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Hey, guys. This is Kenan Thompson. I

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have a problem with you. Yes, you.

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None of y'all told me that auto trader

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has millions of new and used cars

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that I can shop from home. I

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thought we were friends. I put smiles

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on your face. But I'm not smiling. No

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one told me that with AutoTrader, a dealer

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can deliver cars to my home or

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that I could shop by price on auto trader.

0:22

No one considered this friendship

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that you just learned we had officially

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over. Finally, it's easy.

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Auto trader.

0:35

Hi. This is Emily Hanford, host

0:37

of Sola Story. If you're just finding

0:40

this podcast, please go back

0:42

to the first episode and start

0:44

there. And then come back for this

0:46

extra episode.

0:48

This is an audio documentary I produced

0:50

four years ago. It's called HardWords.

0:53

We're putting it on this audio feed because we

0:55

think that if you liked, sold a story, you'll

0:57

be interested in this program too. We

1:00

will have a bonus episode out of sold a

1:02

story coming soon too. This

1:04

documentary, HardWords, was

1:07

originally released on September tenth,

1:09

twenty eighteen. From

1:11

American public media, this is an APM

1:13

reports documentary. I'm Emily Hanford.

1:16

It was twenty fifteen and Jack Silva

1:19

had a problem. He's the chief academic

1:21

officer for the public schools in Bethlehem,

1:23

Pennsylvania, and a lot of the kids in his

1:25

schools were not reading well. Only

1:27

fifty six percent of third graders were

1:29

scoring proficient on the state reading test.

1:32

I didn't I didn't know what to do. He

1:34

knew nothing about how kids learned to read

1:36

or how reading should be taught. But

1:39

he did know that even some older students

1:41

were struggling with pretty basic stuff

1:43

when it came to

1:44

reading. I was a middle school and high school

1:46

teacher for many years, and

1:48

I could see students who had difficulty

1:51

with breaking down individual words.

1:53

They'd come across a word they'd never seen before

1:55

and have no idea how to sound it out.

1:58

Kim Harper noticed the same thing. She

2:00

was a high school English teacher in Bethlehem, and

2:02

she says a disturbing number of her students

2:04

were not very good

2:05

readers, even students in Honors

2:07

classes. They

2:08

didn't like to read. They avoided reading.

2:11

They would tell me it was too hard. She

2:13

didn't know what to do about it either, so she kind

2:15

of shrugged it off. I think it became

2:17

easy to say, well, that's just the way it is. You're always

2:19

gonna have x percent of kids

2:21

who it's just gonna be a struggle

2:23

for.

2:23

Less than sixty percent of kids reading

2:26

proficiently. It wasn't shocking.

2:28

It's just the way things

2:29

were. It

2:30

was always well, that's not a reflection of Bethlehem.

2:32

That's a portion of us.

2:34

Mike Fasanetto is president of the Bethlehem

2:36

School Board. Well,

2:37

you know, those kids or parents aren't around or maybe

2:39

they don't have two parents or one or maybe

2:41

they were grandmother, and that's the best they're gonna do. It's

2:43

true that the district's poorest schools

2:45

had the worst reading scores. There

2:47

are lots of low income families here,

2:49

but there are fancy homes here too.

2:51

And when chief academic officer Jack

2:53

Silva was examining the reading scores,

2:56

he saw there were plenty of kids at the wealthier

2:58

schools not reading very well either. This

3:00

was not just poverty. Since

3:03

he knew nothing about reading, he started

3:05

searching online. There's a whole

3:07

lot of research about how kids learn

3:09

to

3:09

read. There

3:10

are thousands of studies.

3:13

This is Louisa Motz. She's been teaching

3:15

and researching reading since the nineteen seventies.

3:18

This is the most studied

3:20

aspect of human learning. One

3:22

of the many things researchers have learned over

3:24

the years is that virtually all kids

3:26

can learn to read. Researchers

3:29

have done studies in classrooms and in

3:31

clinics, and they've shown over and

3:33

over. That somewhere between one

3:35

and six percent of kids have such severe

3:38

learning disabilities that they will probably always

3:40

struggle with reading. But everyone

3:42

else can learn to read, if

3:44

they are taught. The

3:47

problem is lots of kids aren't

3:49

being taught, at least not in ways that

3:52

line up with what science says about how

3:54

children learn to read. The

3:56

result, more than six in ten

3:58

fourth graders in the United States are not

4:00

proficient readers. Thirty million

4:03

adults struggle to read a basic

4:05

passage of text, and this is

4:07

not just poverty problem. One

4:09

third of struggling readers are from college

4:11

educated families. From

4:17

APM reports This is hard words.

4:20

Why aren't our kids being taught to read?

4:23

Kids who struggle to read are more likely

4:25

to drop out of high school. They're more like to

4:27

end up in the criminal justice system. They're

4:30

more likely to live in poverty when they grow

4:32

up, but we shouldn't have so many

4:34

struggling readers. Over the coming

4:36

hour, we we're gonna find out why. We're

4:39

gonna learn what typical reading instruction

4:41

in American schools is like and why

4:43

it's wrong. We're gonna hear what scientists

4:45

have discovered about how the brain learns

4:47

to read and how kids should be

4:50

taught based on that science. And

4:52

we're going to investigate why teachers and

4:54

schools don't know this science and

4:56

what needs to be done to change that.

5:01

We're going back now to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

5:04

To find out what the chief academic officer

5:06

Jack Silva decided to do about

5:08

all those struggling readers in his

5:10

schools. He knew he had

5:12

to do something. It was really, you know,

5:14

looking yourself in the mirror and saying, you know,

5:16

less than sixty percent of third graders

5:19

and me being the chief academic officer

5:21

was

5:21

just, okay. Let's let's go. Let's do

5:23

something differently. Jack Silva hired

5:26

some people to help him. And Kim Harper

5:28

was one of them. She's the high school English

5:30

teacher you heard a moment ago. One

5:32

of her first assignments was to tour Bethlehem

5:34

sixteen elementary schools and

5:36

find out what were the teachers doing?

5:39

How were they teaching kids to read? She

5:41

went to a professional development day at one

5:43

of the district's lowest performing elementary

5:45

schools. And they were talking about

5:48

how kids attack words

5:50

in a story. When a child came to

5:52

a word he didn't know, the teacher would tell

5:54

him to look at the picture and guess.

5:57

The most important thing was for the child

5:59

to understand the meaning of the story.

