Latest / The Reading Instruction Show / George Hruby presents After the Flood: Reading Instruction Post SoR

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George Hruby presents After the Flood: Reading Instruction Post SoR · The Reading Instruction Show

1:20
I am thrilled to welcome Dr. George Ruby. I just
1:24
realized I had my microphone off when I was doing
1:26
your intro. Sorry about that. I'm gonna post
1:33
it. I'm gonna post it in the chat. Sorry about
1:36
that. Just know that it's incredible. If you
1:49
want to go ahead, go ahead, George. Oh, well,
1:52
hello, everyone. Thank you for signing in. I'm
1:57
thrilled to be here with Andy Johnson's webinars
2:01
and ILAC, a fantastic group. And you're just
2:06
a dedicated group of scholars and teachers and
2:11
educators. And I'm glad you're here. The title
2:18
of my presentation today is after the flood reading
2:21
instruction post science of reading Now what
2:25
in the world do I mean by that? Well before I
2:27
get started, maybe I should say a word about
2:28
me You may not know exactly who I am Which just
2:32
goes to show that how dedicated you are to the
2:34
ILEC And and I would say that well, let me begin
2:39
by saying Andy that I don't seem to be able to
2:45
Get my screen to move Oh, there we go. So most
2:48
people know me from the work that I've done synthesizing
2:52
the research in the neurosciences on reading
2:56
and reading difficulties and reading development.
3:00
This is just some of the work that I've done
3:03
along those lines. But I've done a lot of other
3:05
stuff as well, and I've published on other things
3:07
as well. But I mention this because I want you
3:11
to know that while I may be somewhat critical
3:13
of the science of reading, I am not critical
3:17
of science. And while science, like anything,
3:22
given human ingenuity, can be weaponized in oppressive
3:27
ways, it can also be very useful. So I think
3:32
especially now with the attack on science from
3:35
the right, and along with the attack on education
3:39
generally, we should be cautious. about being
3:44
overly critical about that. But I retired just
3:49
a year ago, and up until then, I was a research
3:53
title faculty at the University of Kentucky,
3:56
and the executive director of the Collaborative
3:58
Center for Literacy Development for the Commonwealth
4:00
of Kentucky. The CCLD was founded in 1998 by
4:04
the state legislature, had a very, very generous
4:08
budget, many millions of dollars per year. And
4:11
we provided teacher professional development
4:14
through the state universities and their faculty
4:17
at all eight of the state universities in the
4:19
Commonwealth of Kentucky. This shows the service
4:22
regions for those. I can say a lot about the
4:24
CCLD, but I really can't. But I just love it
4:26
so much because it's such great work working
4:28
with with teachers and helping them become the
4:31
sort of teachers that they wanted to be, allowing
4:33
them responsible autonomy to pursue the questions
4:37
that were of concern to them and to develop the
4:40
skills that they felt that their students would
4:44
be best served by rather than imposing pre -structured
4:50
programs. And I'll just share this little bit
4:53
of data. These are the National Assessment of
4:56
Educational Progress reading scores for Kentucky,
4:59
the United States, and Tennessee from 1992 to
5:03
2019. The black line is the US average. The light
5:07
blue line, Kentucky blue, is how well we did
5:12
in the Commonwealth. And you can see from 2002
5:15
forward, every single testing year, which is
5:18
about every other year. So it's about 12 testing
5:21
years. We scored significantly above the national
5:24
average. The red line there is Tennessee. Just
5:27
by point of comparison, we share our longest
5:29
border with Tennessee, just to the south. And
5:33
a much more affluent state, I might say. You
5:36
know the correlation between school achievement
5:38
and income. And it just so happens that we are,
5:45
through most of this time period, the fourth
5:46
poorest state in the union. And yet we defied
5:52
the odds, not in math, not in the other subject
5:54
areas, but we did it. And we did it through devoting
5:58
immense amount of resources to supporting our
6:01
teachers so that they could in turn support our
6:04
students. As I say, there's a lot about that
6:08
that I could go on about, but I won't, except
6:10
this. I had to spend a lot of time in the state
6:12
legislature ensuring that we maintained our budget.
6:16
We had lottery monies, we had appropriation lines,
6:18
and I brought in probably about three quarters
6:21
of a mil on average every year in grants. But
6:27
that money could easily have disappeared. And
6:29
so I had to be in there on a regular basis. And
6:31
I'm not a policy person. I'm not a government
6:33
person. I'm not an administrator, usually. I
6:37
mean, I became one for this position. And I learned
6:42
a lot by the seat of my pants. And I'm happy
6:44
to say that in the 14 years that I was there,
6:48
uh we never lost any of our funding even though
6:53
our state university where we're located and
6:56
the others as well sadly lost funding year over
6:59
year over year because of the sorts of budget
7:01
cuts that have been hitting the state universities
7:04
and their colleges of education deeply unfortunate
7:07
and it eventually began to have a toll on the
7:10
literacy faculty available to to work in our
7:12
programs ultimately our center was shut down
7:16
because of political pressure from the forces
7:19
that are behind the science of reading. So that
7:22
does bias my interpretation. But in fact, what
7:25
I'll be presenting tonight is rather similar
7:29
to what I've been presenting since 2020, 21,
7:32
22, 23, about what is really behind the science
7:35
of reading. And with that in mind, I would propose,
7:38
what should we be doing to prepare for what's
7:42
coming next? uh... some of you may know that
7:45
uh... back in twenty twenty i did a six minute
7:47
video on you to call what this politics is the
7:50
science of reading you can look that up it's
7:52
still there and it i did the point there that
7:56
uh... the initial caps give it away science of
7:59
reading is a branding And why would you brand
8:01
something called the science of reading? The
8:03
answer is to sell it. I didn't know exactly how
8:06
or what was going to be sold at that point. It
8:08
was 2020, but I soon enough found out, and I
8:11
imagine many of you have as well. I've also done
8:14
pro bono work for the states bordering Kentucky,
8:17
Ohio, Tennessee. North Carolina, even New York,
8:20
Wisconsin, Iowa, and yes, Minnesota. I got this
8:23
off a Minnesota government page. It's a research
8:26
piece. It's two pagers for legislators. But this
8:30
came out in 22, I believe. And so it's, you know,
8:34
I would offer, they tried to get me to come up
8:36
and present actually to the state legislature
8:38
up there. And I declined because of my schedule.
8:41
But, you know, it's been a tough fight everywhere
8:43
in the U .S. If you're not from the US, and I
8:48
know many of you are not, I want to point out
8:50
that what we call the science of reading is what
8:53
many of you refer to as evidence -based reading.
8:56
If you're in the UK or Ireland, Australia, perhaps
9:01
the EU, you refer to it as evidence -based. If
9:06
you're in Central Africa or in New Zealand, the
9:11
Maori schools, for instance, you might refer
9:14
to it as structured literacy. These are fairly
9:18
analogous terms, and they change. And what we
9:23
call science of reading now, we used to call
9:24
scientifically based reading back in the 90s,
9:27
in the early aughts. So these terms are flexible,
9:29
but the pedagogy, unfortunately, is not. My point
9:34
tonight is this. The science of reading is kaput.
9:38
It's done with. And the time to strategize for
9:41
what follows is now. Now, you might not believe
9:44
that, particularly if you're in the United States,
9:46
because it seems to be going strong. Legislation
9:50
in your state mandates that schools must use
9:55
a program or a teacher PD or an assessment that
9:59
is from an approved list from the State Department.
10:03
And interestingly, all the states with their
10:05
approved lists have the same pretty much approved
10:08
list and there's a reason for that and I'm going
10:12
to discuss that tonight because I think to have
10:16
a voice in what's coming next and we need to
10:19
have a voice we need to have influence on what's
10:21
coming next we need to take back our schools
10:24
take back literacy education for our students
10:27
and for our communities and to do that we have
10:30
to understand what the motivations are behind
10:33
the science of reading and many people have done
10:36
some really great work contributing to this.
10:39
I shouldn't say too many because it's sad to
10:42
say that, at least in the U .S., many teacher
10:46
education faculty are bewildered. We were hit
10:50
with this flood, it's like a tsunami, and it
10:52
came so fast. But some of us of a certain age,
10:55
a certain vintage, and Andy, I have to include
10:57
you here, and a number of other folks as well,
11:01
we were able to say that we knew what was coming
11:04
in the 20 teens. because we said we'd been here
11:07
before in the 1990s when we were starting our
11:10
career. When it came, we pretty much respected
11:13
what was behind it and we said so because we'd
11:16
been here before, you know, and we said, you
11:19
know, this isn't going to work. We've tried this.
11:21
We've been here before. And because we've been
11:24
here before, we also know that this too shall
11:26
pass. And the question is what's coming next?
11:29
And how do I know that it's about to? has or
11:32
that it already has. Well, I'll share some examples
11:36
of that. And then I'll talk about what I think
11:38
is behind it. And then I'll talk about the strategies
11:41
we have to consider for moving forward and what
11:45
maybe we might want to avoid. But there's lots
11:49
of room for disagreement. I would love to hear
11:51
your comments. I would love to hear your thoughts.
11:53
So I want to leave time at the end for discussion
11:55
about that. And this is a discussion which should
11:57
go on for a very long time. Just to make sure
12:01
we're on the same page. I'm not gonna talk about
12:03
the flood the zone kind of science of reading
12:05
You know the wild -eyed claims by Emily Hanford
12:07
and stuff like that. Our kids can't read You
12:10
know, really all of them at all at any level,
12:14
you know, come on. Have you ever met a kid in
12:16
school? Yeah, of course they can read Some kids
12:18
have more difficulty than others, but we're human
12:21
beings. And anything you want to measure a human
12:23
being, they differ. That's not a disability.
