Phonics, Failure, and the Public Schools

David BoazCould the public schools finally be " following the science " on how to teach reading? It would be about time. Dana Goldsteinreports in the New York Times:For decades, Lucy Calkins has determined how millions of children learn to read. An education professor, she has been a pre-eminent leader of “balanced literacy,” a loosely defined teaching philosophy.In a classic Calkins classroom, teachers read aloud from children ’s literature; students then chose “just right” books, which fit their interests and ability. The focus was more on stories — theme, character, plot — less on sounding out words.Her curriculum, “Units of Study,” is built on a vision of children as natural readers, and it has been wildly popular and profitable. She estimates that a quarter of the country’s 67,000 elementary schools use it. At Columbia University’s Teachers College, she and her team have trained hundreds of thousands of educators.But increasingly parents and teachers are pushing back against" whole word " and " balanced literacy " theories. They cite decades of research on how children actually learn to read and write. In 1997 Congress instructed the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development to work with the Department of Education to establish a National Reading Panel that would evaluate existing research and evidence to find the best ways of teaching children to read. The panel reviewed more than 100,000 reading studies. In 2000it reported its concl...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs