13: The List

Summary

Sold a Story: Episode 13 – "The List"

Release Date: March 6, 2025
Host: APM Reports (Emily Hanford)

In Episode 13 of Sold a Story, titled "The List," Emily Hanford delves into the intricate dynamics between educational policy, curriculum evaluation, and the implementation of reading programs in Ohio. This episode explores how a podcast sparked significant legislative action, the role of EdReports in shaping curriculum choices, and the contentious journey of the Success for All program within state-approved reading lists.

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1. The Catalyst: Listener Impact and Ohio's Legislative Shift

The episode opens with Emily Hanford recounting the overwhelming response from listeners after the first season of Sold a Story. Notably, a letter from Matt Huffman, then-president of the Ohio State Senate, expressed his dedication to addressing the flawed reading instruction methods highlighted in the podcast.

[00:00] Emily Hanford: "I’ve gotten a lot of emails from listeners since Sold A Story first came out."

This surge in engagement led to significant political action. Co-reporter Christopher Peek shares how Ohio's education officials were galvanized by the podcast's revelations.

[00:34] Christopher Peek: "Ohio had a lot of people who listen to our podcast."

Following these developments, Governor of Ohio emphasized a renewed focus on literacy in his State of the State address, culminating in the introduction and swift passage of a bill mandating the Ohio Department of Education to approve reading programs aligned with the "science of reading."

[01:05] Emily Hanford: "We're going to make changes to how reading is taught in Ohio."

2. Ohio Department of Education's Challenge

Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer, an official with the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, details the department's urgent task to compile an approved list of reading programs within a constrained timeframe.

[02:30] Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer: "We had a very short window to get things in place."

The new law not only required alignment with scientific research but also banned the use of cueing strategies—methods previously considered standard in many reading programs.

3. The Role and Evolution of EdReports

A significant portion of the episode examines EdReports, a nonprofit organization established to evaluate educational curricula. Initially designed to assess alignment with Common Core State Standards, EdReports used a red, yellow, and green rating system to guide schools in their curriculum choices.

[04:30] Christopher Peek: "They review not just reading curriculum, but math and science curriculum too."

However, as the "science of reading" gained prominence, a conflict emerged. EdReports' evaluations began favoring programs that incorporated cueing strategies, which contradict established scientific understanding of effective reading instruction.

[06:30] Christopher Peek: "Ed Reports has given high marks to some programs that include the cueing strategies, which... is the opposite of what science has taught us about how kids become good readers."

4. Common Core vs. Science of Reading

The episode highlights the foundational differences between the Common Core standards and the science of reading. While Common Core outlines what students should learn, the science of reading emphasizes how reading should be taught based on cognitive research.

[07:55] Christopher Peek: "The Common Core standards don't say anything about how to do that. They don't say anything about how to teach. They just say what to teach."

This distinction became a pivotal point of contention, as EdReports continued to prioritize alignment with Common Core over scientifically validated reading methodologies.

5. The Controversial Case of Success for All

Success for All (SFA), a comprehensive reading program, became a focal point due to its exclusion from the initial Ohio approved list. The program, backed by extensive research, was omitted because EdReports deemed its broader school reform approach beyond their review scope.

[10:07] Emily Hanford: "Why not? Because of what we learned in the previous episode. Success for All is not just a reading curriculum, it's a whole school reform program."

Nancy Madden, co-creator of SFA, expressed frustration over EdReports' reluctance to evaluate the program, emphasizing the need for evidence-based validation.

[10:43] Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer: "We need to judge what's the outcome. We need to look at what is the evidence of effectiveness."

6. Real-World Impacts: Steubenville and Beyond

The narrative shifts to Steubenville, Ohio, where the superintendent and teachers grappled with the potential removal of SFA. Despite initial confidence, the district ultimately faced challenges in maintaining the program without state approval.

[15:00] Emily Hanford: "This stability, the commitment to this place, is one of the reasons Success for All has worked here. Why? It's lasted for 25 years, but it doesn't work everywhere."

Olivia Cilcote's investigative efforts uncovered over 150 schools that had adopted and subsequently abandoned SFA, citing reasons such as administrative turnover, financial constraints, and incomplete program implementation.

[16:58] Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer: "What emerged during my phone calls was a portrait of how complicated and delicate implementing a new program can be."

7. EdReports' Response and Ongoing Influence

Facing criticism, EdReports introduced significant changes to its evaluation process, incorporating a Science of Reading summary and updating review tools to automatically fail programs utilizing cueing strategies.

