Letting the Evidence Speak for Itself

In a letter recently submitted to Education Week CITATION Ste09 \l 1033 (Stephen Krashen, 2009) Stephen Krashen, Professor Emeritus, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California, draws attention to the Reading First final impact study which showed that children following an intensive decoding-based curriculum do well on tests of decoding but not on measures of reading comprehension when compared with regular students. He reminds readers that the National Reading Panel, the foundation for Reading First, came up with similar results.

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From these two studies, Dr. Krashen draws the following conclusion. A high level of proficiency in decoding is not necessary in order to learn to read. Yet, he has employed fallacious reasoning to confirm his obvious bias against Reading First. What these studies actually confirm is precisely what the authors of Reading First already understood; Phonics is not an end in itself. Phonics is a critical step in supporting reading development. With this in mind, The National Reading Panel recommended explicit and systematic phonics instruction. By this, it is meant that teachers should be provided precise directions for modeling and for leading students through the process of using letter-sound relationships to read words; letter sound relationships should be taught in a clearly defined sequence; and students should be provided extensive practice in reading stories with many different words to decode. Phonics is most effective when introduced in Kindergarten and first grade. In my 2006 interview CITATION Nan06 \l 1033 (Salvato, 2006) with Dr. Reid Lyon, former Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch within the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institute of Health and one of the architects of Reading First, he elaborated on the following ideas. 1) No one program is equally beneficial for all kids. 2) Combinations of programs frequently work better than one program alone. 3) The value of any program is data driven and based on its impact on kids. 4) The teacher is one of the most critical factors in how well kids learn. He explained that his research and others found that there are particular characteristics of good programs; they're comprehensive and based upon substantial converging evidence that learning to read is complex and requires the learning and integration of phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, reading fluency, and reading comprehension strategies. Furthermore, effective programs nurture the kinds of instructional interactions that develop these skills with professional development provided to teachers so they can monitor response to instruction (RTI), modify instruction if needed, and implement the programs with fidelity. For Dr. Stephen Krashen to malign, through faulty reasoning (or perhaps opportunistic), Dr. Reid Lyon's good name and suggest anything other than the truth about Reading First is irresponsible and serves to impede the progress Dr. Lyon has made in helping kids learn to read. Unfortunately, this type of propaganda confuses those without the skills to discern between good research and bad, which proliferates the poor pedagogical methods that continue unabated in our nation's schools. I'm disappointed with Education Week, a publication that as a status quo usually researches the facts surrounding any submission before they publish it. Sadly, this time they have failed their readers, falling prey to Dr. Krashen's agenda to advance one avenue of thinking above all with the goal of destroying all others. To borrow a quote from Al Gore –one that has now been recognized as pure folly, Dr. Krashen would have us believe the debate is over. It is over, but in favor of Dr. Lyon. Those in the Educational Establishment, who jumped on the bandwagon to criticize Dr. Lyon, a man whose impeccable research methods have benefitted millions, and will continue to benefit children all over the world if Reading First doesn't get thrown into the Junk Science trash heap bin instead of what passes for scientific methodology and for too long influenced the training of our children's teachers and the education schools from which they graduated, should be ashamed of themselves. The Educational Establishment should stop following political agendas and focus on what replicable evidence based research reveals if we truly want to give every child a chance to read.