6:02

So if the kid came to the word horse

6:04

and the kid reads it as

6:05

house, it's wrong. But if the kid

6:07

said pony, It'd be

6:09

right because Pony and horse mean the same

6:11

thing. Kim Harper was shocked. First

6:14

of all, Pony and horse don't

6:16

mean the same thing. Plus, What

6:18

do you do when you're reading a book that doesn't have

6:20

any pictures? The teachers

6:22

describe their approach to reading instruction

6:25

as balanced literacy. Kim

6:27

Harper didn't really know what that meant,

6:29

but her colleague Jody Frank Kelly had

6:31

heard lots about balanced literacy. She

6:34

was working with Harper to figure out what to

6:36

do about reading. She'd previously

6:38

been a principal at one of Bethlehem's elementary

6:40

schools. Jodie Frank Kelly says the

6:42

main idea behind balanced literacy was

6:45

give kids lots of good books and

6:47

with some guidance and enough practice. They

6:49

become readers. We never looked at

6:51

brain research. Never. Brain

6:53

research. In

6:57

the nineteen nineties, scientists began

6:59

figuring out ways to peer inside

7:01

our brains, and they learned a lot

7:03

about how our brains learned to read.

7:06

The scientists were doing their research in labs

7:08

that were sometimes right across the quad from

7:10

schools of education, but reading

7:13

researchers and education researchers

7:15

kind of live in separate universes. They

7:17

go to different conferences, published in different

7:19

journals. The big takeaway

7:22

from all the scientific research on reading

7:24

is that learning to read is not

7:26

a natural process. We

7:28

are not born wired to read.

7:31

We are born wired to talk.

7:33

That loss. But

7:35

why got This

7:37

is a toddler. He's twenty months old.

7:39

It's actually my own son many years

7:41

go. What's the sound of a rainmaker?

7:45

Kids learned to talk by being talked

7:47

to, being surrounded with spoken

7:49

language. That's all it

7:51

takes. No one has to teach

7:53

them to talk. Is pop by

7:55

the tub? No.

7:57

No. Just

7:59

my Robert Ducky.

8:01

That's my husband reading our son a story.

8:04

Is pop in the cabinets Yeah.

8:07

No.

8:09

It's just my toothbrush and toothpaste.

8:12

Candice. Yeah.

8:15

Talking comes naturally, reading

8:17

doesn't. Our brains don't know

8:19

how to do it. That's

8:22

because human beings didn't invent written

8:24

language until a few thousand years ago.

8:26

And that's like last week in the course of human

8:28

history. To be able to read,

8:31

structures in our brain that were designed for

8:33

things such as object recognition have

8:35

to get rewired a bit. But another

8:37

big takeaway from decades of scientific research

8:40

is that While we use our eyes

8:42

to read, the starting point for reading

8:44

is sound. What a child must

8:46

do to become a reader is figure out how

8:48

the words he hears and knows how to say

8:50

connect to print on the page. Writing

8:53

is a code humans invented to represent

8:55

speech sounds, and kids have to

8:57

crack that

8:58

code. To become readers.

8:59

At, chat.

9:05

In, chin.

9:07

If you grew up in the nineteen seventies like

9:09

I did, you might have watched the electric company.

9:12

This is the part of the show I remember best.

9:14

Siloets on each side of the screen would call

9:17

out parts of words. The letters that

9:19

represent each part would flow out of the mouths

9:21

of the silhouettes and blend together to

9:23

make words. For

9:27

kids to learn how to read, they need to understand

9:29

that words are made up of different speech

9:32

sounds. That's called phonemic

9:34

awareness. Once children are

9:36

able to identify and manipulate the

9:38

individual sounds and spoken words,

9:40

they can begin to understand how different

9:43

letters and combinations of letters represent

9:45

those sounds. The producers

9:47

of the elector company planted their flag

9:50

firmly in the camp that said kids

9:52

need good phonemic awareness to be

9:54

able to learn to read. I used

9:56

the word camp because back in the nineteen

9:58

seventies, there were two distinct factions

10:00

when it came to beliefs about how kids

10:02

learned to read. They were mostly

10:04

beliefs at that point because lot of the science

10:07

hadn't been done yet. This is Louisa Motz

10:09

again.

10:09

It was more debates among

10:12

people who had philosophies. Luisa

10:14

Motz was in the camp that believed in phonics.

10:16

That means teaching children how letters

10:18

represent speech sounds. The

10:20

other camp believed in what is known as whole

10:22

language. This is Mark Seidenberg.

10:25

He's a cognitive neuroscientist.

10:27

Whole language essentially said, if

10:29

we create a literacy rich

10:31

environment, that is highly

10:33

motivating and provides the right sort

10:35

of materials that children will

10:38

figure out how reading works.

10:40

Mark Seidenberg has been studying how children

10:42

learn to read since the disco era. That's

10:44

how he puts it in his

10:45

bio. He says the core belief that

10:47

underlies whole language is that reading comes

10:50

naturally. The essential idea

10:52

is basically learned

10:53

by doing. So children are supposed

10:55

to learn by doing, not be told

10:57

what to do, So no phonics

11:00

lessons. For the whole language folks,

11:02

phonics was old fashioned, kind of

11:04

conservative. In the nineteen seventies

11:07

and eighties and nineties, the big

11:09

idea that took over in schools and in

11:11

colleges of education was that children

11:13

don't need phonics. In fact,

11:15

The belief was that phonics lessons might be

11:17

bad for kids, might get in the way of them

11:19

developing a love of

11:20

reading, by making them focus on all these

11:22

little tedious skills, like breaking words

11:25

into parts. In whole language,

11:27

the battle was seen

11:29

as, are you in favor of literacy? Or

11:31

are you in favor of skills?

11:34

And it was a battle.

11:38

People actually called it war. The

11:40

reading force. It was an

11:42

intense fight because whole language

11:44

was more than just a set of beliefs about

11:46

how kids learn to read. It was

11:49

a movement that said children and

11:51

teachers needed to be freed from

11:53

the TDM of skills based instruction.

11:56

The battle got so heated that Congress eventually

11:58

got involved, convening a national

12:00

reading panel to review all the research

12:02

on reading. In two thousand,

12:05

the panel released its report. The

12:07

sum of the research showed that explicitly

12:10

and systematically teaching children

12:12

and the relationship between sounds and letters

12:14

improves reading achievement. There

12:17

is no evidence to say the same

12:19

about whole language. None.

12:22

Faced with all this evidence contradicting a

12:25

very deeply held belief, the

12:27

educational establishment did an amazing

12:30

thing. They said, balanced

12:32

literacy. Balanced literacy.

12:35

That's the term the schools in Bethlehem were using.

12:38

After the National Reading Panel report in

12:40

two thousand, whole language proponents

12:42

could no longer deny the importance of

12:44

phonics, but they didn't give up the

12:46

reading programs they were selling and

12:48

they didn't give up their core belief that

12:50

learning to read is a natural process

12:53

that occurs if kids are surrounded by good books.

12:56

Instead, they said, let's do both,

12:58

a balance. So whole language

13:01

didn't disappear. It just got repackaged.

