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Reading Wars are Over!  Phonics Failed.  Whole Language Failed.  Balanced Literacy Failed. Who Won?  It Certainly Wasn’t the Students.

3/23/2021

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Exactly what are the reading wars?  The reading wars are an ongoing feud between phonics and whole language.  Phonics is the older of the two teaching methods. Phonics started back in 1690 with the New England Primer.  Then, as now, problems cropped up, which led to the introduction of “whole-word” or the “look-say” teaching method.  The war was on. 

​In the 1960’s, educational theory swung back toward phonics, but then in the 1980’s, it turned back toward “whole-word,” which was quickly becoming known as “whole language.”  In 2000, the National Reading Panel (NRP) was organized, supposedly to solve the question of which method was better.  That was 21 years ago, and yet the battle rages on.  The result of the NRP study was actually that most schools today have converted to balanced literacy—a combination of phonics and whole language.  Balanced literacy has not proven to be any more successful than phonics or whole language.
 
Everyone claims that balanced literacy is new, but I myself learned back in the 50’s from a combination of phonics and the Dick and Jane readers (classified as whole language).  Yes, they were awful.  Unfortunately though, many students did not learn to read under that system in the 50’s.  As one man explained to me, “they put me in a pullout phonics program every year from first grade on.  It didn’t do any good.  I still can’t read.”

 
Reading failure Is a Long-Standing Problem in the United States

If we look at the Nation’s Report Card, we can quickly tell why the reading war continues.  As these three pie charts illustrate (based on data from the 2019 Nation’s Report Card), reading failure is at an all-time high. 

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As the charts show, reading scores show little change through the grade levels. "Proficient" identifies students able to read at or above their grade level. "Not Proficient" identifies students reading below grade level.
Please read the statistics carefully, yes, the charts show that more than 60% of students across the nation cannot read at grade level in 4th, 8th, and 12th grade.  The curriculum responsible for these devastating reading scores combines phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy. 
 
Keep in mind that all of these test scores were from classroom instruction before COVID-19.  These scores reflect teaching methods used in classrooms before the coronavirus pandemic. 
 
Although phonics enthusiasts claim that they have won the reading war, the war rages on because students continue to fail.
 
Notice that I did not say it is teachers, parents, poverty, or lazy students who are responsible for reading failure. No, it is the teaching methods that we are using in the classroom to teach students how to read—the curriculum.  Phonics and whole language simply do not work.
 
Yes, I’m certain that the teaching methods being used in the classroom are the cause of reading failure.  I run a free reading clinic for at-risk and failing students.  I staff my reading clinic with volunteers who have only minimal training at best.  Most of our students are failing in reading when they walk in the door in September.  They have been taught in the school classroom with phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy.  When they complete my program in May, they are able to read; some have even advanced four grade levels in reading, just from September to May.  I also had an undergraduate student direct the program one year, and she had children move up three grade levels in reading.  So, yes, the problem is the curriculum and the teaching methods that we are using in the school classroom.  If we want to stop reading failure, then we must stop bickering and get rid of phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy.  It’s time for us to adopt a new approach to teaching reading, an approach that works for all students.
 

Earlier Post: Curriculum Choices Determine a Student's Success or Failure in School

 
The Reading Wars Have Contributed to Reading Failure

​Reading failure is not a new problem, but it has been growing lately.  Peggy Carr, associate commissioner from the assessments division for the National Center for Educational Statistics (NAEP) explains quite graphically that failure in reading has been raging throughout the reading wars.
 
“Since the first reading assessment in 1992, there’s been no growth for the lowest performing students in either fourth or eighth grade….  Our students struggling the most with reading are where they were nearly 30 years ago.”  
 
As Carr went on to explain, reading scores are getting worse.  We have more students who cannot read today than we did in 2017.  Yet, schools are saying that they have included more phonics into their reading programs.  Obviously, phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy have all failed to help students who need the most help in learning to read.  Carr states:
 
"Eighth grade is a transitional point in preparing students for success in high school, so it is critical that researchers further explore the declines we are seeing here, ….  Both low- and high-achieving eighth graders slipped in reading, but the declines were generally worse for lower-performing students.” 

The reading wars have solved nothing.  Switching back and forth from phonics to whole language and from whole language back to phonics has not helped students learn to read.  Although phonics enthusiasts have been shouting that the reading wars are over and that phonics won, more and more students continue to fail in reading.
 
 
Did Jeffrey Bowers Just Reignite the Reading Wars?
 
Jeffrey S. Bowers, professor at the University of Bristol’s School of Psychological Science, Bristol Neuroscience has just reignited the battle over phonics. 
 