[26:26] Emily Hanford: "They now include a Science of Reading summary with the reviews. And just a few months ago, they changed the review tool. Programs that teach the cueing strategies will now automatically fail."

However, EdReports decided not to retrospectively reassess previously reviewed programs, leaving many past evaluations unchanged.

[26:31] Christopher Peek: "They are not going to go back and do those reviews again."

8. Broader Implications and Future Considerations

The episode underscores the delicate balance between relying on third-party evaluations like EdReports and ensuring that reading programs are genuinely effective based on scientific evidence. Experts like William Coren caution against over-reliance on any single evaluative body, advocating for a more nuanced approach to selecting educational programs.

[27:40] Christopher Peek: "William Coren said, no, we can't. We can't...Hamstring ourselves by saying you can only, only do these things that reach, you know, this very high standard."

Additionally, the episode touches on the recent political landscape, noting the Trump administration's termination of federal education research funding, which could further complicate efforts to implement evidence-based reading instruction.

[31:02] Emily Hanford: "The Trump administration recently announced it is terminating hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts related to education research, including research on reading."

9. Conclusion: The Path Forward

Sold a Story concludes by reflecting on the complexities of improving reading education. It emphasizes that while research is crucial, effective implementation hinges on stable leadership, proper training, and community commitment. The episode serves as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of relying too heavily on evolving standards and highlights the enduring need for evidence-based practices in education.

[31:12] Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer: "We have to remember that kids can learn. We can do better. There's a way to do it. You could be Steubenville."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Emily Hanford [00:00]: "I’ve gotten a lot of emails from listeners since Sold A Story first came out."

• Christopher Peek [04:30]: "They review not just reading curriculum, but math and science curriculum too."

• Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer [02:30]: "We had a very short window to get things in place."

• Christopher Peek [07:55]: "The Common Core standards don't say anything about how to do that."

• Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer [10:43]: "We need to judge what's the outcome. We need to look at what is the evidence of effectiveness."

• Emily Hanford [15:00]: "This stability, the commitment to this place, is one of the reasons Success for All has worked here."

• Christopher Peek [26:31]: "They are not going to go back and do those reviews again."

• Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer [31:12]: "We have to remember that kids can learn. We can do better."

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Key Takeaways

• Legislative Action: The podcast's influence led to Ohio enacting a law mandating science-based reading programs.

• EdReports' Dual Role: Initially aligned with Common Core, EdReports faced criticism for not adequately incorporating the science of reading, prompting updates to their evaluation criteria.

• Success for All's Struggle: Despite robust evidence supporting SFA, its exclusion from initial state lists highlighted the challenges of navigating curriculum approvals amidst shifting educational standards.

• Implementation Challenges: Schools adopting new programs grappled with factors like leadership turnover, financial constraints, and incomplete program execution, impacting the effectiveness of reading initiatives.

• Future Directions: The episode calls for a balanced approach to curriculum evaluation, emphasizing the importance of evidence-based practices, stable educational leadership, and comprehensive program implementation to genuinely enhance reading education outcomes.

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*For more insights and ongoing coverage of this evolving story, visit soldastory.org and stay tuned for future episodes of Sold a Story.

Transcript

[Emily Hanford]

I've gotten a lot of emails from listeners since Sold A story first came out. I have a fat file folder full of actual letters too, sent in the mail. One of these letters came from Matt Huffman. At the time he was president of the Ohio State Senate. The letter is three handwritten pages. Huffman said he was, quote, invigorated after listening to the podcast. He could see there was a problem with how reading was taught and he wanted to fix it. He wasn't the only one.

[Christopher Peek]

Ohio had a lot of people who listen to our podcast.

[Emily Hanford]

This is my co reporter, Christopher Peek.

[Christopher Peek]

I got a call just a couple months after Soldastory came out from one of the top education officials saying all the executives in the department were listening to Soldastory and they want to do something about it.

[Emily Hanford]

A few weeks after Chris got that call, the governor gave his State of the State address. I'm calling for a renewed focus on literacy.

[Christopher Peek]

He's saying a big proposal is coming. We're going to make changes to how reading is taught in Ohio.

[Emily Hanford]

Two weeks later, legislators introduced a bill.

[Christopher Peek]

And this bill says the department has to come up with a list of programs that are aligned with the science of reading.