13:04

And phonics was treated a bit like salt

13:06

on a meal, a little here and there,

13:08

but not too much because it could be bad

13:10

for you. Mark Seidenberg knows

13:12

of a child who is struggling so much with reading

13:15

that her mother paid for a private

13:16

tutor. The tutor taught her

13:18

some of the basic skills that child

13:21

wasn't getting in her whole language classroom.

13:23

And at the end of the

13:26

school year, the teacher was proud

13:28

that the child had made so much

13:30

progress. And the parents

13:32

said, well, why

13:35

didn't you teach this phonics

13:37

in these other basic

13:39

skills related to print in

13:41

class. And the teacher

13:44

said, oh, I did. Your child

13:46

was absent that day. The

13:51

problem with teaching just a little bit of

13:53

phonics is that according to all the research,

13:56

phonics is crucial when it comes

13:58

to learning how to read. Surrounding

14:00

kids with good books is a great idea,

14:02

but it's not the same as teaching

14:04

children to read. According

14:07

to Mark Seidenberg, the reading wars

14:09

of the eighties and nineties are over and

14:11

science lost. The

14:13

ideas that underlie whole language are

14:15

still right now everywhere in

14:17

American classrooms. Like that

14:19

idea you heard earlier, that if a kid comes

14:21

to the word horse and says pony, it's

14:24

fine. That comes from this whole

14:26

language theory that reading doesn't involve

14:28

exact detailed identification of

14:30

letters and words. Instead, the

14:32

theory goes, when readers come to a word

14:34

they don't know, they use context to

14:37

figure out what the word is. So

14:39

if a child gets stuck on a word, she's

14:41

told, RERELEASE the sentence, think

14:44

about a word that would make sense in the sentence,

14:46

look at the pictures. She's told

14:48

that's what good readers do. But

14:51

in fact, that's not what good readers

14:53

do. Studies that compare

14:55

skilled readers to poor readers show

14:57

that poor readers guess when they come to

14:59

a word they don't know because they

15:01

have difficulty decoding. When

15:04

skilled readers come to a word they don't know,

15:06

they rapidly identify the sounds and

15:08

letters in the word. Good readers

15:11

may guess at the meaning of the word, but

15:13

they don't guess at the print on the page.

15:17

We're going back to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania now,

15:19

where balanced literacy was the prevailing

15:21

approach to reading instruction UNTIL

15:23

THE DISTRICT GOT SERIOUS ABOUT TRYING

15:25

TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT ALL THOSE KIDS

15:28

WHO ARE STRUGGLING WITH READING. This

15:33

is Kathy Best. She's walking the halls

15:35

of Calypso elementary where she's the principal.

15:38

Back in twenty fifteen, when Bethlehem realized

15:40

it needed to change the way it taught reading, District

15:43

leaders decided the first step would be a series

15:45

of trainings for all the principals of

15:47

the District sixteen elementary schools.

15:50

Over the course of an entire school year, the

15:52

principals were going to be taught the reading science.

15:55

As it happened, Kathy Bass was out on medical

15:57

leave when the trainings began. But our

15:59

colleagues warned

16:00

her. They

16:01

said to me, Kathy, we know you're not going to

16:03

take well to this training. The principals

16:05

were learning about the importance of explicitly

16:07

teaching children how to decode words.

16:10

And everyone was sure Kathy Bass

16:12

was going to resist. They knew who

16:14

I was and how reading was passion and

16:16

the decoding was never part of anything I

16:18

ever did, but Kathy Bass had

16:21

a secret. Even

16:23

though she was known as the District number

16:25

one balanced literacy champion. She

16:28

had doubts. Before becoming a

16:30

principal, Kathy Bass had been a reading special

16:33

It was her job to help struggling readers.

16:35

In her training to become a reading specialist,

16:38

she says she learned a lot about how to identify

16:41

a child with a reading problem. But

16:43

she learned nothing about how to help

16:45

a child actually learn to read. I didn't

16:47

know what to do except just give them

16:49

more books and it wasn't

16:51

working. With time on her hands while

16:53

she was on medical leave, Kathy Bassett

16:56

began reading about reading, and

16:58

she discovered the vast scientific literature.

17:01

When she returned to work from medical leave and

17:03

joined her fellow principals in the trainings on

17:05

the reading science, she was ready to hear

17:08

what the trainer had to say, and it

17:10

kind of blew her mind. Wow.

17:12

We're okay. Let's go get

17:14

at this. The training the principals

17:16

were doing used a curriculum written by Louisa

17:18

Motz. You heard her earlier. The

17:20

curriculum is called language essentials

17:23

for teachers of reading and spelling or

17:25

letters for short. The principals

17:27

went through the training in twenty fifteen. The

17:29

kindergarten teachers went through at the next year.

17:32

Then the district's first and second grade teachers

17:34

did the training. I got to sit in

17:36

on it for part of

17:37

day. Good morning, everyone. The

17:40

training was led by Mary Do Doniker. She's

17:42

an educational consultant. Which

17:44

word doesn't begin with the same sound?

17:46

Theory, therefore, thistle,

17:50

thinker -- Thicker.

17:53

-- therefore. For children to

17:55

clearly understand how letters represent

17:58

speech sounds, they need to be able to hear

18:00

the speech sounds. And teachers do

18:02

too, It's not always

18:04

easy. Tell me the first sound you hear

18:06

in Eunice. Eunice. Eunice.

18:13

Before you get to the oh, how about

18:15

Charlotte? Once

18:19

kids can isolate the sounds in a word, Their

18:21

next task is to understand how

18:23

letters represent those sounds. In

18:25

English, we have forty four different

18:27

speech sounds or phonemes. Each

18:30

phoneme is represented by a letter

18:32

or combinations of letters. Research

18:35

shows when kids are explicitly taught

18:37

how letters represent phonemes they

18:40

become better readers. But

18:44

phonics isn't enough. Kids

18:46

can learn to decode words without

18:48

knowing what the words mean. To

18:51

comprehend what they're reading, kids

18:53

need good vocabulary too. Scientists

18:56

came up with a model to explain the relationship

18:58

between a person's ability to decode

19:00

text and their ability to comprehend

19:02

what they're reading. Scientists

19:04

called it the simple view of reading,

19:07

and it's basically a math formula. It

19:09

says this, reading comprehension

19:12

equals decoding skills times

19:15

language comprehension. Language

19:17

comprehension is what develops NASH trillion

19:20

children when people talk to

19:21

them.

19:21

It's just my toothbrush and toothpaste.

19:25

Candice. Decoding

19:27

is what kids have to be taught. Print.

19:31

Print. Some kids learn

19:33

decoding quickly and easily. Others

19:36

need much more instruction. But

19:38

a child who can't decode will

19:40

never be a good reader because of

19:42

that math formula. Zero times

19:44

anything is zero. Yeah.