12:27
That's just the nature of organic growth and
12:31
development. People differ. They differ between
12:34
themselves, and they differ in response to their
12:37
own past. So what I'm talking about here isn't
12:41
the stuff like we're in a crisis. when in fact
12:43
we had the highest reading scores that we had
12:45
ever had in history, when Emily Hanford came
12:48
out with her, you know, hard words article with
12:52
American public media reports. I'm talking about
12:56
a legitimate stance, which I don't necessarily
12:58
agree with, but at least I respect the people
13:01
who do believe this. They believe you should
13:03
emphasize letter sounding over comprehension
13:05
and synthetic phonics over other phonics approaches
13:08
for word recognition. And if you're not sure
13:11
what synthetic phonics is, I would invite you
13:15
to go look at some of Andy's previous webinars.
13:18
There's a good one there about the different
13:19
types of phonics. And emphasizing decoding skills
13:26
over language comprehension development. in the
13:29
early elementary grades to a certain extent makes
13:32
sense. You can't do everything all at once. But
13:35
the idea that you should emphasize decoding to
13:37
the exclusion of everything else and not just
13:40
until second grade or third grade or fourth grade
13:44
but till, you know, fifth grade or even in one
13:47
state here, eighth grade. That's kind of crazy,
13:51
I think. The other thing that worries me about
13:54
the science of reading, even the legitimate science
13:56
of reading, is that it posits language developers
13:59
occurring naturally and you hear this said repeatedly
14:01
it's interesting they are vehemently against
14:04
whole language and whole language used to say
14:05
that you didn't have to be overly structured
14:09
with decoding skills instruction because kids
14:12
would develop an understanding of that naturally
14:14
provided you focused on meaning now not all whole
14:17
language people said that but some people did
14:19
So it's strange that they are now, you know,
14:23
taking the exact same tact. But the problem is
14:26
we all know that language develops in response
14:28
to the linguistic environments that a child inhabits.
14:32
And those who inhabit linguistic environments
14:34
that are privileged by the school system, the
14:36
text they use, the language conventions they
14:39
privilege, the language conventions they test.
14:44
are at an advantage compared to those who don't
14:47
have that, or not as far along in their language
14:50
development. And so language comprehension, which
14:53
starts in the earliest months and years of life
14:56
and continues throughout your life, should not
14:58
come to a screeching halt just because you're
15:00
going to do decoding skills in the early elementary
15:03
grades. It should continue on, I would say. The
15:07
other thing about science of reading is it's
15:08
prepaced, packaged, scripted, systematic, structured,
15:11
technologized. Now Andy says that structured
15:15
or systematic just means that it's organized.
15:17
And if that's all it means, that's fine. I mean,
15:19
who's ever recommended disorganized literacy
15:22
instruction, right? But what they're really talking
15:25
about here is a preset structure that is supposed
15:30
to be marched out. presented by the teacher or
15:33
increasingly now by the technology itself directly
15:37
to the children. And this is not going very well.
15:43
Let's remind ourselves what science is. I saw
15:46
this quote in the New York Times. It's by Celine
15:49
Gonder, an epidemiologist. She's talking about,
15:53
this is in relation to the assault on the CDC
15:58
and the health. department here in the US and
16:02
funding for medical research and scientific research
16:06
and so on. And she points out that science is
16:08
a method for formulating and testing hypotheses.
16:11
It is not a fixed set of facts. It should work
16:15
alongside other ways of knowing, but it must
16:17
also be protected from political or commercial
16:20
capture. Protecting the science is, I should
16:29
say, of literacy education from political or
16:32
commercial capture is what my presentation today
16:35
is all about. She goes on to say that perhaps
16:37
I'm naive to think that such preservation is
16:39
possible, but when it fails, people manipulate
16:42
facts, trust collapses, and public decisions
16:45
lose their anchor in a shared understanding of
16:47
reality. This undermines the very goals of public
16:50
health policy, and I would say public education
16:53
policy, which is meant to be a collective endeavor,
16:57
a collective endeavor And we need to get back
17:01
in the game, making sure our voice is heard,
17:04
not as a course of demands, but as an informed
17:08
set of professionals who are there to guide those
17:12
less well -informed, but who have their own vested
17:15
interest in our education systems being successful.
17:20
And these are many. Now, I would say, I think
17:25
this is true for the Anglophone world generally.
17:27
uh... but certainly true in the u s that there
17:30
is this uh... pension by the general public for
17:33
uh... lord is called scientism Okay, and it's
17:36
basically science for people who don't understand
17:38
very much about it kind of conflates science
17:41
with technology and accountancy You know and
17:43
if you ever been to Tomorrowland at Disneyworld,
17:46
you know, it's kind of like that or the Jetsons
17:48
or Star Wars You know, they love new technology.
17:51
We all love to run out to buy the latest iPhone
17:54
You know or the or the latest laptop and we just
17:58
take it for granted that this is progress and
18:00
it's turned out that we're kind of being led
18:04
into places that we've never really asked for,
18:06
and maybe we don't really want to go. And with
18:08
AI now emerging, this question has been asked
18:11
much more loudly and evidently. But I point out
18:16
that scientism is not the same thing as science.
18:20
Okay, with that under our belt, let's look at
18:24
the what I would call health metrics for science
18:27
of reading as of the early 2026. We have declining
18:34
reading scores since 2019. In 2015, U .S. NAEP
18:40
reading scores for fourth grade readers was the
18:42
highest it had ever been in the U .S. in history.
18:46
It was a full half grade level above where it
18:50
had been in 2000. Today, we're back down to where
18:55
we were in 1998. There are reports of childhood
19:00
mental health issues related to technology use.
19:02
And while the focus on this has been first on
19:04
too much phone use, actually first on COVID,
19:07
then too much phone use, then the nature of social
19:10
media and the rather toxic content that's available
19:13
there. But increasingly parents are expressing
19:17
their concern about the use of technology in
19:19
the schools and the technologization of scientifically
19:23
based reading or science of reading. is an issue
19:27
that I want to touch on, because it is related
19:29
to what's behind it all. We've had a loss of
19:34
emergency federal learning lag funding that was
19:36
there for COVID. It began a little bit in the
19:40
late 2020, two large amounts in 2021, but in
19:45
2024 it ended. And now that is creating financial
19:49
problems for the schools who are forced to face
19:51
financial contingency. Pulling back, they can
19:54
no longer afford the two -year leases on their
19:59
operating systems. They are two -year leases
20:01
on the programs that run on the operating systems.
20:04
The two -year leases and licenses for all the
20:06
testing that they do, the diagnostics, the screeners,
20:09
the progress monitors, the summatives. They can't
20:14
do that anymore, you know? And it's creating
20:18
problems. Purveyors are trying to kick the can
20:21
down the road. They're offering special deals.
20:24
There's a blockage here, but that can't go on
20:27
for very much longer. Associated with this, we
20:32
see a retreat of aggressive pro -science of reading
20:34
public relations and gentle admissions of failures
20:37
at websites that used to be dedicated entirely
20:40
to the science of reading orthodoxy, vehement
20:43
about it. And there were even some mainstream
20:45
outlets that allowed these sorts of stories to
20:48
be run as well, even the New York Times, the
20:51
Washington Post, and so forth. We've seen an
20:56
increase in mainstream and social media on the
20:58
importance of comprehension, deep reading, writing,
21:01
language development. That's wonderful. But why
21:03
weren't people acknowledging this five years
21:06
ago, three years ago? The reason is they're no
21:11
longer getting the funding that they were used
21:13
to getting to support science of reading. No
21:16
spoilers here. The AI threat to the software
21:19
industry, including EduTech, EduTech software,
21:22
those proprietary programs the schools have to
21:25
buy. There's a threat to that industry. And as
21:28
a result, it's undermining the private equity
21:30
investments in those companies, as well as in
21:34
private equity finance that are loaning large
21:38
and rather risky bets to those software startup
21:42
companies. More on that later, if you're not
21:44
familiar with what this is about. Parent groups
21:47
are pushing back against technology in the schools
21:49
and finally the mainstream media is beginning
21:53
to run stories acknowledging this and the science
21:56
of reading professional development is Now being
21:59
extended into high schools now that might seem
22:02
like a further advance of the science of reading
22:05
but that is a coffin nail I remember reading
22:10
first and you knew it was over when in the late
22:16
Aughts The question emerged though, okay, so
22:20
the funding is ending on reading first. It hasn't
22:23
done what it was supposed to have done. We've
22:26
hired all these reading coaches, which were essentially
22:28
fidelity monitors. They didn't really, they weren't
22:31
qualified or certified to teach kids themselves,
22:34
but they would show up at the schools with their
22:37
clipboards and their checklist and they walked
22:38
down the halls, looking in the windows, making
22:40
sure the teachers were actually doing what they
22:42
were supposed to be doing. So when the whole
22:44
program ended, what do you do with those folks?
