq and Afghanistan. And so this effort to get the science of reading into schools did some really important things. And there are a lot of teachers who learned a lot, but I think it became pretty quickly a sort of sense that that was like a conservative thing. And there was a lot of pushback. It was part of the No Child Left Behind Act. There were a lot of concerns, well-founded concerns, I think, about that policy. I would not reauthorize No Child Left Behind without some fundamental changes. And so the sort of science of reading and phonics and all of this kind of became like, well, that was George Bush. That was the conservatives. That was the Republicans. That was No Child Left Behind. We don't want any more of that. It is far too punitive. It is far too prescriptive. Led to a dumbing down of standards. Led to a narrowing of the curriculum.

And there's a big reckoning going on right now because there's an understanding of, whoops, we had it wrong. And even some of the people who've been selling these ideas are saying, whoops, we had it wrong. That's Emily Hanford, the host of Sold a Story. Coming up, after years of not teaching kids to read properly, a lot of schools are trying to undo the damage. Today Explained is supported by NRC Health, who believes that healthcare professionals having an ongoing connection with each patient improves experiences at every touchpoint. nrchealth.com slash connect. having an ongoing connection with each patient improves experiences at every touchpoint. nrchealth.com slash connect. Support for today explained comes from Aura.

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A center for ants? It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Emily Hanford is the host of Sold a Story. It's a podcast about how for many years, American schools stopped teaching kids to read using fusty old phonics, and they started using balanced literacy, more or less guessing words based on context. The problem is phonics worked for many, many more kids than balanced literacy.

And now, Emily Hanford, your show is out and changes are being made, yeah? Yeah, so I think that things are really changing. There's a lot going on right now. There's a lot of action at the state level. Research shows Ohio students have fallen behind in reading. So Governor DeWine has proposed a new executive budget plan that he says will teach students the science of reading, which focuses on phonics and comprehension. This is a huge wake-up call for America, and we answered it in Virginia last year. We passed the Virginia

Literacy Act to bring the science of reading, otherwise known as phonics, back into our school system for K through third. The way reading is taught in New York City public schools is about to make a 180 degree shift from a system that teaches children to use picture clues to guess words to a phonics-based system that teaches kids to decode letters. This is part of a movement that has really been gaining momentum over the past 10 years or more that has been largely led by parents of kids with dyslexia. Kids who really struggle with reading have really been getting organized about this and have really been doing a lot of the work to get laws passed that say things like...

When we grew up, we probably learned phonics, but the way it's being taught in schools now, it's not being taught that way. And the science is showing we need to go back to, it's called the science of reading. And I think in the past few years, a really growing awareness of how far apart just core instruction that all kids are getting in class. So not just kids who are struggling the most, not kids with dyslexia, but the core instruction in class has been not well aligned with all the scientific research. So there's really been more of an effort to look at core instruction. And since Sol de Story came out, I would say that this has been accelerating even more.

Several districts have already started implementing these changes. We will do it eventually. We best not wait very long. Thank you. We know that in at least 18 states since the podcast came out, there's been some sort of new effort to look at reading instruction, often with a focus on curriculum. And in at least 10 states, there's actually been explicit efforts to ban the practices that the podcast focused on. So the practices of teaching kids that they don't have to sound out the words, which is sometimes known as cuing. So there is an effort going on in many states to try to ban materials and instruction and professional development that teaches teachers and teaches kids that idea. Have you heard state legislatures cite your podcast? Yes. Emily Hanford had a

podcast that dropped last week. She's a journalist, and there was a statement in there. My colleague, Christopher Peek, my co-reporter, he has listened to, oh, I think it was more than 50 hours of state legislative committee hearings over the past few months. There's a podcast out there I'd recommend people potentially listen to called Sold a Story. I heard it. I watched it, listened to the whole thing. It was very good. It is. And we heard several references to the podcast, and we have called legislators and asked them about it. We need to have the phonics approach to teaching kids how to read. That's what is successful. So that's why this program is very specific and says the state of Minnesota,

in conjunction with our districts and parents, is going to double down on what we know is to be the proven method of helping kids learn to read. We know that the legislation in Indiana, where there is a queuing ban, was specifically motivated by a state senator listening to the podcast and connecting the dots between his own kids. He has two kids who struggle to read, and it was made very clear to him and his wife during COVID that a lot of it had to do with instruction. I had two competing emotional thoughts listening to your podcast. I literally had a tear in my eye and I was heartbroken for what we've done as a society. And second, I wanted to do physical injury to somebody.