The problem, as Bowers explains, is that we cannot expect phonics, whole language, or balanced literacy to help struggling students learn how to read. 
 
That’s right; none of these methods really work with students who need the most help which leaves over half of the students across the nation struggling or failing. 
 
Bowers’ 2020 research article, set off a firestorm of responses from the phonics camp.  The war is raging hotter than ever, but this time instead of just trading theories back and forth, research scientists are looking at the actual data that phonics advocates claim supports their theory.  The data isn’t holding up.

As Dr. Bowers continues to clarify in his latest 2021 article,
 
“The strength of evidence for phonics has been exaggerated in some circles, …. And that is why it is so important to recognize that the evidence for phonics is weak: it should motivate researchers to look beyond the phonics/whole language debate.…  My position is that although there is indeed good evidence that teaching GPCs [grapheme-phoneme correspondence] is essential, there is little evidence that phonics is effective, either by itself or in combination with other forms of instruction. My conclusion is that more research should be carried out on alternative approaches….” (pp. 3-4)  
  
Bowers is not arguing that "grapheme phoneme correspondence" (the process of relating alphabet letters to oral sounds) is important and even essential.  Instead, Bowers is saying that the evidence most phonics believers are quoting as proving that phonics works does not exactly say what they claim.  The evidence is weak, and this is one of the reasons that so many students are not learning to read.  Phonics is simply not as effective a teaching method as they claim.
 
One phonics advocate, Jack M. Fletcher, in his response to Bowers even admitted that “some researchers have exaggerated the strength for phonics.” 
 
Wait just a minute, weren’t the phonics experts just telling us how great phonics is and how it will solve all of our problems even though over 60% of students across the nation haven’t been able to read at grade level in 4th, 8th, or 12th grade since 1992? 
 
Now, they want to backtrack and admit that some researchers have overstated the effectiveness of phonics. 
 
I agree with Bowers.  We need to dump phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy and look for a totally new method for teaching students to read.
 

National Reading Panel Data Gives Us Concerns

Bowers is not the only person explaining that the case for phonics should not rely on the data from the NRP.  In 2006, Gregory Camilli from Rutgers along with his research team also reanalyzed the data from the NRP study.  As Camilli stated, systematic phonics “is generally considered a weak intervention.”
 
Similarly, Jon Reyhner, Department of Education Specialties at Northern Arizonia University, explains the problem in his 2020 article entitled The Reading Wars [Reyhner pulls passages directly from the National Reading Panel (NRP) report and cites page numbers from the full NRP book].
 
“Despite a phonics predisposition, the NRP concluded that ‘phonics instruction produces the biggest impact on growth in reading when it begins in kindergarten or 1st grade before children have learned to read independently’ and it ‘failed to exert a significant impact on the reading performance of low-achieving readers in 2nd through 6th grades’ (NRP, 2000, pp. 2-93-94). The NRP also noted that ‘it is important to emphasize that systematic phonics instruction should be integrated with other reading instruction to create a balanced reading program. Phonics instruction is never a total reading program.... Phonics should not become the dominant component in a reading program, neither in amount of time devoted to it nor in the significance attached" (p. 2-97).
 
Educational psychologist Gerald Coles believes that the NRP actually did a disservice to struggling students because it sounded as if they had an answer, but they failed to deliver a solution to the students who were failing and needed the most help.
 
In all fairness, if you read the entire report, the NRP did state that “… phonics instruction failed to exert a significant impact on the reading performance of low-achieving readers in 2nd through 6th grades….” (p. 94).  
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In essence, the NRP is admitting that you only see improvement the first year or two with phonics training.  This improvement does not carry over into third, fourth, or fifth grade, and the statistical significance all but disappears by sixth grade.  So, how can phonics be classified as an effective teaching method?  As a matter of fact, when phonics has been compared directly to another teaching method, phonics has not scored well.
 
For example, Sebastian P. Suggate’s 2016 study compared 71 phonemic and phonics intervention groups and found that “… phonemic awareness interventions showed good maintenance of effect… phonics tended not to.”  In other words, the phonemic awareness teaching method was better than the phonics teaching method for helping children learn how to read.
 
In my own research, I compared the effectiveness of vowel clustering teaching methods in a group-centered prevention structure against phonics in a one-on-one tutoring setting.  The students being taught using vowel clustering outscored the students being taught phonics through one-on-one tutoring.  In follow-up testing one year later, the students from my Camp Sharigan program were still ahead of the students being taught phonics.  Camp Sharigan is only a one-week program. 
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For more of my research comparing the effectiveness of vowel clustering and phonics, see Chapter 3 of my 2019 book, After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation

The fact that phonics has problems is not news.  Over the years, numerous phonics advocates have also warned about the shortcomings of phonics.  In 2001, Linnea C. Ehri, a strong phonics supporter, admitted that phonics would “not help low achieving readers.”  Jeanne Sternlicht Chall, as far back as 1967, warned that phonics would not work for all students.  So yes, Fletcher is correct: many enthusiastic newspaper reporters, Internet bloggers, and even some researchers have exaggerated and overstated the case for the effectiveness of phonics.  Phonics simply does not work for many students, especially struggling students.  The students who need help the most.