22:46
Do you just gonna let them go? Well, what they
22:48
did is, they sent him into the secondary schools,
22:50
into high schools, to teach and provide PD to
22:53
the high school teachers, the English language
22:55
arts teachers, to teach them how to teach early
22:58
elementary reading. What? Needless to say, the
23:02
teachers wouldn't stand for that and eventually
23:04
the principals reported to the teachers. departments
23:07
of the State Departments of Education and isn't
23:10
a very good idea and it lasted I think about
23:12
two years and didn't didn't go well at all. But
23:14
we're seeing this again. It's called the science
23:16
of secondary reading. The only thing I love about
23:18
this is the SOSR. In other words, it's SOR giving
23:23
us an SOS. Okay, I'll just leave it at that.
23:29
Now, I'm not going to walk you through all these
23:31
stories. Here's one from the Los Angeles time
23:33
on how Mississippi gained its national reading
23:35
test scores to produce miracle gains. But of
23:37
course, the story is going to tell you that it's
23:39
because third graders who don't read very well
23:42
are held back and therefore are not included
23:44
in the fourth graders who are tested on the NAEP.
23:48
And so that increases your NAEP average and increases
23:50
your state score. I didn't know that. And holding
23:54
kids back in third grade raises other problems.
23:58
long -run costs, both financial as well as to
24:01
the child's reading development and their schooling,
24:03
they're more likely to drop out because they'll
24:06
be older by the time they get to high school.
24:08
Just like phonics, comprehension requires explicit
24:11
teaching. Yeah, 2020 -2019, I had a piece in
24:14
Kappen about the disappearance of oral language
24:17
in early elementary reading standards. What was
24:20
going on with that? slowly but surely this stuff
24:23
pieces together, you know, and on and on it goes.
24:26
Here's one reading's thin line between difficult
24:28
and boring. Did you know that it's the teacher's
24:30
responsibility to keep the kids motivated? Even
24:33
though in many classrooms in America today, thanks
24:35
to the technology, they no longer have any control
24:38
over the instruction. They don't plan the lessons,
24:41
they don't design the curriculum, but somehow
24:44
they're responsible to keeping the kids interested.
24:47
in low level skill drilling. Okay, well on and
24:50
on it goes disappointing, you know, Ohio science
24:54
of reading switch, not yet bringing results in
24:57
some urban districts, science of reading limits,
24:59
robust comprehension. So my point is that there's
25:02
this admission that maybe things that we were
25:05
cheering about aren't working as well as we had
25:08
promised they would. The cost of over teaching
25:11
phonics, again, both financial as well as developmental.
25:16
The real culprit of our literacy gap? The kids
25:18
don't have any time to read. Well, when you're,
25:21
you know, this is what Murzoff in Boston Review
25:25
in his essay last year was pointed out. There's
25:27
an instrumentalist bias to this edu -tech software.
25:31
It's all based on computer game design theory.
25:34
And so the idea is to keep you continually, you
25:38
know, interactive with the program. For that
25:44
reason, anything that involves time away from
25:47
the program, away from the machines, away from
25:50
the operating system, is disappeared from our
25:54
curriculum. Kids need time to practice their
25:58
reading and their writing and their discussions.
26:02
We do have this. We have open AI and Microsoft
26:05
bankrolling, new AI training for teachers. This
26:08
came out in the Times just last summer. And more
26:10
recently, a week ago, Malene Trump wants robots
26:13
to teach your kids. So yeah, technology, it's
26:16
very much in the classroom and more is on the
26:19
way. another disconcerting sign at the House
26:24
of Representatives in Congress, a bill has been
26:27
put forward that is essentially identical to
26:29
the science of reading bill you probably have
26:31
in your state if you live in the US that prohibits
26:36
the three queuing system that mandates that you
26:38
use science of reading approved reading programs.
26:42
And you know, this is remarkable because it's
26:44
a Republican controlled Congress. Why would the
26:47
House propose to essentially take back for the
26:51
federal government control of school curriculum,
26:55
when back in 2015, the Republicans worked so
26:58
hard to get the Elementary and Secondary Education
27:02
Act revised to take control away from the feds
27:06
and give it back to the states. And the reason
27:09
is, I'm here to tell you, something that is near
27:13
and dear to every red -blooded American. and
27:17
probably many of you who aren't Americans. It's
27:20
called money and lots of it. How much money am
27:24
I talking about? I'm talking about $190 billion.
27:29
That's how much money the federal government
27:33
threw at post pandemic learning lag relief from
27:35
2021 to 2024. It was well intended. The largest
27:42
portion of that probably went to infrastructure
27:44
development, and that includes building new schools
27:47
and refurbishing old schools that needed it severely.
27:53
But a big chunk of that is also technology infrastructure,
27:57
because the same thing that, at the same time
28:00
that COVID was going on, 5G networks were being
28:03
brought in. And it's the 5G network streaming
28:06
that allows the kind of instructional technology
28:09
that we have in the schools today. Now I want
28:11
you to visualize this with me. How much is $190
28:15
billion? Well, let's start small. Imagine $100
28:20
,000. Imagine earning $100 ,000. You probably
28:24
don't earn that much, but if you're part of a
28:26
two -income earning family, you might. And you
28:28
certainly probably know people who do, people
28:30
further up the food chain, your principal or
28:33
the district superintendent, the dean of the
28:36
College of Education or whomever. Okay, so fine.
28:40
And you know, celebrities and business tycoons
28:42
who make a heck of a lot more. But you can imagine
28:45
$100 ,000, okay? How long would it take you hundred
28:48
thousand dollars a year to earn one million dollars
28:52
just one million and the answer is ten years
28:55
okay well you can imagine ten years you can imagine
28:58
a hundred thousand so you can get your head around
29:00
a million bucks how long would it take you at
29:02
the rate of a hundred thousand dollars a year
29:05
to earn one just one billion dollars and the
29:09
answer is ten thousand years Now, you're not
29:15
going to live that long, obviously. Most of us
29:17
can't trace our own ancestry back 200 years.
29:21
And 10 ,000 years ago, think about 10 ,000 years
29:23
ago, there was no agriculture. There was no pottery.
29:27
There was no metallurgy. There certainly was
29:32
no literacy. The earliest quasi -permanent settlements
29:38
were appearing. They seemed to be mostly for
29:41
periodic religious observation where the hunter
29:44
-gatherers would come together, and it's mostly
29:46
in the Fertile Crescent area of the Middle East
29:48
and southern Turkey. So, you know, I mean, that's
29:52
just an immense amount of time, and that's just
29:54
1 billion. 190 billion? That'd be 1 .9 million
29:58
years ago. There weren't even any Homo sapiens
29:59
around back then. So, okay, so maybe that does
30:03
or does not explain what's going on here. The
30:05
problem is the states have lost what the legislators
30:08
call free money. And they can't afford to maintain
30:12
all these mandates that they've legislated. So
30:15
they want to throw the baby back over to the
30:17
federal government, which has the ability, which
30:19
states do not, and which school districts certainly
30:21
do not, to just print money. And so I think that's
30:29
what's behind this. But I sincerely doubt the
30:31
Senate's going to pass this. But always remember
30:33
this, and remember this in relation to the legislation
30:36
in your own state. Anything that gets passed
30:39
into law can be modified. It's not a one and
30:43
done sort of situation. I learned that when having
30:46
my own victories, the very next year, you have
30:50
to be back at it defending it again. So keep
30:53
that in mind. Let's look at a little history.
30:57
Here again, the NAEP scores, the black line there
31:00
in the middle, this is from 1992, and the lines
31:03
here at this point go to 2017. Black line in
31:07
the middle is the national average for fourth
31:09
grade. The light blue line, that's the thick
31:13
one, that's Kentucky. The others are other states,
31:16
you don't need to get into that. But I just have
31:20
that out there to show you that during the...
31:24
from 1994 through 2017, it was an upward, slow
31:30
but steady, upward improvement in how well our
31:33
fourth grade readers were doing. And you see
31:34
the same thing at the eighth grade level as well.
31:39
Then in 2018 comes hard words. Emily Hanford's
31:45
APM report story claiming that our kids cannot
31:48
read. They're teaching kids to guess the words.
31:52
Right? They're not teaching phonics. No empirical
31:55
evidence for any of this. Sweeping assertions
31:57
that couldn't possibly be true, let alone probable.
32:01
And we are doing better than we had ever been
32:04
done before, historically. Well, here's what
32:07
happens after that story. And you can't blame
32:10
it on Emily. There were other things going on.
32:14
From around 2013 to 2019, there was a push for
32:18
urban district phonics for the major urban districts.
32:22
The push for phonics remediation starts in the
32:24
early 20 teens. It morphs into mainstream classroom
32:29
instruction for children who are at risk, which,
32:32
when you know it, are kids who are more likely
32:34
to be in poverty, who are more likely to be English
32:36
language learners, who are more likely to be
32:38
minority. And that's all the students you find
32:41
in urban districts. So that's what was funded
32:44
and it was a colossal disaster. Here are the
32:47
NAEP district scores from 2015 to 2019. The bottom
32:51
seven cities there all were doing science of
32:56
phonics. skill drilling in the classroom and
32:59
PD for the K through three teachers. I saw it
33:02
happening in Jefferson County, Kentucky, which
33:05
is Louisville, but our center was banned from
33:08
Louisville because they had a private agreement
33:12
with a local. private university one million
33:15
dollars a year to provide this training and I
33:18
had conversations with the folks there and I
33:20
said, you know, I think you need to include some
33:22
comprehension and language development support.
33:24
They didn't want to hear it. They'd done this
33:26
before. They sure had. They'd done it in the
33:28
University of Memphis in Tennessee where it had
33:30
been a colossal failure and before that in Houston
33:32
where it was a failure and as you can plainly
33:34
see it was a failure here too. Meanwhile, however,
33:37
San Diego and Fresno too, high poverty districts,
33:41
high ELL districts, high minority districts,
33:44
they are doing very well. What's going on there?