[Emily Hanford]

The bill passed in June. The governor signed it into law on the fourth of July. Now it was up to the Ohio Department of Education to make a list of approved reading programs. I'm Emily Hanford and this is Sold a Story, a podcast from APM Reports. In this episode, we're going to tell you how state education officials in Ohio came up with their list. Why the Success for All program wasn't on it at first, and the influential organization that Ohio and other states are looking to for help when they're figuring out what programs count as the science of reading. An organization that wasn't set up to do that. We're also going to hear why even an evidence based program doesn't always work. Teaching kids to read is about more than just a program. So Ohio's new reading law passes in 2023. It directs the state government to come up with a list of approved reading programs. My name is Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer and it's this person's job to figure out how to do that.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

I work for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.

[Emily Hanford]

She and her colleagues have to come up with this list quickly. The law says schools in Ohio must be using a state approved reading program by the end of the following school year.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

We had a very short window to get things in place.

[Emily Hanford]

Melissa Weber Mayer and her colleagues knew what wasn't gonna be on the list.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

If there was any indication of any.

[Emily Hanford]

Part of a three queuing method being used, they didn't move forward. That's because the Ohio law included a ban on cueing. The flawed strategies we focused on in this podcast. At least 16 other states now have similar bans. So programs that included cueing were out in Ohio. But what was in the law said programs had to be aligned with the science of reading. Melissa Weber Mayer and her team decided it wasn't feasible for them to do their own analysis of research on reading programs. We actually did not review efficacy studies. They had to come up with a way to do this quickly. So one thing they did, we looked at what our other state colleagues who already had similar laws had done. They looked at other state lists. A program could make a case to get approved in Ohio if it had already been approved by another state. At least nine states have recently created new science of reading lists. And there was another way to make it onto Ohio's list.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

Have you been reviewed by ED reports?

[Emily Hanford]

EdReports? EdReports is the organization I mentioned earlier that's having a big influence on whether a program makes it onto a state's list. My co reporter Christopher Peek has been digging into Ed Reports for several months. Hi Chris.

[Christopher Peek]

Hi Emily.

[Emily Hanford]

So let's start with some basics. What is eDReports?

[Christopher Peek]

It's a pretty new organization. It's a non profit and it's only 10 years old. And it's already built up a lot of clout by billing itself as a kind of consumer reports for curriculum.

[Emily Hanford]

So what exactly does EdReports do?

[Christopher Peek]

They review curriculum. Teams of teachers actually do the reviews. They review not just reading curriculum, but math and science curriculum too. And they rate it. It's a red, yellow and green system. So if you're a publisher, you want an all green rating for med reports. Nearly 2,000 school districts have used its reviews to make their purchasing decisions. And the organization says 40 publishers have actually adjusted their products in response to an Ed Reports review. This is bigger than just the new state list. EdReports was having a big influence on the publishing industry before sold a story and the current conversation about the science of reading.

[Emily Hanford]

And it turns out there's a bit of a disconnect here, right? EdReports wasn't set up with the science of reading in mind.

[Christopher Peek]

No, it was set up with something else in mind. Something called the Common core state standards.

[Emily Hanford]

48 states have now joined a nationwide partnership to develop a common set of rigorous career ready standards in reading and math.

[Christopher Peek]

Common Core was a thing during the Obama administration. It was an effort to raise education standards across the country. The goal was to make sure students in different states were learning the same core skills. But it ran into the same kind of problem that George W. Bush's big education effort ran into. Publishers were saying their programs were aligned to the Common Core, just. Just like publishers were saying their programs were scientifically based during reading first.

[Emily Hanford]

And there was no one really policing that.

[Christopher Peek]

And that's why Ed Reports was established to review curriculum and say, yes, this curriculum really was designed with the Common Core standards in mind, or no, this curriculum wasn't. It's not aligned with the new standards.

[Emily Hanford]

So Ed Reports released its first reviews in 2015, and it becomes very influential very fast. But then along comes the science of reading, and people are starting to ask a different question. Not is your curriculum aligned, aligned with the Common Core, but is your curriculum aligned with the science of reading?

[Christopher Peek]

Exactly. And what I found in my reporting is that Ed Reports has given high marks to some programs that include the cueing strategies, which, as you know, is the opposite of what science has taught us about how kids become good readers.

[Emily Hanford]

So say more about that. Do you have an example?