 
Earlier Post: Why Does Phonics Education Fail? 

 
Instead of fighting over phonics and whole language, we need a totally new method for teaching struggling students how to read.
 
It is time to stop bickering and find a new teaching method.  No, balanced literacy is not the answer either.  We need a new teaching method that helps students link reading with the oral language system.
 
Mark Seidenberg clearly states in his book, Language at the Speed of Sight:  How We Read, Why so Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It, that  the way we teach reading is “a significant part of the literacy problem.”
  
Seidenberg goes on to point out three main problems with our present teaching methods
  • current teaching practices are based on outdated assumptions.
  • true scientific research in reading has had very little effect on how reading is taught in the classroom.
  • new neurobiological brain research in reading is being totally ignored by today’s educators.
 
Dr. Seidenberg goes on to point out that we have decades of research showing that the only effective way to teach children to read is to teach skills that connect reading with oral speech.  So, why are we arguing over phonics and whole language when neither of those methods connect to oral speech? 
 
We’ll talk more about the importance of the oral language system for learning to read next time, but for now I want to close with a quote from Dr. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for over 35 years.  Dr. Fauci was speaking about scientific research and opinions in reference to the coronavirus pandemic, but I believe that his comment about research and opinions is equally valid for the reading wars. 
 
“People’s opinions are a fact of life.  What gets, um, I think troublesome, is when people develop their own set of facts.  Facts don’t change.  So you have a different opinion, but facts are consistent.  That’s the problem.”

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Phonics Failed. Whole Language Failed. Balanced Literacy Failed. If the Reading Wars Are Over, Why Did the Students Not Win? So, How Should We Teach Children to Read?

3/3/2021

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As the pie chart shows, 65% of 4th graders tested below grade level when they took the 2019 reading test.  Indeed, only 35% of 4th graders could read at or above the 4th grade level when tested in 2019.  Students are failing in reading all across the nation.  Scores did not improve in 8th or 12th grade either.

Please note that all of these test scores were from classroom instruction before Covid-19.  The scores came before the lockdown, before hybrid teaching, before disaster struck.  
 
These scores show that more than half the students in every grade are struggling or even failing in reading.  Reading failure is not a new problem.  These students are often classified as “low performing” or “low achieving” readers.  Although I do not like to place labels on children, knowing how reading specialists classify students does help us make comparisons. 

  • for 8th grade only 34% could read at or above grade level
  • 12th grade only 37% could read at or above grade level
  
Reading Failure

The Nation’s Report Card shows that reading failure is a long-standing problem. As Peggy Carr from the assessments division for the National Center for Educational Statistics (NAEP) explains:
 
"Since the first reading assessment in 1992, there’s been no growth for the lowest performing students in either fourth or eighth grade….  Our students struggling the most with reading are where they were nearly 30 years ago.”  
 
During these 30 years, whole language, phonics, and even balanced literacy have been the teaching methods used in the classroom. Classrooms across the nation continue to use these teaching methods, and it is these teaching methods that are causing students to fail. 
 
You may be saying, “I don’t believe in test scores.”  Then, how do you explain that reading scores were lower in 2019 than in 2017?  
 
That’s right, we have more students who cannot read today than we did in 2017.  If the teaching methods that we are using in the classroom were working and successfully helping students learn to read, then, even if test scores were biased or arbitrary, you would see an increase, even a modest increase in test scores.  Instead, we see a decline in the number of students who can read at grade level. 
 
Reading failure is a long-standing problem in the United States, and the problem is getting worse.  We need to wake up before it’s too late.  We need to change how we teach reading in the classroom.  We need to stop screaming about the “reading wars” and ask ourselves “Why have we allowed students to fail for over 30 years?”  If phonics, whole language, or even balanced literacy were effective, scores would not have been lower in 2019 than in 2017.  The “reading wars” are ridiculous and should end; they did not help students in the least.  A recent Washington Post article reviewed evidence that all three methods (phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy) are wrong and do not offer a solution to reading failure.
 
Giving an overview of the literacy problem in the United States, Rebecca Lake claims that approximately 20% of high school graduates cannot even read the words on their diploma as they put on their cap and gown and walk across the stage.

