10: The Details

Summary

Sold a Story: Episode 10 - "The Details" Summary

Released April 11, 2024 by APM Reports

In Episode 10 of Sold a Story, titled "The Details," host Emily Hanford delves deeper into the ramifications of her investigative podcast on reading instruction in U.S. schools. This episode emphasizes the personal stories of students, parents, and educators affected by the prevalent teaching methodologies, while also featuring insights from cognitive scientists on the evolving landscape of reading education.

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1. Personal Stories: Students and Parents Respond

Zoe Gaul's Journey

• Introduction to Zoe: Emily revisits Zoe Gaul, a fourth-grader from New York City's Upper East Side, who was featured in the podcast's first episode.
• Current School Experience: [01:45] Zoe shares her positive experiences in fourth grade, highlighting her friendships and a "really cool teacher."
• Reading Progress: [02:07] Zoe expresses confidence in her reading abilities and demonstrates her skills by reading a passage aloud, showcasing her proficiency.

Lee Gal on Curriculum Resistance

• Parental Insights: [02:48] Lee Gal, Zoe's father, attributes Zoe's reading success to supplemental phonics instruction he provided, contrasting it with the school's approach.
• School's Stance: [03:32] Despite widespread issues with the Lucy Calkins reading curriculum, Lee notes that his child's school remains steadfast in its use, dismissing critiques like those presented in "Sold a Story."
• Teacher and Parent Reactions: [04:20] Lee observes a decline in concerned parents, many of whom have opted for private or Catholic schooling, leaving behind those reliant on costly tutoring services.

Missy Purcell's Hopeful Transformation

• Matthew's Progress: [05:57] Missy recounts her son Matthew's transformation after transferring to a private school specializing in dyslexia. Within a year, Matthew became a fluent reader, gained confidence, and thrived socially.
• Emotional Impact: [06:28] Missy's satisfaction underscores the potential benefits of alternative educational approaches when public systems fall short.

Sarah Gannon's Shift to Advocacy

• From Specialist to Advocate: [07:00] Former reading specialist Sarah Gannon discusses her transition from believing in the balanced literacy approach to embracing the science of reading after her daughter's struggles.
• Professional Isolation: [07:25] Sarah shares the personal costs of her stance, including strained relationships with former colleagues resistant to change.
• New Role: [08:06] Now assisting school districts in implementing evidence-based reading instruction, Sarah emphasizes the need for critical evaluation of curricula and robust teacher training.

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2. Insights from Cognitive Scientists: Balancing Instruction and Practice

Mark Seidenberg on the Science of Reading Movement

• Positive Shifts: [15:55] Seidenberg acknowledges the movement's success in highlighting the necessity of teaching basic reading skills, such as phonics and the relationship between print and language.
• Concerns Over Oversimplification: [16:35] While celebrating increased interest, he warns against the reductionist approach where educators might overly rely on specific programs without understanding the underlying science.
• Depth of Knowledge: [17:32] Seidenberg points out that only a fraction of the extensive reading research is being utilized, potentially limiting the effectiveness of new teaching methods.

Reid Lyon's Cautionary Perspective

• Lessons from the Past: [24:32] Lyon reflects on his experience with the "Reading First" program, emphasizing that providing information alone does not ensure meaningful change in educational practices.
• Systemic Challenges: [25:43] He underscores the complexity of implementing science-based reading instruction across diverse and large educational systems, cautioning against top-down mandates that neglect the nuances of effective teaching.

Balancing Explicit Instruction and Reading Practice

• Decoding vs. Reading Time: [19:47] Seidenberg highlights the importance of teaching decoding skills explicitly while ensuring ample time for students to engage in meaningful reading—a balance that some current implementations may disrupt.
• Implicit Learning's Role: [21:25] He advocates for fostering implicit or statistical learning through extensive reading, allowing students to internalize language patterns naturally over time.

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3. Policy Implications and Future Directions

Impact of New Legislation

• Pressure on Schools: [26:01] Emily discusses the tension between necessary policy support—such as funding and resources—and the risk of schools prioritizing compliance over effective, nuanced instruction.
• Curriculum Commitments: [28:00] Seidenberg warns against schools becoming overly dependent on specific curricula or products, which may limit teachers' flexibility and understanding of best practices.

Potential for Constructive Change

• Collaborative Efforts: [12:05] Christine Cronin, now leading professional development for Boston Public Schools, stresses the importance of teachers feeling connected and supported rather than directed by external mandates.
• Ongoing Evolution: [26:27] Lyon remains hopeful, noting a more mature and thoughtful conversation around reading instruction today compared to past initiatives, though he remains wary of dogmatism overshadowing detailed, evidence-based practices.

Emily Hanford's Reflection

• Work in Progress: [12:29] Emily concludes by acknowledging the complexity of nationwide educational reform, emphasizing the podcast's role in raising awareness and sparking necessary debates.
• Looking Ahead: [12:29] She hints at continued exploration into what works and what doesn't in evolving reading instruction methodologies, promising further insightful episodes.

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4. Notable Quotes

• Zoe Gaul on Reading: “[Zoe] says reading is going well. Do you feel like you're a good reader?” ([02:09])

• Lee Gal on Curriculum Resistance: “...the podcast is something no one is supposed to mention at school.” ([04:01])

• Missy Purcell on Matthew's Progress: “He is doing so great. First of all, I was told he would never be a fluent reader. He's a fluent reader.” ([06:28])

• Sarah Gannon on Teaching Challenges: “Teaching is a very personal career because it involves children and it involves their lives. And if you feel like you're not doing something right and you potentially harm them...” ([07:53])

• Mark Seidenberg on Oversimplification: “If people decide that all we need to do is stick to the program here and everyone will read, I think that would be a really big mistake.” ([28:00])

• Reid Lyon on Systemic Change: “You gotta have time to do it. You gotta have teachers who feel like they're being taken care of.” ([24:38])

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5. Conclusion

Episode 10 of Sold a Story intricately weaves together personal narratives and expert analysis to present a comprehensive picture of the ongoing struggle to improve reading instruction in America. While there is palpable progress driven by the science of reading movement, challenges remain in ensuring that reforms are both evidence-based and practically implementable across diverse educational landscapes. As Emily Hanford continues her investigation, listeners are reminded of the profound impact that effective reading education can have on students' lives and the continuous need for informed, compassionate approaches to teaching.

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Transcript

[Zoe Gaul]

I just think it's pretty cool to be in a podcast. Cause, like, everybody hears it and it's just like, oh, my God, that's me. I did that.

[Emily Hanford]

That's Zoe Gaul. We introduced you to her in our first episode. Did you listen to the podcast?

[Zoe Gaul]

Yeah, I did.

[Emily Hanford]

What was it like to hear about other kids who were struggling to learn how to read?

[Zoe Gaul]

It was pretty cool. I mean, like, it's not cool that they were struggling how to learn to read, but like, Anna.

[Emily Hanford]

There are a lot of kids who struggle to learn how to read. And I think that hearing you and hearing the other kids who are on the podcast was really validating for those kids because they realized, like, they're not alone.

[Zoe Gaul]

Yeah.

[Emily Hanford]

I'm Emily Hanford and this is Soul to Story, a podcast from APM Reports. In our previous episode, we heard what's been going on with the people and organizations at the center of our investigation. In this episode, we're going to tell you about some of the other people who are in the podcast. Kids, parents, teachers and scientists. What's happened to them since Solda's story came out? What do they think about what's happened in response to the podcast? We're going to start with Zoe Gaul. Zoe was in first grade when I went to New York City in the spring of 2021 to meet with her and her dad. They lived on the Upper east side of Manhattan. They still live in the neighborhood in a new apartment. And Zoe still goes to the same public school where she's now in fourth grade. And how is fourth grade going so far?

[Zoe Gaul]

It's going pretty amazing. Two of my best friends are in my class this year. And then I have a really cool teacher.

[Emily Hanford]

Cool teacher? What makes her cool?

[Zoe Gaul]

I don't know.

[Emily Hanford]

She's just cool. And Zoe says reading is going well. Do you feel like you're a good reader?

[Zoe Gaul]

Yeah, I do.

[Emily Hanford]

I asked her if she'd be up for reading out loud again. You willing to do that?

[Zoe Gaul]

Mm.

[Emily Hanford]

You have a book?

[Zoe Gaul]

Yes, I do.

[Emily Hanford]

She's got a brand new book. One she's never read before.

[Zoe Gaul]

Okay, so chapter one. Is that her? Stop pushing. I can't see. Friends, quiet. You're gonna ruin everything. A cab is coming. Quick, hide. 15 year old Isa and 12 year old Oliver raced down, raced around to the side of the brownstone. Hurry, Hyacinth.

[Emily Hanford]

Hyacinth. Pretty impressive.

[Lee Gal]

She's a really good reader.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Zoe's dad, Lee Gal.

[Lee Gal]

And I think it speaks to the fact that certain things that we did together When I was teaching her my phonics curriculum that I cobbled together, they really stuck, and they really helped her connect the dots on how to read, despite the way they taught.

[Emily Hanford]

Zoe's school will have to change the way it teaches reading. The school uses the Lucy Calkins reading curriculum, and as you heard in the last episode, all New York City public schools will have to stop using that curriculum. They're supposed to be using something new by next school year. But when I did this interview with Lee last fall, he told me nothing had changed.

[Lee Gal]

So far, it has not changed. The school knows about Solda's story. The principal there let me know. She's like, I know about the podcast, but we didn't talk about it at all. She just said she knew about it. And essentially they basically were like, we disagree.

[Emily Hanford]

I asked the principal for an interview, but she declined. Lee says it feels like the podcast is something no one is supposed to mention at school. He has talked to a few parents.

[Lee Gal]

About it, but these are private moments. This is not somebody going and saying in front of the entire Parents association and teachers bringing any of those things up that I know of. You know, it's one of those like, hey, by the way, that was really great. And shh. Like, oh, somebody's coming to. You know, it almost feels like that.

[Emily Hanford]

When I first met Lee, he told me there were other parents at the school who were concerned about the reading instruction. Now, three years later, he says they've all left. Really?

[Lee Gal]

Yeah.

[Emily Hanford]

And what are they doing instead?

[Lee Gal]

Do you know they're going to either private or Catholic school? Yeah, yeah, they're all gone.

[Emily Hanford]

But of course, there's always tutoring for the kids who stay.

[Lee Gal]

The other day when I was walking Zoe to school, there was a guy in the corner with a banner stand, and he was the tutor doctor. And like, you know, in our neighborhood, I'm sure he got tons of business. Because what people do when they think that their child is struggling is they just spend money on a tutor because they have the extra income to be able to do that.

[Emily Hanford]

Lee's glad that balanced literacy is on its way out of New York City public schools and that Lucy Calkins is out as head of her teacher training institute. I asked him what he thought when he first heard that news.

[Lee Gal]

I have a lot of schadenfreude, you know, this real satisfaction, but it's too little, too late. I mean, damage has been done for so long. People are going to struggle their whole lives with not being able to read very well.

[Emily Hanford]

For parents who believe Their children did not get what they needed. Watching Balanced Literacy fall has felt like a victory. Missy Purcell remembers when she heard last year that her school district would be dropping the Reading Recovery program.

[Missy Purcell]

It just felt so. I may have gone out to have cocktails, if I may realize.

[Emily Hanford]

Missy's son Matthew was in Reading Recovery. You heard about Matthew in Episode five. He struggled for years and didn't get the instruction he needed in public school. So by the end of Soul's story, he was in sixth grade at a private school that specialized in helping kids with dyslex. And you said that after just one year in that school, he was almost up to grade level in reading and writing. So how is Matthew doing now?

[Missy Purcell]

Oh, you just ask him that question. I'm, like, already tearing up. So here we go. He is doing so great. First of all, I was told he would never be a fluent reader. He's a fluent reader, she says.

[Emily Hanford]

He's happy. He's got a lot of friends. He's playing baseball, and he's a confident student now.

[Missy Purcell]

He has just. He's just blossomed. And I could not be more proud. And I want that for every kid. I don't want my kid to be a unicorn.

[Sarah Gannon]

I do believe every kid can read. Every kid. It's doable.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Sarah Gannon, another parent from Sold a Story, who ended up moving her child to a private school.

[Sarah Gannon]

She said to me the other day, I just feel like people get me. And now all of a sudden, you can see she doesn't think she's dumb anymore.

[Emily Hanford]

Sarah Gannon was the reading specialist in Episode three who put her faith in Fountasyn Pannell.

[Sarah Gannon]

I trusted that they're experts. I trusted that this is the way you teach reading.

[Emily Hanford]

But when her own daughter couldn't read and Sarah wasn't able to help her, she found the science of reading. And eventually she quit her job because her district wasn't willing to change. She says some of her former colleagues, people she considered friends, are not interested in changing the way they teach kids to read, and they don't want to talk about it with her anymore.

[Sarah Gannon]

And at the end of the day, you know, we've moved apart. And I think that's just unfortunately how it has to be.

[Emily Hanford]

Sarah says Solda's story has been hard for many teachers to hear.

[Sarah Gannon]

No one likes to be criticized, especially when it's as personal as teaching. Teaching is a very personal career because it involves children and it involves their lives. And if you feel like you're not doing something right and you potentially harm them. I think it's really hard because no one goes into teaching that I know of to harm people. It's because you are a helper by nature, and most teachers I work with want to do it right.

[Emily Hanford]

Sarah has a new job now, helping school districts that are changing the way they teach reading. She wants teachers and district leaders to learn how to be critical consumers of curriculum, to ask, what is the research behind this? And to be able to evaluate that research. She says that's what was missing before.

[Sarah Gannon]

I think those of us who came from that movement of balanced literacy, where it was almost like blindly accepting what we do, I hope I know for myself, have become a little bit more thoughtful and critical in not just taking someone's word for it.

[Emily Hanford]

This is what I was hoping our reporting would do. I was hoping it would get more people curious about the scientific research on reading, that people, especially teachers, would listen and want to know more. And I wanted people to understand that this is not just about whether schools teach phonics. It's about whether they teach that other idea, the idea that beginning readers don't have to sound out written words because there are other strategies they can use. Instead, I wanted to show people why that idea is a problem and how it became so influential in early reading instruction.

[Christine Cronin]

That was new information for people.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Christine Cronin. You met her in episode three. She was the teacher in Boston who ultimately resisted that big effort by George W. Bush 20 years ago to get the science of reading into schools. She resisted because she felt like she was being told what to do and she didn't understand why. And she says people need to know what, why.

[Christine Cronin]

Especially in education, where people are often looking for the next shiny object, people become initiative weary. And when you told the whole story, there was a lot of information that people didn't have access to without having heard you report on it. That made it beyond just, oh, this is just the next new thing to, wow, there was a flaw here all along that we weren't privy to at the time, and now we have that information, and now we can approach this shift not just as, oh, gosh, it's a new, new thing, but, oh, I really, I should learn more about this. I think that that's the difference that I think that it made.

[Emily Hanford]

She's now in charge of professional development for the Boston Public Schools, where she's working with a team to oversee a big change in reading instruction. The school system started doing this before Solda's story, but she thinks some teachers who were resistant are more interested now because they heard the podcast, or maybe they're just hearing people talking about the science of reading.

[Christine Cronin]

Those conversations are happening through social media. They're happening in sort of all levels of people's experiences as educators. And so they definitely are coming into learning experiences curious and open, I think, in a deeper way, if they maybe had not been before.

[Emily Hanford]

And she says the scientific research is more accessible to teachers than it was 20 years ago during Bush's Reading first program. There are now lots of books and articles and videos and podcasts that explain the research.

[Christine Cronin]

It's not this sort of mysterious thing that I felt like you could only get the knowledge from a few, you know, people who held it.

[Emily Hanford]

And it's not just that the information is more widely available now. It's that teachers are sharing this information with each other.

[Christine Cronin]

And it's just. It changes everything as far as how people feel connected to the work. And we didn't feel that way during the Reading first era. We felt like something was being done to us as opposed to being collaborators as part of a movement.

[Reid Lyon]

I do think it's different this time.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Reid Lyon, the neuroscientist you met in Solda's story, who helped develop Reading First.