[Christopher Peek]

So I talked to Carrie Curto. She was a literacy specialist at the state Department of Education in Rhode island, which was one of the first states to really try to push for better reading curriculum. Rhode island had looked at Ed Reports to come up with a list of programs that district should be using. And Carrie had been on the job for just a couple of weeks when she had a jaw dropping moment.

[Emily Hanford]

I was in my cube on the was it fourth floor of the department of Ed and I began to go.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

Through the materials on the approved list.

[Emily Hanford]

And some of them had some great.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

Evidence, aligned instruction and others. I stuck started flipping through and said.

[Christopher Peek]

Oh, she was seeing programs telling teachers to say things like read the pictures and to use cues other than the sounds of the letters.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

They had a lot of the strategies.

[Emily Hanford]

And guidance that we know runs counter to the science of reading.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

And yet they were on this list that said, go ahead and adopt these programs. This is what the Rhode Island Department of Education stands behind.

[Emily Hanford]

I think to understand how this happened, it helps to know a bit about what the Common Core standards are.

[Christopher Peek]

Yep. The Common Core standards basically lay out what kids should know and be able to do at each grade level. I have a copy of the English language arts standards right here. It's 66 pages long. And here's an example of one of the standards for a first grade. It says That a first grader should be able to ask and answer questions about key details in a text. But the Common Core Standards don't say anything about how to do that. They don't say anything about how to teach. They just say what to teach.

[Emily Hanford]

And you can see how this could be in conflict with the science of reading because one of the big things the science of reading has revealed is that how you teach kids matters. But Ed Reports was basically agnostic on how things were taught. What ED Reports is essentially wanted to see was that a curriculum was covering everything in that 66 page standards document you've got there.

[Christopher Peek]

Right. Even some of the people who were once supporters of Ed Reports are recognizing this conflict now between the science of reading and the Common Core Standards. I talked to David Lieben. He's an educator with more than 50 years of experience.

[Emily Hanford]

I've been involved in education since shortly.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

After the Civil War.

[Christopher Peek]

As you can tell, he likes to joke around a bit too. David Liepin worked with Ed Reports when it was first set up. He thought the organization was needed because that problem we mentioned earlier, publishers slapping Common Core stickers on their products and no one checking to see is this program really living up to that label. But David Lieben now says Ed Reports methodology is flawed.

[Emily Hanford]

Success is dependent upon how we align.

[Christopher Peek]

With standards as opposed to how we.

[Emily Hanford]

Align with science of reading.

[Christopher Peek]

He says one of the biggest problems with ED Reports is that some programs that are backed by rigorous research are, are not getting those coveted all green ratings. They've got good studies that show they're effective. But EdReports doesn't factor studies into their ratings. That's not part of the review process.

[Emily Hanford]

So EdReports was designed to look at does your program cover all of the standards? Not does your program deliver on the science of reading?

[Christopher Peek]

Right. And I should note too that both David Lieben and Carrie Curto, the woman from Rhode island, they're both now associated with organizations that do their own curriculum reviews.

[Emily Hanford]

I want to ask about Success for All the program they use in Steubenville. Success for all has never been reviewed by Ed Reports. Why not?

[Christopher Peek]

Because of what we learned in the previous episode. Success for all is not just a reading curriculum, it's a whole school reform program. So I asked an EdReports spokesperson about this and she told me that reviewing just the reading curriculum wouldn't have provided a complete picture of Success for all. So EdReports decided not to review it.

[Emily Hanford]

Interesting. Nancy Madden, the co creator of Success for All, told me that she didn't want her program to be rated by IT reports.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

I don't want to validate that approach to reviewing what instruction should be. It's the wrong approach. We need to judge what's the outcome. We need to look at what is the evidence of effectiveness.

[Emily Hanford]

She and her late husband, Bob Slavin, spent their careers trying to get schools to use evidence.

[Christopher Peek]

What we wanted to do was show.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

That the evidence could matter.

[Emily Hanford]

I was surprised when Nancy told me they left the country for a while because they were so frustrated by what they saw as a lack of interest in evidence here in the US and what she told me when I interviewed her was that when our podcast came out, she was feeling hopeful again. The CEO of Success for all said the same thing. This idea of science, of Reading coming to schools across the country. We were thrilled. Her name is Julie Weibel. Finally, you know, we're going to look at the evidence, we're going to look at the science, and kids are going to get what they need. But she and Nancy told me it was kind of deja vu when states started making lists, and Success for All wasn't getting on those lists.