19:48

In their training on the science of reading,

19:50

the teachers and principals and Lahan, Pennsylvania

19:53

learned about the simple view of reading and

19:55

a lot more. There's quite a bit

19:57

to know about the structure of the English language

19:59

to be able to teach it to little

20:01

kids. I sat down with three

20:03

teachers who were in the first group to go through

20:05

the training in Bethlehem. I asked them

20:07

what it was like at first. I remember

20:09

sitting there and, like, my head was throbbing

20:11

because it was, like, how can I take all of this

20:13

in? Oh my god. I'm never gonna be able

20:15

to use this or I don't know how to use this and then

20:17

them constantly saying you're gonna get there. You're gonna

20:19

get

20:20

there. That was Adrian Ibera and

20:22

Candy Maldonado. They hadn't learned

20:25

any of this in their teacher preparation programs.

20:28

Neither head teacher, Michelle Bozak. It

20:30

was very broad classes,

20:32

vague classes, and like a children's

20:34

literature class. But not

20:36

actually teaching phonics and things

20:38

like that. When they became teachers, they did

20:40

a little of what they thought was

20:42

phonics. Kandi Maldonado says

20:44

it pretty much went like this. So, like, we

20:46

did, like, a letter a week. So

20:48

if the letter was a, we read books about

20:50

a, we eat things with a, we

20:52

found things with a and then but

20:54

we never did anything else with it.

20:56

Like, we all we did was learned, like,

20:59

a set a and then there's

21:01

apples and we tasted

21:02

apples. When you were all being

21:05

taught to teach that way and teaching that

21:07

way, what was the idea about

21:09

how children learned to

21:10

read? Did you have a sense of that?

21:13

No. No. Now

21:15

that I think about it, no, not really. It

21:18

was just that they do. Almost

21:20

like it's automatic.

21:21

Yeah. When these teachers started

21:23

the training on the science of reading, they

21:25

felt overwhelmed. By the time

21:28

they were done, they felt guilty.

21:30

I thought, all these years, all these students,

21:32

I feel horrible guilt. The Bethlehem

21:35

School District has adopted a motto to

21:37

help ease the guilt. When we

21:39

know better, we do better. Back

21:43

to back in. We're now in a kindergarten class

21:45

at Bethlehem's Calypso elementary school.

21:47

This is Kathy Bass School. The principal

21:49

everyone thought was going to resist the reading science

21:52

but didn't. Her kindergarten teachers

21:54

got the science of reading training last

21:56

year. Now they're putting it into practice.

21:59

Globe. Globe.

22:02

Good job. Cutting that sound off, guys. The entire

22:05

class is seated on a carpet while a student

22:07

teacher holds up flashcards with pictures

22:09

on them. No letters. The

22:11

kids are just practicing the first sounds

22:14

in words that begin with and

22:17

Water. Water. Teachers

22:22

in Bethlehem use a curriculum that mixes

22:24

whole class lessons like this one with

22:26

group work that's tailored to the needs of

22:28

kids at different points in the process of learning

22:30

to read. After the class lesson,

22:33

teacher Lynn Venable meets with a group of

22:35

six students at a small u shaped

22:37

table. So we're gonna start doing something today

22:39

that we have not done before. This

22:41

is brand.

22:42

Spaghett and New. Alright.

22:46

This group of kindergartners is ready for something

22:48

more challenging. Than words that begin with

22:50

whoa and good. So

22:51

let's read it together. What's it say? My

22:54

pet Repairs.

22:56

Wonderful. These kids are writing a report

22:58

about a pet they want. They have to write

23:01

down three things their pet can do,

23:04

but spelling is hard. I need a pension

23:06

information. I need a pencil

23:08

with an eraser says Roman. The

23:10

kids make lots of mistakes. Quinn

23:13

spells Bark, BOC,

23:15

BOC. He needs some help

23:17

discerning the speech sounds in the

23:19

word.

23:20

What is your dog doing? A dog can

23:24

Now I want you to make all the sounds in bark. You

23:26

can do this. Ready? Spelling errors

23:28

are like a window into what's going

23:30

on in child's brain when they're learning

23:32

how to

23:33

read. What's the first sound? We

23:36

got that one. That's b. Now what's

23:38

the next sound? R.

23:40

How do you make

23:41

r? Quinn struggles

23:43

for a moment, but gets some help from missus Vinnable.

23:45

How do you make the sound r? Where's your pirate

23:48

patch?

23:51

How do you how do you write r? Do

23:54

you remember? Tell me. With

23:57

a little more prompting, Quinn eventually

23:59

gets in. A. R. Absolutely. Lynn

24:02

Minnabel has been teaching elementary school

24:04

for twenty one years. She

24:06

says she used to think reading would just kind

24:08

of fall together for kids if they were

24:10

exposed to enough print. Now

24:13

because of the science of reading training, she

24:15

knows better. She says this year's

24:17

class of kindergarteners has progressed more

24:19

quickly in reading than any class

24:22

she's ever

24:22

had. My kids are successful and

24:24

happy and believe in themselves. I

24:27

don't have a single child in my room that has

24:29

that look on their face like can't do

24:30

this. Shirley, can you tell me what your cat's

24:33

gonna do?

24:34

A cat's can't scratch, claw,

24:37

the emperor. You're absolutely

24:40

right. That is a wonderful list

24:42

of things that your cat can do. Can we sum?

24:45

At the

24:45

end of each school year, the Bethlehem School District

24:48

gives kindergarteners a test to see

24:50

where they are with early reading skills.

24:52

The year before the science of reading, training

24:54

began, sixty five percent of

24:57

kindergarteners at this school tested

24:59

below the benchmark score, meaning most

25:01

of them were heading into first grade at risk

25:03

of reading failure. After

25:05

the kindergarten teachers were trained, zero

25:08

kindergarteners at Klipsso finished the

25:10

year at risk of reading failure. And

25:12

at the end of this year, same thing.

25:14

Two years in a row, every

25:16

single kindergarten or a calypso was

25:19

at or above the benchmark score on the reading

25:21

test. Across the entire

25:23

Bethlehem School District, more than

25:25

eight in ten kindergarteners met or

25:27

seated the benchmark score, up from

25:29

fewer than half before the science of

25:32

reading training started. Chief academic

25:34

officer Jack Silva is thrilled with

25:36

the results. But cautious. He's

25:38

eager to see how the kindergarteners do

25:41

when they get to that big state reading test

25:43

in third

25:43

grade. We

25:44

may have hit a home run-in the first inning, but

25:46

there's lot of a game left here. It's

25:48

impossible to know if the science of reading training

25:50

is what led to the test score gains. Some

25:52

of the schools in the district, including Calypso,

25:55

moved from half day to full day kindergarten the

25:57

same year the training started, so that

25:59

could have been a factor. But Kathy

26:01

Bass, to the Calypso principle, thinks

26:03

that if her teachers had just been doing more

26:05

of the same when it came to reading instruction, she'd

26:08

still have a lot of struggling readers at her

26:10

school. She says other school

26:12

districts are taking note of Bethlehem's progress.