33:47
Well, California started a little early on this
33:51
urban phonics push, and when it didn't work out
33:54
very well, they allowed districts to propose
33:56
modifications. Here's my rendition of the Fresno
34:01
Unified literacy wheel. Yeah, they did phonics
34:05
and phonemic awareness. They did fluency practice
34:07
and so forth But they did a lot of other things
34:10
as well speaking and listening reasoning strategy
34:13
use engagement and motivation vocabulary and
34:15
writing and and They bracketed the whole thing
34:18
with language and and ELL support and they got
34:22
results So, you know, there's just another one
34:25
of those little Correlations that aren't causation
34:29
that kind of suggests maybe something's going
34:31
on here And it shouldn't be surprising, because
34:34
that darn national reading panel report that
34:36
you're going to hear a lot about next month when
34:38
Denny Taylor presents, this is a quote from the
34:42
subsection on phonics. It is important to emphasize
34:46
that systematic phonics instruction should be
34:49
integrated with other reading instruction to
34:51
create a balanced reading program. That's right,
34:55
create a balanced reading program. The NRP report
34:59
recommends that. Phonics instruction is never
35:01
a total reading program. Phonics should not become
35:04
the dominant component in a reading program,
35:07
neither in the amount of time devoted to it nor
35:09
in the significance attached. By emphasizing
35:12
all the processes that contribute to growth in
35:14
reading, teachers will have the best chance of
35:17
making every child a reader. That's a national
35:20
reading panel report that many people misrepresent
35:22
as supporting the science of reading and an overemphasis
35:27
on synthetic phonics skill drilling in systematic
35:30
fashion. So that's what happened there. And then
35:35
it morphs into science of reading, because why
35:37
just allow the urban districts to suffer? Let
35:39
all the districts in your state suffer. And that's
35:43
what happened. Then, of course, comes COVID.
35:45
OK, that's that yellow bar. And then comes the
35:49
$190 billion to make everything better. OK? This
35:57
coincides with the classroom digital technology
35:59
push, which gets started in the 20 aughts with
36:02
the one child, one laptop movement, right? And
36:06
people like the Gates Foundation and the Hewlett
36:08
Foundation and other philanthropies funded by
36:11
big tech companies. No surprise why they want
36:16
that. Here's some of the secret sauce behind
36:22
what's going on. This is a chart. And on the
36:26
left -hand side, you see the top five, as best
36:28
I can determine, the five most commonly used
36:32
science of reading approved reading programs
36:34
for early reading. And I've actually done this
36:38
list down to the top seven, but I couldn't fit
36:40
that in here. So these are the top five. The
36:43
middle column are the publishers, and you may
36:45
already know that if you have to deal with any
36:48
of these programs. But on the right -hand side
36:50
are the owners. And what you'll notice is that
36:53
every single one is an equity, a private equity
36:57
group or hedge fund. And in bold, I have the
37:01
years that they bought the publishers that you
37:05
see in the middle column. And you can see most
37:08
of them are 21, 22, 23, right? Which is the year
37:13
when the big $190 billion hit the table. That
37:18
free money was there for the states to use, and
37:22
anything that stood to profit from the science
37:25
of reading was bought up by private equity. They're
37:29
no fools. They know where the money is and they
37:31
know how to handle an amount as large as $190
37:34
billion. There were three that were early in,
37:37
I must say. The first is the Emerson Collective.
37:40
That's the core of the Applify and core knowledge
37:42
language arts. Emerson Collective is owned by
37:44
Lauren Jobs, the wife of Steve Jobs, right? The
37:48
co -founder of Apple and I should say the widow.
37:53
But she's certainly savvy about technology and
37:56
the people she has on her team certainly are
37:58
savvy. And they saw what was coming, 5G networks
38:01
that would allow things like the Khan Academy,
38:04
which was very important. It got lots of good
38:07
publicity in the 20 teens to really get serious
38:10
within the schools. And you know, I'm an Apple
38:14
fan on that. But but so she was early in on that.
38:17
So was Silver Lake Technology Management. I mean,
38:20
the name speaks for itself. It's a private equity
38:23
group that bought Weld North Education, and that
38:26
publishes Imagine Learning. And Veritas Capital,
38:30
which in 2018 bought Cambium Learning, which
38:33
produces Kurzweil learning, or learning from
38:35
A to Z. You know, they specialize in online educational
38:43
programs at that time. But it wasn't until 21
38:46
that Veritas got super serious. They bought Rosetta
38:49
Stone, an online foreign language program, and
38:54
they took off its learning division, Lexia. and
38:59
combined it with Voyager Sopris, an imprint that
39:02
Cambium owned, each of which had their own unfortunate
39:06
reading program, and turned it into what, in
39:08
a press release, they called their super brand,
39:10
Lexia Learning, which then proceeded for 125
39:13
million to buy the rights to the letters program
39:15
from Motz and Tolman. They also began to become
39:18
the major corporate sponsor for the International
39:21
Dyslexia Association, which, by the way, has
39:24
the registered trademark at the U .S. Patent
39:26
Office for the term Structured Literacy. In 22,
39:31
they're a task bought Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
39:34
major conglomerate itself the result of the merger
39:36
of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Brace and Holt Reinhardt.
39:40
And they owned InterReading, the number one foremost
39:42
used reading program for science of reading.
39:45
In fact, if you're in New York City, it's the
39:48
only one you're allowed to use. And a year later,
39:51
They bought Northwest Education Association,
39:53
the owners of the MAP test, the measures of academic
39:56
progress in reading and math, foremost progress
39:59
monitoring. test in the U .S. So that's just
40:04
a taste of, you know, what's going on. Now, I
40:06
want to say, Veritas, I hope, through Old Mifflin
40:09
Hardcourt, also owns Heinemann. So they produce
40:11
good stuff. The problem with Heinemann's stuff
40:13
is, especially with people like Lucy Calkins
40:15
and Fonteson Pannell, the problem with that stuff
40:18
is that it wasn't amenable to quick application
40:22
with online, engaged, low -level skill drilling.
40:27
in a Q and response behaviorist fashion, which
40:30
is what the computer game design requires. And
40:35
so that is the big money behind the science of
40:39
reading. And what about those laws that got passed?
40:42
Well, this is a timeline. It reads from the top
40:45
down the top. A block there is Mississippi, 2013.
40:49
The bottom set of blocks is 2024. So if you read
40:52
it down, you see Mississippi passes its law,
40:55
South Carolina the next year, Nevada the year
40:57
after that. But by 2018, only seven states have
41:01
passed such laws. And most of the states are
41:04
toothless. There's no mandates, there's recommendations,
41:07
but there's no money behind it. So there's not
41:09
a big deal. Then comes COVID, that's the red
41:11
line. Then comes the 190 billion, that's the
41:15
green line. And you can see the explosion of
41:18
states that suddenly passed science of reading
41:21
laws. And these laws now are highly aggressive.
41:24
They mandate curricula. They mandate teacher
41:26
trainings, certain products that must be used,
41:29
certain things that cannot be used. 14 states
41:32
prohibit the three -queuing model, basically
41:36
the teaching of reading from using meaning. Really?
41:41
So, and I'm sad to say the closure of literacy
41:44
teacher professional development centers like
41:46
the CCLD, which was because of pressure through
41:49
the new very right wing board of directors on
41:54
the upper administration of the University of
41:56
Kentucky. So we were finished and replaced with
42:00
a reading research center, which doesn't seem
42:02
to get any funding and isn't doing anything in
42:04
Kentucky, as far as I can tell, but I could be
42:06
wrong. Now, is it a matter of corruption? Do
42:13
these big money folks hire lobbyists? Well, yes.
42:17
And do they go in and they corrupt the morals
42:19
of our noble legislators? No. Our legislators
42:22
actively go out looking for this funding, especially
42:25
if they're in the assembly or the House of Representatives.
42:29
Every two years, they got to run for reelection.