[Christopher Peek]

Success for all was actually on one state list, Arizona. But Melissa Weber Mayer, the education official in Ohio, she told me that her team didn't think Arizona's review process was rigorous enough.

[Emily Hanford]

That seems kind of ironic to me. Success for all is on Arizona's list in part because Arizona doesn't look at ED reports. You get on Arizona's list if you have evidence for your program.

[Christopher Peek]

And we know Success for All has that evidence. But most states are not looking at evidence to decide what belongs on their list. Some of them are looking at ED reports instead. And that's why when Ohio's list first came out, Success for All wasn't on it. The program has never been reviewed by ED Reports.

[Emily Hanford]

I'm going to have you come back later to tell us what the CEO of ED Reports had to say about all of this in your interview with him.

[Christopher Peek]

All right, see you soon.

[Emily Hanford]

First, I'm going to finish the story of what happened in Ohio. When the superintendent in Steubenville first heard about Ohio's new science of reading law, she wasn't worried. Oh, no big deal.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

SFA is the science of reading.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Melinda Young.

[Christopher Peek]

As naive as I guess I was.

[Emily Hanford]

I really just never gave it a second thought. When I first visited Steubenville, the news was still kind of sinking in. They were hopeful that Success for All might eventually make the list. State officials said a second review process would be coming but they were already looking at new reading programs. We are proactive here. This is Tricia Sakoch, the principal of East Elementary. We're not just sitting here waiting. We're getting ready just to be prepared. They were looking at the programs on the state's initial list and there are.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

A lot of school districts who are using approved curriculum already.

[Emily Hanford]

That's Lynette Gorman, another principal in Steubenville. She and her colleagues were looking up test scores in the school districts that were using an approved program. Close to a third of districts in Ohio were already using something on the state's initial list. But only one of those districts was doing better in reading than Steubenville. It's a tiny district with a very low poverty rate. The teachers in Steubenville were having a hard time understanding why they might have to stop using Success for All.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

I don't want a new program.

[Christopher Peek]

Why get rid of something that is proven to work?

[Emily Hanford]

I would be upset about it. They were upset, but they weren't panicking.

[Christopher Peek]

Either way, we'll be fine.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

We're a strong district.

[Christopher Peek]

We'll get through it if we have to.

[Emily Hanford]

I feel in good hands. So I don't. I don't worry. This is Nicolette Hill, an 8th grade English teacher. We have a wonderful board of education and higher up staff and they put a lot of thought into everything we do. I think that they'll make sure that we stay where we need to be and keep excelling and doing what's right for the kids. It really struck me the way teachers here trust their administrators. I don't sense that same kind of trust in a lot of school districts I visit. I think it has something to do with the frequent turnover in leadership in many districts. The average superintendent in a poor school district in the United States lasts only about five years. The superintendent in Steubenville has been on the job for 10, and before that she was a principal and a teacher here. Stability is a feature of this place. Steubenville has low principal turnover and low teacher turnover too. And according to the school district, 48% of the people who work in Steubenville schools went to Steubenville schools. I think this stability, the commitment to this place, is one of the reasons Success for all has worked here. Why? It's lasted for 25 years, but it doesn't work everywhere. Often it doesn't even last very long. More on that and how Success for All finally got on Ohio's list. After a break, I talked to William Coren. He's been overseeing evaluations of education programs for decades and knows a lot about Success for All. I told him that Steubenville had been using the program for 25 years. Does it surprise you that a district has been using SFA for that long? Yes, he said it would surprise him to hear that a district used any program for 25 years.

[Christopher Peek]

The practicality is often that priorities shift over time in districts and, you know, their new administration comes in and they say, here's the new stuff we want to do.

[Emily Hanford]

Program churn is kind of a defining characteristic of American education, and that churn has not been favorable to Success for All. We identified more than 150 schools that had adopted Success for All at some point, but then dropped it. We wanted to know why.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

I started with emails.

[Emily Hanford]

Our research fellow, Olivia Cilcote, reached out to those schools.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

Almost nobody got back to me. So I just started cold calling.

[Emily Hanford]

She made close to 100 phone calls. Eventually she got some interviews. Here's what she learned about why schools dropped successforall so a lot of the.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

Time it came down to administrative turnover. It was common for Success for All to be shepherded in with a new superintendent. But when the superintendent left, Success for All was out too. There was one district where people who didn't like Success for All used the change in leadership to lobby for something else.