26:15

I've gotten calls from other

26:17

administrators in other districts, what

26:19

are you doing differently in Bethlehem? She

26:21

remembers one call in particular. Tell

26:24

me what you're doing with superintendents, all your scores

26:26

in the

26:26

paper. He asked me to call you.

26:28

I spent over an hour on the phone just detailing

26:31

what I've talked to you

26:31

about. And after all of it was said

26:33

and done, oh, I

26:36

don't think that'll work here. There'll be too much pushback.

26:38

Too

26:42

much pushback. Beliefs

26:45

about how kids learn to read and how they

26:47

should be taught run deep in American

26:49

education. You can find

26:51

schools and school districts across the country

26:54

that are trying to change things the way Bethlehem

26:56

is. But typical reading instruction

26:58

in American schools is some

27:00

version of a balanced literacy approach

27:03

backed up by the core belief that learning

27:05

to read is a natural process. Many

27:08

educators don't know the science,

27:11

and in some cases, they actively resist

27:13

it. Why is that? That's

27:16

what we're gonna hear about after the break.

27:19

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27:51

Hey, guys. I'm David

27:54

Spade. Oh, applause. I'm Dana Carvey.

27:56

Are we the host of something? Oh, flying the

27:58

wall. No, Dana. And I would never

28:00

say this one of Apple's Spotify and Amazon's

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28:04

two. I'm just reading that. I would never say that.

28:06

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two, all lower case.

28:55

We're now in Jackson, Mississippi, where something

28:57

unusual is happening.

28:58

Alright, colleagues. Let's go ahead and get started.

29:01

A group of teachers is gathered in a conference

29:03

center for letters training. It's

29:05

what you heard the teachers doing in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,

29:08

but these teachers are college faculty

29:10

from schools of education across

29:12

Mississippi.

29:13

So I'm gonna go ahead and distribute some

29:16

anticipation guides, so to speak.

29:18

That's a euphemism for quiz. The

29:20

first question is, true or

29:22

false. Speaking is natural, reading

29:25

and writing are not. These

29:27

are the faculty who teach people

29:29

who wanna be teachers how to teach

29:31

reading. And they are being asked this

29:33

question because they might not know the

29:35

answer.

29:36

So do I have everyone's? The

29:39

trainer Antonio Figuero collects

29:41

the quizzes. I don't know how many of

29:43

the professors got the question right. The

29:45

answer, of course, is true. Speaking

29:48

is natural, reading and writing are not.

29:51

Most people in this class should know that

29:53

by now because this is the third day

29:55

of this series of letters

29:56

trainings. Here they are reviewing

29:58

the speech sounds or phonemes in

30:00

simple words. Next word is

30:03

cloud. What's the word? Cloud.

30:05

Tap it.

30:07

Wait. Hold on. Hold on. That first

30:09

that first sound is right up there. Alright?

30:11

The trainer points to a sound wall

30:14

posted to his right. According

30:16

to research, this is what you want to see

30:18

in classrooms. Not an alphabet

30:21

wall that says for example, o is

30:23

for octopus, but a sound

30:25

wall that has all forty four

30:27

speech sounds in the English language. With

30:29

the letters and combinations of letters that

30:32

represent those sounds. Octopus

30:34

is a great example of the short o sound.

30:37

But then there's vowel, which starts

30:39

with the letter o, but begins with the sound

30:41

o, represented by the letters o

30:43

w. The college faculty

30:46

in this room, a lot of them didn't know

30:48

this. It's a lot to take you in.

30:50

This is Roshanda Harris Allen. She's

30:52

a professor in the teacher preparation program

30:54

at Tugelu College in Tugelu Mississippi.

30:58

She says she was never taught this stuff about language.

31:00

Not as part of her college education or

31:02

her doctorate, and not when she was

31:05

a kid. We weren't top phonemes. We

31:07

weren't top sound recognition. We

31:09

were just taught here are your site where

31:11

you need to memorize them. She struggled

31:13

with reading when she was little. Her colleague

31:15

at Tugloo, Trishanda Dixon, says

31:17

she did get phonics instruction when she was

31:20

young, but she never learned how to teach

31:22

phonics. I think we did have

31:24

issues with a lack of knowledge initially,

31:26

but I think we're making great strides

31:29

here. It's correct bet. With your partner,

31:31

please discuss the

31:34

simple view of reading.

31:38

So it's one of the theories

31:40

that was The reason I started off by by

31:42

saying something unusual is going on

31:44

here in Mississippi, is that college

31:47

faculty almost never come together

31:49

like this for training. And college

31:51

professors getting training originally designed

31:53

for elementary school teachers in the

31:55

science of reading pretty

31:57

much unheard of. Louisa

31:59

Motes who developed the letters training told

32:02

me Mississippi is the only place she knows

32:04

of where college faculty are doing this.

32:06

And college faculty across the country need

32:08

it. A number of reports and studies

32:11

show that many faculty members and teacher preparation

32:13

programs don't know the reading science.

32:15

Don't teach it, and in some cases

32:18

actively resist it. We'll

32:20

get to the resistance in a bit, but

32:22

first, the story of how this training

32:24

came to be in Mississippi. It

32:28

was the early two thousands. Mississippi

32:30

was and always has been at the bottom

32:33

of the list when it comes to how well kids

32:35

read. That big national reading

32:37

panel report had just come out and a

32:39

wealthy Mississippi couple who'd started

32:41

an institute to improve reading in the

32:43

state wanted to know, word

32:45

teacher preparation programs in Mississippi

32:48

teaching what was in the National Reading Panel

32:50

report. So their organization,

32:52

the Barkdale Reading Institute, did a

32:54

study. The study focused on the teacher

32:57

preparation programs at the state's eight

32:59

publicly funded universities. The

33:01

institute reviewed syllabi and textbooks,

33:04

surveyed the students in the classes, observed

33:06

some of the classes, and interviewed the deans

33:08

and faculty. Kelly Butler led

33:10

the

33:10

study. Generally, I found that among

33:13

the eight publics, You could go

33:15

to any one of them and not necessarily be

33:17

exposed to all five components

33:19

of

33:19

reading. The National Reading Panel had

33:21

identified five components of reading.