[Reid Lyon]

What's changed is this tremendous hunger for information. It's the first time I've ever experienced people asking me, where can I find more information so I can really do this?

[Emily Hanford]

Well, it's kind of blowing his mind.

[Reid Lyon]

People who heretofore would have said, off, you know, I know what I'm doing now say, I can't believe that. I thought that.

[Emily Hanford]

He's feeling hopeful that things are going to change for the better. But he also has concerns because he says the science of reading has become a movement.

[Reid Lyon]

What I'm fearful of because I've seen it so many times is, is movements sometimes gloss over detail. And here's the details are so critical.

[Emily Hanford]

When we come back, we're going to talk about some of the details. In episode three of Solda's story, you heard the former Superintendent of Public Instruction in California testifying before state lawmakers. I agree with the chair's comments. There is no issue facing education that's more crucial right now than how and whether we teach our youngsters to read all of them. Bill Honig told lawmakers he'd made mistakes when he was superintendent because he didn't know enough about how children learn to read. But he said he'd learned from cognitive scientists, and he was optimistic that reading instruction would change. I think we can Turn this around very, very quickly. The field is ready. The teachers are ready. They know that there's a problem. They're willing to play ball. This was in 1996, and as you know, things didn't turn out the way Bill Hoenig hoped. That's why we made this podcast. We wanted to know why scientific research from decades ago still wasn't making its way into many schools. What we discovered is that there was an idea that was in the way, an idea about how kids learned to read that was in conflict with what the research said. This idea was everywhere. It was embedded in books and curriculum materials and assessment systems and intervention programs that were being sold by many people and many publishing companies, and most successfully, by the people and the company we've been focusing on in this podcast. The idea is that kids don't need to be taught how to sound out written words because they can use other strategies to figure out what the words say. This entire podcast has been about that one idea and how that idea justified an approach to teaching reading that didn't include much phonics. That approach, often referred to as balanced literacy, is now being scrutinized by a lot of people.

[Mark Seidenberg]

The science of reading movement and the laws in particular, have had the effect of dislodging, not completely, but certainly pushing that approach off the pedestal and opening the door to doing different things.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Mark Seidenberg, one of the cognitive scientists you heard in Soul's story. And like Reed Lyon, who you heard before the break, Mark is thrilled and kind of amazed that there's such an interest right now in the science of reading.

[Mark Seidenberg]

So we have all this antipathy to science in so many parts of the country, and with regard to many issues. And in reading, you have all these people who are saying, we want to know more, we want to know more. And that's great.

[Emily Hanford]

But like Reid, Mark is worried about the details, the details of how schools are translating the science of reading into practice. So we're going to talk about some of the details because the details matter here. I'm going to start with Mark and then bring in Reid, and I'm going to offer some of my own thoughts, too. Mark Seidenberg's concerns are mostly about how the science itself is being understood or misunderstood by teachers and curriculum developers. As you heard in episode eight, the science of reading isn't a program you buy or a thing you do. It's a body of research. And this research has important implications for how schools teach reading. But Mark says only a few big ideas from the Research literature seem to be getting through, and he thinks that's a problem.

[Mark Seidenberg]

There are big parts of the literature people haven't gotten to for various reasons. And I would say the main one is the stuff we know about learning.

[Emily Hanford]

The stuff we know about learning. Let me back up a bit to explain what he's talking about. First of all, he sees many successes when it comes to how the science of reading is changing instruction in many schools. There's a lot of good news here.

[Mark Seidenberg]

It has definitely focused attention on the need to teach kids basic reading skills, like about print and about how print relates to language and how language relates to the world. And it did definitely increase awareness of a true fact, which is that kids need instruction in these areas and that that's an important thing to do.

[Emily Hanford]

This is a big deal. Lots of kids were struggling because they were being left to figure out too many things on their own. I'm going to read a little bit of this story to you, and if I get stuck on a word, I want you to try to help me figure out what that word could be. This is that lesson you heard in episode one where children were being taught to use the meaning of the story to guess a written word. Do you think that covered word could be the word miss? Because now that they're gone, maybe their parents will miss them. One of the big lessons from the scientific research is that schools need to explicitly teach beginning readers how to sound out written words, because kids who don't get off to a good start with decoding often end up with reading problems they may never get over. Remember this fourth grader trying to read in episode one? The balanced literacy approach, with its emphasis on teaching kids other strategies for identifying words, failed to provide many kids with the decoding instruction they needed. But Mark is concerned that in their enthusiasm to teach things they weren't before, some schools may be going overboard.