42:31
The minute they get elected, they're on the phone
42:34
to their funders trying to get more. Money, you
42:37
know, billionaires are swaying elections in all
42:40
corners of America. I'm just reading. I'm like
42:42
Ted Danson and the man on the inside. I'm just
42:43
reading you the headlines here, you know, from
42:45
my clip file. Four things billionaires are doing
42:48
with their money to influence elections, which
42:50
include board of election. uh board of education
42:54
elections right wealthy to over the past two
42:56
election cycles two billionaires that's two people
42:59
have provided more than nine million dollars
43:01
to fund the california charter schools association
43:03
which in turn has contributed to a range of legislative
43:06
and school board races including one in 2024
43:09
for the sacramento county board of education
43:12
okay you gotta read this stuff folks you gotta
43:15
watch what they're doing over there at the wall
43:17
street journal too they're telling you about
43:19
this stuff they're not they're not hiding any
43:20
of this stuff and it's not illegal and I think
43:23
this is where we need to maybe get a little more
43:26
savvy and realize that those resources could
43:28
be used for good and I'm not I'm pretty sure
43:31
that these folks aren't really out to harm kids
43:34
they just Don't care that they don't stay awake
43:36
at night worrying about how kids learn their
43:38
phonics, you know So if you want to know what
43:40
drove a science of reading predisposition towards
43:43
scientism A lot of ed tech tools that are always
43:46
wowing us the science of reading story promising
43:49
We have a crisis 190 billion dollars to address
43:52
the crisis Suddenly social and mainstream media
43:55
advocacy out the wazoo and voila science of reading
43:58
laws mandating science of reading And there you
44:01
have it uh now The timeline now takes you to
44:06
2022. What happened in 2024? Well, everybody
44:10
knew there was going to be a rebound. And everybody
44:12
knew that the science of reading folks were going
44:14
to take credit for it. And for those of us who
44:17
knew that was bunk, we were really upset. But
44:19
you know what happened? The scores continued
44:21
to drop. Most states continued to drop. So we're
44:27
now in 2026. We won't know the scores for 26
44:30
until probably January of 27. So that's coming
44:33
up next. So here's where we are. The Fed dollars
44:38
ended in 24. The NAEP reading scores are down
44:40
eight points. And you software losing value due
44:43
to AI threat. What's that about? Well, I got
44:44
to tell you this real quick, real fast. AI can
44:48
not only can generate a realistic human language,
44:52
it can also generate functional. So you don't
44:56
need to buy preparatory software from, you know,
45:00
these publishing companies that have turned into
45:02
tech companies. You can just get AI to produce
45:06
your program for you, a bespoke or custom program
45:09
to address your and your students' needs, you
45:13
know, aligned with what is going to be functional
45:16
and responsive to them and their community. Now,
45:22
do we know how to do that? I know I certainly
45:24
don't. You probably don't either. But imagine
45:26
where you had a critical mass of talent, an urban
45:29
district, where you had good teachers, teacher
45:31
educators, educational researchers working together
45:34
with IT people who knew how to do the prompts
45:37
to get AI to produce this kind of thing and beta
45:40
test it and get the bugs out. You'd have programs
45:43
that were custom made for you. Don't make you
45:46
do stuff you don't want to do, that forced stuff
45:49
upon you you never asked for. I think there's
45:51
a lot of potential here for power and liberation,
45:55
but you know what? Technology is always promising
45:58
power and liberation, and it always turns into
46:01
surveillance and control. So I'm not so sure,
46:04
but we'll have to see. More headlines. Oakland
46:06
can't afford to dismantle its literacy infrastructure,
46:09
but it has no choice. It's over 100 grand in
46:12
the red. The future of e -books in school libraries,
46:15
says Publishers Weekly. School libraries face
46:17
shrinking budgets and a shifting vendor landscape
46:19
for digital materials. Even the one laptop per
46:24
child movement back in 2009, this is from 2009,
46:27
in the subhead it says, the vision is being overwhelmed
46:30
by the reality of business, politics, logistics,
46:33
and competing interests worldwide. And that's
46:35
the story with the science of reading. It's an
46:38
alliance of convenience. Advocates for phonics
46:41
and curriculum, people with pet theories about
46:43
teaching and learning, policy advocates, political
46:46
PACs, publicists and media, lobbyists and lawyers,
46:49
all with their shingles out, and behind it all,
46:52
the big money. Dintech, edutech, hedge funds
46:55
and private equity, okay? It's an alliance of
46:58
convenience, but these things fall apart pretty
47:00
easily. And when the funding stops, as it has,
47:03
and when the scores plummet, which is not a good
47:05
look, as it has, something has got to give. And
47:09
people are already starting to snipe at one another.
47:11
Here's The Economist, the foremost publication
47:14
for the business world, right? And tech is profitable.
47:17
It is also mostly useless. Independent research
47:20
identifies few learning gains. Wow. When the
47:25
economist gives you a thumbs down on your financial
47:27
model, your business model, you're in trouble.
47:29
Here's from the times which was always heavy
47:31
breathing for science of reading. It's starting
47:33
to confess up. From book remorse, tech backlash
47:36
at schools extends beyond the phones. Well, Wall
47:39
Street Journal was onto that two years ago. Screens
47:41
have taken over classrooms. Even students have
47:43
had enough. Educators question whether the rapid
47:46
shift toward more technology has benefited learning.
47:49
When kids adopt new technologies, hype can turn
47:51
to backlash. And indeed, parents are now rising.
47:54
Schools beyond screens. Join the movement. Safe
47:57
and intentional tech in school. Call to action
48:00
from Los Angeles Unified School District. Here's
48:05
another one. Excuse me. distraction -free schools,
48:08
a policy project with Jared Horvath, who's a
48:13
cognitive neuroscientist, but he's got a book,
48:15
The Digital Delusion, and it really hits hard.
48:19
But this is interesting, because his webinar
48:20
is focused on legislators, school administrators,
48:23
and district leaders, right, and he's identifying
48:26
them as the decision -makers. I think it's time
48:28
we got involved in becoming decision -makers
48:30
too, you know, and we will. And here are the
48:33
tech titans, you know these folks, they're all,
48:34
this is a photo of them at Trump's second inauguration.
48:38
In 2024, there was strong bipartisan support
48:43
in both the House and the U .S. Senate for the
48:47
online Kids Safety Act. And the Senate said,
48:51
OK, this looks good, sends it back to the House.
48:53
There's a few tweaks you need. And one of them
48:55
is about a phrase is that the tech titans don't
48:59
like so much and it was duty of care the idea
49:02
that tech titans who were producing products
49:04
that are being used by children have some duty
49:07
to do no harm to the children was an outrage
49:10
it impinged upon their their their liberty and
49:14
their free market ethos okay and what happened
49:17
it shot down the kids safety act and it did not
49:20
even come back up again in 25 but it is back
49:23
up again this year i think it's got a better
49:25
chance of past Meanwhile, juries are paying out,
49:32
you know, making decisions that are forcing Meta,
49:35
there's two, just this past week. Meta and YouTube
49:38
got whacked for being responsible for their customers'
49:44
well -being. In Europe... they take a much more
49:48
measured approach and they plan in advance. So
49:52
they're doing things as well. Australia has prohibitions
49:56
against certain media for young kids, and that's
50:00
just reasonable. So when I look in the schools,
50:02
When I see the science of reading, I see excessive
50:05
use of screens and keyboards despite their limits,
50:07
a loss of oral language, writing instruction,
50:09
book reading in the curriculum, limiting activities
50:12
for engagement, creativity, and personal relevance
50:14
in classroom instruction, shuddering the socio
50:16
-emotional support of classroom community. I
50:19
see, of course, you know there's laws mandating
50:21
lower level skill drilling, outlawing higher
50:23
order reading for meaning, prohibiting three
50:25
queuing methods, displacing higher order language
50:28
use and knowledge development, because the computers...
50:31
Maybe it'll change with AI, but the computers
50:34
can't do that. They can't engage in a helpful
50:37
way. So therefore, what happens? Do we put the
50:39
computers aside? No! We keep doing what the computers
50:42
can do. This is what Morozov meant by instrumentalist
50:45
bias. The technology systems there deliver instruction
50:49
with fidelity, displacing teachers' autonomy
50:52
to effectively mediate the instruction and muting
50:55
teachers' cognitive and social mentoring for
50:57
the students. This is terrible. Okay? Displacing
51:01
a higher -order language, it isn't just reading
51:04
skills and writing skills. All right? Once you
51:09
get past the decoding stage, you must be reading
51:11
for meaning in order to advance your language
51:15
development, because the advancement of language
51:18
development is responsible for the advance of
51:21
your symbolic reasoning. You're not born with
51:23
symbolic reasoning. You're born with the capacity
51:25
for it. But the symbolic reasoning you master
51:27
is what you encounter in your culture, just like
51:30
the language that you develop is the language
51:32
you encounter in your culture. And what is the
51:35
first and most paramount symbol system that a
51:38
young child must master? Language. And that's
51:41
why the measures of these two things correlate
51:43
so powerfully. But it's that symbolic reasoning
51:46
that g -weights all of our standardized tests
51:49
and makes them reliable. Otherwise, they wouldn't
51:52
be valid as instrumental. for measurement, and
51:56
they may not be valid for what we really need,
51:59
but they are reliable. And of course, we don't
52:03
just use language and reason symbolically. We
52:05
use language and reason symbolically about stuff,
52:07
and the stuff about which we use language and
52:09
reason symbolically becomes our prior knowledge,
52:11
which is crucially important for language comprehension,
52:14
which is crucially important for reading comprehension.
52:17
So we're not just talking about simple reading
52:18
and writing skills, the mechanics. We're talking
52:22
about improved language reasoning and knowledge
52:26
for communication learning and thought what is
52:30
required to be a member of a democratic polity
52:35
rather than a serf okay I could go on you know
52:39
me but I won't instead I'll just jump ahead here
52:44
there's so many great things that you need to
52:47
check in on including people from uh people whose
52:49
political views you may not agree with but it's
52:53
worth remembering now here's here's uh this is
52:56
just for fun and then i gotta wrap it up i think
52:58
right because i'm getting at the end of my time
53:00
um every 30 years we switch in america between
53:06
didactic reading instruction and experiential
53:09
reading instruction. For the past 30 years, we've
53:12
been focused on didactic, as I'll show you. Experiential
53:15
is sometimes called holistic, didactic is usually
53:17
called scientific, but really they're both scientific
53:20
and they're both. holistic. And there will always
53:23
be didactic teachers. And that's fine. And there
53:25
will always be experiential teachers. And that's
53:27
fine. Or at least there should be. The problem
53:29
is, when policy goes didactic, it tries to stamp
53:32
out everything else. Experiential is more tolerant
53:36
of the diversity. So in that way, it's got some
53:38
benefit. I take a comprehensive view myself.