33:24

They are phonemic awareness, phonics,

33:27

vocabulary, fluency, and

33:29

comprehension. You could go to an undergraduate

33:32

program with the expectation you would graduate

33:34

to be able to teach elementary education but

33:36

not even know what the five components reading

33:39

were. Much less how to teach

33:41

them. The two components most

33:43

essential for learning to read,

33:45

phonemic awareness and fun. Mix were

33:47

basically absent. The study

33:49

found that teacher candidates in Mississippi were

33:52

getting an average of twenty minutes of instruction

33:54

in phonics, twenty minutes over

33:57

their entire two year teacher preparation

33:59

program. Kelly Butler

34:01

was alarmed. How were kids in

34:03

Mississippi going to learn to read if

34:05

their teachers were not learning the basics

34:08

of the reading science in their teacher preparation

34:10

programs. Kelly

34:14

Butler and her colleagues at Barkdale Reading

34:16

Institute went to state education officials

34:18

and said, you have to do something

34:20

about this. And in two thousand

34:22

three, a rather extraordinary move,

34:25

the State Department of Education mandated

34:27

that every teacher preparation program in

34:29

Mississippi require two courses

34:31

on early literacy to to cover what

34:33

was in the National Reading Panel report. It

34:36

was extraordinary because even

34:38

though states have the authority to regulate

34:40

teacher preparation programs, they

34:42

rarely tell them what to teach in their classes.

34:45

Higher education does not like

34:47

to be told what to

34:48

do. This is Kelly Butler again.

34:50

Professors pretty much have academic freedom

34:54

to construct learning in the way they think

34:56

best.

34:57

Faculty members close the door and

34:59

do whatever the heck they want to.

35:01

That's Angela Rutherford. She

35:03

is a faculty member at the University of

35:05

Mississippi. She works with the Barksdale

35:07

Reading Institute, she knows the Reading

35:09

Science, and she says a lot of

35:11

her colleagues and teacher preparation programs

35:14

don't. They believe in whole

35:16

language. That's what they believe.

35:19

I had a colleague challenge me.

35:22

And her question was, Well, you

35:24

know, what do you believe? I said, I

35:26

believe, what I see in research.

35:30

Once, when Kelly Butler was talking to

35:32

a dean about the reading

35:33

science, The Dean said to

35:34

her, is this your science or my science?

35:37

Is this your science or my science?

35:42

That's what Kelly Butler and her colleagues were

35:44

up against. They wanted to change

35:47

what prospective teachers in Mississippi were

35:49

learning about reading. State officials

35:51

did too. But Kelly Butler says

35:53

many deans and faculty still

35:55

believed in whole language.

35:57

We'll fast forward to twenty fifteen,

36:01

and we now have literacy based promotion

36:03

act. The state legislature had

36:05

passed a law called the literacy based

36:07

Promotion Act. The law says

36:09

that kids who are not reading on grade level

36:12

by the end of third grade cannot

36:14

move on to fourth

36:15

grade. What that precipit stated was

36:17

a retraining of teachers because we

36:19

knew that teachers really didn't know

36:22

enough about what to

36:23

do. The teachers already working in Mississippi

36:26

schools started learning the reading science.

36:28

But what about the new teachers just

36:30

graduating from teacher prep programs?

36:33

If they weren't learning the science, the state

36:35

would be spending money forever. Training

36:37

teachers. At this point,

36:39

no one really knew what aspiring teachers

36:41

were actually learning in those required early

36:44

literacy classes. So in

36:46

twenty fifteen, the Barkdale Reading Institute

36:48

decided to repeat the study it had done back

36:50

in two thousand three. This time,

36:52

private colleges were included. Fifteen

36:55

teacher prep programs overall. The

36:57

needle had moved some. Kelly Butler

37:00

says, with one exception, all the state's

37:02

teacher prep programs were now teaching

37:04

the five components of

37:05

reading. The Deans and faculty

37:07

all said they'd heard of the National Reading

37:09

Panel report, but most of them had

37:11

not read it. She learned other

37:13

things that shocked her when I interviewed

37:16

both faculty and students and

37:19

asked them particular questions about

37:21

the science of reading, for example, were they

37:23

familiar with something called the simple view of reading?

37:26

That's that formula scientists came up

37:28

with to explain that reading comprehension is

37:30

the product of your ability to decode

37:33

text, times all the words, you

37:35

know, the meaning of.

37:36

Not a single one that I talked to had ever heard

37:38

simple view of reading, which has been around since

37:40

nineteen eighty six. The

37:44

science had been around for a long time.

37:47

The state had been requiring colleges to

37:49

teach the science for more than a

37:51

decade. And still, prospective

37:54

teachers weren't learning it.

37:56

So the state legislature decided

37:58

to do something else. It started

38:00

requiring teacher candidates to pass

38:02

it test on the reading science. If

38:05

you don't pass the foundations of reading test,

38:08

you don't get licensed to teach elementary

38:10

school in

38:10

Mississippi. What is

38:12

average student.

38:13

You'll be student over here. And we're gonna

38:15

start with only isolation. We're

38:18

back in letters training with the college faculty

38:20

in Mississippi. They're in pairs now

38:22

working on phonemic awareness

38:24

skills. This is Rashonda Harris

38:26

Allen and Rashonda Dixon. You heard them

38:28

earlier.

38:29

What is the first speech sound

38:31

in the following words? Quiet.

38:37

There it is.

38:40

College faculty in Mississippi are not

38:42

required to do letters training, but

38:44

it's in the best interest of those who teach the

38:46

early literacy class since their students

38:48

will not become licensed teachers unless

38:51

they pass the foundations of reading

38:52

test. I interviewed several

38:54

of the women in this training. They were all women.

38:57

Was expecting to hear resistance and resignation

39:00

about being here, but I didn't.

39:02

As I'm sitting in there, I'm thinking, I'm gonna do this

39:04

in class next week or

39:05

oh, man, I wish I'd done that. I'm gonna have to make a note,

39:07

you know, to do this next semester. That was Kim

39:09

Smith of Mississippi and this is

39:11

Barbara Bowen of the University of Southern Mississippi.

39:14

I feel blessed to be part of

39:17

this change. They were elementary school

39:19

teachers before they became college instructors.

39:22

They didn't know the reading science when they were teachers,

39:24

and they're grateful to be learning it now.

39:27

I think that we all agree that that

39:29

this is right

39:32

or best practices. And

39:35

maybe we're here because of

39:37

that.

39:39

And the language ones are not

39:41

here because maybe I think

39:43

they would really resist a

39:46

lot. The faculty who believe in whole

39:48

language didn't seem to be here. I

39:50

had to look for

39:51

them. I found two professors at

39:53

the University of Southern Mississippi willing

39:55

to talk to me. My name is Stacey

39:57

Reeves. I am an

40:00

associate professor of

40:02

literacy and other areas of

40:04

elementary ed, I'm Mary Ariel.

40:06

I'm a professor in the Department of

40:08

Curriculum instructions special education.

40:11

Mary Ariel had actually been the chair of the

40:13

department until a few months before our interview.

40:16

She and Stacey Reeves both told me

40:18

they had no interest in going to the letters

40:20

training. This is Stacey Reeves.