[Mark Seidenberg]

I think people had the idea that, look, we've been leaving too many kids behind. We've been doing a poor job. We know what the parts of reading are, and we will teach them. God.

[Emily Hanford]

And what he's seeing now when he visits schools, when he talks to teachers, when he reads, what they're saying online, is that some schools may be teaching kids more than they need to know.

[Mark Seidenberg]

I've seen first grade classrooms where phonological awareness is the big term that's on the wall, or teaching kids what diphthongs are.

[Emily Hanford]

The point is, children need to be taught how to read. They need to know how to identify the sounds in words, but they don't need to know that's phonological awareness. And they need to know that the letters oi make the sound oi in coin, but they don't need to know that's a diphthong.

[Mark Seidenberg]

I think there's a failure to distinguish what a teacher might need to know about how language works and how reading works and what the kid needs to learn.

[Emily Hanford]

He's concerned that teachers now think they have to teach kids everything there is to know about how English spelling works. Every spelling pattern, every exception, every rule.

[Mark Seidenberg]

And so you have the emergence of a view that really emphasizes explicitly teaching everything that goes into becoming a reader.

[Emily Hanford]

There's not enough time in this school day to teach kids everything they need to know about how written language works. And more importantly, it's not necessary.

[Mark Seidenberg]

There's another kind of learning.

[Emily Hanford]

This other kind of learning has a name.

[Mark Seidenberg]

Implicit learning or statistical learning.

[Emily Hanford]

This kind of learning occurs without explicit instruction. Mark Seidenberg's research has shown that the brain has a remarkable ability to learn from the statistical regularities in language, such as the frequency of certain spelling patterns in words. Explicit instruction is critical at first. Most kids don't just start picking this up. But research shows that a lot of what a good reader eventually knows about words and how they're spelled and what they mean is stuff they learned implicitly through reading. Mark says the goal of reading instruction should not be to teach kids everything they need to know. It should be to teach them enough so that this implicit or statistical learning can kick in.

[Mark Seidenberg]

You know, there's this idea of cracking the code where the light bulb goes on and the kid kind of goes, oh, that's how it works.

[Emily Hanford]

Remember Kamari? You heard Kamari having a light bulb moment in episode two.

[Zoe Gaul]

Smiling, smiling, smiling.

[Emily Hanford]

Kamari got a lot of phonics instruction. Not on things like what a diphthong is, but on how to sound out written words. He needed extra help, but eventually he was able to decode words with spelling patterns he hadn't been taught. That's implicit learning. That kind of learning depends on lots and lots of practice. And Mark Seidenberg is worried that schools may now be spending too much time on instruction and not giving kids enough time to read. Remember the cozy nooks? I mentioned them in episode six. I said that people with good intentions wanted to get kids curled up with books as fast as they could. They wanted to get kids to the good part, which is reading. So they taught beginning readers shortcuts, like, look at the picture. Think of a word that makes sense in the hopes that eventually kids would figure out how to read that approach failed to recognize how difficult it is for many children to learn how to decode words. But Mark Seidenberg wants everyone to be cognizant of the fact that time in a cozy nook curled up with a book is essential. You become a good reader by spending a lot of time reading. But there's that critical first step, learning how to decode, that can't be skipped or given short shrift. And here's the thing. Figuring out the amount of instruction that each child needs and making sure each child gets that instruction, that's a complex task. And Reed Lyon is concerned that with all the new laws and policies and public awareness about the science of reading, schools and teachers are under pressure to do things quickly and they might not have what they need to do things.

[Reid Lyon]

Well, whenever you're trying to put anything in place, you got to have time to do it. You gotta have teachers who feel like they're being taken care of. You know, the nuts and bolts of helping people work together and feel supportive, as hokey as that sounds, is so critical.