53:41
So I believe in both of those things. But there
53:44
are multiple brands that come and go seven year,
53:47
nine year cycles. But the didactic experiential
53:50
goes through 30 years here and then 30 years
53:53
there. The first didactic phase was, of course,
53:56
you know, Puritan, Cal... Alvinist Sunday School
53:59
being used as a model for inculcation in the
54:02
schools for reading and writing. And then you
54:05
had the Prussian model in the mid -19th century.
54:07
But it becomes scientific with the scientific
54:10
industrial management wave from the 1890s to
54:13
the 19Ts, factory model schools, standardization,
54:17
workflow studies, and scripts. For teachers and
54:21
so on and that doesn't go very well So what displaces
54:24
it is progressive education thoughtful reading
54:26
dick and Jane look and say, you know that that
54:29
range from the 1920s to the 1950s then comes
54:32
the second wave of scientific reading a Programmatic
54:35
reading instruction. I went through this in the
54:37
New York City public schools as a kid, right?
54:40
It's basically based on BF Skinner's operant
54:42
conditioning theories right scale learning schedules
54:45
and so forth phonics physiolingual notions of
54:49
It's about sound making and hearing. New criticism,
54:54
meanwhile, in the upper grades and the establishment
54:58
of the Elementary Secondary Education Act as
55:00
part of the cold wave battle with the Soviets
55:03
so that we had to fund education and fund education
55:07
research. So that was good for education colleges
55:10
and researchers. But eventually we realized that
55:15
wasn't working either. Iowa tested basic skills
55:17
in reading. down year over year over year from
55:20
1958 to 1972 and then it starts to climb again
55:25
back to 1998 because by then we were doing something
55:27
different collaborative project -based portfolios
55:30
whole language balanced literacy. Then comes
55:34
the third wave, and this is the one that we're
55:36
in right now. It's in four acts. The first one
55:39
is scientifically based reading, systematic phonics.
55:41
Bush's reading first, for instance. Then comes
55:44
close analytic reading. That's the Common Core
55:46
State Standards. Go look at the early English
55:48
language arts standards. It's the five pillars
55:50
of reading, right? Then comes structured literacy
55:54
in the science of phonics, the dyslexia push,
55:56
the urban district push. And then finally, as
55:59
which I pointed out, was a disaster. And then
56:01
finally, you get the science of reading. 43 out
56:04
of 50 US states now have passed such legislation.
56:07
Although the most recent stuff, like in California,
56:10
isn't as bad as it first looks. And some people
56:13
will say, that's science of reading in name only.
56:15
Maybe so. So the question is, what comes next?
56:20
I think that if 30 years are up, It's time for
56:23
us to switch back to the experiential view. So
56:25
four scenarios. a rebranding or relabeling of
56:28
the same old thing. And I think evidence -based
56:30
is going to be what will come up. The reading
56:33
league is using the term evidence -aligned. Evidence
56:37
-powered is another one. Evidence -driven, that's
56:42
interesting. There's a possibility of rebranding
56:44
with serious modifications. But if the modifications
56:47
are always going to require that the instruction
56:50
be reduced to low -level skills for comprehension,
56:54
that isn't going to be as helpful. as it might
56:57
be. Then there's the possibility, however, of
56:59
getting more experiential and allowing 1 ,000
57:02
flowers to bloom AI. Again, I say might offer
57:05
some opportunities there. I don't know. But I
57:08
do worry about everybody doing their own thing
57:10
because we need unity now. We don't all need
57:12
to be doing the same thing. But we need to be
57:14
unified in insisting that our voice is heard
57:17
and that teachers' responsible autonomy be key.
57:21
I would love a paradigm shift. I would love a
57:25
return to, and you'll see in the superscript,
57:28
the decades when these particular terms were
57:30
prevalent. The return of progressive, collaborative,
57:33
activity -based, student -centered, teacher -directed,
57:35
project -motivated, culturally relevant, sustaining,
57:38
authentically engaging, portfolio -assessed,
57:40
joyful, experiential language and literacy learning.
57:44
You come up with a shorter term for it, okay?
57:47
But the takeaways here are broaden the choice
57:49
of phonics approaches that can be employed in
57:51
decoding instruction. Do not overteach phonics.
57:54
Redesign early literacy curricula to include
57:56
fluency practice with developmentally engaging
57:58
text, language development activities, including
58:01
discussion, writing. performance, for learning
58:04
content, strategic reasoning for text comprehension
58:07
and vocabulary, rely on individual student interests,
58:10
needs, and emerging identities to guide instruction
58:12
for motivation and engagement. Support and trust
58:16
our teachers. No one knows better than the teachers
58:19
do what the students in their classrooms need.
58:23
Beware of overusing assessments, averages, benchmarks,
58:27
or silo labels, okay? You all know this, but
58:31
here are the two hard truths. Big money is not
58:33
going away. Equity funds now own the problem,
58:36
but their resources could be used for good, and
58:38
it is in their longer -term self -interest to
58:40
do so. I think it's time we had a conversation.
58:44
EduTech is not going away, but its use requires
58:47
serious adjustments, and the amount needs dialing
58:49
down at the present. Moving forward, get Big
58:53
Tech finance to the table, and avoid the blame
58:56
game, okay? I know you're probably not comfortable
58:58
with this. There's good reason. I think not to
59:01
be. But we have to have a conversation. And I
59:05
would be, you know, avoid commercial capture,
59:08
but avoid political capture, too. And that includes
59:10
of your own team jersey. OK. We need to get away
59:14
from antagonistic binaries and look to pull together
59:18
enough of a majority that we can actually enact
59:22
a policy change. We have to get the right people
59:25
involved. Us. OK, we have to acknowledge EdTech
59:28
limitations, miracles, or mirage, and EdTech
59:31
has not been helpful for language development
59:33
or comprehension. That's what the meta -analyses
59:35
and syntheses demonstrate. Learn to love the
59:38
problem, not the solutionary. Levine came up
59:41
with this. He brought two apps to IPO, two billion.
59:45
evaluation each he knows his money he knows his
59:48
tech and he wrote this book with this title it's
59:51
an old adage from uh engineering the problem
59:53
is coming up with nifty solutions that don't
59:55
do anything that anybody necessarily wants and
59:58
boy oh boy are you guys tired of ai yet being
1:00:01
imposed and who asked for a summation of my my
1:00:06
email thread with andy johnson i you know i i
1:00:09
can read my own emails and i do have some memory
1:00:11
left as old as i am you know all right and let
1:00:14
us address the financial drain on schools, reduce
1:00:17
the price use and continuous assessment, rededicate
1:00:19
funding to student -centered teacher PD, not
1:00:22
tech implementation. Because we need to start
1:00:27
getting away from so much emphasis on teaching
1:00:29
the program and get back to teaching the students.
1:00:33
We need to get away from relying on the technology
1:00:37
and get back to relying on the teacher. because
1:00:40
the teacher is the single most important variable
1:00:44
in school for student reading achievement. Okay?
1:00:48
And the quality of the professional development,
1:00:50
the support that they receive. It's the teachers
1:00:53
and teacher educators that make the difference.
1:00:55
And do we do it for ourselves and our career
1:00:57
advancement? No, we do it for our children. Hey,
1:01:01
I don't have any kids. No, I mean all of our
1:01:03
children. Okay, societies, children, we all have
1:01:07
a duty of care to do no harm for the kids or
1:01:11
for the fellow adults while we're at it. So that's
1:01:16
my two cents and a half. Thank you for letting
1:01:20
me sound it out. It's much more than two cents,
1:01:23
George. Let's take some questions. This was incredible.
1:01:29
Incredible. If you have a question, you can unmute
1:01:32
your mic and ask it directly, or raise your hand,
1:01:36
or you can put it in the chat. Andy, can I allow
1:01:43
you to be the master of ceremonies here? Yes.
1:01:48
OK. So you can throw me the questions. All right.
1:01:51
So you can type it in the chat, and I'll be happy
1:01:55
to send it to George. So everyone is thanking
1:01:58
you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
1:02:01
Thank you. Thank you. I'm so glad you're here.
1:02:03
Thank you. Thank you for the great work you do.
1:02:05
I can't thank, you know, you need, you change
1:02:13
so many lives. You make things so much better
1:02:16
for the world. And it's easy to get depressed,
1:02:20
but don't. Change in the world one kid at a time.
1:02:25
Yeah. 25 kids a year for 30 years. That's a lot
1:02:28
of kids. It's a lot of kids. All right. Tell
1:02:33
it to the secondary grade teachers. That's right.
1:02:37
That's right. You're getting a lot of love there,
1:02:39
George. Oh, I love getting love. All right. My
1:02:44
kids are all adults now, so I don't get that
1:02:46
much love. If we move toward being frustrated
1:02:53
with oligarchs, won't we start understanding
1:02:56
these private companies will be dangerous too?
1:03:00
I didn't read that well. Yeah, yeah. No, I get
1:03:04
your discomfort and I share it. However, I don't
1:03:08
see them going away. I mean, you know, a couple
1:03:10
years ago when I was pointing this out, people
1:03:12
thought I was nuts. You know that there were
1:03:14
you conspiracy theorists, you know, there's no
1:03:16
see there's no secret cat Why would they you
1:03:18
know, and I said I would tell them I said listen
1:03:20
It's not just the you know, the the the programs
1:03:23
they deliver to the classroom It's all the data
1:03:25
that they vacuum back out again, you know without
1:03:27
any informed consent without any permission slips
1:03:30
from the parents You know these kids it's not
1:03:33
just that their answers to the multiple choice
1:03:35
questions It's the keystroke by keystroke pause
1:03:38
by pause. I glance by I glance that you know,
1:03:42
this is psychometric it's psychiatric data, it's
1:03:45
behavioral data. And people said, well, George,
1:03:48
what would they want with that? And then out
1:03:52
came chat GPT. Oh, so, and now they're talking
1:03:57
about the tutors, private tutors for individuals.
