Last updated on 2024-01-15
Among the first bills from the Governor is House Bill 1022, in which the Department of Education requests the $6 million in emergency funding to train teachers in the phonics-fanning “Science of Reading” that Governor Noem asked for in her December 6 budget address.
I’m not sure what the “emergency” is. The Department of Education already publicly launched this statewide literacy initiative four months ago. The Department contracted with a North Dakota consultant four months before that to travel around the state and give presentations on the science of reading to Department staff, school boards, and teachers for $150 an hour. Now the state has the Pennsylvania-based AIM Institute for Learning and Research® providing AIM Pathways training on the science of reading. According to AIMILR® and the Department, that training is free of charge for teachers, “thanks to funding available to DOE through the American Rescue Plan“. Governor Noem’s budget brief on her push for teacher training in literacy admits that the state launched the program using ESSER funding—the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund extended in 2021 in the American Rescue Plan, which sent South Dakota $382,019,236 in ever-helpful Biden Bucks!
Hmmm… maybe the only emergency is that federal dollars helped the state launch a useful program and the Governor needs the Legislature to rush in with some state money so she can keep President Biden from taking full credit for improving education in South Dakota.
Ah, the ever-present emergency clause used for non-emergencies. I give this emergency clause a pass. Too many poor readers is an emergency. If a change in teaching reading can rectify that, then it makes sense to funnel the money out to districts as fast as possible. It is an appropriation, and shoveling money from the institutions of state government to local districts where students learn to read could be considered an emergency, I guess.
The thing is I remember the Rapid City school district making a huge change in literacy emphasis in 2000. It was an emergency back then, too. The science of reading changes as research brings new insights.
I’m on the fence with the “Science of Reading” (except that it’s a self-serving name). Maybe it will be a positive change, maybe it won’t. The bigger problem is people don’t make reading a regular part of their lives. I took Spanish for 2 years. I could never actually speak it because I never used it outside of the classroom. Too many people seem to have the mistaken notion that it’s only the school’s job to teach their kids to read. If parents don’t read with and to their kids (let alone read for their own pleasure) it’s unlikely for their kids to have much success unless they have an aptitude for it.
I have a hard time believing that the science of reading changes much at all.
“Dick said to Jane, see Spot run.” People my age will remember where
this came from.
Most of us learned to read.
The teachers have no room for any more training.
Their days are already packed and they have to respond to emails etc 24/7.
The teachers unions continue to look away and bring them cookies at Christmas time to try to make up for the fact they are complicit in keeping their salaries at basement level.
Edwin–About half of us learned to read with enough comprehension to fully understand and be able to appropriately react to a High School Science book. Word recognition is just one component of reading literacy.
Well, Edwin, new things are learned every day in every field and pile enough days together and you have a changed outlook. Beside, the Dick and Jane books were really pitiful, actually. I liked them because we had a dog named Spot, so it was relatable to my family’s lifestyle. That was not true of a lot of urban dwellers, or even black rural/suburban dwellers. My Dick and Jane book had no black people or indigenous people or any other minority person. Dick and Jane were also mostly from the “look/see” reading fad that pushed out phonics, I did have phonics for a couple years at Mark Twain Elementary. Today phonics in a newer form is back in fashion.
Donald, don’t confuse reading science with social science.
Reveal Radio aired a segment on this subject back in October. Good stuff.
https://revealnews.org/podcast/how-teaching-kids-to-read-went-so-wrong-update-2023/
Unions in New Mexico have concerns.
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/why-some-teachers-unions-oppose-science-of-reading-legislation/2023/03
Leave it to our governor to promote phonics–a governor who not infrequently displays an inability to make a subject agree with a verb—as the way, the truth, and the light to teach reading.
Phonics did come under scrutiny decades ago with the advent of whole word learning, and phonics has come under attack as a methodology for those with dyslexia: https://www.newchapterlearning.net/phonics-vs-whole-word.html#:~:text=At%20the%20whole%20word%20recognition%20stage%20of%20reading%2C,are%20unknown%20%28not%20already%20in%20the%20visual%20dictionary%29.
For most children a method balanced between phonics and the whole-word approach is likely better than focusing on phonics exclusively. See the interventions the teacher uses in the “structured literacy” approach, for example (an approach also noted as ‘scientific’ by its proponents).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cciMpUePOV0
Without evidence, I can’t but help think that a phonics only approach leads to inculcate children with the mistaken notion that since there is a one-to-one correlation between sounds with letters or groups of letters, there must therefore exist all kinds of other one-to-one correlations: a one-to-one correlation of a word with a given meaning (ignoring the overdetermination of meaning), as well as a one-to-one correlation of Bible passages to their precise interpretation and meaning. Literalistic interpretations of texts could very well be the perverse outcome of strict phonics teaching, another topic for another time.
Dyslexia is seldom diagnosed by SD schools and yet is present in 15-20% of children and adults. It the most disruptive learning problem for students of all intellect capacities to comprehend reading. Very few children have access or financial means to get the private specialized education it takes to be able to keep up with their grade level. Phonics is not a tool for dyslexia. So frustrating to see someone in charge of education not properly diagnose a problem and then throw money at a method that will have no impact. https://dyslexiaida.org/dyslexia-basics/
There are four vocabularies we all have: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Each overlap, but not as completely as we would think (or hope). I would contend that at some level, ALL reading becomes site word reading.
Then there is this example that made the rounds a few years back:
Aocernig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the Itteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt ting is taht the frist and Isat Itteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sill raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is beuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey Iteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Or even this extreme:
15’7 17 4M4Z1VG 7H47 YOU C4И R34D 7H15 3V3И 7HOUGH ONLY 4 M1V0R17Y OF 7H3 “L3773R5” 4R3 CORR3C7?
7H3 И30С0R73X 15 4M4Z1VG! 4И DO YOU И071C3 7H47 R34D1VG 7H15 B3COM35 MOR3 4UTOM4T1C 45 YOU GO 4LOVG?
7H15 15 7RU3 3V3И 7HOUGH R1GH7 WOW YOU 4R3 UML1K3LY 70 B3 COn5C10U5 OF WH1CH 5YMBOL5 4R3 R3PLAC1G
WH1CH L3773R5.
Sometimes creating meaning has less to do with the text than with the reader. (Which is ironically punished on ACT and Accuplacer testing when the reader is asked to be critical of textual grammatical nuanced flaws.)