40:23

I am philosophically opposed

40:25

to

40:27

jumping on the bandwagon of

40:30

the next great thing that's going

40:32

to teach every child how to learn to read.

40:35

Phonics for me is not

40:37

that answer. She says she knows

40:39

this from her own experience. She was

40:41

an elementary school teacher before she got

40:43

her PhD. It was the early nineteen

40:46

nineties. Her students did phonics

40:48

worksheets and then got these little books

40:50

called decodable readers that contained

40:53

words with the letter patterns they'd been practicing.

40:56

Sentences like the bad rat

40:58

hit in the tin can. They were

41:00

boring, they were repetitive,

41:02

but as soon as I sat down with my first graders,

41:05

and read a book, like

41:07

frog and toad or friends, they

41:09

were instantly engaged in

41:11

the

41:11

story. She says she ditched the phonics

41:14

workbooks

41:14

and the decodable readers. And once

41:16

I started teaching in a more whole

41:18

way, a more encompassing way of

41:20

the whole child, What does this child

41:23

need? What does that child need? Let's read

41:25

more real books. Let's

41:27

write more real language about

41:30

your life. Once I did

41:31

that, my teaching improved the

41:33

students learn more I feel.

41:35

I feel they came out the other side much

41:37

better. Stacey

41:40

Reeves says her students seemed more engaged,

41:43

but she admits she had no evidence

41:45

they were learning better. One

41:47

of the central tenets of the whole language

41:49

movement is that teachers are best able

41:51

to judge whether their students are learning,

41:53

not standardized tests. Another

41:56

key idea is that all children

41:59

learn differently and need to be taught in

42:01

different ways, but that's

42:03

not true with reading. Our

42:05

brains are much more similar than

42:07

they are different, and we all need

42:09

to learn the same things to change

42:12

our non reading brains into reading

42:14

brains. Some of us learn

42:16

to read more quickly and easily than others,

42:19

but everyone reads in basically

42:21

the same way. One of the most

42:23

consistent findings in all of education

42:25

research is that children become better

42:28

readers when they get explicit and

42:30

diplomatic phonics instruction. Dequotable

42:33

readers with letter patterns may be boring

42:35

and repetitive for adults, but they

42:37

help children learn to read. Mary

42:39

Ariel, the former chair of the curriculum and special

42:42

ed department at the University of Southern Mississippi,

42:44

remains unconvinced. She's against

42:47

explicit phonics instruction. She

42:49

thinks it can be helpful to do some phonics

42:52

with kids as they're reading books. Maybe

42:54

prompt them to sound something out to notice

42:56

a letter pattern in a word. But

42:58

she thinks kids will be distracted from understanding

43:01

the meaning of what they're reading if teachers

43:04

focus too much on how words

43:06

are made up of

43:06

letters. What it really does, it makes it

43:08

harder because we're trying to make meaning of

43:10

it and when you you're teaching these meaningless

43:13

symbols

43:14

that it is actually making it harder. So

43:17

breaking it down into pieces makes it

43:19

hard. Makes it harder to learn to read?

43:22

That's the idea. That's one of the

43:24

ideas of concepts behind whole

43:27

language is that it's that's

43:29

when it's meaningful, it's easy. And

43:31

when it's broken down into little parts, it makes

43:33

it

43:33

harder.

43:34

So okay. So so from

43:36

your perspective, how do kids learn to

43:38

read? Well, I

43:40

think kids learn to read in different ways.

43:43

A lot of children come

43:45

to school already reading because

43:48

they have been immersed in print

43:50

rich environments from the time they were

43:52

born.

43:53

The underlying belief here is their reading

43:55

comes naturally when children are read

43:57

to and surrounded by books. Mary

44:00

Ariel sees the effort change reading instruction

44:02

in Mississippi as an example of

44:04

lawmakers telling educators what to

44:06

do and she doesn't like it. She

44:09

actually left her job shortly after our

44:11

interview in part because of her frustration

44:13

over what's happening with reading in Mississippi. She

44:16

told me she does not like the term

44:18

science of reading. That's one

44:20

of the bones of

44:22

contention. That the phonics

44:24

based approach is the scientific approach.

44:28

It's it's their science.

44:31

The belief that learning to read is a natural

44:33

process that occurs when children are surrounded

44:35

by books is a problem not just

44:37

because there's no science to back it up.

44:40

It's a problem because it assumes the

44:42

primary responsibility for teaching

44:44

children to read lies with families, not

44:47

schools. If you are not

44:49

fortunate enough to grow up in a household

44:51

where there are lots of books and adults who read

44:53

to you, you're kind of out of luck.

44:56

There is no debate at this point among

44:58

scientists. The reading is a skill

45:00

that needs to be explicitly taught by

45:02

showing children the ways that sounds

45:05

and letters

45:05

correspond. Here's Louisa Motz

45:07

again. Is so accepted

45:10

in the scientific world that If

45:13

you just write another paper, another

45:15

study about these fundamental facts

45:17

and submit it to a journal, they won't accept it

45:19

because it's considered settled science.

45:25

I think often of scientists

45:28

in the area of climate change research

45:32

all of this information about

45:34

climate change was

45:36

readily available decades

45:38

ago. And we

45:41

still have

45:43

prominent people in our government who

45:46

are climate change deniers. It's

45:49

appalling. Luis remote

45:51

says it's not just faculty and deans at colleges

45:54

of education who resist the science. It's

45:56

also the publishing industry. That continues

45:58

to sell stuff that does not line up with

46:01

what the science

46:01

says. The American education

46:04

system has bought into whole language

46:06

literally. And it's hard to get rid

46:08

of it. Districts have spent so much

46:10

money on this stuff that

46:12

they may feel that their resources have

46:16

been used up. And also, of course,

46:18

the administrators who are responsible for

46:20

making the decisions of spending the money

46:23

want to defend their decisions. She

46:25

says educators convince themselves that

46:28

what they're doing is best practice. But

46:30

if you believe that what you've invested

46:32

in is the best there is when it comes

46:34

to teaching kids to read and still,

46:37

More than forty percent of the students in your school

46:39

district are struggling, what do you

46:41

do? You blame the kids.

46:43

You blame their families for not reading to them

46:45

enough. You blame poverty. And

46:48

then it's no longer shocking that

46:50

four in ten kids can't read very well.

46:52

It's just the way things are. You

46:58

might be thinking if phonics and

47:01

phonemic awareness are so important,

47:03

and lots of schools are doing such a

47:05

poor job teaching those things. How

47:07

does anyone learn to read? It's

47:09

a good question. I have lots of

47:11

experts. Basically, it comes

47:13

down to this. Some kids crack

47:16

the code quickly and easily. Experts

47:19

told me probably a third of children, maybe

47:21

a bit more don't need much instruction.

