"The results have been impressive. They have also been ignored."

June 08, 2004

Joanne Jacobs mentioned a story on Balanced Literacy today that's really gotten us steamed.

Seems a public elementary school in Madison, WI, has resisted its school district's push for the mediocre Balanced Literacy program, and instead has been teaching reading using Direct Instruction, a method which uses explicit phonics.

There are two noteworthy results:

The kids--especially the black kids--are soaring.

And Madison school district administrators couldn't care less.

Actually they do care. They care that Direct Instruction flies in the face of their cherished theories of "language acquisition through literature" so much that they're forcing Lapham Elementary to abandon Direct Instruction for the officially-sanctioned fuzzy-wuzzy Balanced Literacy.

That'll show 'em.

Katherine Esposito's article in Isthmus positively nails a number of aspects of the reading wars, and is well worth the read. A few points to note:

• Lapham (whose students continue at Marquette Elementary) switched from Balanced Literacy to Direct Instruction five years ago.
• In that time, the percentage of black 3rd graders considered "advanced" has increased 300%.
• The district average for advanced black 3rd graders remains where Marquette was 5 years ago.
• All the school's 3rd graders rank a close second in the entire city.
• Did we mention they're being forced to revert back to Balanced Literacy?

Elements of the story comprise a comedy of errors, but unfortunately no one's laughing. For example, take Reading Recovery, a fabulously expensive program for struggling early readers. (We discussed Reading Recovery in a post this past January.)

• The Madison school district has a budget deficit of almost $10 million.
• Reading Recovery cost $1.3 million in a recent school year, at a cool $4,000 per student.
• For this price they could have paid the entire tuition at any of a number of private schools, which seem not to have forgotten how to teach Phonics.
• Half of the students served by Reading Recovery failed the program and require more assistance.
• A consulting firm (hired specifically during one budget crisis) recommended eliminating or trimming Reading Recovery, noting "It is the highest-cost literacy program."
• Reading Recovery has been retained in the district. (Sigh.)

In Esposito's article we found one of our pet theories on Special Education validated. We've long felt that the expanding numbers of children labeled "Special Ed" haven't been because of an increasing problem with the development of children, but rather because of our collective amnesia on how to effectively teach reading.

Fall down on the job of teaching reading and you run the risk that the kid won't pick it up on his own. When that happens (and it does, a lot), then that child will be handicapped in every class that involves reading (which is most of them), leading to a near-certain designation in any of a number of Special Educations categories, most notoriously, "Learning Disabled."

What if these kids were simply taught to read properly in the first place?

Of course we will always have a percentage of Special Education children, but it probably won't be the epidemic we have today. This epidemic has hit minorities the hardest, possibly because these kids need explicit phonics instruction even more than white children, for any of a number of reasons.

Esposito writes of Sara Obern, a Special Education teacher who used Direct Instruction in daily 20-minute doses with a group of students behind in reading. In one year, all seven of her "Learning Disabled" students (all of whom were black) increased two grade levels in reading, enough to lose the LD designation!

"It made me so angry just having those kids and realizing, 'They're not disabled!'" [Obern] says now. "They're saying this kid is failing because there's something wrong with this kid. But if I can have him come up two years in one year, there's nothing wrong with that kid."

Meanwhile a jaw-dropping third of all black students in Madison are labeled "Special Education."

If only they were properly taught to read.

Readers may wonder what exactly is so bad about Balanced Literacy, for after all, it does sound like a reasonable approach: taking "a balance of the best of phonics and Whole Language."

In his "Educators vs. Reading" essay from Campus Report Online, Onkar Ghate writes:

Unfortunately, the dominant view among educators is that because "reading is such a complex and multifaceted activity," in the words of Dr. Catherine Snow, professor of education at Harvard, "no single method is the answer." This is like saying that because eating is "such a complex and multifaceted activity," no single principle can guide us, and that a proper diet must therefore contain a mixture of food and poison.

It's rewarding that he'd use the poison analogy, for it is one we've championed anytime we try to explain how Balanced Literacy isn't a benign "balance" but rather harmful to our children. For starters, Whole Language teaches that guesswork is a perfectly acceptable strategy to use when encountering an unknown word (after looking at the first letter, in a sop to the phonics crowd). Whole Language, in its love affair with literature, expends much effort in getting kids to figure out the meaning of text without actually sounding out words phonetically.

Whole Language (and Balanced Literacy) proponents say things like, "We used to say 'sound it out' now we say 'figure it out.' "

Unfortunately, this approach sacrifices not only the author's subtlety and imagination, but just about every proper noun you could think of. (When's the last time you saw a picture of "Thursday"?) And when encountering an unfamiliar character name in a story, say "Hermione Granger" the kids are actually told to substitute a more familiar name, say "Halle Berry" and use that name anytime it comes up in the story!

And this is supposed to be reading? No, it's Balanced Literacy.

Veteran teacher Sara Obern isn't fooled about this "balance," as Esposito reports:

"Balanced Literacy means you use a mixture of Whole Language and phonics," she says, a touch of cynicism in her voice. "Yes, you surround the kids with good books. Yes, you read out loud to them. Yes, you use many different approaches. Except -- let's guess. Which one?"

The one that works, naturally.