[Emily Hanford]

That's something we heard in the last episode. There tends to be resistance to Success for All. Some people just don't like it for sure.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

That is one dynamic. I talked to Ryan Mario when he got a teaching job at a charter school in Detroit. The school had recently started using Success for All.

[Emily Hanford]

You know, I was enthusiastic about the program. I don't know if it was necessarily as welcomed by everybody. You know, one of the biggest downfalls that a lot of teachers would talk about was the scripted nature of it. You know, they didn't necessarily love having to be on a certain page on a certain day at a certain time. They almost felt like it was robotic.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

But it didn't feel robotic to him. He says Success for All helped him become a better teacher.

[Emily Hanford]

So why did the school stop using it? Was it resistance from teachers?

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

No, actually, in this case it came down to money. The school had gotten a grant to adopt Success for All, and when the grant money ran out, they dropped it.

[Emily Hanford]

So cost is a factor here. Leadership change is a factor. What else did you learn about why schools stop using Successfor All?

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

What emerged during my phone calls was a portrait of how complicated and delicate implementing a new program can Be. I talked to Jennifer Hanson. She's the English language arts specialist for Geary County Schools in Kansas. She says successbrawl worked better for some schools than it did for others.

[Emily Hanford]

They weren't always seeing the same results. What was going on.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

So this district includes a military base, and the teaching staff turns over a lot. Jennifer Hansen told me they get about 100 new teachers a year.

[Emily Hanford]

Wow. That's a lot.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

Yeah, that's like 15% of their teachers. She says there was inconsistency in how different schools and different teachers were using Success for All. Eventually, a new superintendent came in and decided it was time for a new program. And they looked to ed reports to decide what that should be.

[Emily Hanford]

On ed reports, they had to be all green. If there was an area that they were not green in, we didn't even look at them or have them come and talk to us. Another reminder of how influential ed reports has become.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

Yeah. And something else that came up was how success for all groups kids for reading instruction. Remember kids get grouped by ability instead of grade level. Several people I talked to said they had a tough time making that work. They said kids who were behind weren't catching up. And the schools ultimately gave up on success for all because they couldn't get enough kids up to grade level.

[Emily Hanford]

I talked to the folks in Steubenville about that. They said that was a challenge for them at first, too, that it took a couple of years for them to really figure out how to group kids and monitor them and get the tutoring right. But now it's a rare exception when a child is still behind by the end of third grade.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

It does sound like success for all is something you have to stick with for a while to see the full results. It may be that some schools are giving up too quickly, and often it's because a new leader comes in who wants to take things in a new direction.

[Emily Hanford]

I was struck by something else you learned in your calls. You told me not all schools that adopted Success for All did the whole program.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

That's right. Some schools were using it just as a reading curriculum. They weren't doing all the elements like the tutoring and the attendance. In some cases it was because they didn't have the staff to do all that those schools didn't see great results with Success for All. And maybe that's not surprising since they weren't doing the whole program.

[Emily Hanford]

Did you come across any schools that had dropped Success for All because it wasn't on a new state list?

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

Yes. Franklin County Public Schools in Virginia had been using Successfor all in several of its schools. Some schools had been using it for 17 years. But then Virginia passed a Science of Reading law and created a list of approved programs. The SFA was not on the list.

[Emily Hanford]

Of approvals from the state.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

Brenda Muse is the director of Curriculum and Instruction.

[Emily Hanford]

We all were really a little bit.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

Shocked that they didn't make the cut, she said. The district could have tried to get a waiver to keep using Success for All, but district leaders decided it made more sense to adopt a state approved program for the entire school district.

[Emily Hanford]

There are other schools that we know of that have dropped the program because of a state list. The Success for All organizations sent us the names of 42 schools in seven states that, according to their records, had recently dropped the program because it wasn't on the state's list of approved programs.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

I think there's a lot of confusion about the research base for Success for All. Some people I spoke with said they dropped Success for All in favor of a program that was backed by evidence. One person said explicitly that they dropped Success for All because it wasn't backed by evidence, which was probably the most puzzling thing I heard in all my calls. There seems to be a perception out there that Success for All is not the science of reading. Maybe because the science of reading is new to so many people and Success for All has been around for a long time. It seems like it's not current or something.

[Emily Hanford]

Really interesting insights. Thanks for making all those phone calls, Olivia.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

No problem.