47:24

A parent points out some things about how

47:26

words work. A teacher does a bit of

47:28

phonics. The kid grows up watching electric

47:30

company like I

47:31

did. And she's off and

47:33

reading. It's not as if some students,

47:35

many students can't learn in ways

47:38

that we taught reading before. This

47:40

is Jack Silva again, the chief academic

47:42

officer in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

47:44

The question is, do you want all of them to be

47:46

able to read? There

47:50

is no evidence that phonetic instruction

47:53

is bad for kids, not even

47:55

kids who crack the code easily. In

47:57

fact, research shows good phonics

48:00

instruction helps them become better

48:02

spellers. This doesn't mean

48:04

that phonics is all kids need,

48:06

Remember, according to that math formula,

48:08

kids also need to know a lot of words and what

48:11

they mean. And that's why reading

48:13

to children and surrounding them with good

48:15

books is really important. The

48:17

whole language proponents are absolutely right

48:19

about that. But as I said before,

48:22

reading to kids and surrounding them with

48:24

books is not the same as teaching

48:27

them to read. According to

48:29

the research, what you should see in

48:31

every school is a heavy emphasis on

48:33

phonics instruction in the early grades.

48:36

Louisa Mote says the idea that this will make

48:38

reading harder or somehow turn kids

48:40

off to reading makes no sense.

48:43

It's the opposite. She

48:45

says if schools do a good job teaching

48:47

phonics in the early

48:48

grades, the kids read better

48:51

get off to a better start earlier

48:53

and they accelerate their progress faster

48:57

and read more and like it

48:59

better and so it becomes a

49:01

self reinforcing cycle. I

49:03

can read. Therefore, I like

49:05

to read. Therefore, I will read.

49:08

Whereas the converse is

49:10

true when you don't give

49:12

kids insight into the

49:14

code and don't arm them with

49:16

insight into language both spoken

49:19

and written, what happens is,

49:21

this is a mystery. I'm

49:23

not sure I'm getting what

49:25

these words really say. Therefore, I'm

49:27

uncomfortable and therefore, I

49:30

don't really like it.

49:36

The kids who suffer most when schools don't

49:38

give their students insight into the code

49:40

are kids with dyslexia.

49:42

They have an especially hard time understanding

49:45

the relationship between sounds and letters.

49:48

If

49:48

you're a kid with dyslexia from an upper income

49:50

family, someone is probably going

49:52

to notice that you're struggling and pay for

49:54

you to get the help you need. But what happens

49:57

to kids from poor families? All

49:59

you need to do is look at our nation's prison

50:02

population for an answer. Our

50:04

prisons are full of people who grew

50:06

up in poor families. And according

50:08

to a study of the Texas prison population,

50:11

nearly half of all inmates have dyslexia.

50:14

Half. They struggled to read

50:16

his kids and probably never got

50:18

the help they needed. If

50:22

you were a kid who was able to crack the

50:24

code with minimal instruction, You

50:26

should count your lucky stars. But

50:29

a question we should all be asking is,

50:31

why aren't we helping all kids learn

50:33

to read? For

50:38

Kelly Butler of the Barkdale Reading Institute

50:40

in Mississippi, the main problem

50:42

at this point is ignorance Too

50:45

many teachers, school administrators, and

50:47

college professors don't know the science.

50:50

She's

50:50

betting that teaching them the science is the

50:52

answer. Part of my

50:54

optimism about this is it's not

50:57

like we're just setting out to try to figure out how

50:59

to teach reading and so we can then teach everybody

51:01

how to do We know how to do it, so we need

51:03

need to get her done.

51:06

Mark Seidenberg is not as optimistic.

51:08

He's the cognitive scientist we heard from

51:10

in the first part of the program. He'd

51:13

like to believe that teaching the science

51:15

would be enough to change minds. But

51:17

he's not so

51:17

sure. He makes a comparison to

51:20

climate change too. And one thing that

51:22

we've learned from climate change

51:24

and the other issues over which we have

51:26

polarization in this country is that

51:28

facts aren't the thing that change people's

51:30

beliefs. In fact, confronted

51:33

with data that

51:36

contradict deeply held beliefs,

51:39

instead of bringing people closer

51:41

together, it can have the paradoxical

51:44

effects of and trenching them further.

51:49

If there is one fact that everyone

51:51

can surely agree on, it's that

51:53

kids need to know how to read. The

51:55

stakes are really high here. The

51:57

research shows children who don't learn

51:59

to read by the end of third grade are

52:01

likely to remain poor readers for the rest

52:04

of their lives. And they're likely to fall

52:06

behind in other academic areas too.

52:09

Right now, in this country, millions

52:11

of kids are struggling. And so are

52:13

teachers. Dozens of

52:15

teachers I've talked to have told me they

52:18

knew in their gut that the way they were

52:20

teaching reading wasn't working for

52:22

a lot of kids. But they didn't know what

52:24

else to do. They felt helpless

52:26

and guilty. They shouldn't have to feel

52:28

that way. Teachers need to

52:30

be taught how to teach kids to read.

52:33

The research is clear about how

52:35

to do it. You've

52:43

been listening to an APM reports documentary,

52:46

hard words. Why aren't our kids

52:48

being taught to read? It was produced

52:50

by me, Emily Hanford. The editor

52:52

was Chris Juulen with help from Katherine Winter.

52:55

Special thanks to Emerald O'Brien, Tom

52:57

Shacks, Liz Lyon and Tim Shanahan.

53:00

Our associate producer is Alex Baumhart.

53:03

Our web editors are Andy Cruz and

53:05

Dave Mann. The mix was by Chris

53:07

Juulen and Craig Thorson. Fact

53:09

checking by Betsy Town or Levine, theme

53:11

music by Gary Meister, The

53:13

APM reports team includes Sasha Azlanian

53:16

executive editor Steven Smith and

53:18

editor in chief Chris Worthington. We

53:21

have more about this story our website, including

53:23

a documentary about how schools are

53:25

failing kids with dyslexia. You can

53:27

find it at APM reports dot org

53:30

and on our podcast educate. If

53:33

you want more people to hear this program,

53:35

please share it on social media and review

53:38

it on your favorite podcast app. And

53:40

if you have a story to share about reading, please

53:42

write to us. The address is

53:44

contact at APM reports dot

53:46

org. Support for APM

53:48

reports comes from the Spencer Foundation and

53:51

Lumina Foundation. This is

53:53

APM American Public Media.

54:01

This is Emily again. You've been listening

54:03

to hard words from twenty eighteen.

54:06

We'll have a bonus episode of Soul

54:09

de Story coming soon, so

54:11

keep this podcast in your feeds.

54:13

If you want to find out more about the Soul of Story

54:15

podcast and all of our reporting on reading,

54:18

you can go to our website soldstory

54:21

dot org.