[Emily Hanford]

He learned this the hard way through his experience 20 years ago with Reading First. He thought if educators learned about the research, instruction would change.

[Reid Lyon]

I thought just saying the words would get it done.

[Emily Hanford]

What he learned is that information is not enough. He says the key thing to think about is how do complex systems change? What's the best way to do that? And one of the lessons from Reading first is that top down policies are not necessarily effective when the goal is complex systems change. That's why Reed has concerns about laws that are telling schools they have to do things and they have to do them fast.

[Reid Lyon]

Where my fear is, is it takes us away from the details I'm talking about and the love for learning the details back to a combative stance where you're blowing out a lot of epinephrine and norepinephrine and cortisol.

[Emily Hanford]

That's the neuroscientist talking. He's referring to chemicals in our brain that get released when we're stressed. He wants to avoid this, to avoid the kind of fight that eventually took down Reading First. And he is optimistic because, as he said earlier, he does think something is different this time.

[Reid Lyon]

There is a thoughtfulness about reading in the country today. There is an actual mature conversation.

[Emily Hanford]

But there are intense debates going on right now on social media and among teachers and researchers about the details of how to teach kids to read and how to do it at scale, because that's the task here, getting thousands of school districts to make the right kinds of changes so that millions of kids can become better readers. It's a tall order. I'm worried that things will fall apart under pressure. The pressure of new laws and policies in particular. It's tricky. Policy has an important role to play here. Schools and teachers often need the resources that can come with policy, things like money for new training and materials. And policy has a key role to play when it comes to accountability. Sometimes pressure is necessary to change the status quo. But what's happening now is that schools and districts are buying new curriculum and material, sometimes because they have to. They're spending a lot of money committing to new products. And there are a lot of questions to ask about these new products. What's the evidence they will lead to better results? This is one of the things Mark Seidenberg is really worried about. He's worried that schools will commit to doing things in a certain way because they have bought a particular product that tells them to do it that way.

[Mark Seidenberg]

If people decide that all we need to do is stick to the program here and everyone will read, I think that would be a really big mistake.

[Emily Hanford]

And something that's troubling him is a kind of dogmatism that he's noticing in conversations these days around the science of reading. People expressing strong beliefs, joining teams, and becoming committed to new programs and new authorities.

[Mark Seidenberg]

One thing I see is there is this sort of authoritarian strain where people want to have someone they can on for guidance. It's like we need to have an authority who we can rely on to tell us what to do. And one of the problems with people like Lucy Calkins were, well, she took on that role and she was a flawed resource.

[Emily Hanford]

Here's what I think. I think as a nation, we need to approach what's happening now as a work in progress, keep learning new things and be prepared to course correct if necessary. But this is hard to do in education because it's such a big system with so many parts and so many people and so much money involved and so much at stake. What I can see is that the sold a Story podcast and our earlier reporting has helped to raise awareness about the body of research known as the science of reading. It spurred a lot of action and reaction, and now it's kind of messy out there. And that means we're not done with this story. There's a lot more to report on, and we're going to do that. We want to know what's working in schools as they are changing, how they teach reading and what's not working and why. There's more coming in this podcast. If you want to be sure to get new episodes, follow the show in your podcast app. You can also sign up for our email list. If you have a story you want to share, please email us. You can find our address. Sign up for the email list and get a link to our website in the show Notes. You can also find links there to an article and a talk by Mark Seidenberg about his concerns with translating the science of reading into practice, and a piece by Reid Lyon on what he believes are the most important findings from the reading research, with tons of citations. If you want to read more this episode was produced by ME with Christopher Peak. Our editors are Chris Julen and Curtis Gilbert. Mixing and sound design by Chris Julin and Emily Hovik. Our theme music is by Wonderly. Final mastering of this episode was by Derek Ramirez. We had reporting help from Annika Best and fact checking by Betsy Towner Levine. Special thanks to Emily Corwin, Chris Haxel and Margaret Goldberg for listening to early versions of this episode and providing feedback. Andy Cruz is our digital editor, Tom Scheck is our Deputy Managing editor, and our Executive Editor is Jane Helmke. Support for Sold a Story comes from the Oak Foundation, Ibis Group Group and the Hollyhock Foundation.