1:04:00
I think this would be wonderful if they could
1:04:02
do it, but I think it's going to be a heavy lift
1:04:04
in terms of the training data that would be required
1:04:07
on an individual basis. A child isn't going to
1:04:09
produce enough data for these systems, but in
1:04:11
the future, they may be more efficient. Anyhow,
1:04:14
the oligarchs are an issue, and I'm not happy
1:04:17
with that. And I think there needs to be a way
1:04:19
to bring that in. But that's a political issue
1:04:22
that I keep in a different bucket because, you
1:04:27
know, I mean, I don't know if I should share
1:04:30
this with you or not, because I don't want to
1:04:32
turn anybody off. I'm a democratic socialist,
1:04:34
OK? But when I went to the state legislature,
1:04:38
as I did numerous weeks every darn year for 13
1:04:41
years, in Kentucky, a deep red state, it actually
1:04:46
used to be a bipartisan state, and then it became
1:04:48
a deep red state while I was here. It wasn't
1:04:50
my fault. But you've got to come across as being
1:04:56
neutral. or you put people off their feed. And
1:04:59
we aren't going to win any policy battles with
1:05:02
a small minority. We aren't going to win any
1:05:04
elections that way either. We have to start finding
1:05:07
a consensus. on things that we can't agree on.
1:05:12
And I think most Americans now are agreeing that
1:05:15
the inequity of our economic system has gotten
1:05:19
way, way overly extreme. They feel it at the
1:05:22
cash register, of course. They feel it when they
1:05:24
look at their paychecks. And that's already reported
1:05:27
in the news. I don't have to overemphasize that.
1:05:30
The rich aren't happy about the idea of taxing
1:05:32
billionaires and so on, of course. But that's
1:05:35
a whole different set of arguments, and we can't
1:05:37
be trying to hook that cart to our children's
1:05:41
literacy instruction. It's not fair to them.
1:05:46
You know, I mean, of course, education is political,
1:05:48
but some things are more political than others.
1:05:51
And I think the most political thing is politics.
1:05:53
So if you want to be a political activist, get,
1:05:56
when I was younger, I was, you know, back in
1:06:00
the 70s and 80s in Atlanta. You know now I'm
1:06:06
Quite so much energy. So I leave it to the young
1:06:10
but when it comes to advocating policy I wouldn't
1:06:13
get let allow it to be captured by your own political
1:06:16
preferences or anybody's political preferences.
1:06:19
I try to keep it as Seemingly neutral as possible
1:06:25
the philosopher Richard Rorty had some interesting
1:06:27
things to say about American education But I
1:06:29
don't have time to share that but maybe some
1:06:32
other day Next question. How many years to go
1:06:35
until the 30 year shift begins? I think it's
1:06:38
time right now right because if science for reading
1:06:41
started in the mid 90s and it's now the mid 2020s
1:06:45
That's 30 years times up So we're gonna and and
1:06:50
you know these things change pretty pretty quickly
1:06:52
you look at the shift, but you know in in 20
1:06:56
in 20 Sixteen, the philosopher Bertrand Russell
1:07:01
wrote a piece for the Atlantic Monthly about
1:07:04
education and the politics of education and the
1:07:08
fact that education was political in nature.
1:07:10
And he talked about how forlorn these didactic,
1:07:18
authoritarian, rote, skill -drilling forms of
1:07:22
instruction were in American public education
1:07:24
classrooms. He had just sort of come over to
1:07:26
do some work here in the States, Harvard. And
1:07:33
by golly, but by 2020, I mean by, excuse me,
1:07:36
1920, the professional uh the progressive education
1:07:41
association was founded and its conference in
1:07:44
the 20s 1920s would bring in over 25 000 teachers
1:07:49
to attend every year so you know or more So,
1:07:54
we can do that. We did it. And it turns on a
1:07:58
dime. It turns so fast. Unfortunately, it goes
1:07:59
the other way, too. In the 1880s, 1870s, 1880s,
1:08:03
there were neo -romantic approaches to teaching
1:08:05
reading, which were very experiential. Colonel
1:08:08
Francis Parker's Quincy method. And when the
1:08:11
first state tests in Massachusetts were imposed,
1:08:13
which were the first state to do statewide testing
1:08:16
in the 1890s, they discovered that districts
1:08:20
that use the Quincy method did better than other
1:08:22
districts. So the very next year, the state legislature
1:08:25
got together and passed a bill that prohibited
1:08:28
the Quincy method. Sound familiar? Three queuing
1:08:32
method. So here's the next question. How do we
1:08:38
get someone to publish something that explains
1:08:40
all the errors in thinking? By the way, I have
1:08:44
a book coming out this summer making sense of
1:08:46
the science of reading. Context matters. So that's
1:08:50
one. There you go. I think that, yeah, Andy,
1:08:55
that's great. You need to do a webinar just on
1:08:57
that book when it comes out so that we can all
1:08:59
celebrate it. You know, all of the errors are
1:09:04
too many. I think priority of relevance is handy
1:09:07
here to economize our efforts and to hit on the
1:09:10
things that are most useful. I mean, bless academia.
1:09:13
I'm so glad I'm not an academic anymore, you
1:09:15
know, really. I mean, I'm coming in my 70s. I'm
1:09:18
entitled to retire. You know that you come out
1:09:23
with this crazy talk about kids can't read they're
1:09:26
teaching kids to guess the words Do you mean
1:09:28
using inference to understand what the word might
1:09:31
mean? You know that? It's just crazy talk and
1:09:34
bless the hearts of the academics who took the
1:09:37
time to explain why those statements were nonsense
1:09:39
And it had no impact they kept making the same
1:09:42
statements and eventually we got tired of trying
1:09:44
to correct them Other people, you know, focused
1:09:47
on what does the research actually say, what
1:09:49
does it not say? They did technical meta -analyses
1:09:52
and synthesis and wonderful reports. You know,
1:09:57
the... Great, great critique on science of reading
1:10:01
has been done by a lot of people. You know, Helen
1:10:05
Idarova in Wisconsin talking about the political
1:10:07
groups that are behind it. Rachel Gabriel with
1:10:11
the sort of religious fundamentalism that's behind
1:10:14
it, you know, in the Moms for Liberty team and
1:10:16
so on. Like that more in Ackerman in Alberta,
1:10:21
you know her work on wrecked and on explaining
1:10:24
the irrationality of the science of reading narrative
1:10:27
Excellent work excellent work, but you know who
1:10:31
reads that stuff We do you know that that's not
1:10:33
going to reach the general public and right now
1:10:35
is the time to reach the public I mean the public
1:10:37
is acting on their own. They are say we've had
1:10:40
enough We suspect that the problem is this technology
1:10:43
because we see what happens when the kids bring
1:10:44
it home You know, I had two kids are going through
1:10:47
the public school system here in little Lexington,
1:10:49
Kentucky. And I saw the all the bringing home
1:10:52
the Darren Chromebooks, bringing home the laptops,
1:10:55
you know, and I remember when the when the booklet
1:10:58
of worksheets disappear and I said, oh, no more
1:11:00
worksheets, huh? No, dad, they're in the computer
1:11:02
now. You know, oh, so anyway. Next question.
1:11:08
Yeah. Correcting all the problems is too much.
1:11:09
Find a few that are going to sell to the general
1:11:13
public. and not put people off their feet. Very
1:11:16
good. Next question. By the way, ILAC has webinars
1:11:19
recorded of the people that George just mentioned,
1:11:23
Rachel and all those people. So do you have any
1:11:26
advice for teacher -to -be students at a state
1:11:29
university in Massachusetts? They're all in practicums
1:11:33
with phonics packages. Yeah. Yeah. The battle
1:11:39
in, you know, next month Denny Taylor is going
1:11:41
to present, and I know she was very active in
1:11:45
communicating with the Massachusetts legislature.
1:11:51
I know also Rob Tierney, dean at the University
1:11:56
of British Columbia, wrote a letter to them as
1:11:59
well. And you know but it's tough when when the
1:12:05
science of reading people come in with their
1:12:07
waving their checkbooks. You know that's the
1:12:10
carrot and the stick is if you don't get on it
1:12:13
we're going to get our pack after you and destroy
1:12:15
you politically. You know the big money they're
1:12:19
ruthless they're aggressive right and. But it's
1:12:25
not a good look for them and i think we have
1:12:28
to have more people. know what's behind this.
1:12:31
If you are a student who is looking to become
1:12:35
a teacher, don't lose faith. Things are going
1:12:38
to turn around. They're going to turn around
1:12:39
in part because you're going to be there to help
1:12:42
make them turn around. So do the phonics packages.
1:12:46
And let me say, when that tsunami floodwaters,
1:12:48
when they recede as they are now, I promise you
1:12:51
receding, a lot of crap is going to be left up
1:12:53
on the beach. But some of it is worth saving.
1:12:57
We don't want to become a cargo cult, but we
1:13:01
should never think that phonics doesn't matter.
1:13:04
We should never think that the coding skills
1:13:06
don't matter. There's a lot that we can learn.
