A couple of years ago at a school board meeting, our principal said that they really don’t know how to teach kids to read. This shocked me. I wrote about it here in a series of 8 articles that explored student reading at schools in the Upper Valley area of New Hampshire and Vermont.
Many teachers were trained to discourage children from sounding out words, the very skill that helps people learn to read — phonics. Sure, English has silent letters and oddly spelled words, but phonics provides the basis for becoming a skilled reader.
No wonder our principal didn’t know how to teach kids to read — she hadn’t learned to use phonics in her own training.
Our superintendent was equally to blame — he brought the Fountas & Pinnell reading program to our small village school a few years prior. He told the school board, of which I was a member at the time, that it was a successful approach because he knew the author from his graduate school days at Teacher’s College in New York. That was good enough for us, but it shouldn’t have been. We should have asked for the research that supported it.
I’m often reminded of this approach to teach reading. Last week, I came across this short video, Why Johnny Can’t Read: Not Enough Phonics. The take-home point is that if your child isn’t learning to read in school, you can help your child learn to read at home.
In fact, it seems that most kids do learn to read at home and not in school. That would explain the lousy test scores we see again and again.
In the chart below, you’ll notice that even though New Hampshire scores better than the national average in 8th grade reading, they have never scored above proficient in at least the last 20 years, and likely longer. You’ll also notice that scores started to drop before the pandemic in 2019.
John Stossel also referred to the Sold a Story podcast, which I came across a few years ago. It was eye-opening. I listened to it twice, all the way through.
“Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It’s an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn’t true and are now reckoning with the consequences — children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.”
Here’s a short Trailer: Sold a Story.
Teach your kids to read. Don’t rely on others to do it. Let us know if you want some guidance.
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