The Fight Over Phonics

About 50 years ago, the educator Lucy Calkins pioneered a technique called balanced literacy, which de-emphasized the use of phonics to teach reading. It was widely adopted in the United States, including in New York, the country’s largest public school system.
But doubts about the approach persisted, and now it seems that using balanced literacy has given a generation of American students the wrong tools.
Dana Goldstein, who covers family policy and demographics for The Times, discusses the story of balanced literacy and how Professor Calkins is trying to fix the problems that the technique created.
Guest: Dana Goldstein (www.nytimes.co...) , a national correspondent for The New York Times who writes about family policy and demographics.
Background reading:
• Lucy Calkins has rewritten her curriculum to include a fuller embrace of phonics. Critics may not be appeased. (www.nytimes.co...)
• Fed up parents, civil rights activists, newly awakened educators and lawmakers are crusading for “the science of reading.” Can they get results? (www.nytimes.co...)
For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily (nytimes.com/the...) . Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

[@cynthiap.8647]

I knew the reading curriculum sucked in NYC but I didn’t know that Lucy Calkin changed the curriculum with her “balance literacy” & disregarded science of reading. Now I know why I, as a young child, struggled to read by guessing words & just memorizing words. As an educator, I observed many of my students struggling to read & guessing words. So I researched more about science of reading & implemented phonics skills my students needed to learn in my guided reading groups. My whole teaching style change and I loved it! I saw the difference with my students too. They were motivated to read & gradually became independent readers without using pictures. In NYC IT SHOULD BE A MANDATE FOR DISTRICT TO CHANGE THEIR CURRICULUM TO SCIENCE OF READING!

[@HebaruSan]

"Look at the pictures and guess" is such a glaring red flag for a method that's supposed to teach how to read books _without_ pictures!

[@c.b.5535]

At first I thought she meant, to look at context clues, but you really need to already know how to read in order to do that.

[@sannydee]

Learned to read hooked on phonics. Became a teacher using guessing and cues. Then I became a sped teacher who tried to undo the latter with the former. Now I teach elementary to face the damage Lucy has done earlier. We have created kids who see reading books as the opposite of joy.

[@HebaruSan]

Calkins deserves so much blame, but it was also a systemic, institutional failure. School districts, schools, and teachers should have been at the forefront of understanding how literacy works rather than waiting for parents to force them by staging an uprising!

[@finalascent]

I emerged from a suburban school system in the early 1990s, well ahead of most of my college peers in reading comprehension, sentence formation, and essay writing. I credit that public school system for grounding myself and my age cohort in those "boring basics."

[@bluesky5384]

Agreed. This year is my first using Sonday systems which is multi sensory phonics (reading sounds and words, touch spelling them, writing them, reading them again). It's a boring 20 minutes but extremely systematic daily and I'm seeing better spelling than I have in quite a while. This isn't me saying reading skills (retelling, word solving, story elements etc) aren't important either. We just have put that in the forefront while completely ignoring that even upper grades need the phonics instruction provided by programs like Sonday. I teach 3rd and this is my first year after a decade at my school that I've had a phonics program to teach to my students. I started right after Words Their Way was phased out.

[@jaddison1112]

Phonics is the very best way to teach a child to read. I worked in Public Schools as a teacher's aide, and then a teacher for 40 years. Invariably the Los Angeles City Schools bounced back and forth from Phonics based and Whole Language kids don't learn to sound out words, and read without phonics. Many children have been badly damaged by LAUSD and other school districts doing away with phonics, and use only Lucy Calkins methods. KIds reading skills plummeted every time Calkins reading methods were the only way a teacher was allowed to teach. Kids will not read on their own, they goof around. Kids I taught loved to learn phonics. Kids never learn to spell either, how can children write proficiently without spelling correctly? Phonics work !!

[@bluesky5384]

Anyone who has ever read through the lesson scripts knew that her program wasn't developmentally appropriate. She created this program through the lens of a perfect school with students who all already have the foundations. I'll still teach some skills within the program but it's paired with Sonday systems now.

[@FloriaG777]

I'm curious to know what special education resource teachers supporting the classroom thought of Lucy's methods? Reading interventions are targeted, systemic, explicit, multi-sensory, and repetitive until mastered. For instance, students who are deaf struggle developing their literacy skills. It makes sense that her methods are flawed, especially if you look to students with hearing impairments and the correlation with auditory deficits.
Perhaps an apology isn't necessary, but maybe monetary retributions for selling a program that essentially failed students. The implication for some students may be a life-long due to these failings. Just an opinion, but perhaps her approach should be geared to students after certain foundational skills are achieved or an integration of the two. Also I would like to read her ongoing and initial body of research that demonstrates positive outcomes work i.e., evidence based. I really appreciated this information. Thank you!

[@jbach1841]

Her approach has stunted one, two, maybe three generations. How did the depts of education and districts continue to buy her junk for decades? So absurd. The implications extend wide and far.

[@markswanson1564]

What happens when there are NO pictures in the books?!

[@mikenicholas9017]

This whole debate is pointless until educators understand the science of audiology in the ages 0-3.
Children learn the sounds of language in this age only. After that, if you teach phonics, it has to match the sounds they hear.
These vary culturally.
Eg.
As a rule, a Japanese adult will never hear the difference between r & l, no matter how loud you say it.
There is no right method of phonics that works for all children without knowing this science and the phonemic awareness of different cultures. We don't all use the same sounds and you may as well teach African click languages as English to some kids.

[@mikenicholas9017]

Multiculturalism and desegregation meant this had to be addressed. We tried, but we failed. Audiology shows us the way forward.
And don't get me started on dyslexia and it's causes.

[@dchen4662]

高大成法醫是專業相信全世界的人都會相信、你的判斷希望你能繼續為賴小弟 伸張正義

[@sfdoctorp]

who takes an international flight, and then hitchhikes? such BS

[@zren2023]

I’m not disputing that Lucy’s method was not appropriate for many kids, but it wasn’t entirely wrong. English is not a phonetic language. Explicit phonics instruction should be part of any reading program. But do is reading the way Lucy proposed. Watch, 5 years from now, a new study will say….

[@HawaiiFoodAndFun]

Balanced literacy sounds interesting.
I had my 4 year old read the Star Wars opening crawl.

th-cam.com/video/wKX8Y0O5Hh8/w-d-xo.html