Emerging Consensus on How to Teach Reading (Commentary)

Emerging consensus on how to teach reading can be found in Red and Blue state laws, signaling a potential end to the reading wars. (Commentary)

by Bruno V. Manno

Disagreement on how to teach children to read created the reading wars, a decades long conflict over which of two approaches is the most effective.

A new teachers’ union analysis from the Albert Shanker Institute of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) shows a growing policy consensus in red and blue states on teaching reading that signals an end to these reading wars.

This creates what the public-policy scholar Ryan Streeter calls an “ideological heartland” of “domestic realists” who want pragmatic solutions to important problems K-12 education confronts.

This consensus is especially important because of pandemic-related learning loss experienced by K-12 students. According to the Education Recovery Scorecard, the typical student is a third of a year behind in reading (and a half year behind in math). It’s far worse for our most disadvantaged students.

On one side of the reading conflict has been phonics. This approach emphasizes instruction for children on the building blocks of reading, especially learning how to decode and sound out words.

On the other side of the conflict has been the whole language approach. This approach emphasizes children learning entire words that are part of stories so that they learn to read naturally when exposed to books.

Eventually, a compromise between these warring camps emerged called balanced literacy. It claimed to integrate both approaches, though in practice often did not include phonics instruction. It failed to do much to improve student reading test scores. For example, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or the Nation’s Report Card, reports that average reading 2022 test scores for U.S. fourth- and eighth-grade students “were not significantly different in comparison to the first reading assessment in 1992.”

The AFT report on Reading Reform Across America documents that between 2019 and 2022, 223 reading laws were enacted in 45 states and the District of Columbia. It examines 40 topics discussed in these laws, including student testing and accountability, teacher preparation and professional development, family engagement, and learning support for students. It calls these laws “an ambitious, bipartisan, state-driven effort to improve U.S. reading outcomes through multilayered investments in teachers and students.”

These laws have four notable characteristics.

First, they are based on the science of reading, which includes research from education, psychology, and neuroscience showing how individuals learn to read. Its basic insight—though not only one—is the importance of phonics or sounding out words in the reading process, especially in the early grades. So, these bills require educators to use evidence-based teaching practices and materials to teach reading.

Second, they emphasize five pillars of reading instruction, reflecting the 2000 report of the National Reading Panel, created by the U.S. Congress and convened by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The report embraces phonics but includes other important dimensions to teaching reading. The five pillars are phonemic awareness or knowing speech sounds; phonics or knowing how letter sounds are merged together to create words; vocabulary or a collection of words; fluency or using language easily and accurately; and comprehension or the capacity to understand, including integrating relevant background knowledge with what is being read.

Third, the states discuss the importance of holding teachers and students accountable for teaching and learning how to read, with thirty-five states having extensive discussions on this topic. This focus on accountability for results emphasizes the importance of having clear goals for student improvement and tracking progress toward those goals, ensuring that young people are learning to read.

Finally, the report points out that the success of these new laws depends on how well states implement the comprehensive approach found in the laws. For example, a recent report from two University of Michigan researchers shows that students in states with comprehensive program implementation supports like teacher coaching and student summer tutoring had larger reading test score gains than those with less comprehensive supports.

The leading example of this comprehensive approach producing significant improvements in student reading is the state of Mississippi. An important feature of its 2013 legislation was extensive professional development for teachers and an accountability measure that required students to pass a third grade reading test to advance to the fourth grade.

Students get a second and third chance to pass the test, with exemptions for things like learning disabilities or limited English proficiency. Only about 9% of students are held back. One study found that the students who were held back, especially Black and Hispanic students, had higher English language arts test scores in the sixth grade than those who just missed being held back.

This red and blue state consensus creates an ideological heartland, a state of mind rather than a physical location, in which domestic realists live. It avoids the reading war extremes and is based on practical action that accomplishes results.