[Emily Hanford]

So now I'm going to turn back to Ohio. As we were wrapping up the reporting for this episode, the state updated its list just over a month ago. A year after the initial list was published, the Ohio Department of Education added Success for All and some other programs, too. I emailed the education official you heard earlier to find out what happened. She said programs that failed in the first round were allowed to reapply last fall. This time the state didn't rely on ed reports. They did their own review of Success for All and the program was approved.

[Christopher Peek]

As soon as I got the news.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

I sent it out to all of the principals.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Melinda Young, the Steubenville superintendent.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

It was on a Friday evening and it was crazy because they all responded back within, I would say, five minutes. It was like relief. Yes, relief.

[Emily Hanford]

Ohio's list was updated in time to save Success for All in Steubenville. But we know of two charter schools in Ohio that had already been told by their parent organizations to drop Success for All because it wasn't state approved. And as hundreds of Ohio school districts were looking for new programs over the past year, not a single one reached out to the Success for All organization about adopting their program.

[Christopher Peek]

The decisions schools and districts are making now will affect how reading is taught for the next five, ten years, maybe more.

[Emily Hanford]

This is my co reporter, Christopher Peek.

[Christopher Peek]

And a lot of money is being spent. Ohio gave out more than $50 million to help districts pay for new reading programs, and most of that money is going to programs that got good ratings from Ed Reports. So can you just start off by introducing yourself? Sure.

[Emily Hanford]

I'm Eric Hirsch and I'm the Chief.

[Christopher Peek]

Executive Officer of Ed Reports. Eric Hirsch started off our interview by talking about the history of the organization.

[Emily Hanford]

It'll be our decade anniversary in March.

[Christopher Peek]

And it's been fairly amazing. But he hesitated a bit when I asked about the influence this organization is having right now. I've seen Ed Reports come up a lot in state regulations or state laws about, you know, you should be looking to Ed Reports to figure out is this a good program or not. And I was wondering what you make of that. Is that a good thing to have Ed Reports in state regulations? How do you feel about that? Personally, we say Ed Reports is a place to start. He repeated this several times in our interview.

[Emily Hanford]

Ed Reports is a place to start.

[Christopher Peek]

Ed Reports is a place to start.

[Emily Hanford]

I believe curriculum is a place to start. Right. And Ed Reports is a place to start.

[Christopher Peek]

He told me Ed Reports shouldn't be the final say on what the best reading programs are. EdReports provides information from the lens of.

[Emily Hanford]

Our educator reviewers, and we believe it's helpful to districts and states in understanding.

[Christopher Peek]

What'S in the materials.

[Emily Hanford]

Before Ed Reports, there was not a lot out there, not much to go on. But the thing is, a lot of states and school districts have been treating Ed Reports as more than a starting point. They've been treating it as a gatekeeper, a place that can tell them which programs are compatible with the science of reading and which ones aren't.

[Christopher Peek]

And Ed Reports has been telling teachers its reviews were based on that science. I found a blog post they published in 2023. It said EdReports has always reviewed instructional materials for the science of reading.

[Emily Hanford]

But then critics started pointing to curriculum with the cueing strategies that were getting good reviews from Ed Reports and Curriculum that were not getting good reviews but had evidence that showed they were effective.

[Christopher Peek]

Right. And recently EdReports has made changes. They now include a Science of Reading summary with the reviews. It highlights how well programs teach Foundational skills. And just a few months ago, they changed the review tool. Programs that teach the queuing strategies will now automatically fail.

[Emily Hanford]

So is Ed Reports going to go back and re review all the reading programs they've already rated?

[Christopher Peek]

No, they've already released ratings for 86 reading programs, and they are not going to go back and do those reviews again.

[Emily Hanford]

So let's talk about what this all means. Like what to make of it all.

[Christopher Peek]

Well, it's clearly a problem when a program that has lots of evidence behind it, a program like Successforall when a program like that is having such a hard time getting on state lists.

[Emily Hanford]

Yeah, states could be doing the opposite. They could be saying schools should only use programs that have research evidence.

[Christopher Peek]

But that could be a problem, too. Rigorous studies are expensive and complex and take a long time. Lots of programs never get studied.

[Emily Hanford]

Right. They might be good programs, programs that include effective practices, but they haven't actually been tested. One of the reasons Success for All has so many studies is that Bob Slavin and Nancy Madden were researchers before they created a program. I asked the education research guy we heard earlier if he thought schools should use only programs that have been rigorously studied and proven to work. And William Coren said, no, we can't.