1:13:10
It's a painful and expensive and wasteful way
1:13:13
to do it, but there's a lot that we have learned
1:13:15
from the science of reading error. Or should
1:13:17
I say error? So don't lose faith. Stick with
1:13:24
it. And you're better off in Massachusetts than
1:13:25
a lot of places. So here's a question. Can you
1:13:31
find a new term for student -centered responsive
1:13:35
ways of literacy teaching and intervention? I
1:13:39
use meaning -based. That's one that I've been
1:13:41
using. Yeah. Yeah. The only problem with Meaningbase
1:13:46
is, and I like Meaningbase too, Andy, but the
1:13:51
problem I recognize with it is that it does challenge
1:13:54
the fundamentalists who are afoot. They're fearful
1:13:56
of reading for meaning because it might give
1:13:59
kids ideas. I know it sounds like I'm trying
1:14:03
to set out a caricature, but it's true. There
1:14:06
are folks, because I've actually met folks like
1:14:08
this and had discussions and tried to understand
1:14:12
them. They're fearful of the word development,
1:14:17
because development suggests substantive change.
1:14:19
Well, of course it does. You get an education,
1:14:22
hopefully you're not going to continue to be
1:14:24
a six -year -old, but they're afraid of that.
1:14:28
It's like a pod people scenario for them. They're
1:14:33
conservative by nature, so they don't believe
1:14:35
in change. They believe in cycles that keep repeating
1:14:37
themselves. Sadly to say, when it comes to education
1:14:41
policy, they might be right. But if that's the
1:14:43
case, then we're on our way to more experiential
1:14:47
work. I think we do need a good term for it,
1:14:51
and it's one that won't be already freighted
1:14:56
with concerns. I don't understand why you would
1:15:00
be afraid to teach kids to read for meaning.
1:15:03
And I think most sensible people, I think most
1:15:06
moderate liberals, moderate centrists, and moderate
1:15:09
conservatives would all agree that that's what
1:15:11
reading is for. But we have this flood the zone
1:15:15
kind of extremism that distracts and misinforms
1:15:20
and strikes toxic emotional states in its audience.
1:15:25
And we just need to be sensible. We're talking
1:15:28
about kids, and it's harmful. That stuff that's
1:15:30
harmful for kids on their phones, it's harmful
1:15:33
for all of us. And again, you're seeing that
1:15:35
pushback from an adult perspective as well in
1:15:38
the media. So I think we're going to have a reset
1:15:41
on technology and make it a tool for us to use
1:15:47
rather than a tool that uses us. All right, go
1:15:50
through a couple more here. The next on the list,
1:15:53
could you talk through how early career researchers
1:15:55
can protect their emerging careers as they investigate
1:15:59
and research in this arena? Excellent question.
1:16:04
Excellent question. I don't know where you are,
1:16:15
but you may come to discover that most academics
1:16:19
are fairly timid, and they know it. And they
1:16:24
compensate for that by speaking very bravely,
1:16:27
but to a closed audience. And that's why they're
1:16:31
so good at circular firing squads. And I think
1:16:35
this is unfortunate. We need to get away from
1:16:38
that. We have a lot of folks, let's just say
1:16:42
a percentage of folks, who get into academia.
1:16:45
Because they wish desperately to become members
1:16:48
of the professional class That's that that that
1:16:52
chunk between the super rich and the middle class,
1:16:55
you know like the top Second to top 9 % if you
1:17:00
will, you know, there's the 1 % that owns 90
1:17:03
% of the wealth and then there's the 9 % of the
1:17:07
professional class who like the house servants
1:17:09
and When you become an academic, you find yourself
1:17:12
in that strata, even though your earnings are
1:17:16
really only putting you at the middle class level,
1:17:18
but you pretend you have cultural capital and
1:17:20
you're superior in your opinions. Well, about
1:17:23
what you have a degree in and expertise, yes.
1:17:27
But that doesn't mean everything under the sun.
1:17:29
So your opinions about other things are no more
1:17:31
important, particularly to democracy, than the
1:17:34
guy who collects the trash. And nothing wrong
1:17:38
with collecting trash, either. That's a job that
1:17:40
needs to be done. And I think that there's a
1:17:42
lot of toxic attitude about that. You don't want
1:17:49
to upset the money when it is funding things
1:17:52
in your. university, obviously. So be very knowledgeable
1:17:56
about what your other colleagues are doing research
1:18:01
and getting grants, especially. If you really
1:18:04
want to fly in your career, it's not enough to
1:18:06
publish. You've got to also get grants and then
1:18:10
publish out of the grants. And grants are harder
1:18:13
and harder to come by, particularly in the United
1:18:15
States now. If you defy the The the power it's
1:18:23
the beat And you are a pain in the side of normative
1:18:27
social convention. You're in trouble So give
1:18:30
up the being the pain on the side of the normative
1:18:32
social convention allow that just as a matter
1:18:34
of politics And you do so anyway in your committee
1:18:37
meetings. So stop stop kidding yourself And but
1:18:41
stay firm in your opposition to people whose
1:18:45
self -interest is intentionally or not and probably
1:18:49
not arming children and harming our schools and
1:18:53
harming our democracy as a result. All right.
1:18:55
Let's go with one last question. And George has
1:18:58
written an excellent article on this. How do
1:19:01
we debunk their brain research? Well, you don't
1:19:09
do it by debunking science. And I want to say
1:19:12
that the neuroscience, the neuroscience is, because
1:19:15
they're plural, are Are very legitimate, but
1:19:21
they aren't going to tell you about how to teach
1:19:23
kids to read effectively Okay, nothing works
1:19:27
for everyone. Nothing works for any one person
1:19:29
in a good teacher hoist a heavy toolkit No one
1:19:31
knows better about that than the teachers themselves.
1:19:34
Okay So if you want to know about how to teach
1:19:37
kids well in classrooms You have to look at the
1:19:40
research on teaching kids in classrooms research
1:19:42
on the biology of the brain, the genetics of
1:19:45
the brain, the proteomics, the systemics, is
1:19:48
very fascinating stuff. I am particularly fascinated
1:19:52
with life sciences. And most of the neurosciences
1:19:54
are situated squarely in the neurosciences. Cognitive
1:19:57
neuroscience is an outlier. And between cognitive
1:20:01
neuroscience the way it's done at Harvard's mind,
1:20:03
brain, and education program, and brain -based
1:20:07
education on the other hand, there's been a lot
1:20:08
of effort on behalf of grabbing the public's
1:20:13
imagination. which is a good way to get attention
1:20:15
and media and grant funding. But it misrepresents,
1:20:20
I mean, I've been a member of the Society for
1:20:23
Neuroscience and it's not like, you know, AERA
1:20:25
or LRA where you just send in a check and presto,
1:20:28
you're a member. You got to be vetted. They look
1:20:29
at, you got to get letters of recommendation
1:20:31
from neuroscientists and so on. But I got in
1:20:34
there and I was invited to panels and to present
1:20:36
on this stuff. So my work has been, I think Vouch
1:20:40
is pretty legitimate, OK? But it's the it's the
1:20:44
misrepresentation and and within the neurosciences
1:20:48
neuroscientists themselves have noted that there
1:20:52
is often over interpretation of the significance
1:20:55
of findings and Particularly when you realize
1:20:59
in cognitive neuroscience that over half of the
1:21:02
studies are reporting false positives according
1:21:05
to the neuroscientists themselves and that that's
1:21:08
a problem. That's a problem in cognitive psychology
1:21:10
and social psychology too. This is why the term
1:21:14
psychology has been dropped by people who want
1:21:16
to claim that they're cognitive scientists. You
1:21:18
know, psychology's got too much baggage. There
1:21:24
are good there there are sources I wouldn't waste
1:21:27
your time trying to debunk it and I know how
1:21:29
frustrating it is You've got somebody from IT
1:21:32
or from administration who say we got to worry
1:21:35
about learning styles and all the research evidence
1:21:37
shows That teaching kids learning styles has
1:21:40
no impact on their learning it makes you feel
1:21:45
good maybe and that's all right but it really
1:21:48
isn't helpful and you know you could devote time
1:21:51
better spent to understanding that kids need
1:21:54
a diverse range of instructional methods and
1:21:57
that they're not mutually exclusive and you don't
1:21:59
need to take on a team jersey and say you know
1:22:02
that our side versus that side of what's the
1:22:04
best way to teach reading that's just the wrong
1:22:06
way to think. The life is far, far too complex.
1:22:10
And even the most complex models of reading development
1:22:13
and reading differences are so crudely simplistic
1:22:18
and reductive. They're not worthless. Even the
1:22:22
simple view of reading is not worthless if you're
1:22:25
communicating to legislators and journalists.
1:22:28
It's just complex enough for them to understand
1:22:30
and seem intriguing, but you have to make sure
1:22:33
you don't misrepresent it. Okay, but it's far
1:22:36
too simplistic for those of us who do legitimate
1:22:38
research. Am I off topic there? I hope that addresses
1:22:42
everything is on on topic George when you're
1:22:45
around everything's on top All right. Well, let's
1:22:49
leave it there with the idea that Denny Taylor's
1:22:53
coming on May 7th And her stuff is just as good
1:22:57
as George. So better Oh, she's incredible. So
1:23:01
I would invite you, I'll be sending you all the
1:23:03
information and I'll be sending you a recording
1:23:06
of this. So thank you, George, Dr. Ruby for an
1:23:10
incredible evening again. Thank you. And I look
1:23:15
forward to seeing you all next month. Excellent.
1:23:18
Thank you, George.