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Furthermore, the National Center for Adult Literacy states that 85% of adolescents and youth seen by the courts are classified as functionally illiterate and unable to read.  [For more on these statistics, see Chapter 1 in my book, After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation:  Teaching At-Risk Students to Read.]  
 
Reading Failure Is a Major Problem That Is Getting Worse.  So, What Are We Going to Do about It?

 
If we simply send students back to the classroom and use the same teaching methods that were being used before Covid-19, we will send them back to a failing curriculum in reading. 
 
Many schools announced that they introduced more phonics into their curriculum in 2019 than in 2017 and are clamoring that the “reading wars” are over and that phonics won.  

If the “reading wars” are over, why did the students not win?  Why are more than half of the students across the nation still failing?

 
Why Does Phonics Education Fail? 

Earlier Post: We Are Using the Wrong Teaching Methods 
 
So, where does this leave us?  We have over half the students across the United States struggling or failing in reading.  We have three teaching methods that have been proven not to work for the students who need the most help.  Be careful.  Do not be like some who claim that the struggling students can’t learn to read, and that regardless which method we use, “low achieving” students will never learn to read.
 
I have personally had the pleasure of helping many students learn to read:
  
  • Students who failed under whole language in the school classroom have come to my after-school program, the Reading Orienteering Club, and returned to the classroom reading at their age level.  Even if a student has been retained, we emphasize sending the child back to the classroom reading at their actual age level.  Some children have moved up 4 grade levels in reading in one year.
  • A group of students continued to fail after the school placed them in Reading Recovery, but the same students succeeded with my method of vowel clustering.  They returned to the classroom reading at age level.
  • Special needs students placed in a one-on-one pull-out program in systematic phonics still didn’t learn to read, but they came to my reading clinic and succeeded.  They learned to read.  I believe that every student can be taught to read.
  •  One student failed for nine straight years in reading but learned to read with vowel clustering teaching methods.  The school had tried both balanced literacy and systematic phonics tutoring.  Still, she failed.  It’s never too late for a student to learn. 
  • Students who failed under “balanced literacy,” a common school program that combines whole language and phonics, also learned to read at age level using vowel clustering.  We even had two students move up two grade levels in reading after only 48 hours of instruction with vowel clustering.
 
Why did one method succeed where phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy teaching methods had failed?
 
As David A. Kilpatrick explains in his book Equipped for Reading Success:
 
“Until recently, almost everyone thought that we store words by having some type of visual image of every word we know….  Many teaching approaches [like phonics and whole language] presume this. We assume that if students see the words enough, they will learn them. This is not true…. I believe this assumption that we store words based on visual memory is a major reason why we have widespread reading difficulties in our country…. The big discovery regarding orthographic mapping is that this oral “filing system” is the foundation of the “filing system” we use for reading words. We have no “visual dictionary” for reading that runs alongside our oral dictionary.” (pp. 59-68)
 
For a child to learn to read, the child must learn to match letters to the sounds they represent.  This is not an easily learned task for some children.  We need to use a teaching method that works with the oral language system and makes it easier for students to learn.
 
Therefore, phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy are never going to succeed with more than half of the students across the nation who cannot read at grade level because they are not being taught how to attach words to their oral language system.  The vowel clustering teaching method that I use at my reading clinic works with the brain and helps struggling children learn to read.
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We need change. The students desperately need for schools to adopt a new approach for teaching reading.  Will they?  Will the pandemic's end solve all our problems? Chester E. Finn, Jr., Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus, Thomas B. Fordham Institute, comments on this very question in his article, “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Back in That Old School?”  
 
“If the pandemic vanished tomorrow and all U.S. schools instantly reopened in exactly the same fashion as they were operating last February, how many parents would be satisfied to return their daughters and sons to the same old familiar classrooms, teachers, schedules and curricula?  A lot fewer than the same old schools and those who run and teach in them are expecting back!  Of course there’d be plenty of pent-up anger and frustration over the “lost year,” anxiety about kids struggling to catch up, … But would all that fade into gratitude for being able to resume the status quo ante? Nope.  Some fading would doubtless happen over the months. But how many millions of families would insist on something different instead of docilely accepting schooling as it operated before the plague hit?”
 
Is Finn correct, will parents demand change?  Will parents be satisfied to return to failed teaching methods?  Will parents be content to see their children struggle? 
 
How should we teach children to read?  
We need to change and use a method that works, but will the schools make the change?  Are the “reading wars” really over?  We will continue to pursue this question in my next blog post.  

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    Elaine Clanton Harpine, Ph.D.

    Elaine is a program designer with many years of experience helping at-risk children learn to read. She earned a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology (Counseling) from the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

    if you teach a child to read, you can change the world.

    Copyright 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 Elaine Clanton Harpine 

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