[Christopher Peek]

Hamstring ourselves by saying you can only, only do these things that reach, you know, this very high standard.

[Emily Hanford]

He says there wouldn't be enough programs, not enough choices. He thinks choice is important, that there isn't a program that will work well everywhere.

[Christopher Peek]

But there is a real risk here that schools and districts are committing time and money to programs that aren't effective. That's a potential downside when programs that haven't been proven get popular.

[Emily Hanford]

Right. I'm thinking about why we made this podcast in the first place. We made this podcast because there is something else to consider here. And that is what's the idea about how reading works that a program is based on? If you recall, scientists behind the government's Reading first initiative were trying to get rid of the cueing idea. They were trying to get rid of that disproven theory that beginning readers don't need to sound out written words. But then Reading first got caught up in arguments about programs and the whole thing fell apart.

[Christopher Peek]

What we wanted to do was focus attention on the idea again, to show people that there was an idea about reading that wasn't right, that was still in popular curriculum materials.

[Emily Hanford]

Yeah, lots of people, lots of teachers didn't know there was anything wrong with that idea. And I think that's because Many of them didn't actually know how kids learn to read. I thought teachers needed to know that. I thought they needed to understand what cognitive scientists had figured out about how reading works, that this was one of the missing links here. But Steubenville challenged my thinking about that in an interesting way. When I was there, some of the teachers were taking a new step, state mandated science of reading course. And they told me they were learning a lot. Some of them hadn't really known how kids learn to read. They didn't know the science behind it, but they didn't need to know that to teach reading well. They were given an effective program and they did it and it worked.

[Christopher Peek]

But as Steubenville clearly shows, it is more complex than just handing teachers a program. They got all that training. There were resistant teachers there that needed to be convinced.

[Emily Hanford]

And the community has things going for it that many others don't. The consistent leadership, the low teacher turnover, all the people working there who grew up there. It's clear that improving reading achievement is about more than just a program, right?

[Christopher Peek]

It's not like the answer here is that every school should be doing success for all.

[Emily Hanford]

Even Nancy Madden says that, and she was one of the people who created the program. We don't want success for all to.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

Be the thing that everybody uses.

[Emily Hanford]

What she wants is for states and schools to consider evidence. And she's worried that all the talk these days about the science of reading won't actually result in better outcomes for kids. That we'll look back in a few years and say that didn't work. And after everyone is done blaming each other, we'll be left with the same narrative that took hold after that big report by James Coleman back in the 1960s, the report that seemed to indicate schools don't matter that much.

[Christopher Peek]

We have to maintain the expectation that.

[Emily Hanford]

Kids really can succeed and the expectation that schools can make a difference.

[Dr. Melissa Weber Mayer]

We have to remember that kids can learn. We can do better. There's a way to do it. You could be Steubenville.

[Emily Hanford]

Before we go, I want to say one more thing. A main theme of this podcast is research matters and the body of research known as the science of Reading. A lot of that research was funded by federal grants. I'm recording this in early March of 2025. The Trump administration recently announced it is terminating hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts related to education research, including research on reading. If you have information you'd like to share with us about that or anything else we want to hear from you, you can call us, send us a voice memo or write us an email. Our address is soldastorypmreports.org the number is 612-888-7323. That's 612888. Read. All those ways to reach us are in the show Notes. Let us know if we need to keep your name or other identifying details confidential. This podcast is not over. We're going to keep following events and looking for more stories about schools and districts that are succeeding. You can sign up for our newsletter so you'll be notified when we have new episodes. You can do that on our website soldastory.org you can also find a story that there by my co reporter Christopher Peek about Ed Reports. He has more on the history of that organization, how they became so influential, and how they're responding to the science of reading. It's a great read. This episode of Soul to Story was produced by me with reporting from Christopher Peake, Olivia Cilcote, Kate Martin and Carmela Waglianone. Our editor is Curtis Gilbert. Our digital editor is Andy Cruz. Fact checking by Betsy Towner Levine Mixing sound design and original music by Chris Julen. Final mastering by Derek Ramirez. Our theme music was written by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Margaret Goldberg. Tom Scheck is the Deputy Managing Editor of APM Reports and our Executive Editor is Jane Helmke. Leadership support for Sold a Story comes from Hollyhock foundation and Oak Foundation. Support also comes from IBIS Group, Esther A. And Joseph Klingenstein Fund, Kenneth Raynan foundation, and the listeners of American Public Media.