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What helps children become better readers? It can be hard to say

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What helps children become better readers? It can be hard to say

Educators say a longer period of investigation is merited before concluding structured literacy approach is a success.

By Peter Smagorinsky and David Reinking

What does drinking coffee have to do with teaching reading?

Each is entangled with many interacting variables, making it hard to isolate a single cause (e.g., coffee, a teaching method) for a specific outcome (e.g., heart disease, reading proficiency).

For example, according to one report, "Australian researchers found that drinking six or more coffees a day increases a person's risk of heart disease by as much as 22 percent." But the six-cup threshold can be difficult to measure. Some drink from mugs, others a demitasse. Some make it strong, some make it weak. Some order a small, some a large.

Some add sugar and cream or a sugary, fatty cream substitute. Some have a doughnut with their breakfast coffee as part of a generally unhealthy diet. Some smoke a cigarette with every cup and don't exercise. At day's end, some may consume alcohol or other inebriants to counteract the stimulation of caffeine, themselves associated with deadly health issues.

So, is the abundant coffee drinking the cause of heart disease, or is it one among many unhealthy habits that often come along with it, or all in collusion?

Which brings us to research about teaching reading. Specifically, we respond to a recent Get Schooled essay in which Claire Suggs celebrates the effects of "structured literacy" on children's reading development. Suggs has been a reliable observer of schools for many years as a senior research consultant for the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, among other positions.

But in her enthusiastic endorsement of the educational approach called the "Science of Reading," she exhibits the same blinders as do those conducting coffee studies. When many factors of teaching reading are in play, it's nearly impossible to single out any one as the indisputable cause of the outcome. And the outcome of most reading instruction has been stable for over 40 years now, in spite of the crisis rhetoric issued by Science of Reading advocates, whose insistence on their exclusive insights into how to teach reading has made their product an attractive brand to be sold.

In her report on three Georgia school districts' institution of a Science of Reading emphasis, Suggs includes a testimonial from a principal who reported that "All of this long term is reducing high school dropout rates, that's the longevity of the work we're doing right now. . . the children are thriving, and parents are on board." Actually there has been no "long term." The intervention is too new. Promising great results in the future has sustained many a "reform" effort that has, in that great future, been replaced by another miracle cure, celebrated with its own promises of a better tomorrow.

Suggs reports that "Under the structured literacy approach, teachers provide explicit and systematic instruction in the five components of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension."" These five principles underlay the Science of Reading, which adapted its "settled science" claim from the five pillars of reading identified by the National Reading Panel two decades ago.

Suggs accepts the claim of Science of Reading that they have triumphed in the Reading Wars: "After years of disagreement, consensus has grown among researchers that structured literacy is the most effective way to teach reading." But the consensus exists only among true believers. In fact, this is a very contentious domain, with much disagreement remaining among researchers and practitioners as the Reading Wars rage on in yet another decade.

Few would deny knowing phonics, having a good vocabulary and comprehending a written text are central features of reading, along with "fluency," generally referring to reading smoothly without hesitation.

Simply on their own, this bundle of five features complicates the effort to make a causal claim, especially when different teachers provide different instructional emphases. Perhaps these areas of reading are taught more systematically and explicitly than others, even as it's not possible to demarcate clearly between systematic and unsystematic, explicit and implicit. And, since much school learning is implicit and thus virtually impossible to identify to an outsider, ruling it out because it's not clearly visible seems an oversight.

To complicate matters further, Suggs reports that the three districts she studied accompanied structured literacy with a massive support apparatus:

Increased professional development for teachers and administrators subsidized by a stipend.

Addition of a full-time instructional coach in every elementary school to help teachers stay the course.

Addition of a literacy expert in district office teams, aligned with the program's priorities.

Surely this districtwide emphasis has something to do with whatever Suggs and her colleagues found. We may well be simply witnessing a Hawthorne Effect, where change and the scrutiny it involves, not the intervention itself, produces short-term, but transitory, gains. Those who invest a whole district's resources in a great solution are also invested in its success, however, leading to wondrous claims of effectiveness that have no measurable support.

Perhaps a longer period of investigation is merited, given the history of changes that produce an immediate burst of enthusiasm, and then fade in effectiveness. It's happened before: The federal government invested billions in the massive national Reading First initiative, which included training teachers in the elements of "structured literacy," including 90-180 minutes of systematic phonics instruction daily. The results were disappointing.

It is far too early to conclude that the optimistic reactions Suggs reports are justified. Our concern is that a complex, districtwide initiative is being evaluated on the initial enthusiasm of people for whom change is welcome, with claims stretched to include future benefits. So far, there are no clear results other than testimonials of a set of upbeat stakeholders.

Like coffee consumption, specific reading instructional strategies do not act alone, but are part of complex social systems. We hope our caution helps to inform the discussion about how Georgia schools invest their funds and instructional time in their children's reading development.

Peter Smagorinsky is a retired professor at the University of Georgia, an inductee in the Reading Hall of Fame and former co-editor of Research in the Teaching of English. David Reinking is a retired professor at Clemson and the University of Georgia. He is also an inductee in the Reading Hall of Fame and former co-editor of Reading Research Quarterly and Journal of Literacy Research.