And they took their kids out of school and started homeschooling them. And this is what a lot of parents do when they can, when they have the means in terms of time and money. And this is one of the reasons why this is so critical. Because what happens when schools don't teach reading, there are still many, many kids who learn how to read. Number one, they don't need a lot of instruction. So they're not depending on school to teach them, they can figure it out. But number two, if they do struggle, they have a backup plan, because they were lucky enough to be born into a family that can provide the backup. And the backup is the teaching their kids themselves, which many moms and dads, but many moms end up doing.

I know moms who've quit their jobs to teach their kids to read. And or they hire tutors, which can cost $60, $70, $80, $100, $150 an hour. Or they take their kids and put them into specialized private school. There are specialized private schools that teach kids specifically who have a hard time learning to read. And these schools can cost $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $80,000 a year. So this is a problem here. A lot of times when people look at poor reading outcomes in the United States, they say, well, poverty. Look, this has to do with poverty. And poverty certainly has something to do with it. But there are more kids struggling with reading than are poor in the United States. And when I look at those test scores now,

I want people to think about wealth. What is happening here is some kids are from families that have the money and resources to make sure they learn how to read, even if they're not being taught how to do it in school. But some kids don't. Lots of kids don't. In the states where they're saying, look, it may be time to go back to phonics, the, you know, this intuitive reading thing is actually not working. Kids are just guessing. It doesn't work for a lot of kids. Given the politicized times that we live in, is this happening mainly in Republican states or in Democrat-controlled states? Where's it going down? You know, this is one of the things that makes me most hopeful, because there is a true bipartisanness

about this, multi-partisanness about it. So we see it being sponsored by Republicans, by Democrats. At last count, we had at least nine states where these bills were being co-sponsored. There was a Democrat and a Republican who were leading the charge on this. We don't have a lot of issues anymore that we can really get bipartisan consensus on. And I think this is an exception. And I think that's because this matters deeply to a lot of people because it's their children or their students who are not learning how to read. And these are people who are left, right, and everywhere in between. All over the map, there are people whose kids are struggling with reading. So I really think that is a, this is a sort of positive story in this time, in this very deeply, deeply partisan time. I don't think this is a partisan issue.

So we have a bipartisan effort to move toward an emphasis on phonics inspired in part by your show. How are you feeling about all this? What do you think at the end of the day? It's fascinating because people often are sort of blown away by that because a lot of people really are motivated on this issue, whatever they're doing, because there's some deeply, deeply painful personal story. And I don't have that. But a lot of people do. And like I said, a lot of people do. This is not uncommon. I'm feeling a lot of different things. I'm watching what's going on with the legislation, and I feel a little bit of trepidation because I think as soon as things start getting top down, they get a little scary. You know, there's always some

reaction to that. And I think you really need a nice combination to get to a good place policy wise and education in particular, where it's some combination of sort of bottom up and top down. And this has really been bubbling up for the bottom now for a while. So I think it's good that there's response coming from above because it can get really frustrating and not be productive if this is bubbling up from the bottom and no one's responding with good policy, with money, with training. You know, teachers need things. So I think it's good that we're seeing some response. But the success in this is going to be really how it plays out on the ground. At the end of the day, this is about

teachers and schools and sort of what they need and them being able to do this well. And I would say to anyone who's trying to make policy on this, trying to make big changes, be sure to talk to the educators. Be sure that you're answering, you're responding to their needs, that whatever you're passing as a policy is solving a real problem. And that you are listening to hear what are the problems that your policies are causing. And how do we have to change the policy? Or what's a new policy we need? These are fragile times.

And the stakes are high. There's urgency about this because kids are six years old and in first grade right now. And they're not being taught how to read. At the same time, we have this thing we do in education where we just, we try to do things really fast. We try to force stuff because we understand the urgency. But when we try to do it fast, we don't do it well. We need to help the kids who are struggling out there, but I do hope we take our time and get this right so that in like three or four years, people aren't looking back and being like, oh, well, the science of reading, that didn't work. We don't want that to happen because this matters too much. That was Emily Hanford of APM Reports. Her show is called

Sold a Story. It is very good. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode was produced by Miles Bryan and edited by Matt Collette, who may not know how to read. He may just have memorized a lot of words. It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard and engineered by Michael Rayfield. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.